Last Words by George Carlin
things I wanted (or thought I did).
He found two backers in Toronto: Ron Cohen, who was producing movies up there, and a director named Bob Schultz. But Bob
was one of these guys who make a film frame with their thumbs and
fingers and he started talking about "the thread" and "I see you on
a beach. I see you on a beach at sunset..." I knew then that it was
LAST WORDS
as hopeless as it had always been. The whole thing just collapsed in
a heap.
I don't often cry, but I cried on the phone that night to Brenda:
"It's not going to work! It's a rotten process! It sucks!" I went to a club
called Yuk Yuk's, watched other guys being comedians and smoked
a lot of pot in the stairwell. I called Brenda back (she was with her
folks in Dayton) and said, "I'm driving down to Dayton."
I rented a car and drank a lot of beer on the way. A real lot: it's 360
miles. I was stopped twice but got out of it, because I was a celebrity.
Finally I reached Dayton in the dead of night, got lost and crashed
my car in the middle of nowhere into a huge fucking hole. Completely demolishing my nose. Which seemed to end any chance I
might've had of ever being in the movies. No nose, no movies.
But God jumped in again. It's two in the morning when I crash.
I'm bleeding profusely and I'm unconscious. The police who
arrived—I found this out later from a good cop who saved my a s s were going to plant cocaine on me. I'd crashed in the black section
and they were going to set up a comedian-in-the-black-sectionscoring-drugs thing.
In fact, for once, I didn't have any drugs. Just a lot of empty beer
bottles. The good cop told them they couldn't set me up, stopped
them cold. Not only that, he wrote the crash up as strictly an accident. No DWI. Finally I get to a hospital. It's three in the morning—
and on duty in the emergency room is a plastic surgeon! He was able
to do the initial things that saved my nose. St. Elizabeth's Hospital,
where Brenda was born. Catholic hospitals have always been good
luck for me.
Slowly but surely Jerry was building things back up. He dealt with
the Taxman on a weekly basis, keeping that off my back. He was
making me more money from appearances than before. He did all
the booking and promoting of the shows himself so there was no
one to split with, no agency to pay, no promoter's fee and no promoter ripping us off on fifty or sixty seats. That automatically made
things more profitable. He began to find little markets in between
big markets, where you had a small theater of about 1,100 seats and
could do two shows a night. Places like Club Bene in South Amboy,
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New Jersey, that didn't affect the New York market or the Philadelphia market. He began loading me up and getting me out there.
Playboy came back into my life. They wanted to interview me.
Playboy still had a huge circulation in the early eighties and their
monthly interview was a big deal; a major indicator of media status.
Jerry thought it was important, another talking point. Something
else to send people: "See? George is on his way back."
Both of us knew what Playboy was really interested in: my drug
problems. Still, Jerry figured it was worth the risk. It turned out in
my favor: an opportunity to put the cocaine years behind me (which
was true enough: all my coke money was going to the Taxman).
It was pretty funny and fairly smart; a lot of personal history that
underlined I'd been around for a while and wasn't about to leave
the scene anytime soon. The cutline on the piece summed it up:
"A candid conversation with the brilliant—and still rebelliouscomedian about his new life after years of inactivity and a crippling
cocaine habit."
Jerry wanted me to do another HBO special. We owed them one,
actually: after the second one in 1978, Artie Warner had squeezed a
$40,000 advance out of them to meet the movie payroll. HBO was
growing fast and the whiz kid behind it, Michael Fuchs, had developed a winning strategy vis-a-vis network TV: that on cable you
could say and do (but mostly say) things you'd never hear on NBC,
CBS and ABC. That made me a natural for them.
Jerry wouldn't shoot it just anywhere: it had to be Carnegie Hall.
He liked the alliteration of "Carlin at Carnegie," and it was in line
with his "big" goal: not every comedian could play Carnegie. It
would give me status, single me out. The only night he could book
was a Sunday in the fall—he hated that because it would mean paying New York stagehands double golden time. But he took it, even
though it would mean we could only shoot one show—there would
be no "safety" show the following night to edit from and cover fuckups. Brenda's needs were met too—she would actually produce the
show; Jerry, who'd never produced any television, would executive
produce.
Then the third and biggest bombshell went off.
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I happened to have a hatred for the Dodgers. (This has abated
now, because I've realized where my real values lie. I've retreated
from emotional sports involvement.) But at that time I was still
rooted in the old patterns. I hated any Los Angeles team. I wished
them ill. I still wish them ill from an intellectual standpoint.
