It's amazing that there was a time when what you said could get you locked up in prison. I've actually accrued a reputation for being irreverent. Yes, sir, the sticky wicket. I cuss gratuitously but subject matter's another story. This is going to be a good show. Are there any subjects that are never appropriate for humour? People say a good comedian doesn't have to cuss and I thought, 'That's (BLEEP) rubbish.' How dirty is too dirty? Why is all that is so funny? I don't know! What you're about the hair is going to shock and disgust you. If you choose to go blue, you've got to do it right. Dirty for the sake of dirty, there's nothing worse than that. You must promise me something. You won't get me in any trouble on the show tonight. EXCITING MUSIC MUSIC CONTINUES Subtitles by Ericsson. www.able.co.nz Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Able 2018 CHEERING, WHISTLING UPBEAT MUSIC Listen, I will be cussing tonight. Just so as you know. No, I will, I will. Don't (BLEEP) 'Aw' me. Not allowing an artist to use the word (BLEEP) is like not allowing a guitarist to use the chord E. It's possible to play the instrument but why the (BLEEP) would you bother? Now, don't wave your finger at me. You knew when you are here there'd be cussing. The last thing comedy needs is to be polite, you know? The world was never changed by anyone being well-behaved or well-mannered or quiet. There's a certain exhilaration in pushing the boundaries. I had this memory of being, like, three and I would shower with my mother. LAUGHTER My mum got her water from the shower head. That water would then cascade down her ample bosom and, like,... pike off of her '70s Jew bush... LAUGHTER That was my water. I was raised by parents who spoke explicitly. There's something about growing up not knowing that talking about your vagina or penises was taboo. Now, if you haven't done it before, ladies, go home and treat yourself, do it tonight. Just give your man a little push-push in the tush-tush, just give him a little Atari. My whole comedy career I've been told to be less dirty and I would get more work if I just toned it down a little bit and it's crazy to me that a highbrow publication like the New Yorker would be interested in interviewing me about why I find it funny... to butt-finger a man. No, please, no, really... I don't think there's any subject that's off-limits. The other day, a guy told me to suck a bag of dicks. That was interesting. LAUGHTER I'd never heard that before. Total stranger told me to suck a bag of dicks. LAUGHTER ERUPTS A whole bag of 'em. What we consider offensive or blue evolves with every generation. EXPECTANT MUSIC With vaudeville, for the first time comedy becomes an industry. Our poor father, he died of throat trouble. They hung him. Vaudeville is created commercially to clean up humour. There's no cursing, there's no blasphemy. Why? They want men, women and children to be able to come there. They want a bigger audience. # Ha-ha Ha-ha # Ha-ha # Ho-ho # Ha-ha Hey-hey # Ha-ha Ho-ho # Ha-ha # Ha-ha # Ha-ha # Ho-ho # Ha-ha. Ha-ha! # Hey-hey! # If a vaudevillian did something on stage that was objectionable they would send a blue envelope backstage with the material they wanted excised from their act. And so that became the whole idea of that phrase 'blue material'. Say good night. Good night. So you had vaudeville comedy, which was accessible to all, but at the same time concurrently you had another style of comedy that was a little bit different. GROOVY MUSIC Burlesque houses were often like going to a strip club. These guys were there with their trench coats to watch girls. They had the different styles of comedy, different people performing within them. I see you lying there, my anger is aroused, I pull out my dirk. Uh-oh, now we're getting to the point. Because burlesque, the primary attraction was scantily clad ladies, in order to compete for attention, a comedian had to do something that was going to upstage a naked woman. So they would do this sort of dirty-ish comedy. Your wife's on television? Indeed she is. I didn't know that. A magician. What does she do? Well, she does one trick that's really amazing, mystifying. She takes a little rubber ball. Yeah, yeah. She bounces the little rubber ball up and down. And she stands with her legs like this. And when the little ball bounces up and down, the little ball disappears. LAUGHTER Well, what are you