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CNN Live Event/Special
Seven Words You Can't Say on TV; History of Comedy. Aired 10- 11p ET
Aired February 09, 2017 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
(APPLAUSE)
JIM JEFFERIES, COMEDIAN: It's amazing that there was a time when what you said could get you locked up in prison.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I actually accrued a reputation for being a reverend.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir, speaking legit.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I cuss gratuitously by subject matters and other stories.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is going to be a good show.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are there any subjects that are never appropriate for a human?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People say, a good comedian doesn't have to cuss, and I thought that's (beep) rubbish.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Howderdy (ph) is tudurdy (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why all of these were fleening (ph)?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What you're about to hear is going to shock and disgust you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If you choose to go blue, you got to do it right. Dirty for the sake of dirty, there's nothing worse than that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And, you must promise me something, you won't get me in any trouble on the show tonight.
(APPLAUSE)
CRAIG FERGUSON, SCOTTISH-AMERICAN TELEVISION HOST, DOES THIS NEED TO BE SAID: And listen, I will be cussing tonight. Now, this show is, you know, no I will. I will. Don't (beep) me. (LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FERGUSON: Not allowing an artist to use the word (beep) is like not allowing a guitarist to use the chord E. It's possible to play the instrument but why the (beep) would you bother.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FERGUSON: Now, don't wave your finger at me. You knew when you got here, there'd be cussing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ELAYNE BOOSLER, COMEDIAN: The last thing comedy needs is to be polite. You know, the world was never changed by anyone being well- behaved or well mannered or quiet.
JEFF ROSS, COMEDIAN, ROAST MASTER GENERAL: There's a certain exhilaration in pushing the boundaries.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SARAH SILVERMAN, AMERICAN STAND-UP COMEDIAN, WE ARE MIRACLES 2013: I had this memory of being like three and I would shower with my mother. And my mom got her water from the showerhead. That water would then cascade down her ample bosom and like pike off her '70s Jew bush...
(LAUGHTER)
SILVERMAN: ...that was my water.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SILVERMAN: I was raised by parents who spoke explicitly. There's something about growing up not knowing that talking about your vagina or penises was taboo.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALI WONG, ASIAN AMERICAN ACTRESS, STAND-UP COMEDIAN, BABY COBRA, 2016: Now, if you haven't done it before, ladies go home and treat yourself. Do it tonight. Just give your man a little -- a little push, push in the tush, tush to give him a little Atari.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WONG: My whole comedy career, I've been told to be less dirty and I would get more work if I just tone it down a little bit. And it's crazy to me that a highbrow publication like the New Yorker would be interested in interviewing me about why I find it funny to butt finger a man.
No, please. No, really. I can't...
JIMMY KIMMEL, HOST JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE, WRITER: I don't think there's any subject that's off limits.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LOUIS C.K., AMERICAN COMEDIAN, SHAMELESS 2007: The other day, a guy told me to suck a bag of (beep) That was interesting. I never heard that before. A total stranger told me to suck a bag of (beep), a whole bag of them.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KLIPH NESTEROFF, AUTHOR, COMEDIAN: What we consider offensive or blue evolves with every generation.
BOB MANKOFF, CARTOON EDITOR, THE NEW YORKER: With vaudeville, for the first time, comedy becomes an industry.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our poor father, he died of throat trouble. They hung him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MANKOFF: Vaudeville is created commercially to cleanup humor. There's no cursing. There's no blasphemy. Why? They want men, women, and children to be able to come there. They want a bigger audience.
NESTEROFF: The vaudevillian did something on stage that was objectionable. They would send a blue envelope backstage with the material they wanted excised from their act. And so that became the -- the whole idea of that phrase "Blue Material".
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE BURNS, AMERICAN COMEDIAN, SINGER AND WRITER: Say good night.
GRACE ALLEN, AMERICAN COMEDIAN: Good night.
BURNS: OK.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NESTEROFF: So, you had vaudeville comedy which was accessible to all but at the same time concurrently you had another style of comedy that was a little bit different.
Burlesque House of Rock is like going to a strip club. These guys were there with their trench coats to watch girls. They have different styles of comedy, different people performing within them.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) LEON DEVOE, ACTOR: I see you lying there, my anger is aroused. I pull out my dirk.
