Process
George Carlin
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4m 4s
Throughout his 50-year career, George Carlin meticulously recorded his thoughts and observations on thousands of small scraps of colored paper. “Every day I take a lot of notes,” Carlin explained. “They can be a sentence, a word, an idea, two things that connect or contrast, an afterthought, a neat phrase. It’s an incessant process.” The scraps of paper – whose diversity of size, color, and texture indicate the spontaneity with which they were accumulated – were then sorted into Ziploc bags and arranged alphabetically into dozens of categories: “Americans,” “Death,” “Euphemisms,” “Fullashit,” “Lingo,” “Oddball Facts,” “Race,” “War & Peace.” Carlin cross-referenced the growing collection of notes to orchestrate the material into a polished, well-rehearsed stand-up routine. Consisting of some 25,000 individual pieces that are now held in the National Comedy Center’s archives, this extraordinary material offers a unique and intimate glimpse into the workings of one of comedy’s greatest minds.
This video includes exclusive interviews with Lewis Black, Kelly Carlin, Janeane Garofalo, and Richard Lewis.
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