bragging about? My wife does the same thing with a basketball. Sure. Yeah, she does it the hard way, she's knock-kneed. Vaudeville is clean, burlesque is dirty. The thing about burlesque is, that audience is all male. You're not going to burlesque to see the comic. HE CHUCKLES OK? You're going to see the boobs. LIVELY BIG-BAND MUSIC The Dean Martin celebrity Roast, coming to you from the MGM Grand Hotel. APPLAUSE Dean, I'd like you to know that I cancelled a proctologist appointment to be here tonight. LAUGHTER And I think I made a mistake. LAUGHTER So in the late '60s and 1970s they would televise Friars Club roasts but they were sanitised versions of what you would actually see at the Friars Club. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of reasons why we should honour this man tonight. First of all, he's Italian and I love the Italian people. I'll never forget the word of Carmine D'Angonanzo who said to me in Brooklyn on a Saturday night... LAUGHTER The televised roasts that Dean Martin did were always so funny and it was fun to see. But there's something about those private, Friars Club, behind closed doors, you know, stag roasts. The fact that they were these huge stars like Jack Benny and Milton Berle that the public had only heard on TV or on the radio be very squeaky-clean, suddenly you got to see another side of it. I've known Don for about eight years and, like most performers, Don has probably thousands of acquaintances, professional people that he knows. But he's also one of the people who has close friends and I like to feel that I am one, I don't want to speak for Don, but I am one of his very close friends. And I think that's important to Don because queers need friends. LAUGHTER Haaaaa! Wunnerful. The vaudeville style of comedy and the burlesque tradition of comedy came together at the Friars Club. It's good when an artist can express themselves in a way that may not be acceptable outside that temple of free speech. People say there's a time and a place for that kind of comedy, that's the time and place, the roast. I will remember this evening probably as long as it takes me to get my car. LAUGHTER APPLAUSE WHISTLING Ladies and gentlemen, here is a very shocking comedian, the most shocking comedian of our time, a young man who is skyrocketing to fame, Lenny Bruce. CHEERING, APPLAUSE You might be interested in how I became offensive. LAUGHTER At that time, there were laws on the book around obscenity. You couldn't say fuck. You couldn't say come. You couldn't say cock. I mean, could you imagine that? I'd like to, perhaps, give you a four-letter word... that starts with an S and ends with a T. CHUCKLING First time on television. I'm not going to look at you when I say this because this way I can't get busted, you don't know who said it, the band said it. LAUGHTER It starts with an S and ends with a T and the word is... snot. LAUGHTER Lenny Bruce saw himself as a social critic and part of that was challenging our language and why certain words were taboo. The Jew has no concept that there's a dirty word graph. In other words, F-U-C-K, the Jew doesn't know is worth 90 points and S-H-I-T five points because both rabbis and priests, S-H-I-T. Only one F-U-C-K-S. If you listen to my father's routines, you will hear a 'obscenity', the so-called curse words or blue material. He did not use them for shock value. They had a purpose, they had a reason and they were leading to a point. And there's a difference, you know, between a big piece of art with a little shit in the middle of it, a big piece of art, a little shit in the middle, a big piece of art, then a big piece of shit with a little art in the middle, a big piece of shit with art in the middle. You don't understand that art of one big piece of shit. SOLEMN MUSIC If he was just playing small joints and wasn't really a household name, nobody would have bothered him, but his popularity started to grow and he became something of a force and something of an influence. So he started to question authority and he started to step on toes. Christ to Moses, 'Look at the Earth. He said, 'Well, obvious the book is bombing down there. 'Gideons are shoving it in motel drawers.' So then Christ and Moses fly to New York. They say, 'What's playing at St Pat's? 