Original subtitles

Tonight's guest is one of those rare artists to whose name the adjective

legendary is often attached.

At the HBO Comedy Festival, Jon Stewart introduced him by referring to the holy

trinity of comedy, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and George Carlin.

He has written and appeared in 12 HBO concert specials, which have earned him

four Emmy nominations and won two American Comedy Awards and two Cable Ace

Awards.

He has also received an Emmy nomination as Outstanding Performer in a children's

series for his portrayal of Mr.

Conductor in Shining Time Station.

In 2001, the American Comedy Awards honored him for his lifetime achievement

comedy. He has appeared in films as varied as With Six You Get Egg Roll,

and Ted's Excellent Adventure, The Prince of Tides, The Streets of Laredo,

Dogma.

Scary Movie 3, and Jersey Girl.

You will find his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at the corner of Vine and

Selma. The Actors Studio is proud to welcome George Carlin.

Because this is a school and our master's degree candidates are

everything that shaped the guest in that chair, we usually begin at the

beginning, which for everyone else is a question as mundane as, where were you

born? But this is the first time I have ever had a card in my hand that reads,

George Carlin was conceived in August 1936 at Curley's Hotel in

Rockaway Beach, New York.

confirm that? And if so, how?

My mother and father had been separated for two years before this moment I'm

speaking of. And they ran into each other on the street in New York.

And they were very much in love. They just knew it was difficult to live

together. And he couldn't metabolize ethanol very successfully.

So there was a problem.

But at this stage, the marriage wasn't finished yet, and they met on the

and being very much in love and romantic types, he said, let's go out to

Rockaway, man.

Let's go out and have a weekend together. So they went out there, and on

chance moment, it hinged my very existence. I was conceived then.

On that weekend in August, on 116th and Beach Street there, Rockaway, New York.

See the kind of information we're going to get tonight. Yeah.

Detail. Now, I have this Dickensian picture of your mother climbing out a

and down a fire gate with you and your brother three months after you were

What was the occasion?

Well, it's clear from the story about them meeting and having conceived me is

that there was trouble between them. He was a drinker and he was a bully.

The occasion when they split finally was after my birth, about two to three

months after my birth. It was clear it wasn't going to work.

She didn't want to have happen to me what happened to my brother. He was

So one night he came and was terrorizing them and she took me in her arms. She

made our way down this fire escape to the courtyard, down through the

to Broadway where my Uncle Tom was waiting with his peckard.

and drove us to the country. I started my road trips very early. Off we were.

And we were vagabonds for about two or three years until she found an apartment

and we established a little, she called it, our little home. How did she support

you and your brother?

She wound up at the Association of National Advertisers. She was the

to their president.

So she supported us. She used to say, I make a man's salary.

And in those days, it was a fair description of...

Yeah, how she did.

You moved to 519 West 121st? First home where he didn't know where we lived.

I see. And what was that neighborhood like?

That was wonderful. My front door on 121st between Broadway and Amsterdam was

directly across the street from Teachers College.

We knew every square foot. We knew how to get through. Columbia University?

Columbia University's Teachers College.

At the end of my street was Riverside Church, a 23 -story Gothic phallic

with the largest carillon in the world.

Underneath it, closer to me, Union Theological Seminary, the largest multi

-denominational seminary in the world. Around the corner and down the street,

without crossing a street, Jewish Theological Seminary, same thing as the

only in the Jewish faith. Across the street from that, the original Juilliard

School of Music.

We also had St. John the Divine, and we had Grant's Tomb, and all of this was my

neighborhood. And down a few blocks were what we called West Harlem. We had

Spanish, black, and Irish kids, working class Irish kids.

That's where I chose to hang out. This was a big influence on the neighborhood,

but the streets of West Harlem were the influence on my life and learning and

behavior. One of the things that interests us...

is the birth of this obsession that has consumed the life of everyone in that

chair for 10 years and of the students out there in our audience.

Can you remember moments when it began for you? When I was small, and by that I

mean six, maybe even five, I would go to my mother's office sometimes, and

she had taught me to imitate Mae West.

And then for that, I would say to her, we got to go to the automat.

