C a n c e l e d D e c e m b e r 1995.
For about twenty years before The George Carlin Show I'd regularly turn down some offer to have conversations about a sitcom.
I was always opposed to it for the usual kind of showbiz-cultural
reasons. I ' m a stand-up comedian, not a sitcom guy. Movie parts are
fine, but it's a commercial wasteland, and so on.
I'd developed a real sense of myself vis-à-vis television, of where
I stood in relation to it. If I'd learned anything in the sixties from
Perry Como and the Two Buddies and wearing the bunny suit in the
closing number, the torture I went through, it was: situation comedy
was just another form of the same thing. There was a reluctance, on
many levels, to get involved in the worst aspects of commercialism.
Fox had been coming after me for about four years and I'd been
turning them down. They gradually made the offer so good I had
to listen. They gave me 20 percent of the back end and an executive
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producer credit. Most important, they wanted to put me with Sam
Simon, whose pedigree was terrific: Taxi, Cheers, The Simpsons,
Tracey Ullman. A brilliant writer and shaper of comedy.
What really changed my mind was that the 1992 HBO show
was a watershed. It brought me to a new artistic level—that good
plateau—as far as the writing and performing. I could afford a pause,
a victory lap. I was in my midfifties, I had a great offer, there was a
great writer to work with; I thought, maybe I owed it to Brenda—and
myself—to see if there was a place I could fit and do something with
this form that didn't embarrass me. I didn't want to be in my seventies snarling, "I should have taken that Fox offer, if only I had . . .
Christ, look at these fucking kids today!"
I took the chance. And I had a great time. I never laughed so
much, so often, so hard as I did with cast members Alex Rocco,
Chris Rich, Tony Starke. There was a very strange, very good sense
of humor on that stage. The feeling on the set was relaxed, democratic. And the crew was great. No Hollywood ego bullshit from
anyone. I loved the acting, the process, learning the lines, shaping
them.
But I didn't enjoy the corporate crap. You're dealing with people
who are in the business of guessing. Guessing backed up by testing.
They test their guesses and if their guesses are correct, they start
second-guessing. One another. The studio. The network. Everyone's at odds.
The biggest problem though was that Sam Simon was a fucking
horrible person to be around. Very, very funny, extremely bright and
brilliant, but an unhappy person who treated other people poorly.
There's a producer-writer in-group culture in television that isn't
friendly to outsiders—especially a star who, though he's supposed to
be the raison d'être of the project, comes from another area of show
business. They keep you at arm's length, keep you in the dark about
certain areas. It made no difference that Jerry and I were executive
producers—Sam was the show runner, the most important person
in getting the show on.
Once a week I'd go to long-rewrite night, after rehearsals and be2 5 2
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fore shooting began. I had to be onstage all the time during the
week, so I wasn't part of everything else that happened up in the
Executive Office Building. But on long-rewrite night I was. I liked
it because I enjoyed having writers around and punching up and
shaping stuff.
But the length of time that goes into ordering the fucking food!
Ten different menus: the Chinese, the Italian, the deli, the Mexican, they're all over the Valley and, "Okay, who's gonna pick the
menu tonight? Joey! Let Joey! No, Joey picked it last week, I'll pick
it! Don't order from there, they don't deliver!" Then the food arrives
and there's the sorting out whose food is whose and the eating of the
food.
I'm old-fashioned. I like to get on with the work. I say: "Hey, Joey,
on page thirty—that's where we left off—can we put in so-and-so?"
And Joey says, "Mblmblmggmlmmmm. Ya gonna finish that?"
There was ritual, and I don't like rituals. There were unwritten
rules, and I don't like them either. For instance, you never criticize
or knock down someone's idea, you just let it die in the air. Nobody
says it sucks. They don't say anything—just move on to the next suggestion. And even if you fight for a change and win, the rule is, you
then have to lose a few. Let others win a few, even if you object to
their changes. You end up only half represented.
The produceT-writer culture also had a private vocabulary: "Let's
not hang a lantern on that," or "Drumroll, drumroll!" leaving me
more in the dark than ever. Which is the whole point of private
vocabularies.
All trivial considerations perhaps, but important signs of the
groupthink that prevents full expression. I hesitate to say "free expression" because it sounds too political, but full expression on a
television show you can never have.
Fox wasn't heavily committed to The George Carlin Show. I was
told the head of promotion didn't like it. We weren't getting much
cooperation from on-air promotions and Fox's promotional team.
Mainly the network wanted us to retain a share of the audience
Married. . . With Children left us with.
