Still funny, by George

Kirk Baird

Saturday, Feb. 24, 2001 | 10:42 a.m.

It's easy to think of George Carlin as an American institution, pointing out what's wrong with the world in a brutally honest way that few -- if any -- comedians today can match.

But it's safe to say the comedian would reject such fawning. In his mind he's simply an entertainer doing what he does best.

And in Las Vegas the 63-year-old Carlin will be doing his job in a new home, the Hollywood Theatre at the MGM Grand, where he'll perform March 8-21.

The Las Vegas Sun recently talked with Carlin about his move to the MGM, the fact that he's an author and his thoughts on society:

Sun: You recently left Bally's after a long partnership. What happened?

George Carlin: I think that company, Park Place, I don't think they're very entertainment-conscious. It seems like there's been a lot of things they've done in recent years to downplay live entertainment, people who were entertainers. I was there for about 10 years. I four-walled (leased the showroom), we always ran our own game there, and they just tried to take more of the money away from me. Here I was getting 800 people on a Monday night, sometimes 1,100 on the weekends. They didn't see any value in that. Here they had an early show, the "Jubilee" show, that would pay their cost for the whole room, and then I would put 800 people in there. They wanted more of what I was taking out, and I wasn't going to give it to them.

Sun: How has your comedy evolved over the years?

GC: I don't try to explain that, that's something people can see for themselves. The ones who care about my stuff follow me, they know what the evolution has been. And those who are kind of distant from it and just sort of know my name, it's not really important that they know. It's just hard to describe from the inside. It's easier to see from the outside, I think.

Sun: You've written two books. Is there a difference in the approach you take to performing comedy versus writing it?

GC: I'm an entertainer, first, and a stand-up, and I know those are very obvious descriptions and I don't run from them. But I have to emphasize that you do this for self-expression, to get it off your chest. And that's why I did the books. I thought, "Hey, here's a whole form I've ignored for all this time, running around people's hometowns, standing up and talking to them, and there's a much more efficient system that I could be doing. And that is to send it out to them and let them read it." The two things together work very well for me.

Sun: Do you have a preference between the two?

GC: No. They're different aspects of the same process. It's all writing, and one of them is a form of writing that gets performed by the writer himself. The other is just pure writing.

Sun: It seems many comedians aspire not to be stand-up comedians, but to be Hollywood or TV stars. Is that hurting comedy?

GC: I don't know if it's hurting comedy, but it's reducing the number of people who could probably develop stand-up careers and material. A person like Eddie Murphy, if he had done stand-up for 30 years, you would want to see how interesting it had gotten. But of course he doesn't want to travel around doing that.

Sun: Performing comedy all these years, has it gotten easier for you?

GC: Oh, yeah, sure. Much, much easier. You learn techniques and skills and technical things about writing, and efficiencies, things that make the whole process flow easier and more quickly each time. You skip steps that weren't necessary, you see where you can have shortcuts to get the stuff developed faster, that's what I found.

Sun: There have been some critics who have likened you to a social commentator. Is that how you view yourself?

GC: I would really would run away from that feeling if I had it. I don't have it. There is a spillover effect. My position is not, "Gee, folks, let's try to make it a better world." My position is (expletive) this world and (expletive) this human species. I'm glad it's disintegrating, so I want to show you how funny it is that it's disintegrating.

In saying that, there's an underlying message in "Look how badly you're doing." And so it can be interpreted by people as wishing for a better world, which I don't. I think an artist has to be independent of any kind of goals like that. If people take something away from the work, that's fine. Let them feel a little bit moved by it or inspired by it or whatever. But my goal is to get these feelings off my chest and make them laugh.

Sun: You seem to have a negative view of mankind.

GC: They call it the descent of man for a reason. It's a descending line, not an ascending line. The pursuit of material goods ... I can't believe that this species, given such a wonderful mind, this beautiful instrument the brain, so complex, so capable of abstract thought, has settled for salad-shooters and microwave hot dogs ... and Jet Skis. I mean, where is the lofty, noble human aspiration? The people who do that are outnumbered. The people who care about real art and real thought and real academic pursuits ... they have names for these people: eggheads, nerds and geeks.

We had it great once and I don't think the chance exists anymore. I hope the insects take over.