The automat was my reward, going and getting mashed potatoes and peas.

And so that was when I first noticed that being cute and clever and having

skill like that, mimicry in this case, got the attention of adults and their

approval and a form of approbation.

And I guess that must have registered with me.

as something I needed and I wanted. And then I noticed Bob Hope in acting movies

and Red Skelton. And I would see them having fun and being funny and so forth.

And then I'd imitate them to my friends or to my mother or whatever. And it

began to build this idea that there was something to aspire to real outside of

my mother's office and the automat, you know.

Some of your humor can be mildly.

described as sacrilegious.

I'd like to know if you remember your First Communion.

I do. The thing about First Communion was they told us we would feel

We would receive First Communion, the host would be the body of God, the body

our Lord Jesus Christ, and that it would make us feel different. We would feel

full of this grace and wonderful glow.

And I didn't feel it.

I was seven years old. I didn't feel it. It was a host. It was in my mouth. It

was unleavened bread. I finally swallowed it.

I had no mystical or even semi -mystical experience, and it began to plant in my

mind the idea that maybe they're not telling me the whole story.

But I went to a Catholic parochial school unlike anything that we hear

this stereotype.

First of all, we had no report cards, no marks of any kind.

We didn't have to take the state's regents' test.

That's how high the standards in this school were. We were exempted from state

regents' tests.

We had no corporal punishment.

We had no uniforms.

We had boys and girls together.

And we had movable chairs and desks so that our arrangements of who was sitting

next to you could be changed about every month. And you had different neighbors,

as we called them.

And everything was discussed.

And the name of this remarkable school was? Corpus Christi School. Still there.

The street is virtually unchanged.

121st between Broadway and Amsterdam.

How did you wind up at Cardinal Hayes? My brother had gone to Cardinal Hayes.

brother was, I looked up to him. He was a cool guy.

I hung out in the neighborhood he hung out in, which was pretty much the only

one we had anyway, but I followed his footsteps down the hill.

And I went to the Air Force later, because he did.

My interest was in getting away from everything, go to the Air Force, and get

out, get the GI Bill, and go to jockey school. That was what I thought of

as doing, because that'll get me to comedy, and that'll get me to acting.

is all going to work, but I've got to go get the GI Bill by being in the Air

Force, and you had an obligation to be in the service anyway, so I'll just

discharge it this way, and that's what I did.

And you received a general discharge under honorable conditions.

The Air Force and I at one point, a year early, we looked at each other and we

said, it's not working.

And they more or less said to me, I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll give you

full pay and allowances. You'll get your GI Bill.

We will not ask you to do four years of reserve time.

And he said, something like this, you don't mention that you were here, we

say anything either.

So I have violated that, but it wasn't a sacred oath. Where did you work when

you returned from the Air Force?

I went back to Shreveport as a civilian, stayed for almost a year, and then a

friend who had worked there went to Boston, and he was the manager of a

there. So I went to Boston, and it wasn't the best job for me. It was a

announcer job.

They had networks still. There were still soap operas. It was NBC network.

And it wasn't a place where I could be a DJ.

And then you went down to Fort Worth, I believe. I went to Fort Worth where I

really had the best radio job I ever had. That was 7 to midnight. I called it

the homework shift.

I answered my own phones. I talked to the kids.

How was Burns and Carlin born?

Well, Burns, Jack Burns, worked at the radio station in Boston. And Jack and I

had an affinity for comedy. We both knew the same sort of blue -collar Irish.

We had them in our heads. And he joined you, I think, in Fort Worth. He wound up

coming into Fort Worth. What took you guys to Los Angeles?

Well, he came by Fort Worth one night, surprisingly, and he said, George, I'm

going out to Hollywood to give him one last chance.

He was in his James Dean period.

We felt that we should go to Hollywood. We should go to Hollywood and become a

comedy team in nightclubs.

Eight months later.

We were standing in NBC's building doing the Jack Park show as Burns and Carlin

established,

about six months established, Nightclub Act.

I can't explain the kind of breaks that have come my way and that are out there.

Dreams come true. Dream your dreams and massage them and you'll live them out.

I'm telling you, it works.

