George Carlin HBO Comedy Specials
REVIEW: Right after Carlin died HBO ran all of his comedy specials in one night and I recorded some of them. I wasn’t much interested in his most recent routines, I’d seen parts of them, and like many artists late in their careers, I thought Carlin had lost his stuff. He wasn’t especially clever or funny or even very interesting. But I was very curious to see his early work since I have a very clear memory of watching his first HBO special on the tv in the common-room of my dorm in the middle of a long drunken party night during my freshman year of college. Carlin was *the* drug-culture comedian of the 70’s, even more than Cheech & Chong, because while C&C were hilarious, they were “dumb-funny” (and I don’t mean that as an insult), silly bits about being stoned that were outrageous, while in Carlin we saw the kind of “stoner” that we, especially college students, imagined ourselves to be. Carlin’s routines, his word-play and observations about the (oft-times absurd) ways we use language and his cultural perceptions were smart in the way we wanted to be smart – insightful and, in their own way, rebellious. Any teenager or college student who’s ever smoked pot knows what it’s like to have what a friend and I used to jokingly refer to as those “profound revelations” that occur when you’re stoned. Of course, most of the time they don’t seem so “deep” the next day, but sometimes some of them held up, and Carlin’s material came across with the kind of shrewd, skewed wisdom to which stoners could relate. His brilliant comedy told us that doing dope didn’t necessarily mean you were a dope. This is not mere speculation, Carlin once said in a routine that without the insights he gained from marijuana he would have ended up a different person and would never have had the kind of career that he did.
In his first specials he comes across as rather shy, a soft-spoken, gentle person, not at all the “angry-man” thing that marked his later routines. It’s quite charming, as if he’s surprised to find that others find his unique observations as interesting as he does. In these routines he’s as much an actor as stand-up comedian; effortlessly making character transitions, many times from one line to the next, in an instant he becomes a crotchety old man, then a stern aunt, then a pleading young child, using his voice and body to convey the person he’s portraying. What’s amazing is that there is no setup, no preparation, it’s just Bang! he’s this person, then that person, and we recognize these people w/o any of the the usual intro, they’re just there and gone.
I think one the best of these early shows is the second special, “George Carlin Again!” from 1978. At this point, after “Seven Words” had made him a mega-star comedian, he’s much more confident onstage, while still retaining that modest demeanor. Watching it, one can sense the warmth that the youthful audience has for him. At one point he sets up a joke by saying “You’re going to groan at this one” and one can hear groans from the audience in response before he even does the bit, but it’s not heckling, rather it’s the audience playing along with him, willing to give him a groaner because they love him, and Carlin improvises and plays off this with great charm.
In that second special he does a long, brilliant routine on the phrases that we use to express the passage of time that is Carlin at his peak and I think is better than “Seven Words”; he riffs on cliche after cliche, it’s extremely polished and just as funny and observant today as it was 30 years ago, which is really saying something when it comes to a comedy bit.
There’s also an amazing moment during the first special when, right before the “Seven Words” routine, HBO interrupts the show and puts up a disclaimer that the next segment contains strong language and may be offensive to some. Talk about a different time and place. When he finally gets to it, the whole thing seems incredibly tame compared to today’s standards. (Lenny Bruce, we thank you.)
If you’re a fan of Carlin these early specials are gems. Not only are they funny, the historical perspective of 70’s pop culture is fascinating.
Harold
