Kelly Carlin was at least somewhat involved with this movie and I have very high hopes for it. Can you believe George has been dead for 14 years? I feel like I just heard him the other day.
Patton Oswalt, who I think is in the movie, just mentioned on Twitter that he never met George Carlin, but he felt like he knew him. I agree. Of all celebrity deaths, Carlin’s is one of the biggest losses. He was just massively intelligent, way ahead of his time, and was the greatest comedian(can we even always call it that?) of all time.
I’m looking forward to seeing this movie when it comes out. I hope it is good enough to get some Oscar buzz going. HBO.
In case anyone else didn’t know what OP was referencing: George Carlin’s American Dream.
Thanks for the heads-up! Unlikely to have much new for Carlin fans, but a fun and important summary of his life and work, it seems.
Kelly Carlin tweeted about it the other day and Patton Oswalt also tweeted about it. I hadn’t even realized we had something coming. Honestly, I can’t believe this didn’t come out 5 years after his death. Seems like something that would come together more quickly.
Perhaps nobody before GC sweated every single word of his routines the way that he did. I still marvel at his delivery.
I started listening to him not long after he let his hair grow long.
And I never stopped.
He was, IMHO, definitely among the pantheon of his craft.
I did work on this - not sure if they’ll use the footage, but the researcher/archivist asked me (since I have a nice Mort Sahl/Carlin YouTube channel with rare stuff) if I had Carlin’s first appearance. She told me “I looked and couldn’t find it via NBC’s archive page”… I couldn’t believe she didn’t realize NBC was too cheap, and recorded over even the Carson shows until the early 70s… She told me she was working on the authorized Carlin bio (Jessica Berman Brogdon), so I helped her out… One hour out of my life looking for this one minute clip. When I asked if she could help me out, allow me to “ghost” (do archival grunt work), she ignored me… A few days later, Mort died.
She complained about the video quality, so it might not even be there.
I just watched both parts. I thought these were two one-hour episodes but the total runtime was about 3½ hours. It was a little slow in parts, but well worth the watch. There was a lot there I didn’t know, like about the low point in his career, his decision to walk away from from conventional standup that was becoming very successful in order to be more authentic, and his personal challenges. I’m curious what others thought of the film.
I like it I guess I just wasn’t very impressed by it. I didn’t know Carlin spent so many years building his career just to totally change his act when he got successful. He should’ve just sold out for a few more years and did the hippy dippy weatherman for a bit, built up some fuck you money, then changed his act.
Also I was surprised that George’s older brother lived to be 90 when George died at 71. I guess hard lifestyle really does kill you young since they had similar genetics.
I did enjoy the part about how playful George was with his second wife. That was a look into his life I never knew about. All I ever saw was the ball of rage and disappointment (in humanity) that he presented himself as on stage.
Thanks. That’s a good description of how I felt about it, too. I didn’t think the film itself was particularly awesome, although it’s garnered strongly positive reviews, but I thought it was very informative about Carlin’s personal life and struggles. As a big fan of Carlin I was familiar with most of the comedy bits scattered throughout the film, but knew very little about the man himself.