How did you guys become the Wright Brothers at KDAY?

They were looking for someone like us. We auditioned. They liked it.

They called us the Wright Brothers, as opposed to Burns and Carlin.

And we were on the air within about two weeks from that day, the day we walked

in there.

And we stayed with them long enough to get a little bit of a coffeehouse job.

We were suddenly a real comedy team with real agents, international agents, and

we wound up on the Jack Parr show that year. I mean, I can't understand this

stuff. How does this happen?

Now, you began doing a lot of television appearances. How many appearances did

you do? Do you remember on the Merv Griffin show?

Burr must have numbered around 30 or in the low 30s. Same with Mike Douglas,

perhaps a few less.

But they were daytime syndicated shows that you can go back to, go back to. And

I had to write, write, write, write, write. And I became skilled at producing

material for myself, which is really the thing that has sustained me the most.

More than any other skill or talent that I have, writing material for myself.

In 1967, the so -called Summer of Love, I was 30.

Well, the people I was entertaining were 40 and 50.

I was in these standard mainstream nightclubs, entertaining them, not

with them at all. In fact, disliking them and disliking the things they stood

for in business and in their corporate mentalities and all the things they

for. And now, to my left, as it were, the 20 -year -olds were beginning to

sound like my A personality, my rebellious guy.

I'm noticing this counterculture. And I had musician friends all through the

60s, and I watched them change.

I watched their hair grow. I watched their interests grow. I watched their

change. And I had them as friends, and I was still a pot smoker, which I believe

is a value -changing drug. I believe it has a permanent effect on your value

system. And I think it is a self -limiting drug. It also suggests its own

eventually. For me, it did. I think there comes a time when the disinclusive

says to you, We've just about got through the changes we need, George.

Now it's a burden. Now it's a bit less of an assist, and it's more of a

So I learned that lesson. But I had begun to change, and suddenly this

clash of George the outlaw rebel and George the guy with the tuxedo or the

suit going like this.

They were completely incompatible. I had a very successful career. I was making

$12 ,500 a week in Las Vegas. I said, I got to go to the colleges. I said, I

belong at the college concerts. I belong with people who are open and will let

me be myself and experiment.

And you changed your look.

Yeah. My beard got longer. My hair got longer.

My wardrobe changed slowly as I took more risks, I guess. And I began to do

material.

That was a little... Now they would use the word edgier. It's edgier.

The album FM and AM was released in January 1972. It went gold, and it won

Grammy for Comedy Album of the Year.

I want to talk about the people who taught you, who influenced you.

You've mentioned that you saw Danny Kaye. Yeah. Did you see the Marx

Oh, yes.

And what I loved about them was the chaos.

Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chao, all of them were victims.

Their characters were victimized by the culture and surroundings of the people

in their movies.

And Groucho Marx reversed that. And they became the perpetrators of the deeds

that were sort of like out of line. And the society became their victims. And I

didn't know that at the time, but I was attracted to it instinctively.

Spike Jonze. Spike Jonze. Roger Hogan lived to 537. He had a collection of

Jonze records, old 78 RPM album.

And I loved that because of the sheer destruction of something nice.

He would take a beautiful song and just destroy it in a very funny way.

Ernie Kovacs.

Ernie Kovacs because of the madness, the sheer inventiveness, the chance

-taking. Jerry Lewis.

Jerry Lewis was unbridled anarchy. He was the best at that, and there I was,

know, 15, 16, 17, at a time when it really impressed me.

Lenny Bruce.

The honesty.

The honesty at opening up the wound.

and just think, look, look in here. This is what we do. This is how we do it.

Look at this. Richard Pryor.

Richard was a supreme artist who took the black experience, such as his

was in Peoria, and a particularly interesting childhood and exposure to

aspects of the world, a knack for retaining all of

that, and then...

turning it into these magic characters.

During the early 70s and into the 70s, George recorded six albums on the Little

David record label.

The first four albums were certified gold.

By this time, I think your humor was becoming more and more openly

autobiographical. Am I correct?

The first of the albums, yes, especially Class Clown, and the next one was

called

occupation fool.

To whom was the album Class Clown dedicated?

