Word: carlin
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WOODY ALLEN is the comic laureate of our age. Nothing against George Carlin, he of the long hair, cute dirty words and drug jokes, but Woody stands head and glasses above anyone else in terms of the absolute number, quality, diversity and insightfulness of the comic ideas he has produced. Woody the loveable neurotic forces the audience to laugh at its own foibles and fuck-ups. Allen often reaches a peak of manic intensity amazing in such a small, redhaired nebbish of a man. So how does he do it? What makes Woody Allen funny...
...George Carlin has never tried to change the world; he just likes to run up on that stage and gesticulate and sweat and express, and the gales of laughter--sometimes even hysterical and mad--make him feel good. "My purpose is self-expression, and when they applaud or laugh, it's their way of saying, 'Hey man, we like your self-expression," he says...
Unwittingly summarizing his own situation, Carlin talks about his teenage drug experience: "The trouble with drugs is that they are self-limiting. They open certain doors of perception which you already have--the drug doesn't add anything which isn't already there. Even with LSD and mescaline, you reach a point where it just doesn't do as much for you anymore...
...words, as defined entities, are self-limiting; now Carlin has come to a plateau in his life where new and fresh words and ironies are getting harder to find. He is literally fighting to free himself from his own words, and he has chosen film as his surely needed exit...
...Carlin harbors no intentions of decaying, of joining the Show Biz Kids in Hollywood by the swimming pool and the shapely bods. The wiry Irish class clown and streetcorner toker from White Harlem still enjoys visiting his mother in the old neighborhood, and seems to gain perspective on his life as he ages. Soon his funny beard will turn gray--and age and eternity aside, it is painful to imagine that Goerge Carlin will become a prisoner of his own words...