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More unwritten rules. Married . . . With Children was considered
a Dumb White Show and we were a Smart White Show. A Smart
White Show couldn't follow a Dumb White Show. Fox saw itself
as a black network, and while blacks liked to watch Dumb Whites,
they didn't like watching Smart Whites. (Dumb White Network Executives at work: it turned out we had the highest share of retained
audience from Married . . . With Children of anything Fox ever followed it with.)
There were pluses. My hellos in the airport, my level of
recognition—from black people in particular but also the general
public—shot up. But Fox was not the place for me. I was incredibly happy when the show was canceled. I was frustrated that it had
taken me away from my true work. I would have done my ninth
HBO show in 1994 and I didn't. I had just learned—finally—how to
do my work. This wonderful second burst of creative energy was interrupted and hurt in a way. Now I cherished it all the more for that.
So Fox was part of a paring down process, getting rid of extraneous
dreams and ambitions, once and for all.
Forget weekly television. I'd rather be sitting in a crappy motel in
Wisconsin or Oregon going through my files, making notes on the
next HBO show, rolling over during the night to write down a note:
"Hm-hin-hmmm, that goes with the Kleenex bit for 2002 . . ."
They could get me away from stand-up for a while perhaps, if
they said: "There's this wonderful movie role, you costar, big money,
great script. You play a priest and you get to strangle six children.
Not all in one burst either: in six separate scenes with six different
techniques of strangulation." I'd give up a month or two for that.
Which brings us to Shining Time Stat
ion.
Shining Time Station was presented to me as an acting opportunity. At that point Jerry and I were characterizing the kind of role I
wanted as something where my eyes bulged out. I walked away from
a lot of stuff because I was looking for somewhere to really stretch
my eyeballs.
But when the Shining Time lady, Britt Allcroft, a wonderful, creative, concerned woman, came to me about her project, I thought:
"Hey, here's a chance to show something quite different: a side that's
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gentle, childlike." Britt was careful about what her team did, and
this was PBS. Jerry and I had always tried to associate ourselves with
strong brands: HBO, Atlantic, Warner Bros. Records—PBS was one
of them. Plus I took the place of Ringo Starr (who did the first season). So that made me the anti-Pete Best.
The nicest thing about it was I didn't have to deal with actorsadults or children—because it was all green-screen. I was the only
actor there, which made the acting a little harder, but it was more
pleasant not having to deal with everybody's little story-of-the-day.
It won me a whole new generation of admirers who knew nothing
about George Carlin except that he was a little man in a little blue
suit. When I ran into one of these kids at the airport and the parents
would say, "That's him, that's him! Go over and say hello," the child
was always completely fucking traumatized. I was out of uniform and
way too big. I had to say gently, "I'm not on the Island of Sodor, I'm
not working today. But I am Mr. Conductor." Then that wonderful
look would come on the child's face: "What the FUCK is going on?"
I must say, like most adults, I find kids fascinating one-on-one.
Just watching them drool or look at you funny. Or even saying something bright. But as a class—far too much attention.
Now, ten to twelve years later, some of Mr. Conductor's little fans
are beginning to show up at my concerts and HBO shows. To complete their education.
After Fox died, we did some one-hour specials for PBS with
guest stars like Jack Kingman, and a series of half-hours, a few of
them where Mr. Conductor was the central person and told several
Thomas the Tank Engine stories. There was talk about a feature
film, which never came to anything, but I do remember a fascinating series of discussions out at the studio—casual but with a
purpose—talking with Britt about what the movie ought to be and
how to keep the core of Shining Time Station intact.
She pointed out how the stage in Shining Time Station began
over on the right with a lot of mischief: Schemer and his arcade, the
moneymaking schemes, always creating hassles and anarchy and
chaos. Then, as you moved leftward on the set—she didn't plan that
you move leftward but some right-wing asshole could see a sublimi2 5 5
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nal message there, I guess—you came to the center, the information
booth, with Stacy Jones, the female stationmaster. She was the embodiment of order and reassurance: "It's all right, it's okay, this is going to work. The train comes in at eight and it leaves at nine." Then,
moving farther left, you got to Billy Twofeathers, the engineer, an
American Indian, who represented a spiritual and nurturing side.
There was a combination in Shining Time Station of nurturing,
freedom, lesson learning, chaos. I pointed out that Mr. Conductor
didn't quite fit into any of those roles but could be part of any of
them—even chaos, in his evil twin. None of them explained why he
was so fascinating to children. And Britt asked, "Why is he the most
fascinating?"
The director had been Jesuit-trained as a kid and I'd been attacking them and religion in children's lives and we'd been enjoying
that. There seemed to me a connection. I'm aware this is a wellknown theme, but bear with me.