Leonard Schneider, which is Lenny Bruce's real name.

I think I said, in memory of Leonard Schneider, for taking all the risks.

Didn't you also pay tribute in the album to the nuns and priests of Corpus

Christi? I listed every one of the eight nuns I had had and all the priests we'd

had in that parish that I knew. There were probably five or six names.

I wanted people to know that the disrespect I had for

the dogmatic aspect and for the inconsistency, and in a lot of cases the

of Catholic doctrine, was tempered with an affection, an affection and a

gratitude that I had.

for this wonderful setting that I considered like a garden. Later I looked

and I thought, well, that was a little garden where they let me grow. They let

me be a creative person and think for myself there.

So I wanted to kind of illustrate that, that I was kind of like going, you know,

thanks and no thanks, something like that.

As provocative as every cut in the album is, the one that sent it and you over

the top, literally and figuratively forever and into history was the last

Seven words you can't say on television.

For the edification of our master's degree candidates, George,

would you please enlighten them? What were those seven words?

Piss. Sucker. Motherfucker. And piss.

And I pointed out.

Because you couldn't say tits. And I guess now you can hear it on an

show, you know, especially maybe after 9 o 'clock or something.

And if they say shit, it's because NYPD has a special promotion they're going to

say. You know, it's so false. It's so artificial.

But in that time, I said, tits doesn't even sound like it should be a curse.

It's kind of cute. It sounds like a nickname. Hey, tits, meet Toots. Toots,

is Toots.

It sounds like a snack food. It sounds like a snack food. Cheese tits, corn

tits, tater tits.

Tater tits. Give me a box of the tater tits. One of the things that makes

unique is his feverish passion for and encyclopedic knowledge

and mastery.

of words.

I don't think anyone would debate that George Carlin is the most agile verbal

comedian we've ever had.

I'd like to know how that started.

Do you think, is that genetic?

I think there's a great genetic marker for language.

And then, of course, reinforcement of anything genetic is important.

My mother was that way.

My father, besides being a great salesman, he was a public speaker.

He won

The Dale Carnegie, at that time there was a public speaking course they had,

they had finals every year of the winner of the best public speaker in America.

And he gave a speech at Waldorf Astoria the night of the dinner for the

finalists, and he won.

I still have the gavel, which was his award, a mahogany gavel with a silver

on it.

I treasure the memories I have of him indirectly through my mother. But he had

the gift.

And my mother had it. She would come home from work, and I would bring her

newspaper. I would get her World Tele, the World Telegram.

And she would call me, and suddenly she'd say, George, come in here. Look at

this. Look at this.

She'd say, look at these words.

Look at how that word cuts.

Look at how that word just, read that sentence. I'd read it. She'd say, look

that cuts right through. That word has power.

It has impact.

It takes the idea apart. You see, she would show me that stuff.

When did you begin guest hosting on The Tonight Show?

It would have, well, it was during the period when I was still deeply into the

cocaine. And it would have been, they dropped me from the Tonight Show for

a year because the word in the regular entertainment industry, the standard

mainstream agents and managers and stuff, he flipped.

He's had too many drugs, he's flipped. He's wearing tie -dye shirts, he's

cursing, he's talking, the guy's flipped.

So I finally got back in good graces after a couple of big selling albums.

do understand when you're successful at the cash register, don't they? Oh,

you're selling albums. Well, I guess it's different. I guess it's okay.

So suddenly I was hosting the Tonight Show in Johnny's absences.

How much coke were you using during that period? I guess I must have gone

through six or seven grams a day sometimes.

And it was a thing where the fun was in doing this.

You know, the act, there was a ritual to it. There was a ritualism, chopping it

up with the razor blade and stuff and getting it all into the little brown

bottle and keeping one in here and then having a second one because when this

one's out, you want to know where that one is. But you would lose track of it.

It was brutal, horrendous, and a lot of fun.

I suspect that there were times when it wasn't just fun.

Oh, absolutely. The thing about all drugs, I think, all habits,

of that type, chemicals, alcohol, everything.

There's a period when the pleasure greatly outnumbers and outweighs

the pain, the price you pay.

The ratio of pleasure to pain was a good -sized one.