'Good double bill, Spelman and Sheen.' Cardinal Spelman would be relating love and giving and forgiveness to the people and Christ would be confused because their route took them through Spanish Harlem. And he would wonder what 40 Puerto Ricans were doing living in one room and this guy had a ring on that was worth eight grand. LAUGHTER What about the accusations that you trample on other people's religions? I discuss religions, many points of view. I'm interested, I'm searching for an answer,... as Billy Graham is. At this time, priests and people of the cloth, you bowed to them and people got very angry because now they're talking about their religion, their belief system. You play with somebody's belief system and their religion, now you've got a problem. And they got the powers-that-be crazy. 'Shut him up. You've got to silence him.' Someone saw Lenny Bruce in a club in Chicago and he was making jokes about the Pope or something and two detectives went up on stage because of that remark and handcuffed him in front of the audience and took him away. You can't even imagine that today. They found it was obscene enough to put me in a jail cell for the last 24 hours and the thing I wish they would do is tell me what words were obscene? In court, the cop is reciting what he thinks that my father's talking about. When my father had the microphone and he was doing this, he was imitating a priest doing the holy water in the pews. The cops wrote it down that it looked like he was pretending masturbation. It got fierce. It got really fierce. There were some really funny, great comedians, and blue, but they chose him to make some, you know, some ridiculous point. They took away his First Amendment rights. It was a horrible moment. The reason I got busted, arrested, I picked on the wrong God. If I were to pick on the God whose replica is the whoopee cushion store, the Tiki God, the Hawaiian God, those idiots, their dumb gods, I would have been cool. But I picked on the Western God, the cute God, the in God, the Kennedy God. And that's where I screwed up. No matter how many times he would get arrested, no matter how many times he was dragged off the stage, no matter how many times he had to go to court, my father believed that he had the right to free speech. My dad went from making $150,000 a year... to being registered as a pauper. We had no money. All the money and everything went on lawyers. The way that he was beaten down and beaten down and beaten down, coupled with his drug use, is what killed him. SOLEMN MUSIC Lenny really took the blows. He was the martyr. He cleared the way for the new openness, which was happening in all sorts of media in the '60s, but it took guys like Lenny Bruce to really push the boundaries and go to jail for it. Your remote! There is not one piece of comedy being done today that didn't come out of something Lenny Bruce said. Really. He was like, you know, the Big Bang. Did he take the hit for all us? Yeah, I imagine he did. I mean, yeah, thank God for Lenny Bruce. Let's see, let's see, what's nice to follow a good heavy, morose thing like that? A commercial, yes. GROOVY MUSIC One time, Lenny Bruce was performing and George Carlin was in the audience and the police busted Lenny Bruce. As Carlin has told it, you know, the cops wanted to check everybody's ID because if they could get somebody who was underage, they could really wreak havoc. And, you know, you have young George Carlin trying to be arrested with Lenny Bruce to be able to ride in the paddy wagon with him. 'If they're going to bust Lenny, they're going to bust me.' It gives me goose bumps just thinking about that. And Lenny Bruce said, you know, 'H-H-How did you get in here?' And, er...and he said, 'Well, I refused to cooperate with the police'. And Lenny Bruce said, 'What are you, a schmuck?' HE LAUGHS WHEEZILY Carlin came up as a kind of traditional short-hair, stand-up comic. He was quite successful in getting Ed Sullivan gigs and so forth. Here is comedian, comedy star George Carlin. Que pasa? Al Sleet here, your Hippy Dippy Weatherman. Tonight's forecast - dark. Carlin, at first, wanted just to have success. And he got that success and then felt that he was getting that success in a way that didn't speak to his heart. I used to be this guy, or maybe this guy used to be me. I don't know. We were each other at one time. It wasn't long ago, he, er... I liked him, you know? He was really good. He was funny. I had a lot of fun with him. He did some nice things for me, but it was like, um...there was nothing