I especially hate the Dodgers, because they deserted me when I
was a boy. I was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, and when they left New
York, they left a hole in my heart. Then the Mets came along. I
liked the Mets, because they represented what the Dodgers used
to be—inept National League working-class stiffs. (At least they
were in the beginning.) Back in '82, I was still totally in the Mets
camp.
The Mets come to L.A. and Jerry and I get invited out to Dodger
Stadium to watch the game from those moronic field-level boxes,
where you really can't see the game. You only see the outfielders
from the chest up, because of the crown of the field. But these fucking ignorant, cocksucking Dodger fans in the boxes think it's the
hottest thing ever. Dodger fucks who know nothing about baseball,
who arrive in the third inning and leave in the seventh (they're famous for that) and in between listen to the game on the radio so
they can understand what the fuck's happening.
So there I am in the belly of the beast sitting in a field box with
these privileged cocksuckers, drinking beers at a fierce clip and eating very fatty hotdogs, arguing with the Dodger fans and cursing
at the Dodger players on the field. (I would've made a great soccer
hooligan.)
We're in the sixth or seventh inning; the Mets are winning but
Valenzuela is pitching. Fernando is at his peak and very popular out
there. He's pitching a close, close game and the Dodgers look like
they might pull it out. For once the Dodger fucks are watching every
pitch, every swing.
Suddenly I get this bad tightness in my chest. It's not a pain. I don't
collapse. The feeling is more like: "If I only just stretch enough, this
will go away." But it wouldn't.
I said to Jerry, "Something's wrong with me. Let's go to the nurse.
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Don't ever do that. A little tip for you readers out there who might
be planning to have a heart attack at Dodger Stadium. Do not go to
the nurse's office. Here is the extent of medical treatment for a heart
attack at Dodger Stadium: 1. They have you lie down. 2. They ask
you how you feel.
I said to Jerry, "I'm not having a heart attack, but let's get to a hospital and check." A friend of ours, John Battiste, a limo driver and
an acting teacher, had driven us there. We'd said we'd meet up with
him at the end of the game at a specific place. Meanwhile he was
going to go and park somewhere else and hang out with the other
limo drivers. So we had no idea where he might be.
So far all this had taken maybe half an hour. You have a couple
of hours before the real damage sets in. I didn't know that, but then
I didn't know I was having a heart attack either. But here the Carlin
luck kicks in. Normally the Dodger fucks would have been repeating their usual pattern of leaving in the seventh inning. The aisles
would've been clogged with thousands of fat cocksuckers on the
hoof, slowing up egress. But for this game everyone was staying. So
I guess while the Dodgers might've helped give me the heart attack,
they also helped me beat it.
Jerry, who'd never been in Dodger Stadium in his life, found John
instantly, right where we left him and next to the car. I lay down in
the back and John drove like a maniac from downtown L.A. to Saint
John's in Santa Monica. It's sixteen or seventeen miles, and he must
have made it in ten minutes.
I get there and I'm in bad shape. I wasn't unconscious in the limo,
but now I'm in and out. Or maybe they knocked me out or let me
pass out. I have little recall of this part. They give you nitroglycerin,
and then if you get a headache from the nitro they give you some
morphine for the headache. They try to balance everything out and
get you stable. All they want to do is stabilize you.
I come around long enough to see that Brenda and Kelly have
arrived. Kelly is crying and crying. I say: "Don't worry, honey, I'll
be okay." Which just makes her cry harder. What I don't know is
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that my pulse is down to 20 and Brenda's been told that I'm "going."
There's not a lot left the medical team can do. The women in my
life have been brought in to say goodbye. I pass out again.
Suddenly, at the last moment, someone came up with the idea
to use streptokinase. Streptokinase, a highly effective clot-buster, is
now standard cardiac therapy in emergency rooms, but at the time
it had only just been developed and very few hospitals had it. It happened that Saint John's had been experimenting with it. They asked
Brenda if they could use it. She said yes, absolutely! And it turned
me around.
They wanted to go on and do open-heart surgery but Brenda said
no. I don't know why. All they do is slice your chest open, crack your
ribs, spread them back as if they're butterflying you, take your heart
out, cut arteries from your leg, sew the new arteries back onto your
heart, put your heart back and sew you up. What's the big deal? It's
no worse than Aztec human sacrifice.
She said later she'd heard somewhere that a lot of men have real
personality changes after open-heart surgery. That if this affected
me to the point where I became afraid or withdrawn and couldn't
work, it would destroy me.
She may have been right, but if I'd made the decision I would
probably have said go ahead. I don't think I'd let surgery change
my personality. First of all, I'm extremely optimistic and positive.
Secondly, I hate to behave in clichés. I'd never go: "Now I'm compromised. I'm damaged. I'm crippled. I think I'll change my personality."