MANNY KING, ACTOR: Oh, oh. Now we're getting to the point.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NESTEROFF: Because burlesque, the primary attraction was scantily clad ladies. In order to compete for attention a comedian had to do something that was going to upstage a naked woman, so they would do this sort of dirty-ish comedy.
[22:05:00] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, I check...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And he did.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I didn't know that one.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A magician.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What did she do?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, she does one trick that's really amazing, mystifying. She takes a little rubber ball.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, yes, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She bounces the little rubber ball up and down, OK?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ...and she stands with her legs like this.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And when the little ball bounces up and down, the little ball disappears.
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, what are you bragging about?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My wife does the same thing with a basketball.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She could...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, she does it the hard way. She knocks kneed.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP) MANKOFF: Vaudeville is clean. Burlesque is dirty. The thing about burlesque is that audience is all male. You're not going to burlesque to see the comic...
(LAUGHTER)
MANKOFF: ...OK? You're going to see the boobs.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast coming to you from the MGM Grand Hotel.
(APPLAUSE)
JACK BENNY, AMERICAN COMEDIAN: Dean, I'd like you to know that I cancelled a proctologist appointment...
(LAUGHTER)
BENNY: ...to be here tonight.
(LAUGHTER)
BENNY: And I think I made a mistake.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NESTEROFF: So in the late '60s and 1970s, they would televise Friars Club Roasts, but they were sanitized versions of what you would actually see at the Friars Club.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DON RICKLES, AMERICAN STAND-UP COMEDIAN: You know, there's a lot of reasons why we should honor this man tonight. First of all, he's Italian and I love the Italian people. I love to get the word of (UNTRANSLATED), he said to me in Brooklyn on a Saturday night.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROSS: The televised Roast of Dean Martin were always so funny and it was fun to see, but there's something about those private Friars Club behind closed doors, you know, a stag roast. The fact that they were these huge stars like Jack Benny and Milton Berle, the public can only heard on TV or on the radio to be very squeaky clean suddenly you got to see another side of it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHNNY CARSON, AMERICAN TALK SHOW HOST AND COMEDIAN: I've known Don for about eight years and like most performers, Don has probably thousands of acquaintances, professional people that he knows, but he's also one of the people who have close friends and I like to feel that I am one. I don't want to speak for Don but I'm one of his very close friends. And I think that's important to Don because queers need friends.
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wonderful.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NESTEROFF: The vaudeville style of comedy and the burlesque tradition of comedy came together at the Friars Club.
ROSS: It's good when an artist can express themselves in a way that may not be acceptable outside that temple of free speech. People say there's a time and place for that kind of comedy, that's the time and place, The Roast.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I will remember this evening probably as long as it takes me to get to my car.
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[22:10:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVE ALLEN, AMERICAN TELEVISION PERSONALITY: So, ladies and gentlemen, here is the very shocking comedian, the most shocking comedian of our time, a young man who is skyrocketing to fame, Lenny Bruce.
(APPLAUSE)
LENNY BRUCE, STAND-UP COMEDIAN: You might be interested in how I became offensive.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MARC MARON, COMEDIAN/PODCASTER: At that time there were laws on the book around obscenity. You couldn't say (beep). You couldn't say (beep). You couldn't say (beep). I mean, can you imagine that?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRUCE: I like to perhaps give you a four letter word that starts with an S ends with a T. First time in television, I'm not going to look at you when I say this because this way I can't get busted. You don't know who said it. The band said it.
(LAUGHTER)
BRUCE: Starts with S and ends with T and the word is snot.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RICHARD ZOGLIN, AUTHOR, COMEDY AT THE EDGE: Lenny Bruce saw himself as social critic and part of that was challenging our language and why certain words were taboo.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRUCE: The Jews have no concept that there's a dirty word graph. In other words f-u-c-k, the Jew doesn't knew those word 90 points and s- h-i-t five points, because those rabbis and priests s-h-i-t only one f-u-c-k.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KITTY BRUCE, DAUGHTER OF LENNY BRUCE: If you listen to my father's routines, you will hear "obscenity", the so-called curse words or "Blue Material". He did not use them for shock value. They had a purpose. They had a reason and they were leading to a point.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRUCE: And there's a difference, you know, between a big piece of art a little (beep) in the middle, a big piece of art a little (beep) in the middle, a little piece of art and a big piece of (beep), a little art in the middle a big piece of (beep), a little art...
(LAUGHTER)
BRUCE: You don't understand the art one, a big piece of (beep).