behind him, you know? He was kind of...just superficial. Just the surface. He was all characters. I wasn't in there. I found out I wasn't in my own act! The guy who really picks up from Lenny is George, who basically kind of goes right after the taboos again. He's constantly picking and picking and picking. And the Irish priests were always heavily into penance and punishment, you know? They'd give you a couple of novenas to do. Nine first Fridays, five first Saturdays. Stations of the Cross. A trip to Lourdes. Wow! LAUGHTER That was one of the things that bothered me about my religion, was that conflict between pain and pleasure, you know? Because they were always pushing for pain and you were always pulling for pleasure, man. LAUGHTER George Carlin was a wordsmith. And each of his routines were poetry. Memorised poetry. Carlin would spend a year practising these routines, where every word was there for a reason. Nothing was there by accident. My trouble was I wanted a list. Here are these words I'm not supposed to say. Let's have a look at them. LAUGHTER I'll be glad to avoid them if I can just see them and know what they are. You got to say them to find out what they are, man. Shit! HE IMITATES WHIPPING Argh! Oh, fuck! HE IMITATES WHIPPING Oh! George Carlin, more than anyone else, even more than Lenny Bruce before him, he had FUN with vulgarity. And THAT drove people crazy. I kept finding more ways to describe dirty words than there WERE dirty words. They call them dirty, bad, filthy, foul,... vile, vulgar,... LAUGHTER ...off-colour... LAUGHTER ERUPTS ...blue, in poor taste,... suggestive... cursin', cussin', swearing', profanity, obscenity... All I could think of was shit, piss, fuck, (BLEEP), cocksucker, motherfucker and tits, man. CHEERING, APPLAUSE As you watched the bit, he initially gets the shock laugh and then he begins inserting these vulgarities into very normal, comfortable, musical, almost lyrical language, to show you how ridiculous it is. Shit, piss, fuck, (BLEEP), cocksucker, motherfucker, tits! Cocksucker, motherfucker, tits! Cocksucker, motherfucker, tits! Cocksucker, motherfucker, tits! All those seven words are beautiful ingredients to a great melody. It's a great way to start an orchestra. I got Carlin records and I remember my dad was listening to it with me, and my dad was an English major, so anything with wordplay and language, he was always into it. Despite the language, he would still let me hear it. The United States Supreme Court has ruled that the government can act against broadcasters who present offensive material. The 5-4 decision upheld the government reprimand of a radio station that broadcast a record by comedian George Carlin. WBAI played a cut from an album. The cut is called Filthy Words, and it's a follow-up to an earlier album piece I did called the Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television. WBAI played it in the context of a programme they were doing, in the mid-afternoon, about contemporary language and attitudes towards language. The FCC took issue with WBAI based on a complaint by a listener who was in his automobile at the time with his son, and he claimed that it was indecent. Claimed that it was an invasion of his privacy and that his son shouldn't be subjected to that. The 'seven words you can't say on television' don't exist before George Carlin. Those are NOT seven words you can't say on television. He put those words together because of the rhythm, because of the way they sounded, and for the routine. And then instantly, it goes into the court record, and the FCC, and everybody PRETENDS that these are the actual words. He created the very battle that was fought against him. ARCHIVE: The Federal Communications Commission said that New York's WBAI was wrong in playing the record, though the FCC imposed no punishment immediately, and the Supreme Court agreed. I was raised at a time where using bad language was associated with people of low intelligence, and he helped break that stereotype for me. Carlin even has a bit - 'there's no such thing as bad words. There's bad intentions, 'but there's not bad words, you know?' So I... That was freedom. As soon as something's desensitised then it becomes normal, then when it becomes the normal, then it doesn't become offensive, then when something isn't offensive, we're not afraid of it any more. Everything George Carlin said was basically him