Modified On August 9, 2012
There’s a clip that circulating on the WWW (mainly via Facebook) that purports to be George Carlin’s “best three minutes” ever.
And many of those posting it are comedians.
We are baffled by it all.
It’s particularly confounding that many of the re-posters are also claiming that some sort of vague, unnamed, nefarious forces are actively engaged in trying to suppress the clip. Since the entire special is available via Amazon for $15.49 (and you can get free Super Saver Shipping on orders of over $25), or for $19.98, directly from the HBO site, we’re not quite sure how this suppression thing is working out for the dark and powerful cabal that’s silencing Carlin’s words. (They’re identified only as “PTB,” or Powers That Be.)
Unless we’re mistaken, the clip is a 3:12 segment from Carlin’s “Life Is Worth Losing” special. It originally aired in 2005 and aired several times thereafter. The special was Carlin’s thirteenth for the multinational entertainment and news conglomerate, HBO/Time-Warner, so, when he speaks of “the real owners, the big, wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions (about who) own everything,” the hypocrisy, the irony, is glaring. As we recall, pointing out hypocrisy was the impetus for some (if not most) of the best Carlin material. There was a time when Carlin was intimately familiar with irony. It seems so long ago.
We’re not sure why it’s being hailed as his best three minutes. There are no laughs (just a nervous titter here and there) and there is occasional applause, but not for anything funny, rather the applause seems to come when the message is bleakest. (When Carlin says that the “owners” of America are counting on “the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big, red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes every day,” the Santa Rosa, CA, crowd applauds lustily.)
We know that Carlin was capable of cynicism, of painting a bleak picture– especially when dwelling on death and disease and loss– and that he could sometimes coax hearty laughter from those same dismal observations. This is what great comics often do. But in this clip (which appears to be his big finish), the cynicism overwhelms any possible laughs. It’s unrelenting. And it’s main, intended product seems to be despair. This might come as no surprise to anyone who’s read a recent Carlin interview or seen any of his recent specials. But Carlin seems to have lost sight of the joke.
We’re not disheartened so much by the message (as political commentary, it’s pretty weak stuff), but by the paucity of humor and wit. Coming from someone who was for decades cited as one of the top three or four comedians ever to take the stage– it’s totally depressing.
To hold this up as this artist’s “three best minutes” is just plain wrong.
We’re reminded of the video, “The Lenny Bruce Performance Film”– shot at Basin Street West in 1965– in which Bruce “directly addresses the accusations and allegations stemming from his multiple arrests for obscenity.” Of course, he also does some of his greatest hits, but the video is, for the most part, unwatchable. It is fascinating for the documentation of the spectacle of a man, in his next-to-last public performance, who is consumed by the legal tumult in his private life, but as comedy, it’s a lowpoint.
We recently had a conversation with someone who, in 1964 or so, traveled to an upstate New York venue to see Mort Sahl only to be disappointed when Sahl mostly engaged in a decidedly unfunny dissertation on the Kennedy assassination and peppered his stage show with ponderous readings and analysis of the Warren Commission Report. Sahl’s a great comedian. (We saw him close a show about five years ago at the State Theater in Easton, PA, and he was nothing short of brilliant.) But such performances did not distinguish him and are indicative of a performer who has allowed anger over a particular issue or set of topics to totally cloud his judgement when it comes to standup comedy.
There’s nothing wrong with a comic having strong convictions about certain matters that mean a lot to him. But if you can’t express those feelings in a funny way, then perhaps you need to run for office (a la Al Franken) or become a pundit or write a book.
We laughed long and hard at a good part of Carlin’s work as youths. He has influenced the majority of comedians working today. He was, no doubt, a brilliant and prolific standup comic. But it’s okay to admit when he sucks. There’s no blasphemy involved here.
The argument could be made that those who brand this clip his best work are, in fact, doing harm to his legacy. Suppose for a minute that someone who has never seen or heard Carlin (and there are such people; and there will be more and more such people as time grinds on) clicks on this clip, after being told that it represents the pinnacle of his artistic output. They will no doubt wonder what all the fuss is about. Indeed, they may come away from the experience believing that neither Carlin nor standup comedy are very entertaining.
ADDENDUM: From the Wikipedia entry, “Life Is Worth Losing”:
During his 2007 comedy tour, he had been explaining early on during his performances that he had moved away from “coasting” on his material from this recording and made haste in creating new material because of the dark nature of the subject matter. He said that after the material was sinking in he got to thinking and realized that it was “fucking depressing”.
Emphasis ours.