Judd Apatow & Michael Bonfiglio Dissect The Genius Of An “Outlaw” Comedy Legend In ‘George Carlin’s American Dream’
11.06.2022 - 19:03
/ deadline.com
Today, beards are commonplace, unremarkable bits of facial shrubbery. Even as conservative a figure as Sen. Ted Cruz sports one.
But 50 years ago, a man choosing to wear a beard sent a political message. It signaled participation in the counter-culture, a spurning of orthodoxy. George Carlin captured the threatening act of going bearded in a routine included on his 1972 comedy album FM & AM.
“Here’s my beard. Ain’t it weird? Don’t be skeered, it’s just a beard,” he riffed, continuing, “That’s the thing. The word ‘beard’ shook up a lot of people. BEARD! It’s not American sounding. BEARD! Lenin had a BEARD!”
Carlin told his audience he had sprouted a beard and grown his hair long around 1971. It was a transgressive act that marked a turning point in his life and career, moving from clean-cut comic to culture-defining, acerbic observer. Without him making that fundamental shift, we wouldn’t be talking about Carlin today, nor would Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio have directed the two-part biographical documentary about him for HBO, George Carlin’s American Dream.
“He figured out how to get successful by selling himself out a little bit by trying to be on TV and be safe,” Apatow says, referring to the earlier, 1960s iteration of Carlin—cleanshaven, hair tidied, straightjacketed in a Mad Men-style suit and narrow tie. “Then he ultimately decided, no, I have to be me. And he decided to go against the grain. And that’s when he found his greatest success was when he was true to himself.”
The Emmy-contending film documents Carlin’s less than idyllic childhood in an uptown section of New York City (Carlin would not that he and his pals referred to the neighborhood as “White Harlem” because it “sounded tougher” than its breezier