Seven Dirty Words_ The Life and Crimes of George Carlin - James Sullivan [117]
Even if they didn’t know about his Vicodin habit, Carlin’s friends were well aware that he’d become a wine connoisseur. When Carlin quietly put up five figures of his own money to support Chris Rush’s existential one-man show, Laughter Is the Sound of Bliss, he took the less-known comic to a fancy dinner. Rush wondered how his friend could justify ordering a $200 bottle of red wine. Then he tried it. “I had two sips, and I started rapping like I was on a mix of acid and Scopolamine,” says the former molecular biologist. Carlin looked at Rush and said, “Now you know why all those counts fought over vineyards.”
His previous habits earned the comedian a voice-over role in the animated Pixar film Cars. Carlin’s character, fittingly, is an aging, daisy-painted Volkswagen minibus named Fillmore, who lives in a Day-glo geodesic dome and talks up the benefits of his “homemade organic fuel.” The character was based on Bob Waldmire, a real-life hippie throwback who travels Route 66, where much of the movie is set, in a VW bus, drawing postcards and maps of the historic road’s icons.
Carlin’s rehab was timed to give him a clean bill of health before starting a new Vegas engagement, at the Stardust, in early 2005. He and Hamza knew Terry Jenkins, entertainment director for the Stardust’s parent company, Boyd Gaming, which owned a resort in Tunica, Mississippi, where Carlin had performed. Taking over for Wayne Newton, he stayed at the Stardust Theater until it closed in late 2006, in anticipation of demolition. The gaming company then brought the comedian over to the Orleans. He checked it out beforehand by asking Tommy Smothers, who had headlined there with his brother. “Probably the best comedy room in Vegas,” Smothers told him. Situated several blocks off the Las Vegas Strip on Tropicana Avenue, the Mardi Gras-themed Orleans was a welcome change for Carlin, who appreciated the fact that audiences needed to make an effort to find him there.
Yet he still had plenty of healthy contempt for the town. Vegas, Carlin said not long after the move, remained for him “the most dispiriting, soul-deadening city on earth.” But he couldn’t deny the benefit of working out new material in front of an ever-changing audience, unlike the fixed number of devoted fans he could count on during his periodic visits to medium-sized markets around the country. Though the Vegas audience continually replenished itself, he said, it came with a cost—he couldn’t assume the crowds would be his from the outset. “In Pittsburgh I get the hardcore fans who know what I am about. In Las Vegas often I get people who saw me on Leno or got a coupon. . . . Each night I have to find out how they are going to be and I have to train them.” The Orleans, he knew, was as apt a fit as he was likely to find in Sin City. “He loved it here,” says Jenkins. “Almost every night, George would ask me what percent of the tickets were paid [not comped]. That would always give us an indication about how many people were making that trip from the Strip.” He’d also take note of the cab lines outside after the show. More cabs meant more guests specifically there to see Carlin.
Jenkins and his colleagues watched the comic prepare for his last two HBO specials at Boyd’s Las Vegas properties. The title of Life Is Worth Losing, Carlin’s fourth show in a row (and last) from the Beacon Theatre, was a parody of Life Is Worth Living, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen’s inspirational prime-time program from the early days of network television. Carlin’s thirteenth HBO concert, recorded less than a year after his rehab, was relentlessly bleak, the one special that most supports the notion that he grew darker in his final years. Even the stage was designed like a snowy city cemetery at night. After his opening rap, a jargon-filled verse he called “Modern Man” (“I’m a hands-on, footloose, knee-jerk head case, prematurely post-traumatic, and I’ve got a love child that sends me hate mail”), Carlin unleashed a cavalcade