“I do this real moron thing, and it’s called thinking. And apparently I’m not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.”
George Carlin found many ways to express these opinions: acting, writing, comedy and, of course, criticism. He was dark, dirty, and expressive; an icon who, even in death, found a way to call the world out on its crap.
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Carlin was born in Manhattan, New York, where he was raised alongside his brother Patrick by their mother, Mary. Carlin was only two months old when Mary left his father over his alcohol abuse.
It was the middle of the Great Depression, but somehow Mary found work as a secretary, allowing her to support her children. In his final interview, Carlin would say that his mother “saved” him and his brother, though at the time their relationship was difficult.
So too was Carlin’s education. He studied at various parochial schools, and at the insistence of his mother became an altar boy. It was during this time that he developed the distaste for religion that would flavour his comedy in the future.
Where Carlin did shine was at Camp Notre Dame, where he would spend most of his summers. It was where his love for performance grew, and he regularly won the camp’s drama award. He would later request that a portion of his ashes be spread at the lake.
After completing grade nine, Carlin left school, and eventually joined the military. He worked as a radar technician while earning his high school equivalency. Carlin often received disciplinary punishments, and was court-martialled several times, before being discharged in 1957.
For some time, Carlin had been moonlighting as a DJ in Louisiana, and he used this experience to find work at radio stations in Boston and Fort Worth, Texas. It was at the latter that he mat Jack Burns, a fellow DJ with a passion for comedy. They formed a stand-up duo, and after successful gigs at a local coffeehouse, headed for California.
As The Wright Brothers, they found success in a breakfast show at Hollywood station KDAY, and released an album, Burns and Carlin at the Playboy Club Tonight, to great acclaim in 1960. They would split two years later, but received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1987, which Carlin asked to be positioned at the doors to KDAY headquarters.
For the first half of the 1960s, Carlin made guest appearances as a range of characters on TV, such as Al Sleet, the Hippie-Dippie Weatherman, and a group of stupid DJs from ‘Wonderful WINO radio’.
His career was buoyed by the support of volatile comedian Lenny Bruce, who would come to influence much of the social criticism that Carlin began to incorporate into his performances. The two met when Bruce was arrested for obscenity mid-performance. When the police asked Carlin for his identification, he refused, stating that he did not believe in government-issued IDs. He was subsequently thrown in the same vehicle as Bruce and taken to jail.
Bruce helped Carlin find his way on to The Tonight Show in the mid-60s. Carlin would become a frequent substitute for host Johnny Carson on the show over the next 30 years.
By the 70s, Carlin was making incredible money, and would fly to performances on his private jet. However, he realised he was not content, and desired to change his image.
He hired talent managers Jeff Wald and Ron De Blasio to help him target a younger audience, and he was soon touring in significantly smaller, hipper clubs. In the book Comedy at the Edge: How Stand Up in the 1970s Changed America, Wald said that Carlin’s income (around $250,000 a year in the late 60s) dropped by 90%, but his career was simultaneously reaching new heights.
Carlin’s dress style – a t-shirt, faded jeans, long hair, and earrings – was in direct contrast with that of the tailored, clean-cut comedians of the time, and resulted in him making less and less appearances on TV for some time. However, his rambunctious counterculture persona soon caught on, and he was launched back into the public eye.
Signing to a new record label, he released FM & AM, a dual-sided album that paired his old, family-friendly style with the new Carlin, who didn’t shy away from discussing, sex, drugs, and an extensive analysis of the word ‘shit’. It won the 1972 Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album, and revitalised a style of comedy not seen since the death of Bruce in 1966.
That same year, Carlin was arrested for performing his iconic routine, Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television, at the Milkwaukee Summerfest.
“Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that’ll infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war.”
The case was thrown out, but the resulting press made Carlin a legend. He would go on to expand the so-called ‘dirty words list’ over the rest of his career, including dozens of suggestions sent to him by fans.
In 1975, Carlin had the honour of hosting the inaugural Saturday Night Live. Then, suddenly, he disappeared.
Or just about. Between 1976 and 1981, Carlin rarely performed outside of two HBO specials in 1977 and 1978. It was later revealed that he had suffered three heart attacks, caused by excessive use of alcohol and drugs.
He eventually returned, releasing A Place for My Stuff and appearing in HBO specials every 1-2 years.
After dabbling in the form, Carlin’s first success in film came in 1987’s Outrageous Fortune, starring Bette Midler. Two years later, he played sagely time-traveller Rufus in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, as well as in the sequel and television series.
Curiously, also on television, Carlin would replace Ringo Starr as the narrator of the US version of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends in the 1990s. He also played Mr Conductor in the show, and two subsequent spinoffs.
Carlin had a major supporting role in The Prince of Tides alongside Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand, before launching The George Carlin Show in 1993. He played taxi driver George O’Grady; the surname a reference to his grandmother’s family name.
A retrospective of his work – George Carlin: 40 Years of Comedy – was shown at the Aspen Comedy Festival in 1997, and in the same year, Carlin released his first hardcover book, Brain Droppings. It remained on the New York Times Best Sellers List for 40 weeks.
In a 2001 interview with Esquire, Carlin revealed his reason for pursuing standup over the screen: “Because of my abuse of drugs, I neglected my business affairs and had large arrears with the IRS, and that took me eighteen to twenty years to dig out of. I did it honourably, and I don’t begrudge them…But I’ll tell you what it did for me: It made me a way better comedian. Because I had to stay out on the road and I couldn’t pursue that movie career, which would have gone nowhere, and I became a really good comic and a really good writer.”
From 2004, Carlin headlined at the MGM Grand Las Vegas, but after an abusive rant directed at the audience, he checked into rehab.
Over the next 18 months, he created new material, but struggled with his health. He spent six weeks in hospital for heart failure and pneumonia in 2006.
On March 1, 2008, Carlin’s final HBO special, It’s Bad for Ya, aired.
George Carlin died at the age of 71, on June 22, 2008, four days after being named the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor honoree by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
His words live on as a reminder to be critical of the world around us, and do what we can to be a good and honest person. Or, as Carlin himself might have put it, to beware bullshit on the path to truth.