Seven Dirty Words_ The Life and Crimes of George Carlin - James Sullivan [74]
The nuns, trained in the progressive policies of the Sinsinawa Dominicans—whose home base, ironically, was in Wisconsin, Carlin’s bugaboo state—were quick to explain that they felt the comedian was doing a social service by underscoring the harmlessness of mere words. There was a method to his apparent madness, they said. For the first time, Mary Carlin began to feel that her son’s peculiar brand of creativity might be something for her to celebrate, not lament. “She’d gotten the imprimatur from the church,” Carlin once said. From then until the end of her life, Mary Carlin exulted in being the mother of the famous comedian, stopping people on the crosstown bus to tell them that George Carlin would be on The Tonight Show that week. Joining her son on the Mike Douglas set for a taping a few years after his breakthrough, she claimed to have told him from a young age, “Insist on being yourself always, in all ways.”
“Mother, eat your words,” the boy had replied.
He did insist, and he still had to fight for it. In the summer of 1973 Carlin was in New York filming segments for his first network special, to be called The Real George Carlin. Revisiting old neighborhood haunts—Grant’s Tomb, the Columbia University campus—and taping some material at the Bitter End, he spoke openly about the conundrum of trying to get exposure without sacrificing integrity. Standing next to a life-sized cardboard cutout of his formerly clean-cut self, the ponytailed comedian told his audience that he’d just begun to let his true self into his act.
The program itself was a compromise, sponsored by Monsanto, the chemical company known as the leading manufacturer of Agent Orange and, until the chemical was banned, a top producer of DDT. The company, looking to improve its public image, was investing heavily in television showcases, producing an ongoing series of variety specials under the title Monsanto Night Presents. Henry Mancini, Jose Feliciano, Tony Bennett, Dionne Warwick, and Jack Jones were a few of the performing hosts.
A homecoming of sorts, The Real George Carlin featured music by B. B. King and Kris Kristofferson with Rita Coolidge, and several monologues shot on location by the host. It was produced by Jack Sobel, Lenny Bruce’s onetime agent. Sitting in a trailer parked at Columbia, waiting for a camera to be repaired, Carlin told a reporter that he didn’t expect to get more than 50 percent of his planned material approved for the show, even though he had been promised broad leeway. “Let’s face it,” he said. “TV is controlled by government and paid for by private industry. Certainly with that combination the result is bound to be mostly junk.” He had recently received offers to host his own talk show and variety show, he claimed, but they weren’t right for him. “I work best in an auditorium with 2,500 people,” he said. “That’s really where I belong.” Taking the Monsanto offer was a test case: How much freedom would he truly enjoy? If it went well, he thought he might like to do a series of similar specials, maybe one a year.
Carlin felt a compulsion to question every convention. He entered each new business venture with suspicion, fully expecting that the freedoms he was promised were, on some level, contingencies. Smoking pot had unquestionably affected his worldview. “I take a perverse delight in knowing that I never did a television show without being stoned,” he said shortly after guest-hosting for Carson the first time. But although marijuana may have heightened his already highly developed sense for detail, cocaine was affecting his performance in other, more insidious ways.
He began to stumble through some performances, occasionally missing them altogether. Scheduled to play the University of Bridgeport, he bailed out at the last moment, claiming that he just wasn’t up to it. During a run at the 3,000-seat Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey, he mumbled distractedly, several times losing his place and asking,