I realized I'd almost died. I didn't go: "Nothin' happened here!
Gimme a beer." But I didn't dwell on it. I never had a Big Philosophical Moment. Although I will say this: I have looked death in
the face. And found it wanting.
I'd like to keep you up to date on the Comedians Health Sweep-
stakes. First Richard Pryor had a heart attack. Then I had a
heart attack. Then Richard burned himself up. Fuck that shit!
I'm going to have another heart attack. Current standings
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are . . . Heart Attacks: Carlin two, Pryor one. Burning Yourself
Up: Richie one, Carlin zero.
Carlin at Carnegie in 1982 was the pivotal event in my career
after the drift and confusion of the late seventies. The material
wasn't stellar: with the exception of the heart attack sweepstakes and
"Seven Dirty Words" (included by special request of Mr. Fuchs), it
was mostly A Place for My S t u f f .
As usual I was unhappy with my performance. So was Brenda.
She'd been saying all along that Jerry was crazy to insist on
Carnegie, where we could only do one show and no "safety." She
actually reduced me to tears. But I thought she was right: I'd missed
a giant opportunity.
Jerry wasn't so sure. He'd seen a performance that "wasn't bad."
What he'd also seen, that I couldn't, was powerful symbolism. I was
back at Carnegie Hall, where I'd been ten years earlier at the height
of my first breakthrough. I'd shown I could bounce back from a
near-fatal Big Ticker Event and joke about it. The lack of focus, the
tentativeness, the hey-man looseness of the seventies had all vanished. I took the stage from the moment I came on and held it till I
left. Sure, there were some fluffs and shot timing and nervousness,
but the first hints of a new voice were emerging with an edge to it
that hadn't been there before.
HBO's subscribers agreed with Jerry. When it came out in early
'83 it was a ratings smash. Within weeks we were selling out double
shows again and I was giving the wild and crazy guy a run for his
money. Carlin at Carnegie was the real beginning of a relationship
with HBO that over the next twenty-five years first incubated my
artistic development and then set the seal on it. Without that anchor I don't know how exactly I would have evolved as a performer
and an artist. You could say as HBO grew, I grew, but it wasn't just
the size of the audience and the fact that it was self-selecting. The
constant need for a new hour of material every couple of years kept
me fresh and productive. And HBO's absolute lack of censorship
was liberating. Whatever topic I chose, people I attacked, language
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I used, views or opinions I expressed, I never heard: "We'd rather
you didn't. . ." "We'd prefer if you'd . . ." "Could you change/tone
down/leave out. . . ? " Even in the vicious, repressive atmosphere of
the Bush years, they've never wavered.
HBO s Carlin at Carnegie special was the last time I ever recorded
a version of "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television." There
was no need. For the first time, all seven were on television.
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I GET PISSED, GODDAMIT!
I'm in Pittsfield tonight. I go
Winston-Salem for the two-a-nights . . . This weekend I'll be in
Fort Myers and Corpus Christi . . . Then on to Pensacola, Birmingham, Raleigh . . . Work at full bore. Pressure, pressure.
Death and the Taxman looking over your shoulder makes life
different.
There was a growing aggressiveness, a new confidence and
coherence—and urgency. I didn't have the luxury of sitting around,
smoking dope and thinking: "Boy, that was close." I had to get on
with my life.
Throughout the eighties I had outbursts of anger. It kept building
up and festering. Anger at myself for getting myself in this tax mess,
for being such a cokehead 1 didn't have the sense to avoid the tax
mess. Anger at myself for not getting Brenda help sooner and for the
damage we did to Kelly.
But good stuff came from that anger. Gradually I learned to
channel it where it really belonged—fueling the new voice that had
made those brief appearances at Carnegie. A voice that slowly grew
sharper, stronger, populating my whole personality; more authentically me, more authoritative.
All this can be linked to the confidence that came from being
hooked up with Jerry. I was realizing that I hadn't just gotten a manager for his incredibly generous percentage. I also got an agent, a
promoter, a road manager, a business adviser and financial backer;
and as I've said, a best friend, a kindre
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d spirit whose mind worked
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along the same diseased lines as mine. Who I could riff and freeassociate with during the long road trips and wee hours in dreary
motels. Over the years Jerry's sown the seeds of some of my best
pieces.
Having such confidence in him, I could turn my attention internally to my work. Concentrate on how I expressed myself, how
I could entertain them, make them like me, all the elements that
make up what I do. When uncertainty and unreliability and financial pressure eat up a large percentage of your energy it's impossible
to pay attention to that. And when it's relieved, all that energy is now