Funny Folk Salute [Expletive-Deleted] George Carlin
There may be seven words you can never say on television, but only five are needed to describe George Carlin. At least according to Robin Williams.
“He was one funny motherf–ker,” Williams said of his legendarily caustic comedic forebear, who died of heart failure Sunday evening at the age of 71.
“George Carlin was the living embodiment of the First Amendment. In the traditions of Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift, he dealt with the insanity of the world with the one-two punch of humor and honesty with no apologies,” added Williams.
“He was one of the greats,” Ben Stiller said in a more censor-friendly statement, “and he will be missed. [He] was a hugely influential force in stand-up comedy. He had an amazing mind, and his humor was brave and always challenging us to look at ourselves and question our belief systems, while being incredibly entertaining.”
Kevin Smith, who frequently cast Carlin in films and who gave the taboo breaker his last live-action big-screen role in 2004’s Jersey Girl, reacted to news of the death on his official website this morning.
“Dammit. My favorite memory of Carlin is sitting in the audience at one of his Vegas shows as he did his ’People I Can Do Without’ routine,” Smith wrote. “When he got to ’guys over the age of 10 who wear their baseball hats backwards,’ he tossed in ’Kevin, you’re exempt from this.’
“Changed my sense of humor forever. Sixteen years later, I was happy to have met the man, let alone worked with him. Honestly, I was lucky to have known him at all.”
Jay Leno also paid tribute to his fallen friend, who broke onto the national scene back in the 1960s as a hippy-dippy weatherman on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show.
“If there was ever a comedian who was a voice of their generation, it was George Carlin,” Leno said. “Before George, comedians aspired to put on nice suits and perform in Las Vegas. George rebelled against that life.
“His comedy took on privilege and elitism, even railing against the game of golf. He never lost that fire. May he continue to inspire young people never to accept the status quo.”
Judd Apatow gave props to Carlin’s influence over today’s class of cutups.
“Nobody was funnier than George Carlin,” he said. “I spent half my childhood in my room listening to his records experiencing pure joy. And he was as kind as he was funny.”
Saturday Night Live mastermind Lorne Michaels was also in mourning for the comic genius who served as the first-ever host of SNL, albeit one who later admitted to having been on cocaine for the duration of his appearance.
“You never forget the people who were there at the beginning,” Michaels said. “George Carlin helped give Saturday Night Live its start as our first host. He was gracious, fearless and, most important of all, funny.”
HBO, which produced 14 Carlin-fronted comedy specials, also issued a statement on the funnyman’s death.
“Because HBO has had such a long and close relationship with George Carlin, his passing is like losing one of our own,” the cable net said in a statement.
“No performer was more important to helping our network define itself in its early years. And no performer was more committed to the ideal of freedom of speech, a principle he embodied for the 50 years he performed with his trademark wit.
“We will miss his humor and his righteous comic anger, and we will simply miss him.”
Jerry Seinfeld, meanwhile, is penning a eulogy to Carlin for tomorrow’s New York Times. He’s also set to speak about his comedic forebear on tonight’s Larry King Live.
Did NBC go too far with MILF, and what is the family hour anyway?
Edward Wyatt’s New York TImes piece questioned whether NBC crossed the line by broadcasting racy material in the “family hour.” On both 30 Rock and The Office, the writers let loose, basically presenting what you might call adult rated moments in what NBC asserts is family time. All I have to say to that is, “What? There’s a family hour? Since when?” Apparently, I wasn’t the only one caught off guard by the raunchiness of the family hour. The Parents Television Council just today rescinded their praise for NBC’s claim that programs in the 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. time period would target families. PTC is calling NBC’s pledge “hypocritical.”
Seriously, when you think about the kind of things discussed in many TV programs that air between 8-10 o’clock, the family hour as we knew it in the ’70s, ’80s and even the ’90s is an antiquated notion at best. The Standards & Practices police, the censors, are asleep at the button if you ask me. What doesn’t get by? The two items cited in the Times were the following: the TV show causing a stir within 30 Rock was called MILF Island, a reality TV show in which 50 eighth grade boys are stranded on an island with 20 “holy hot mamas” with whom they’d like to have sex; on The Office, in the midst of a screaming fight, Jan yelled at Michael that they should go ahead and have a “fu*kin’ kid.” The expletive was blipped out and Jan’s mouth was digitally blurred.
Now, were the two shows funny? Absolutely. I was laughing out loud. I loved them. But some part of me did wonder, “Has TV gone too far?” This isn’t the first time I felt this way. I remember when How I Met Your Mother concocted a whole episode about “the tricycle” — Ted’s opportunity to have sex with two women at the same time. My jaw dropped on that one. It was broadcast at eight o’clock at night. Would a kid even be able to comprehend what Ted and Barney and Marshall and Robin and Lily were talking about? If a parent was watching the show with a kid in the room, would they send him or her out? Of course, if a parent knew what was going on, wouldn’t he or she heed the TV-14 warning? (I don’t think so; that’s just like the warning on the DVDs about pirating the content!)
There’s a lot at issue here; not just the concept of family hour viewing. It’s not just the time of night. Are families watching TV together anymore? Probably not. When I was a kid, there was only one color TV in our house. If I wanted to watch the color set, I had to watch what my parents were watching. Today, everybody has a television set. Kids nowadays are able to watch television online, on a cellphone, in their bedrooms. Are mom and dad even aware of an eight-year-olds viewing habits?
