HBO’s ‘George Carlin’s American Dream’: TV Review
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“We don’t really have philosophers anymore, but we have comedians,” Chris Rock says in the second episode of Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio’s two-part documentary, George Carlin’s American Dream.
The accurate gist and genesis of Rock’s observation is the compelling evidence that George Carlin both transcended and changed the parameters of his chosen profession. It’s been nearly 14 years since Carlin died, but based on his continued social media ubiquity, his words have lived on and remained crazily specific, as if every unanticipatable catastrophe of human culture was somehow anticipated by only one man. On any given day, whether the trending topic relates to reproductive rights or environmental disaster or political hypocrisy or the power of free speech, one subset of fans is lamenting that we’ll never know what George Carlin would have said about the news du jour, while another set is posting the blistering stand-up set that illustrates exactly what George Carlin did say about that topic.
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That Carlin left behind countless hours of clearly articulated, increasingly irritated expressions of his worldview doesn’t change the most persuasive aspect of Apatow and Bonfiglio’s documentary — namely that Carlin was a protean embodiment of the country that spawned him. Not only did Carlin’s life have a second act, but he had a third and fourth act, and the comic he was in the mid-’90s and ’00s almost surely wasn’t the comic he would have been today. Which makes the documentary simultaneously a celebration and a tragedy.
For its first two hours, Apatow and Bonfiglio take an approach that’s perhaps a hair too straightforward and chronological: They track Carlin from his abusive childhood to an ill-considered stint in the Air Force to his time as a DJ to his partnership with Jack Burns to his first incarnation as a suit-wearing, clean-shaven establishment journeyman to the explosion of true stardom finding a voice in the counterculture.
Like many a key figure in the explosion of in-home media, Carlin’s path was well-documented at every stretch, and the directors here are able to weave together audio from his radio days and various talk show and variety show appearances to emphasize the differences and common threads. Carlin’s look might have shifted dramatically, but the versatility and careful calibration of his delivery and his fascination with comedic linguistics was there from the beginning. The very best parts of George Carlin’s American Dream involve his fans in the stand-up world — that would be nearly every comic who ever lived, represented here by the likes of Steven Wright, Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Burr, Robert Klein and more — breaking down the nuances of Carlin’s performance, not just his subject matter.
Carlin’s biography is conveyed decently through myriad interviews and audio recordings he made over the years and then more effectively from a few key primary sources, including Carlin’s brother Patrick, who died this year. Daughter Kelly plays a key role, tracing the relationship between George and her mother, Brenda, with an unflinching candor that touches on her mother’s alcoholism, her father’s drug addiction, and the crises and recoveries along the way. The more personal the material, the more George Carlin’s American Dream resembles Apatow’s Garry Shandling documentary, which is a good thing.
The introduction of the notorious “seven dirty words” routine, subsequent paradigm-shifting legal case and move into the Reagan era marks the documentary’s shift from something very solid into something very good and reflective. In this respect, it mirrors its subject. This is when we see Carlin as a pioneer, whether in his verbose and irritated topicality — predecessors like Lenny Bruce and contemporaries like Sam Kinison are acknowledged — or his capacity in helping shape the new medium of the filmed HBO comedy special. In both its flaws and its exhilarating highs, Carlin’s was an American journey, one of reinvention and perpetual discomfort with the status quo.
Especially at the end of the second episode, Apatow and Bonfiglio concentrate on Carlin’s prescience without delving all that deeply into his subsequent appropriation by both sides of the political spectrum. It’s easy to know what Carlin thought about abortion because he said it, and there’s no reason to think he would feel differently today. But the filmmakers don’t want to get into the speculative. On any given day, Twitter users are there putting words in Carlin’s mouth or miscontextualizing past routines to suggest what he would have thought about things like cancel culture or vaccine mandates.
Kelly Carlin has aggressively fought back against misappropriating her father, but this isn’t a fight the documentarians want to engage in. Purely ideological figures are absent from the documentary on either side, and you can sense that Carlin’s colleagues are too devoted to dare say, “George would have thought [insert 2022 hot button issue] was ridiculous” even if their own thoughts are passionate one way or the other. There’s some conjecture about Carlin’s late-career nihilism — which parts were authentic, which parts were an act, which parts were onstage catharsis — but it isn’t about dwelling on the unknown.
The point ultimately is to treasure the record that Carlin left and to lament that that record didn’t include two or three decades more of scathing commentary and reflection — both the taking down of politicians and sacred cows and the fart jokes and funny voices. Here it largely succeeds, and four hours spent listening to George Carlin is four hours well spent.
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