Over the years, the difference in the ratio was evident.

Much less pleasure, far more pain.

At one point, I finally said, you know...

And I don't remember the dialogue, but it was something like this.

This costs much more than it's worth. And the intellect took over from

the wayward adult.

The intellect said...

This doesn't work anymore.

This is not worth it. You have to change this So what I did was I never went to

a facility.

I never had a detox period never had any of that I just began using less and

using it less frequently Until it was gone.

What happened to you in 1978?

I had my first heart attack Yeah, my father died when I was eight years old

first symptom of heart disease was a trip to the cemetery

I was lucky. I had a minor heart attack when I was 40.

What was that? 41.

And I learned a little about heart health.

Not enough, but I had two heart attacks since then. Haven't had one in 12 years.

And they've spaced out to about nine years apart. So that's not bad.

Every nine years?

In the wake of the heart attack, though, in 1978, you virtually vanished.

You cannot be the fastest gun in town forever.

You cannot be the hot new guy in your field forever.

I had my honeymoon period. I had my four gold albums. The other two that

followed it weren't so bad, but they weren't gold albums.

And I reached a drift.

The country had changed, too. And the culture had changed, and it was disco!

You know, it was, I mean, the whole idea of peace, love, happiness, and all of

this stuff was gone come 1976.

In 76, I hit a wall, and here comes HBO with a mass audience.

This time visual, too, so that adds to the effect of the album.

I think it was in 1982 that you released A Place for My Stuff.

This was different kind of material. This was not, this was...

Something that everybody could understand. What they later began to

observational humor.

Humor based on experiences we all have, universal experiences.

Your romance with words and their often subtle, elusive meanings is nowhere more

evident than in a brilliant routine called, quite simply, baseball and

You'll notice a couple of differences between baseball and football.

Baseball is a 19th century pastoral game.

Football is a 20th century technological struggle.

Baseball is played in a park, the baseball park.

Football is played in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War

Stadium.

Baseball is played on a diamond.

Football is played on a gridiron.

Baseball has no time limit. We might have extra innings.

Football is rigidly timed and it will end even if we have to go to sudden

You've also created over the years some wonderful characters.

There was Al Fleet, the hippy -dippy weatherman.

He was your most thoroughly stoned

character.

The weather is dominated by a large Canadian low, which is not to be

with a Mexican high.

Tonight's forecast, dark.

Continued dark tonight, turning to partly light in the morning.

Old Al got out of the weather business when he realized he had given the final

weather forecast. He had given the ultimate forecast. There was nowhere to

You know, when there's nothing left to conquer in your field, hey, it's time to

leave. And old Al had given the ultimate forecast. He told us, he said one

night, that the weather will continue to change on and off for a

long, long time.

And he was gone, Philip. God bless you.

Are the stock and trade of Japan's Kabuki and of some comedians.

You seem to have a special gift.

Are your eyes separately wired?

The two eyes begin here.

This one comes in.

They meet at the center. And then this one goes out there.

It's like this.

Do you think that talent for comedy is purely genetic or can it be acquired?

I think you can learn.

to refine.

Certainly you can learn to deliver it and improve the

skills that are involved.

But I think the essential quality for this humor is

ingrained in the personality.

It's a way of seeing the world.

Let's not forget, Carol Burnett or Lucille Ball versus Mort Saul versus

Bruce, Richard Pryor, Steve Martin, myself.

The Three Stooges, Will Rogers, Steve Allen, all these people qualify as

comedians. And there's very little in common among them in style or delivery

tone or attitude or approach.

It's just in the fact that they have looked at the world and said,

wrong. Something's wrong here, folks. And this is how I deliver that feeling

back to you. This is through my filter, through my prism. You said something's

wrong. Yes. Hmm? Yes. Does it begin there? For example, you have said, I

sense of betrayal from three sources.

Just three.

Religion, the nation, the species.

Sort of covers it, doesn't it? I

think that one of the most astonishing three

minutes you ever invented is the matter of the invisible man living in the sky.

Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an

man living in the sky who watches everything you do every minute of every

day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you

to do.

And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place full of fire and

smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live

suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever till the end of

time.

