Documentary follows rise and many rebirths of comic Carlin
For comedians of a certain age, there was one album that was worn out on the turntable, dutifully memorized and acted out. That was George Carlin’s signature “Class Clown.”
“The way George Carlin looked at the world and broke it down taught so many of us how to be comedians,” said Judd Apatow. “He injected the software into our brains about how to think as a comic.”
Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio teamed up to honor Carlin, the dean of counterculture comedians, directing the two-part documentary “George Carlin’s American Dream.” It recently premiered on HBO and is streaming on HBO Max.
“For most people, he is on our Mount Rushmore of comedy,” said Apatow. “He is definitely one of the best thinkers but also writers and performers that comedy has ever had.”
The documentary traces the rise and multiple rebirths of Carlin, from mainstream, groomed comic in a skinny tie and slicked-back hair to bearded, long-haired provocateur.
That change — from playing a mocking hippie-dippy weatherman on variety shows to a more authentic comedian talking about power, language and human foibles — took its toll. The documentary also plainly discusses Carlin’s wicked coke habit and personal turmoil. Kelly Carlin, the comedian’s daughter, would have it no other way.
“I think we’re all better off when we take people off a pedestal — not to take them down, but to raise ourselves up to their level. We are all humans here trying to figure
out our way,” said Kelly Carlin, who co-executive produced the series.
An A-list of comedians are interviewed, all attesting to Carlin’s genius, including Jon Stewart, Paul Reiser, Stephen Wright, Alex Winter, Paul Provenza, Robert Klein, Bill Burr, Bette Midler, Kevin Smith, Stephen Colbert, Hasan Minhaj and Judy Gold.
Carlin’s biting insights on life and language reached its zenith with his “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” routine, which appeared on “Class Clown.” When he uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested for disturbing the peace.
When the words were played on a New York radio station, they resulted in a Supreme Court ruling in 1978 upholding the government’s authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language. “It’s extraordinary that his material actually created a new category of speech in our country,” said Bonfiglio.
The HBO portrait is wonderfully enhanced by the Carlin archives, which include Post-It notes of joke ideas, scripts, home footage, letters and TV clips. The filmmakers also
got lucky when they found 23 hours of brutally honest interviews he did for an autobiography.
The documentary charts Carlin’s reinventions against the backdrop of huge social changes — Watergate, Vietnam, Reaganomics, hippie culture, among them. It also documents his fallow early ’80s when he was in the comic wilderness before a Carnegie Hall show reignited his career. Carlin died in 2008.
“It was always important to us that we show how he was both reflecting and being shaped by the culture,” said Bonfiglio. “It was kind of a two-way sort of a thing.”
The documentary comes at a time when Carlin’s observations are making a comeback. The late stand-up went viral recently thanks to a widely shared routine about abortion from his 1996 HBO special “Back In Town.”
“I really do feel like one of the things that’s happening in our world right now is we are looking for our moral center,” said Kelly Carlin. “And I think why he keeps showing up is because he was someone who we would get to check in with. It’s interesting how hungry we are for his voice right now.”