looking at the world going, 'Grow up. Grow up. Grow up.' Shit, piss, fuck, (BLEEP), cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. Now, that was the original. We've added a few words since then. We've added fart, turd and twat. LAUGHTER And I know there are some other words many of you are wondering about - why they haven't been considered, why they haven't shown up on the list thus far. We're looking at them all very closely. Some of your favourites might make the list this year. Asshole, ballbag, hard-on, piss-hard, blue balls, taint, nookie, snatch, box, pussy,... pecker, peckerhead, pecker tracks, jism, joint, donniker, dork... Poontang! LAUGHTER, CHEERING, APPLAUSE Cornhole and dingleberry. LAUGHTER, CHEERING, APPLAUSE CLICKING CLICKING RECORD CRACKLES GROOVY MUSIC Until Redd Foxx came along in 1956, nobody had ever recorded their stand-up act and released it as an album. Redd Foxx is distinguished because he invented, essentially, the genre of stand-up comedy record. Everybody in my hometown bought a jackass. LAUGHTER Preacher's wife had the biggest ass in town. LAUGHTER I know because I rode her big ass all the time. HYSTERICAL LAUGHTER Some time I'd ride her ass along. Her ass would sweat and I'd slip right off her big sweaty ass. HYSTERICAL LAUGHTER Redd Foxx was making very explicitly sexual records, blue records, or off-colour records, that were sold in African-American communities. Everybody that I knew when I was growing up had Redd Foxx records. He was listened to by African-Americans on a massive level. But he was unknown in mainstream society, virtually. What are party records? You play 'em at a party. You ever been to a party? Put the records on, when it's kind of dull, and then wait. Yeah? Are they... The party starts. ...naughty? Yes. There's a new bikini bathing suit coming out this summer. A new bikini, girls. It's two Band-Aids and a cork. LAUGHTER All right - two corks. LAUGHTER My parents had the Redd Foxx dirty jokes record in the house. And they would put it on after I'd go to bed like it was porn or something, you know? Hygiene. The toughest thing in the world is to have to turn to your mate one night and say, 'You got to wash your ass.' LAUGHTER Knowing how difficult it is, I said it for you in this album. LAUGHTER You Gotta Wash Your Ass. When you went to the record store, you often had to ask for these albums, because they wouldn't be out that you could just go and pick them up out of the bin. They were often hidden or in a certain part of the store where you needed some sort of assistance for the people in the store because they were thought to be too scandalous. I've heard several of them and it's a miracle you're able to select lines from them to do on television. LAUGHTER The party records that Redd Foxx did were underground, but underground to mainstream society. So the mainstream didn't know about it and didn't want to be part of it, at that point. Ain't no way to get an ambulance in the ghetto, right, unless you call up, 'There's five niggers killing a white woman!' LAUGHTER Some dudes would talk to you while they kicked your ass. 'Why you wanna fuck with me, man?' LAUGHTER 'Shit. Somebody get this nigger off of me.' 'I didn't know the nigger was black!' LAUGHTER I don't know how you feel about the title of your album, but I find it difficult to say. You do? Most white people... It's hard to say 'crazy'. LAUGHTER You tell them the title of the album. I can't say this. The title of the album is That Nigger's Crazy. LAUGHTER See, you can just say that... Yeah, well, look... If I said that, would you get mad? I'd punch you out. LAUGHTER Richard Pryor was influenced by Redd Foxx, but what he did was to bring some of that sensibility to the mainstream. The idea that a guy who had been developing this new, provocative racial material suddenly breaking through to a mainstream audience was a big moment. A lot of people here might be offended, so you should leave now, cos I'm going to say 'fuck' and 'suck'... LAUGHTER, WHISTLING ...and 'shit' and 'doodoo'. LAUGHTER Pryor used profanity in a way that even exceeded Lenny Bruce and all the comics that went before him. He made the use of those terms... seem to be a part of everyday life, and made the people listening to his comedy accept that characters say them and that being who they realistically were. This is the way these people really talk. He changed this low comedy