But he loves you.

He loves you and he needs money.

He always needs money.

He's all -powerful, all -perfect, all -knowing, and all -wise. Somehow, just

can't handle money.

Why on your website does your mother continually die in

a variety of ways?

For example, for example, from his website, 1990.

Mother dies of infection picked up at mobile labia -piercing clinic run by

Christian bikers.

Yeah. What do you mean, yeah?

Well... By that time, when in fact did she die?

My mother died at the age of 89.

Why did you choose six years after her death to kill her again at the hands of

Christian bikers?

I don't know. You know, I have a rich pile of... for instance, ways of dying,

things I've made up.

And you have to use this stuff.

And the timeline on my web page is,

the timeline of my actual life includes just ordinary repertorial descriptions

of things that happened and occurred, and then a lot of comic distortion and

some sheer invention.

Like father dies having rough sex in Barca lounger with Norwegian sailor.

just I just love I just I love the combination of images there, you know

Certain certain words are just funnier than others and especially in

combinations and Rough sex of the Norwegian sailor Barca lounge. I mean,

know, it's just a great combination. I just like taking language and creating

the way the Marx Brothers did.

Obscenely unlikely things with the words that are all useful in other ways and

have ordinary pedestrian meanings.

You go to great pains on your website to derogate your performances as an actor.

A few examples.

June 1966, first acting job, That Girl.

Episode as Marlo Thomas' agent, George Lester.

My acting really sucks.

It's true.

First movie.

Appears with Brian Keith in Doris Day and with Six Who Get Egg Roll.

Plays car hop Herbie Fleck. Acting sucks a little less.

Progress. Progress.

1987. Appears with Bette Midler in Shelley Long in Outrageous Fortune.

Plays Frank Madras, a drunken ex -hippie tracker.

Acting getting better.

February 1989.

Appears with Keanu Reeves and Alex Winters in Bill and Ted's Excellent

Adventure.

Plays Rufus, the futuristic mentor to Bill and Ted. Acting acceptable, not

yet. Now there are some here who obviously disagree with you. Tell us

experience of making that movie. Did you enjoy it?

Oh, that was fun.

Keanu and Alex were nothing but cut -ups and clowns on the set. It was like

being with a couple of teenagers.

In September 1991, you stepped completely out of character, I think, to

over the role of Mr.

Conductor on Shining Time Station on PBS.

Right. What drew you to a choice as surprising as this one? I thought, this

chance for me to show that I have other sides to me besides cursing on stage,

that I have some colors.

They're not expecting. That's always been what I want people to see.

Well, you showed a lot of people that you received two Emmy nominations for

role. Yeah.

George Carlin's website.

Appears with Barbra Streisand and Nick Nolte in Prince of Tides playing Eddie

the Gay Neighbor.

Really good job.

Best acting so far.

Yeah. Well, finally, a little respect.

Yes. How did the role come to you?

Word was passed to my manager to let us know that Barbara was interested in

seeing if I'd be interested in these pages, and they faxed over pages and

And it was this gay neighbor of Nick Nolte's sister.

So I was in New York, and they called me up to her apartment on Central Park

West. And so...

I went there and after reading the pages with her, I said, listen, Barbara, I

said, I said, Barbara, I said, I really need this part.

I said, I don't know how to tell you this, but I've always wanted to be an

actor. And I think I have skills and I have talents that haven't been used yet.

And I have a way sometimes. And I just told her about myself.

And bingo, she didn't tell me that day, but pretty soon I had the part.

And it was the best acting up to then. And maybe it's in the best ones of all.

Because there was stuff on the pages to do.

They're leaping from fire escapes now. One guy landed on my air conditioner. I

greased my window, so that didn't help at all. Oh, I love New York.

Tell me about it.

How's Andrew?

Gone. Said he needed space, so he found a younger man at the duplex.

His loss, Eddie.

Bless you.

Savannah was an angel. I practically lived over here.

So you're alone now, huh?

Well... Unless I can tempt you into crossing the line while you're here,

I got enough troubles, Eddie.

Actually, you look terrible, Tom.

I mean, you're not even cute anymore.