I don’t think the networks are able to control or adhere to a family hour anymore, not with time-shifting and alternate technologies. But standards are something to consider. I don’t want to sound like an old-fart — although I probably do — but shouldn’t there be some things are are deemed adult fare?
NBC defended the criticism over shows like My Name Is Earl (in which they are all criminals), 30 Rock and The Office, saying they have a tradition of adult, edgy, sophisticated comedies on Thursday nights. It’s true that Seinfeld often skated close to the edge of good taste, with masturbation contests, nipples in Christmas cards, et. al. And Friends’ Joey and Chandler were overjoyed when they discovered they were getting free porn on their TV. Porn was labeled as something really great by Friends, making you wonder what kids learned when they heard that. What would a kid make of Christine’s bizarre, incestuous dream involving her brother Matthew on a recent episode of The New Adventures of Old Christine or her and Barb’s discussing lesbianism?
Censorship is not the answer. Creating an arbitrary family hour like they’ve done in the past is not the answer either. However, writers and producers need to realize that their audience is not adults only. Tina Fey should know that writing for the eight o’clock time period is not the same as writing for Saturday Night Live. Same with Carter Bays and Craig Thomas. How I Met Your Mother isn’t David Letterman. Of course, what about the Fox animation block on Sunday night? Those shows are wickedly funny, and Family Guy and American Dad are outrageous.
On the other hand, there are eight o’clock shows that are family fare. NCIS, Chuck, Ghost Whisperer, Ugly Betty for instance. Families can watch The Amazing Race, Survivor, Dancing with the Stars and American Idol together. And sitcoms like Everybody Hates Chris, The Bill Engvall Show and Tyler Perry’s House of Payne are meant to be watched by families. I interviewed Ali LeRoi, co-creator of Everybody Hates Chris, for TV Week recently, and he told me, “When I was growing up, we all watched The Andy Griffith Show, it was a family show. It was easy to understand and I don’t think the enjoyment of shows like that will ever go away. I do think at times, young hip executives get into an office and think they need to reinvent the wheel and they really don’t.”
Families who are really concerned do have options: the Disney Channel offers Hannah Montana, and does really well. So does ABC Family with reruns of Seventh Heaven and Gilmore Girls. And nobody is stopping any parent from popping in a DVD that they deem more acceptable.
I don’t want the networks to be watchdogs and wardens, but I do want these writers to think twice about what’s appropriate. They can’t control where the network chooses to show their programs, but more often than not, they have a good idea. Knowing that, what about being funny without resorting to vulgarities. I’m as guilty as anyone; I laugh at the jokes. But I also feel bad after the fact and wonder when television lost its conscience.
Triumph The Insult Comic Dog skewers the WGA
OK, so the writers and the studios have come to an agreement and the strike is over. Now we can start dumping on everyone!
The Writers Guild of America East held their awards show on Saturday night in New York City, celebrating each other and also the end of the three month strike. The event really got lively when Triumph The Insult Comic Dog (with help from Robert Smigel) took the stage and unleashed some choice barbs at the WGA. He also gets in a few shots at NBC head Jeff Zucker, the late night hosts, and John Ridley. There are too many funny lines to just reprint here (though nothing about pooping on the new contract, which is odd), but here are a few highlights.
No, we have an excellent agreement. And what better way to celebrate than with the most scaled-down [expletive] award ceremony ever? Who needs Rita Moreno? Who needs to sit? Who needs food? You can drink free Sierra Mist at the bar.
Seriously, I spent time on the picket line. I learned a lot. Not until you hang out with these writers do you realize how much [expletive] there is on TV. “You write for ’Reba’? That’s terrific!” Ladies and gentlemen, what a powerful statement: No “According to Jim” until this strike is over! Now I know why the public was in favor of this strike.
We had to get an agreement today. We had to. There was too much public outcry. At the end of the day, we had to end the strike to get all the ugly writers off of YouTube.
Personally, I want to see the complete, foul-mouthed version of this speech. You know Triumph must have been at least a little more nasty than these snippets reveal. If anyone finds footage of the event online, let us know in the comments.
Channing Tatum Confirmed for G.I. Joe’s Duke?
Eleven days ago, the character of Duke in Stephen Sommers’s much hated-on G.I. Joe was said to be down to three actors: Lost’s Matthew Fox, Fantastic 4’s Chris Evans and Channing Tatum from the upcoming MTV-does-Iraq-War flick Stop-Loss. AICN now says that Tatum is definitely Duke.
Tatum is 27, he was born in Alabama and if you’ve recognized him in anything it was probably the wobbly Shia LaBeouf flick A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints or the rare, naughty Anne Hathaway debacle Havoc. Slashfilm’s resident diehard G.I. Joe fan, Peter, is returning from Sundance shortly, so I’ll let him unleash the expletive-barking hounds of hell on this casting truthiness if he feels it necessary, but to me, Tatum is fine. I’ve seen the movies above, and I’ve seen him pop out a tear in the trailer to Stop-Loss, and all I really needed to see was the above photo to know he’s fine for this role.
Sommers coming aboard automatically zapped this movie into low-brow Cartoon Land, and no actor this side of George Clooney or Josh Brolin was going to save it. Tatum can pull off the role of an arrogant, affable cocky co-leader with a large firearm hanging off his shoulder. Let’s just hope he doesn’t bump into Rambo from Rambo because that would take more than the crime cleanup crew from Sunshine Cleaning to wipe up with a sponge and broom.