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERT WEIDE, FILMMAKER: If he was just playing small joint and wasn't a household name, nobody would have bothered him but his popularity started to grow. He became something of a force and something of an influence who started to question authority and he started to step on toes.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRUCE: Christ and Moses looked at the Earth and they said, wow and noticed (ph) the book (ph) is bonding down there. Gideon's are shoving at motel drawers. Christ and Moses fly to New York and said what's playing in St. Pat's? Good double (ph) Bill, Spellman and Sheen, it's a...
(LAUGHTER)
BRUCE: ...cuddle Spellman would be relating love and giving and forgiveness to the people and Christ would be confused because the route took them through Spanish Harlem...
(LAUGHTER)
BRUCE: ...and he would wonder what 40 Puerto Ricans were doing living in one room and this guy had a ring and it was worth 8 grand.
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What about the accusations that you tramp on other people's religions?
BRUCE: I discuss religions many points of view. I am interested. I am searching for an answer as Billy Graham is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRUCE: At this time, priests and people of the cloth, you bowed to them. And people get very angry because now they're talking about their religion, their belief system. You play with somebody's belief system and their religion, now you got a problem. And they got the powers to be crazy. Shut him up. You've got to silence him.
ROBERT KLEIN, COMEDIAN: Someone saw Lenny Bruce in a club in Chicago and he was making jokes about the pope or something and two detectives went up on stage because of that remark and handcuffed him in front of the audience and took him away. You can't even imagine that today.
[22:15:00] BRUCE: They found it was obscene enough to put me in a jail cell for the last 24 hours which -- and the thing I wished they would do is tell me what words were obscene?
BRUCE: In court a cop is reciting what he thinks that my father is talking about when my father had the microphone and he was doing this. He was imitating a priest doing holy water in the pews. The cops wrote it down that it looked like he was pretending masturbation. It got fierce, it got really fierce.
RICHARD LEWIS, ACTOR, COMEDIAN: There were some really funny great comedians and blue, but they've chose him to make some, you know, some ridiculous point. They took away his First Amendment rights. It was a horrible moment.
BRUCE: The reason I got arrested, I picked on the wrong god. If I would have picked on the god whose replica is the whoopee cushion store, the Tiki god the Hawaiian god, those idiots they're damn good, I would have been cool. But I picked on the western god, the cute god, the in god, the Kennedy god and that's where I screwed up.
BRUCE: No matter how many times he would get arrested, no matter how many times he was dragged off the stage, no matter how many times he had to go to court my father believed that he had the right to free speech. My dad went from making $150,000 a year to being registered as a pauper. We had no money. All the money and everything went on lawyers. The way that he was beaten down and beaten down and beaten down coupled with his drug use, is what held him.
ZOGLIN: Lenny really took the blow. He was the martyr. He cleared the way for the new openness which was happening in all sorts of media in the '60s, but it took guys like Lenny Bruce to really push the boundaries and go to jail for it.
BOOSLER: There's not one piece of comedy being done today that didn't come out of something Lenny Bruce said. Really, he was like, you know, the big bang.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did he take the hit for all of us? Yes, I imagine he did. I mean, yes -- yes, thank God for Lenny Bruce.
BRUCE: Let's see -- let's see, what's nice to follow a good heavy morose thing like that? A commercial, yes.
[22:20:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GILBERT GOTTFRIED, ACTOR, COMEDIAN: One time Lenny Bruce was performing and George Carlin was in the audience and the police busted Lenny Bruce.
WEIDE: As Carlin has told it, you know, the cops wanted to check everybody's ID, because if they could get somebody who's underage, they could really wreak havoc.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And, you know, you have young George Carlin trying to be arrested with Lenny Bruce to be able to ride in the -- in the paddy wagon with him.
LEWIS: If they're going to bust Lenny, they're going to bust me, which gives me goosebumps just thinking about that.
GOTTFRIED: And Lenny Bruce said, how, you know, you know, how did you get in here? And he said, "well I refused to cooperate with the police" and Lenny Bruce said, "Lenny, are you schmuck?"
(LAUGHTER)
ZOGLIN: Carlin came up as a kind of traditional short hair stand-up comic. He was quite successful on getting Ed Sullivan gigs and so forth.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ED SULLIVAN, AMERICAN TELEVISION PERSONALITY: Here is comedian comedy star, George Carlin.