That's your idea, seduction. No wonder you're alone.

Well, it isn't easy.

Did you know Savannah was seeing a psychiatrist again?

Of course. I recommended her. She's a friend of mine.

It was a bitch washing it out.

You found it?

George Carlin's website.

March, April, 1998.

Films motion picture Dogma. Yeah.

In Pittsburgh.

Plays part of Cardinal Glick, a religious marketing hustler.

Enjoyed ridiculing Catholic clergy.

Back to business at the same old stand.

How did writer -director Kevin Smith decide that George Carlin was the only

person who could play Cardinal Ignatius Glick?

Kevin came to me and he wanted me to play this. He says, I wrote this part,

character with you in mind, and would you look at it? So that got me into this

minor repertory company of Ben's, which is where these folks show up a lot, and

that was my first one. I've done three now. What is the new Jesus that he

presents to his... The buddy Christ.

The Buddy Christ, who... What is his symbol, the Buddy Christ?

Hold on.

But isn't there more to it than that? There was another.

That's right. He's winking.

See, Padre, it goes down like this. These guys think that by passing through

that archway, they can go straight to heaven.

You want me to call off the ceremony for that?

Who sent you?

We were sent by him, who is called I Am.

Cute. Really cute.

Well, come on, kids. Playtime with the Cardinal is over.

Work for Moses.

Stay out of this. Let's go.

Your Eminence, it's not a joke. I'm telling you, man, this ceremony's a big

mistake. The Catholic Church does not make mistakes.

Please, what about the Church's silent consent of the slave trade? And its

platform of non -involvement during the Holocaust?

All right.

Mistakes were made.

But one can hardly hold the current incarnation of Holy Mother Church

responsible for the oversights of old. Now, I'm a very important man with very

important matters that demand my attention.

So if you please.

But tomorrow. Tomorrow goes off without a hitch. Do I make myself clear? Neither

you nor any other influence short of the hand of God himself is going to keep

this thing from going off without a hitch. Dogman contains some very serious

quite authentic religious debate.

Yeah. Given your views, reputation, did Kevin Smith encourage you to make any

contributions to the script? No. Was it all written? It was all done, and it was

pretty much above my expertise. You reunited with him recently for Jersey

Girl. Yeah. I once told Kevin, I said, Kevin, I want you to know something.

If you ever need a character to strangle six children, give me a call.

Because I can do that character, and I can surprise a lot of people.

So he must have kept me in mind for something out of the norm for what the

public expects of me, and had me play the grandfather, the father of Ben

Affleck, the grandfather of the Jersey girl, little Raquel Castro, who was

fantastic the only way i prepared for this was to uh to learn it and to

understand the scene and what my purpose my character's purpose was in the scene

and then absorb all of that and then forget it and just kind of call on the

parts of me that knew this man so on this one i said this is the most

role i've ever had i'm not going to do any preparation except what's in me and

i'll find what's in me what i need for this guy and it turned out to be the

feeling i had about my acting How long was your book, Braindroppings, on the

York Times bestseller list? Well, the hardcover and softcover combined were in

the low 40s, 42, 44 weeks, something like that. That and the Napalm, I'm very

proud of these things. The Napalm book, the second one on Braindroppings,

combined both hardcover and softcover, have sold a million and a half copies.

And that's not so usual for a comedian's stuff. No, it's not.

It certainly is. I was proud of that. You have a right to be.

We begin our classroom with the questionnaire invented by Marcel Proust

brought to a high state of the art by my hero Bernard Pivot.

What is your favorite word?

I have to give you more than one.

The musical instrument, the balalaika.

It's just so wonderful to say balalaika.

For some reason, Skylark.

It's a lovely word and it evokes lovely things, of course. Your least favorite

word? There are harsh words.

A lot of them are two -word phrases. Harsh words like dump truck, ash can,

meatloaf.

What turns you on?

Well, reading about language. What turns you off?

I don't like people who are pretentious and arrogant.

What sound or noise do you love?

Oh, the sigh, the well -earned and comforting sigh that comes naturally to

What sound or noise do you hate?

Oh, the sound of a truck backing up with that beep, beep, beep.