into high art in a way that no-one had done before. Cos I remember the motherfucker... LAUGHTER He could make a motherfucker laugh at a funeral on Sunday, Christmas Day. It was about making sure that he told the truth, and he said it on several occasions, that that's what he was trying to do. My dad would always say, 'If only you knew Lenny Bruce,' and I didn't understand that until much later. And I think it was because for my dad, that was kind of the beginning of speaking... Speaking truth to power, they say. Politically and consciously. I'd also like to thank the cameramen, who have done such a wonderful job in getting rid of the black cameramen. LAUGHTER Lenny kind of lit that fire, and my dad and Carlin took it this way. And it never stopped. APPLAUSE AND CHEERING Richard is the rawest motherfucker in showbiz. Richard's the one that made me want to do comedy. I wanted to be Richard so bad I used to go out on stage when I was 15 and talk and walk and act and do everything like Richard Pryor. My mother was sitting there watching her 15-year-old son on stage saying some outlandish shit. My whole act back then was about taking a shit, cos that's all I had done at 15. I think every African-American comedian to some degree was inspired by Richard Pryor. Eddie Murphy did get into using four-letter words more out of a sense of, 'I'm trying to shock you.' I got a lot of people from other countries who see my films and come over to the United States because New York is like a tourist place, and they get HBO and catch Delirious and they can't speak English, and try to do my act on the street and all they got is the curses. I got foreigners from all over the world walking up and going, 'Eddie Murphy! 'Fuck you!' APPLAUSE, CHEERING, LAUGHTER 'I love it! Suck my dick, eh?' LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE 'Suck it, you black motherfucker.' I saw Eddie Murphy's Raw and Delirious when I was really little, like when I was in second grade. I even knew then, like, 'He nasty. He naughty. 'He's not supposed to be saying any of that. 'Those are bad, bad words. 'And it's hilarious.' You watch the Bill Cosby Show? APPLAUSE, CHEERING I do too. I love the Bill Cosby Show. I've been a big fan of Bill Cosby all my life. Never met the man before, but he called me up about a year ago and chastised me on the phone for being too dirty. APPLAUSE I was pissed off. I was so mad, I called Richard Pryor's house up and said, 'Yo, Richard, Bill Cosby just called me up 'and told me I was too dirty.' He said, 'Do the people laugh when you say what you say?' I said yes. He said, 'Do you get paid?' I said yes. He said, 'Well, tell Bill I said have a Coke and a smile 'and shut the fuck up.' LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE My imitation of Dolly Parton. CHUCKLING Dolly Parton's mother. LAUGHTER Dolly Parton's brother. LAUGHTER You're making fun of the brother of a celebrity's testicles! LAUGHTER I had one with a birth control pill and I had one with a diaphragm then I had another one with the IUD. LAUGHTER I don't even know what happened to my IUD - it never came out. LAUGHTER But I have my suspicions, cos that kid picks up HBO. Watch Showtime! Get the fuck out of my face. As guys like Pryor and Carlin came along and shocked you and were scatological and talked about sex, as each new stand-up comedian came along there was less and less barriers to break through so they would reach further and further to try to do something that would shock the audience. HE SHOUTS Sam Kinison embodies the '80s era of comedy. It was more like a trend. People were doing characters that were an extension of themselves. So Sam Kinison was Sam Kinison, but on stage he was Sam Kinison The Character as opposed to Sam Kinison The Man. You ever been married? HE GIGGLES What's your name? Michael? Well, Michael, if you ever think about getting married, if you ever think you've met the right woman, wanna settle down, change your life, will you do me a favour, Mike? Remember this face. HE SCREAMS, LAUGHTER It was really the expression of the heartbroken man. We hold a lot of stuff in because we're civilised people and we're trying to do the right thing, but there's a lot that goes on emotionally that we can't express. And to have that little monster put it out there like that - great. It's like a relief valve. Sam did not care if the audience hated him. And would even bait