And PAY ATTENTION!
When we're in the womb, we're in the oceanic state, we are completely part of nature. We are attached to nature, literally, physically.
Everything comes through tubes, you don't have to do a goddam
thing, everything's cool. You are at one. You are in union with nature.
Then you get torn out of this fucking place and there's pain and
screaming and the violence starts. The slapping on the ass, the acid
wash, the circumcision. You are out of there, not attached, not cool,
not at one with anything. And INDIVIDUATION starts! You are
JOHNNY PHILLIPS and you are going to be a LAWYER. And
you're going to be just like your FATHER and you've got RED HAIR
and you're gonna have a TEMPER and a whole bunch of other shit
will be true of you. You better SHAPE UP and have a goal and work
for it and achieve things. UNION is OVER.
The rest of your life is spent yearning for reunion. To join the
One again. That's where religion perverts a very natural longing in
people. More primitive people have found a way of having for themselves a communion with nature, balance and harmony with it.
Not: "I am DISTANT from nature and SEPARATE from nature
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and I will change the course of that river and I will tear up the land
and make freaks out of animals and take milk out of them." Instead,
it's: "We won't control nature, we can't. So let's live at one with it."
But we civilized people have this loss, this loss of union, this loss
of oneness. And we look for it and dream of finding it, but in all the
wrong places. In religion, in sex, in success. . .
Back to Mr. Conductor. I said, "He's got two things combined.
He's small like a child. He's childlike, like a child. But he's fully developed like an adult. And he's wise like an adult. These things are
joined, so there's a unity in him that is complete." That's one of the
reasons I did him so unself-consciously—even in those silly outfits
and with the propeller on my head. I didn't feel the need to use one
of my voices. He was natural to me.
I said to Britt: "I think he's fascinating to children because he's got
the things children need from adults, experience and information
(and gold dust). At the same time, he's totally unthreatening. He's
even smaller and more powerless than they are. He's a baby adult."
I loved doing Shining Time Station. But part of it was—I also
like presenting a moving target. I liked the idea of people saying,
"Well, that's nice. Now he's on Shining Time Station educating
two-year-olds. Hey, but. . . doesn't he say cocksucker' and . . . 'the
Virgin's bleeding from her cunt?' " Yeah. Keeping them a bit off
guard.
And being on the series gave me a great line for the '99 HBO
show You Are All Diseased. It was a reprise of riffs I'd been doing for
some time about child worship in America.
Kids were getting FAR TOO MUCH ATTENTION! And whatever people thought about kids they had to listen to an expert. . .
This was MR. CONDUCTOR talking!
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One last story about material. About just how long it can take
for stuff, even stuff I love, to see the light of day, or in this case
HBO. And why I hate topical humor.
Sometime in the late eighties I be
gan to see things in my files like,
"Hey, let's just kill everybody." That was only one brief thought, but
I remember thinking, "Here's an opportunity to create some art."
Obviously I don't think it would be a good idea to kill everybody, but
at the same time it was a good idea to let loose in the world. If I could
come up with enough semi-, quasi-, pseudo-reasons and methods
for getting rid of everybody in the world (except for a nice workable
two hundred thousand, including me), I've got a great piece.
The boilerplate definition of satire is taking on the mentality of
your enemy—at this point it was still Reagan and his gang—and taking it to extremes in an ingenious way. I guess that's what this was—
instinctively anyway. Reagan's basic worldview was that to save the
American way of life everybody had to be ready to die in a nuclear
holocaust. (Except of course a nice workable two hundred thousand
Republicans, including him). So being 1000 percent for that kind of
ultraviolence, really enthusing about it, relishing it, was fun. It appealed to the extreme in me. Some part of comedy is always about
excess.
Over time the idea grew in my files. Other similar ideas attached
themselves to the core one. I began testing them out in shows on the
road. One variant was that because the world is so fucked we should
just kill everybody and start over. Another was essentially the intro2 6 1
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duction to "The Planet Is Fine." Television news about disasters,
the worse the better, was my favorite entertainment. I couldn't give
a shit about the budget or where the Pope was. Give me screaming
people on fire being crushed by falling masonry. Now that's fun!
Some offshoots became pieces in their own right. One of them—
the same basic idea—is "Capital Punishment" from Back in Town.
The idea was that we shouldn't abolish capital punishment. We
should expand it, kill far more people, in far more entertaining and
time-tested ways like crucifixion, beheadings, boiling them in o i l in all cases the slower the better . . .
As I played out the piece onstage a character began to emerge