GEORGE CARLIN, AMERICAN STAND-UP COMEDIAN: ...hippy dippy weather man, tonight's forecast, dark.
(END VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Carlin, at first wanted just to have success and he got that success and then he felt that he was giving that success in a way that -- that didn't speak to his heart.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARLIN: I used to be this guy or maybe this guy used to be me, I don't know. We were each other at one time. It wasn't long ago. He -- I liked him, you know, he was really good, he was funny and I had a lot of fun with him, he did some nice things for me, but it was like -- there was nothing behind them, you know. It was kind of just superficial, just the surface. It was all characters. I wasn't in there. I found out I wasn't in my own act.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEWIS BLACK, COMEDIAN: The guy who really picks up from Lenny is George, who basically can he goes right after, you know, the taboos again. He's constantly picking and picking and picking.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARLIN: And the Irish priests were always heavily into penance and punishment, you know. It gives you a couple of novenas to do a nine first Fridays, five first Saturdays, Stations of the Cross, a trip to Lourde's, wow.
(LAUGHTER)
CARLIN: That was one of the things that bothered me a little about on my religion was that conflict between pain and pleasure, you know, because they were always pushing for pain. You are always pulling for pleasure, man, you know.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE SACKS, AUTHOR, AND HERE'S THE KICKER: George Carlin was a wordsmith and each of his routines were poetry, memorized poetry. Carlin would spend a year practicing these routines where every word was there for a reason. Nothing was there by accident.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARLIN: My trouble was I wanted a list. Here are these words I'm not supposed to say. Let's have a look at them.
(LAUGHTER)
CARLIN: I'll be glad to avoid them if I could just see them and know what they are. You got to say them to find out what they are men, (beep).
(LAUGHTER)
CARLIN: ...(beep).
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PATTON OSWALT, WRITER, COMEDIAN: George Carlin more than anyone else, even more than Lenny Bruce before him, he had fun with vulgarity and that drove people crazy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARLIN: I kept finding more ways to describe dirty words than there were dirty words. They call them dirty, bad, filthy, foul, vile, vulgar...
(LAUGHTER)
CARLIN: ...off-color...
(LAUGHTER)
CARLIN: ...blue, in poor taste, suggestive...
(LAUGHTER)
CARLIN: ...cursing, cussing, swearing, profanity, obscenity, oh I could think of (beep), (beep), (beep)...
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[22:25:00] OSWALT: As you watch the bit, he initially gets the shock laugh then he begins inserting these vulgarities into very normal comfortable musical almost lyrical language to show you how ridiculous it is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARLIN: ...(beep), (beep), (beep), (beep), (beep).
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE LOPEZ, ACTOR, COMEDIAN: Those are words that are beautiful ingredients to a great melody. It's a great way to start an orchestra.
(APPLAUSE)
RUSSELL PETERS, COMEDIAN: I got Carlin records and I remember my dad was listening to it with me. And my dad was an English major, so anything with word playing and language he was always into it, you know, he -- despite the language he was -- he would still let me hear it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: United States Supreme Court has ruled that government can act against broadcasters who present offensive material. The five to four decisions upheld the government to reprimand of a radio station that broadcast a record by Comedian, George Carlin.
CARLIN: WBAI played a cut from an album, they cut and called "filthy words", that's a follow-up to an earlier album piece I did call "the seven words you can never say on television." WBAI played it in the context of a program they were doing in the mid-afternoon about contemporary language and attitudes toward language. The FCC took issue with WBAI based on a complaint by a listener who was in his automobile at that time with his son and he claimed that it was indecent. He claimed that it was an invasion of his privacy and that his son shouldn't be subjected to that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The seven words you couldn't say on television don't exist before George Carlin. Those are not seven words you can't say on television. He put those words together because of the rhythm, because of the way they sound and enforce the routine and that instantly, it goes into the court record and the FCC and everybody pretends that these are the actual words. He created the very battle that was fought against him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Federal Communications Commission said that New York's WBAI was wrong in playing the record, though FCC imposed no punishment immediately and the Supreme Court agreed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEVIN SMITH, WRITER, DIRECTOR: I was raised to the time where using bad language was associated with people of low intelligence and he helped break that stereotype for me.
(LAUGHTER)
SMITH: Carlin, even as a bit, there's no such thing as bad words, there's bad intentions, but there's not bad words, you know, so I -- that -- that was freedom.
