“George Carlin’s American Dream” brings us closer to the comic legend than ever before
May 20, 2022 Andrew Buss Features, George Carlin, News
The term GOAT – which stands for Greatest of All Time – is obviously thrown around and overused a lot these days. It’s sort of become embedded into pop culture, whether we wanted it to or not. But when it comes to George Carlin, the phrase isn’t anything new. For years – even long before his passing – fans all knew this to be true. Ask any comedy fan who were the greatest comics of all time, and George Carlin would be a consistent thread on that list.
Of course, who is “the greatest of all time” is entirely subjective. It changes from person to person. But the new documentary George Carlin’s American Dream makes a pretty damn good argument for it. Directed by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio, the documentary is a glorious 4-hour deep dive into a comic who spanned many generations of fans over the course of the 5 plus decades of his career.
The documentary takes you through his early life to the many times he successfully reinvented himself throughout his time onstage. George Carlin was living proof of reinventing one’s persona. In the 1960’s, he had a respectable career as a stand-up, appearing on talk shows and variety shows and making a pretty good living. But he felt trapped into a mold he didn’t want to be in. So he decided to fight against the mold, grow his hair long, grow a beard, and embrace the counter-culture of the 70’s. And when it came time to reinvent himself in the 90’s, you saw him fight more and more against the establishment, right before your eyes. Watching someone fight against their own image is truly a wonder to behold. But nobody did it quite like Carlin did.
One thing the documentary made a point to fight back against, however, was something we’ve been seeing a lot of in the years since he died. There seems to be a constant need for one political party to repurpose his stand-up routines for their own gain in an attempt to claim ownership over him. Ask a staunch Republican or Democrat which side he represented, and they’d give you all the reasons why it was theirs.
But the documentary makes it clear that it was neither. He wasn’t going to be stuck in a box like that. He simply represented himself, speaking to what he took issue with, whether it was with the right or left. There was no categorization to be had.
Another thing the documentary effectively does is give George Carlin a presence within the film that other documentaries seem to lack. Much like The Zen Diaries of Gary Shandling, the film makes good use of Carlin’s best attribute: His voice. While yes, there are plenty of incredibly insightful interviews with the ones who knew him best – including his daughter Kelly, his manager Jerry Hamza, his brother Patrick, and friends and people he influenced including Jon Stewart, Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Provenza, Kevin Smith, and Stephen Colbert -, it’s not your standard retrospective.
Utilizing a treasure trove of archives, Carlin’s own voice is consistently guiding us through the film. One thing this documentary doesn’t have a shortage of is insight from the man himself. Because sure, you can tell 100 stories about George Carlin. But these are all stories that – either through stand-up, interviews, his writings, or various home recordings – Carlin could just as easily tell himself.
Take Summerfest, for example. Sure, you’ve got interviews from Kelly and also people who were there the night he got arrested onstage, including members of the Milwaukee, Wisconsin police. But it serves the documentary so much better to actually hear the routine itself, right down to the moment that he left the stage.
Last week, the premiere for George Carlin’s American Dream was held in Hollywood. Carlin had a variety of family and friends in attendance, all of whom obviously knew him well. But at one point during the premiere, I leaned over to Carlin’s publicist for the last 11 years of his life Jeff Abraham and asked if he had heard of a particular story before. “Not at all,” he replied. Just goes to show how manny facets George Carlin had. Even those who worked for Carlin hadn’t heard everything yet.
Documentaries on performers – and especially stand-ups – are very hard to pull off. We’ve seen so many lackluster documentaries over the years, as it’s hard to find the balance between who the comic was onstage and off. It’s very easy to get totally wrong, when not handled properly. This, however, is clearly not that. Nearly 15 years after his death, this is the sort of documentary treatment George Carlin fans have been waiting for.
