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Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy

40 Years of Comedy

George Carlin

HBO · 1997 · 50 min

Half stand-up performance, half career retrospective hosted by Jon Stewart.

Watch it free on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

If you queue up this hour expecting a traditional set, the format might throw you. Rather than a standard performance, the television broadcast is a hybrid project. The front half features a tight 27 minutes of stand-up where George Carlin targets advertising culture, pet ownership, and the everyday lies holding society together. Then, he trades the microphone for an armchair to sit down with a young Jon Stewart.

Filmed live at the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen, Colorado, for the 1997 US Comedy Arts Festival, the project serves as his tenth HBO release. The Stewart interview covers his upbringing and early days in the business, interspersed with archive clips from his previous decades on stage.

The year was a commercial peak for the working comic—his first hardcover book, Brain Droppings, was on its way to a forty-week run on the New York Times bestseller list. The Aspen performance picked up two CableACE awards and a pair of Emmy nominations, even if diehard fans often asterisk it in rankings due to the abbreviated stand-up set.

The set list

3 bits

  1. Gourmet food advertising

    Dissects the misuse and commercial bastardization of the word 'gourmet' applied to everyday items like coffee and pizza, contrasting them with ridiculous delicacies like toasted snail penises and deep-dish yak dick.

  2. Pets

    Stories and reflections about his pets, presenting new personal material.

  3. Business lingo and religion

    Early developmental routines dissecting corporate speak and religious absurdity, later reworked for 'You Are All Diseased'.

How it plays

Tone
Hilarious, thought-provoking, quick, and biting.
On stage
Urbane and witty cultural commentator dissecting language and behavior with intense abandon.
Pace
Dished out at a furious pace; described as being 'on fire'.
About
advertising, pets, business lingo, religion, American bullshit

What the critics said

Praised as brief but highly effective, described as like a 'Molotov cocktail: quick, dirty and extremely effective at making a first impression' and a great primer for newcomers.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, themoviedb.org, georgecarlin.net, thecriticaleye.me, variety.com, tv.apple.com.

Backstory

Broadcast live from the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen, Colorado, as part of the 1997 US Comedy Arts Festival, celebrating his 20th year working with HBO.

Details

Released
Taped
Wheeler Opera House, Aspen
Runtime
50 min
Where
HBO
Director
Rocco Urbisci
Honors
Nominated for 2 Primetime Emmys (3 wins & 3 nominations total)
Topics
Before
Back in Town (1996)
After
You Are All Diseased (1999)

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