JEFFERIES: As soon as it's desensitized then it becomes normal then when it becomes the normal, then doesn't become offensive. Then when something isn't offensive, then we're not afraid of it anymore. Everything George Carlin said was basically him looking at the world guide grow up, grow up, grow up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARLIN: ...(beep), (beep), (beep), (beep), (beep), (beep), (beep) and tits. Now, that was the original list. We'd added a few words since then we'd added fart, turd (ph) and twat. (LAUGHTER)
CARLIN: And I know there are some other words that many of you are wondering about why they haven't been considered, why they haven't shown up on the list thus far. We're looking at them all, very closely. Some of your favorites might make the list this year.
(LAUGHTER)
CARLIN: ...(beep), football, bag, hard, (beep), blue balls, paint, nookies (ph), snacks, box, (beep), (beep), (beep), (beep), (beep), (beep), (beep), joint, donakers (ph), dork, pumtang (ph)...
(LAUGHTER)
CARLIN: ...cornhole and dingleberry (ph).
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:30:00] KLIPH NESTEROFF, CURATOR, NATIONAL COMEDY CENTER: Until Redd Foxx came along in 1956, nobody had ever recorded their stand-up act and released it as an album. Redd Foxx is distinguished because he invented the genre of stand-up comedy records.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REDD FOXX, COMEDIAN, Everybody in my town, both of jack ass, preacher's wife had the biggest ass in town. I know because I rode her big ass all the times. Sometimes I'd ride along it as long as it is so sweaty not slid right off her big sweet ass.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MEL WATKINS, "ON THE REAL SIDE" AUTHOR: Redd Foxx is making a very explicitly sexual records, blue records or off-color records that were sold in African-American communities. Everybody that I knew when I was growing up had Redd Foxx records. He was listened to by African- Americans on a massive level but he was unknown in mainstream society virtually.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What are party records?
FOXX: You're playing by the party, have you been on a party, put the record on when it's kind of dull and then wait.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes? Are they...
FOXX: How they start?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Naughty? FOXX: Yes.
There's a new bikini bathing suit coming out this summer. A new bikini girls it's two Band-Aids and a cork. All right, two corks.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RUSSELL PETERS, COMEDIAN: My parents had the Redd Foxx dirty jokes record in the house. It was -- and they put it on after I go to bed, I'm like, like it was porn or something. You know.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FOXX: Hygiene, the toughest thing in the world to turn to your mate one night and say, you've got to wash your ass. Knowing how difficult it is, I said it for you in this album. You've got to wash your ass.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TODD BOYD, PROFESSOR OF CRITICAL STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: When you went to the record store, you often had to ask for these albums because they wouldn't be out that you could just go and pick them up out of the bin, often hidden or in a certain part of the store where you needed some sort of assistance from the people in the store because they were thought to be too scandalous.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DICK CAVETT, TV HOST: I've heard several of them and it's a miracle that you're able to select lines from them to do on television.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATKINS: The funny records that Redd Foxx did worked underground but underground to mainstream society. So, the mainstream didn't know anything about it and didn't want any part of it at that point.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FOXX: There is no way to get ambulance in the ghetto, right, unless you call up, there's five killing a white woman.
[22:34:58] Some dudes will talk to you while they kick your ass, right. Why you want to (muted) with me, man? (muted) Somebody get this nigger off of me. What? I didn't know the nigger was blind.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't know how to feel about the title of your album but I find it difficult to say.
RICHARD PRYOR, COMEDIAN: You do?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
PRYOR: Most white people, it's hard to say crazy.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're telling the title of your album I can't say...
PRYOR: The title of the album is that Nigger is crazy.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You can just say that and talk about it but if I said it, wouldn't you get mad?
PRYOR: Well, look, I used to be -- I'd punch you out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RICHARD ZOGLIN, "COMEDY AT THE EDGE" AUTHOR: Richard Pryor was influenced by Redd Foxx but what he did was to bring some of that sensibility to the mainstream. The idea that a guy who had been developing this new provocative racial material suddenly break through to a mainstream audience was a big moment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRYOR: A lot of people here might be offended. So you should leave now. I'm going to say (muted) and suck, and (muted) and doodoo.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATKINS: Pryor used profanity in a way that even exceeded Lenny Bruce and the comics who went before him. He made the use of those terms seem to be part of everyday life and made the people listening to his comedy except the character saying them, and that being who they realistically work.