them, you know, he would almost challenge them to leave if they didn't like it. And when you don't care, that's frequently when you get the best results. Very seldom someone comes along who's unusually different and gifted and creative and presents something that's unusual. Right. LAUGHTER And the money from last week? Yeah. Sam Kinison really took comedy to an extreme in the shouting, in some of the language and in some of the taboo subjects that he went after. I read the paper, they said that a group of homosexual necrophiliacs... CHEERING, CHUCKLING ...had been going around to mortuaries offering them money... to let them come in at night and spend a couple of hours undisturbed with the freshest male corpse. AUDIENCE EXCLAIMS For these corpses, I know these guys were laid out on slabs. They're in there going, 'Well, life was tough, 'and, yeah, it was pretty hard to live up to, 'and I've faced death and I'm glad I went through it, 'and, well, now I'm ready to spend eternity in heaven 'and be with Jesus and...' # Rock of ages. # 'Hey! 'Hey, what's this shit?!' LAUGHTER 'Oh, I don't believe this! 'There's a guy's dick in my ass!' Just that guy sitting there going, 'Oh, what's this?' Like, that moment? Boy, that was funny. No laughing matter. That's what critics are saying about some routines that are passed off as comedy these days, a lot of it on television. Is it the cutting edge of social satire or the adult expression of what some children write on sidewalks? ROCK MUSIC Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet Eating her curds and whey Along came a spider He sat down beside her and he said, 'Hey! What's in that bowl, bitch?' Oh! Dice was dirty. Dice's language was filthy. Only thing that made Dice different was that his blue, his dirty was controversial. I really, though, don't understand why women go to hear Dice Clay. To me it's like... a Jew going to a Hitler rally. I treat my girlfriend good. Like, for Christmas I bought her this beautiful, um... dustpan. LAUGHTER With her name engraved, man. The whole family was over, I took it out - you had to see the look on her fucking face. Yeah, the guy is... a chauvinistic moron. You know? I wouldn't hang out with that guy. Not if he meant those things. You know, even as a guy I wouldn't hang out with him because then I'd be saying, 'He's deranged,' you know? You know? But as a comedian, it's very funny, and it doesn't hurt anybody. To be outrageous and bad-boy and breaking the rules is extremely lucrative. It is extremely pandering. There's a lot of comedy that's done under the guise of being the edge which isn't, because it's actually connecting with the basest audience. UNSETTLED MUSIC I found, through great effort, at least one remark of his that I could say on the air. Yes. He describes his sexual technique as, and I quote, 'So I say to the bitch, "Lose the bra or I'll cut you."' Is that funny? What you're asking me to do is to defend Andrew Dice Clay's act... No, I'm asking you, is that funny? I don't know what the context was. Obviously the way you just said it, no, it's not funny. But the fact of it is, for me, that what he does is a character. And when he's up there and he's on stage, it's a comedian. How are you? Who's Dice, who's Andrew Clay, who's the Jewish kid, who's the kid who's acting Italian? You know... You want to know who he is? I'll tell you. APPLAUSE, CHEERING LAUGHTER Andrew Clay is the guy who came out here about ten years ago. VOICE BREAKS: And broke his ass. Know what I mean? CHUCKLING Broke his ass, he believed in himself, became the hottest comic in the world. And anybody that doesn't like it can wipe their ass with whatever they say about me. APPLAUSE, CHEERING That wasn't Dice that broke down. That was Andrew. The backlash was so strong that it got past the Dice character and got to the Andrew guy and made him feel bad for what was being said. CHANTING: Dice. Dice. Dice. Did it celebrate a certain type of thinking that probably doesn't need any more celebrating? Yeah, maybe. But did it make it look stupid as well? Did it make it look moronic? Yes. Off limits is not a permanent address. It's just a marker that keeps getting moved. You couldn't say 'pregnant' on TV when Lucille Ball was pregnant on I Love Lucy. It keeps changing. So anyone who says, 'Well, it's off limits,' well, enjoy the next ten minutes, cos that's about as long as that's gonna last. The thing