Everything beeps now.

In a way, I've been waiting all my life for this moment.

George Carlin, what is your favorite curse word?

Motherfucker.

It has such balance to it.

What profession other than yours would you like to attempt?

I think with the tools I have, I think I would have made a good trial lawyer.

What profession would you not like to participate in? I just wouldn't like any

profession where I really had to answer to another person almost, you know,

without exception, without a vote.

If heaven exists,

What would you like to hear God, if God exists, say when you arrive at the

pearly gate?

Now we're going to have some fun around here.

He'd be absolutely right. Now we're going to have some fun here. Here we go.

Mr.

Carlin, my name is Steve Nicholas. I'm a second -year playwright.

I'm curious about your writing process.

Yeah. Do you choose a theme and write to that theme, or do you take material

that you've already written and try to weave a thematic thread through it?

The thing about my process, and it's always interesting to me to describe it,

save these files. I have 2 ,000, roughly, files in this computer on every

subject we can think of.

These are collected, I call them harvesting, every week or so, and

into their appropriate files.

My process is, these files grow, and I write for my stage act.

I have about an hour, I do about an hour and 20 minutes, an hour and a half.

There's no theme.

It's mostly varied among language, the big world, about which we mostly can

find disagreements.

Business, government, race, politics, religion, the big things.

Consumerism.

And then the little world, things we all agree on because we all experience

them. Dogs, cats, telephone manners or whatever, clothing, shopping, all the

things we all know. So those three things, language, the big world, and the

little world, have always been places I drew from.

Hi, Mr. Crellin. Hi. My name is Seth Rabinowitz. I'm a third -year actor. Hi.

One thing you talked about earlier tonight was that you felt kind of

religion, your species.

Yeah. And I'm just curious, as somebody who still clearly very much enjoys life,

enjoys living life, and enjoys doing what you do, what kinds of things still

give you hope?

Well, I live a personal life of great optimism and positiveness.

But I look around and I don't see a way out for this species.

To me, using technology to fix the mess made by technology is what we're

planning to do.

And it doesn't seem to fit for me. I just see this thing as some of these

problems that exist as not really having...

Certainly easy solutions. And it's always a fix. It's always a band -aid.

seems that a lot of things we do for the best intentions, especially when you

get to this field of engineering and tampering with the physical world,

they seem to create more problems than they fix.

I look at it and I think, wow.

I hope I live long enough to watch it all collapse, just for the fun of it.

But I'm really kind of glad that I'm closer to death than birth.

I really am, because presumably there could be some really ugly

cataclysmic event.

I once said, if the world ever really blows up...

I hope it happens east of me so that I can watch on CNN for a long time before

the prevailing winds bring the thing back around to me.

You know, I just a long time ago, I said to myself, when you're born in this

world, you're given a ticket to the freak show.

When you're born in America, you get a front row seat.

Some people are the freaks. We have our Tanya Harding's Joy Botafogo's Mike

Tyson's Michael Jackson's. Then there are the people who merely watch the

freaks. And that's most of us most of the time.

Then there are those of us who get to.

comment on the freak show, to review the freak show.

I gotta tell you about the part of the freak show I saw yesterday, folks. Oh,

yeah, and that's the guys like me. People say, well, that's awfully

I say, no, no, no, no. It's realistic and skeptical.

And to point it out isn't cynical. To point it out is to be highly skeptical

cynical behavior.

And I think it's an important distinction, because people like to just

word as if it's a bad thing.

And I know that cynical has more than one meaning, and there is a cynical

there's a cynical aspect to what I do.

But I think there's a healthy realism in it, too.

I hope.

I hope we're interfered with again by the extraterrestrials, and this time

help, you know, in a big way. This time they say, we're going to do another

genetic thing.

We're going to do it just like we did when we brought you people. Suddenly you

had architecture.

Suddenly you could lift stones up and build a pyramid. Suddenly you had a

mathematics. Suddenly you had all these things. You never had them. Suddenly

they appeared. We're going to do that again, and this time we're going to help

you folks again.

I just hope that happens, because then all those dreams that I don't quite

have... for us could come true and that would be the best thing, best surprise I

could get.