This is the way these people really talked, he changed this low comedy into high art in a way that no one had done before.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRYOR: Because I remember the mother (muted), he could make a mother (muted) laugh at a funeral on Sunday Christmas Day.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATKINS: It was about making sure that he told the truth. And he said it on several occasions, that that's what he was trying to do.
RAIN PRYOR, RICHARD PRYOR'S DAUGHTER: My dad would always say, if only you knew Lenny Bruce, I didn't understand that until much later. And I think because for my dad that was kind of the beginning of speaking truth to power they say, politically and consciously.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RICHARD PRYOR: I also like to thank the cameramen who had done some wonderful job of getting rid of the black cameraman.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAIN PRYOR: Lenny lit that fire and my dad and Carlin took it this way and it never stopped.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
EDDIE MURPHY, COMEDIAN: Richard is a rawest mother (muted) in show business. Richard is the one that made me want to do comedy. I wanted to be Richard so bad I used to go out on stage when I was 15 and talk and act and walk do everything like Richard Pryor. My mother was sitting there and watching her 15-year-old on stage saying some outlandish (muted). My whole act that was all about taking the (muted), because that's all I had done at 15.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ZOGLIN: I think every African-American comedian to some degree was inspired by Richard Pryor. Eddie Murphy did get into using four-letter words more out of a sense of I'm trying to shock you.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MUURPHY: I'd lot of people in mother country to see my film to come over to the United States because New York is a tourist place and it get HBO and they catch "Delirious" and they can't speak English and try to do my act on the street and all I got is curses. I've foreigners from all over the world walking up to me all the time. Eddie Murphy (muted), you. I love it, suck my (muted). Suck it you black mother (muted).
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ALI WONG, COMEDIAN: I saw Eddie Murphy's "Raw" and "Delirious" when I was really little like I was in second grade. I even knew then like he was nasty, he is naughty, he's not supposed to be saying any of that. Those are bad, bad words and it's hilarious.
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MURPHY: DO you watch the "Bill Cosby Show"? I do, too. I love "Bill Cosby Show," I've been a big fan of Bill Cosby. I'm like, I never met the man before but he called me up about a year ago and chastised me on the phone for being too dirty.
Pissed off. I was so mad, I called Richard Pryor's house, I said, Richard, Bill Cosby just called me up and told I was too dirty. He said, do the people laugh when you say what say? And I said, yes. And he said, do you get paid, I said, yes. Well, tell Bill I said have a Coke and a smile and shut the (muted) up.
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[22:40:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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GILBERT GOTTFRIED, COMEDIAN: My imitation of Dolly Parton. Dolly Parton's mother. Dolly Parton's brother. You're making fun of the brother of a celebrity's testicles! ROSEANNE BARR, ACTRESS: I have birth control pill and I had one with
the diaphragm and I had another one with the IUD. I don't even know what happened with my IUD. It never came out. But I have my suspicions because that get picks up HBO.
BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT, COMEDIAN: Watch ShowTime, get the (muted) out of my face.
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ZOGLIN: As guys like Pryor and Carlin came along and shocked you and were scatological and talked about sex, as each new stand-up comedian came along, there was less and less barriers to break through, so they would reach further and further to try to do something to shock the audience.
NESTEROFF: Sam Kinison embodies the '80s era of comedy, it was more like a trend. People were doing characters that were extensions of themselves. So, Sam Kinison was Sam Kinison, but in stage he was Sam Kinison the character as opposed to Sam Kinison the man.
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SAM KINISON, COMEDIAN: Have you ever been married? What's your name? Michael? Michael, if you ever think about getting married, if you ever think you've met the right woman and you want to settle down and change your life, would you do me a favor, Mike. Remember this face.
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MARC MARON, COMEDIAN & PODCASTER: It was really the expression of the heartbroken man, we hold a lot of stuff in because we're civilized people and we're trying to do the right thing but there's a lot that goes on emotionally that we can't express. And to have that little monster put it out there like that, great, it's like a -- it's like a relief valve.
NESTEROFF: Sam did not care if the audience hated him and would even bait them. You know, he would almost challenge them to leave if they didn't like it. And when you don't care, that's frequently when you get the best results.
[22:45:04] RODNEY DANGERFIELD, COMEDIAN: Very seldom someone comes along who is unusually different and gifted and creative and presents something that's unusual. Right. Any money from last week?