today, the thing right now you can't make fun of? The thing that's too sensitive at this moment? Transgendered people. SILENCE See? LAUGHTER You can't do it. Can't make fun of them. It's too sensitive. In fact, you can't even call them 'chicks with dicks' any more. LAUGHTER No. No. You have to call them 'men who talk too much'. LAUGHTER There's been so many dirty jokes. So you can't do some cliched dick joke that everybody's heard before or some cliched big pussy joke. You'd better do something fresh and new that nobody's ever talked about before. Most women won't let their husbands watch when they're going through a miscarriage. I sat my husband down in front of me while I sat on the toilet and I was like, 'You look.' LAUGHTER 'You watch the whole thing.' And he felt so bad for me, and I used it as leverage and held that shit over his head for a month, and got him to do whatever the fuck I wanted him to do for 30 days. He took me to see Beyonce. LAUGHTER He bought me a bike off of Craigslist. That's my miscarriage bike, and I love it very much. LAUGHTER For 30 days, I finally had the marriage I always wanted. LAUGHTER If you're filthy, the lower you go, the funnier you better be, and I'll go with you. There's filth that I absolutely adore. But if it's just all you have, then you shouldn't be here. Girls grow up so fast. It's like they don't have childhoods any more. They're sexualised so early, you know? A girlfriend of mine has a little baby girl and I babysat her. I changed her diaper? Totally shaved. LAUGHTER, CLAPPING Six months old. It's always just about busting things that are taboo. Unless you're brave enough to lose people, then why are you doing this? Some people start off with some friendly material and they build up to the intense stuff later on. I like to just walk out there and do my most offensive joke first in the hope that the people who were going to walk away in 40 minutes will walk out now and we can actually enjoy ourselves. HE CHUCKLES Bill Cosby. LAUGHTER It turns out that Bill Cosby is a rapist. LAUGHTER I know. I always used to watch him on the telly as a kid and I always used to think to myself, 'Ah, I bet he doesn't rape.' LAUGHTER But I've been wrong before and I'll be wrong again. LAUGHTER You see, a comedian, by the very nature of what he is, is a troublemaker. He is an iconoclast. He's a playful troublemaker, a good-natured troublemaker, but a troublemaker, and therefore he must recognise the existence of certain, er, taboos. Free speech involves getting free speech coming back at you. A rape joke is a good example. You make a rape joke, and it's shit, right, and you go, 'You're a fucking douchebag, 'you should never have made that joke.' 'You're harshing my First Amendment rights!' No, I'm not. It's my First Amendment right to call you a dick when you're a fucking dick. You're a dick. That joke sucked. Free speech, motherfucker. There's more freedom now than ever before, and the reason there's more freedom now is because of people like Redd Foxx, like Richard Pryor, like George Carlin who kind of martyred themselves in the '60s, who got in trouble for saying very innocuous things. And we owe them a lot of credit. You guys mad about that one? LAUGHTER, CLAPPING It's going to get so much fucking worse. LAUGHTER Look, anybody who talks graphically, you know, we owe Lenny Bruce. That was done for us by him. You know, we all know how to work clean. I say fuck too much, there's no doubt. But I can. Do you remember, before we leave, do you remember the actual seven words? Um... God. Oh, jeez! I had them memorised and I wasn't prepared to do it right now. It's weird - I never committed them to memory. I don't want to say them now, because people may be watching. Tits. Shit, cock... Shit, piss, motherfucker, cocksucker, tits. Did I miss one? You know, the problem is I don't even think words are dirty, so it's trying to remember what the fuck they are. Shit, tit, cock... I'm missing one. What's...? Shit? WHISPERS: Cocksucker. Oh, cocksucker. Of course. CHUCKLING IDYLLIC MUSIC Are you serious, Louis? Shit, tit, cock... Dick? Penis? Cock? Vagina? Pussy? Oh, yeah, cunt. Motherfucker. I was right, I said motherfucker. Shit, piss, uh... cock, (BLEEP), motherfucker, cocksucker, pi... I left piss out, I think. Shit, tits, fuck, (BLEEP), cocksucker, motherfucker and piss. Oh, my God! Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Able 2018