KINISON: Yes.
ZOGLIN: Sam Kinison really took comedy to an extreme in the shouting, in some of the language and in some of the taboo subjects that he went after.
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KINISON: I read the paper, they said that a group of homosexual necrophilia's have been going around mortuaries, offering them money to let them come in at night, spend a couple of hours undisturbed with the freshest male corpses.
But that's where these corpses because I know these guys were laying out on slabs, they were like, their life was tough and, it's pretty hard to live up to. And I have faced death and I'm glad I went through it and well, I'm just -- now I'm ready to spend eternity in heaven and be with Jesus. Rock of ages.
Hey, what is this (muted)? I don't believe this, there's a guy's (muted) in my ass.
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MARON: There's that guy sitting there going, what's this? Like, that moment, boy, that was funny.
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DAN RATHER, CBS HOST: No laughing matter, that's what critics are saying about some routines that are passed off as comedy these days, a lot of it on television. Is it the cutting edge of social satire or the adult expression of what some children write on sidewalks?
ANDREW DICE CLAY, COMEDIAN: Muppet sat on a tuft, eating a curds and wheat, sat down beside, he say, hey, what's in the bowl (muted).
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dice was dirty. Dice's language was filthy. The only thing that made Dice different was that his blew, his dirty was controversial.
BETSY BORNS, TV PRODUCER: I really don't understand why women go to hear Dice Clay. To me it's like, a Jew going to a Hitler rally.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLAY: Like I treat my girlfriend good. Like for Christmas I bought her this beautiful dust pan with her name engrave and the whole family was all like took it out, you had to see the look on her (muted) face.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The guy is a chauvinistic moron. You know, I wouldn't hang out with that guy, not if he meant those things, you know, even as a guy I won't hang out with him, because then I'd be saying he's deranged. You know, but as comedian it's very funny and it doesn't hurt anybody.
GOLDTHWAIT: To be outrageous and bad boy and breaking the rules is extremely lucrative, it is extremely pandering. There's a lot of comedy that's done under the guise of being the edge which it isn't because it's actually connecting with the basest audience.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I found through great effort at least one remark of his that I could say on the air.
LORNE MICHAELS, TV PRODUCER: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He describes his sexual technique as I quote, so I say to the bitch, lose the bra or I'll cut you. Is that funny?
MICHAELS: What you're asking me to do is to defend Andrew Dice Clay.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, I'm asking you is that funny?
MICHAELS: I don't know what the context was, obviously the way you just said it, no, it's not funny. But the fact of it is for me that what he does is a character and when he's up there and he's on stage, it's a comedian.
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CLAY: How are you?
Who is dice, who is Andrew Clay, who is the Jewish kid, who is the guy that's acting Italian? You know, I got to -- well, you want to know who he is, I'll tell you.
(CROWD CHEERING)
Andrew Clay came out here about 10 years ago and broke his ass, you know what I mean? Broke his ass, he believed in his self, became the hottest comic in the world and anybody who doesn't like it can wipe their ass with whatever they say about me.
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GEORGE LOPEZ, ACTOR: That wasn't Dice that broke town, that was Andrew, the backlash was so strong that it got past the Dice character and got to the Andrew guy, and made him feel bad for what was being said.
MARON: Did it celebrate a certain type of thinking that probably doesn't need any more celebrating? Yes, maybe. But did it make it look stupid as well, did it make it look moronic? Yes.
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[22:49:58] CLAY: Thanks a lot. You're great. See you soon. Good night.
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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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LOUIS C.K., COMEDIAN: There's no worse life available to a human than being a caught child molester, and yet they still do it. Which from -- you can only really surmise that it must be really good. I mean, from their point of view. From their -- not ours, but from their point of view.
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PATTON OSWALT, WRITER & COMEDIAN: Off limits is not a permanent address. It's just a marker that keeps getting moved. You couldn't say pregnant on TV when Lucille Ball was pregnant on "I Love Lucy," it keeps changing. So, anyone who says it's off limits, well, enjoy next ten minutes, because that's about as long that that's not going to last.
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ANTHONY JESELNIK, COMEDIAN: The thing today, the thing right now you can't make fun of, thing that's too sensitive at this moment transgendered people. See?
You can't do it. You can't make fun of them. It's too sensitive. In fact, you can't even call them chicks with (muted) anymore. No. No. You have to call them men who talk too much.
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