"[Radio tuning]" "[Big band music plays]" "December 7th, 1941..." "A date which will live..." "In infamy." "[Announcer] This is the news that electrified the world." "Unconditional surrender." "Thanks, Jean, I'll be there." "[Martin Luther king] Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." "The most shocking comedian of our time," "Lenny Bruce." "Here he is." "No, I promise, continuity, I'll behave myself." "[Kennedy] Ask not what your country can do for you..." "Will Elizabeth Taylor become bar mitzvahed?" "[Audience laughs]" "[Announcer] There are a few isolated flare-ups between whites and negroes." "By the way, are there any niggers here tonight?" "[Audience laughs]" "That's what we're doing in Vietnam." "[Audience laughs]" "[Man] The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked." "[Bruce] The reason I got busted, arrested, i picked on the wrong God." "There are words that offend me." "Let's see, governor faubus, segregation offend me." "What has happened to our moral values?" "Don imus." "[Imus] That's some nappy-headed hoes, there." "You might be interested in how" "I became offensive." "♪♪ [Piano music]" "Lenny set the bar for comedy, for everybody." "He pushed the envelope at a time when things were tightening." "He opened the door for anybody who ever stands in public and speaks and says anything." "The public and their reputation created the guy that he became and ultimately led to his downfall." "People that paid to see Lenny Bruce came and they saw a man starting to crumble." "Hold everything." "What's the matter?" "It's all over." "What's all over?" "The hair on that man's head." "Oh, come on." "My grandfather knew Lincoln's gettysburg address." "Well, what's so great about that?" "Everybody knows Lincoln's gettysburg address." "Yeah, but he knew his telephone number, too." "Ahhh." "Before Lenny Bruce, comics were really people who introduced strippers." "They would do ten jokes, you know, and here's Sally, and she's going to show you her stuff." "When I first got into stand up comedy on nbc, you couldn't have a cleavage or your knees showing." "It's all different than it was when we started because, except for a few comedians, you couldn't use any blue material." "You couldn't touch on anything that was controversial in politics and religion." "What was I, 21 when I discovered Lenny Bruce, and I started doing stand-up at 17." "And the first few years I heard of Lenny Bruce, and I was like, "who's this Lenny Bruce?" ""Who cares?" "Some old guy, he died, whatever, heroin overdose."" "And then I went to the museum, the museum of radio and television, and I started watching." "And again, you're just in awe the moment you start watching the guy, because he did have his own style, and, you know, his whole hip thing, man, you know, dig." "Lenny was discovered by Paul Desmond, the alto saxophonist with brubeck." "Lenny was working a strip joint in the San Fernando valley as the emcee." "'Cause I remember he started out doing impressions." "So many of the great comedians started out doing impressions, you know." "Guys like Eddie Murphy and Jim carrey." "Me." "There were kids that, eight and nine years old, that were sniffing airplane glue." "[Audience laughs]" "To get high on, you know." "So I had sort of a fantasy how it happened." "The kid is alone in his room." "And it's Saturday." "The child is played by George macready." "[Audience laughs]" "[In a gruff voice] Well, let's see now, I'm all alone in the room, and it's Saturday." "Mother's away and what'll I do that's good and hostile?" "Well, let's see, I'll..." "[Audience laughs]" "I'll make an airplane, that's good." "I'll make a Lancaster." "Good structural design." "I'll get the balsa wood, I'll sand it here." "I'll cut that off, I'll get the struts now." "Now I'll get a little airplane glue," "I'll rub it on the rag and, uh..." "Ah." "Hey now, it's a nutty plane here." "I'm getting loaded." "Is this possible, loaded on airplane glue?" "Maybe it's just stuffy in here," "I'll call my dog over." "Flicker?" "[Audience laughs]" "Flicker, come here, darling, and smell this rag." "Smell it, you freaky little doggy." "Smell that rag, flicker." "Flicker!" "[Shouting] Flicker!" "It worked." "I'm the Louis pasteur of junkiedom." "I'm out of my skull for..." "Well, there's much work to be done now." "Horses hooves to melt down, noses to get ready, cut to the toy store." "Any toy store, any hobby shop." "It might be your kid who walked in that day." "Ding-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling." "Hello, Mr. schindler." "Nice store you got here." "Give me a nickel's worth of pencils and a big boy tablet, and some erasers and 2,000 tubes of airplane glue." "[Audience laughs]" "I loved his work." "He was brilliant." "And whenever I was on the road and he was in town, I would rush over and hear him." "We worked together extensively starting at gene Norman's club on the strip, the crescendo." "And we were the house comedians." "It was upstairs." "Lenny would be working under, say, Peggy Lee or jeri Southern." "Downstairs I'd be with count basie or Stan kenton." "So we were together all the time." "We were together after the show at the gaiety delicatessen." "We knew each other pretty well." "We got to know Lenny." "We got to see Lenny working." "And we enjoyed his work." "You know, we thought him a pretty good comedian." "But not always." "Because you really didn't know for sure what was going to happen on the night you went." "He was irreverent, an individualistic, and wasn't trying to please anybody." "And people said "too smart for the room." "Too dirty, too this or that."" "We were all on the high wire." "We worked without a net." "If I hired them, then I put 'em on stage, let them do what they want to do." "You hired them because you had faith in what they were doing." "So then don't tell them what to say and what not to say, it's not my business." "If it wasn't for Lenny Bruce, you wouldn't have" "Richard pryor or George carlin." "You wouldn't have these guys." "He really opened the doors to what is today modern comedy." "He kicked that door down." "And as a result usually it's the first guy through the breech that takes all the bullets." "[Radio static]" "Two persons really helped Lenny Bruce during his career." "One in the press and one on t.V." "Hugh Hefner and Steve Allen, were both very important in Lenny Bruce's career." "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." "Here he is." "[Audience applauds, music plays]" "[Gold] He came from vaudeville, that was the interesting thing, and his mother, you know, grew up in vaudeville, and he grew up in vaudeville." "And he just totally bucked that trend of, like, ba-dum-bum jokes and setup punch line, "take my wife,"" "and to get up there and start talking about yourself, and to get really deep and personal, and talking about the world you're living in, and politicians and racism and class, it's like, that's unbelievable." "Lenny went beyond what any other mainstream comics had done at the time." "[Lonow] He began to speak in the verbiage that they would speak at a table at canter's, which nobody did." "You know, can I say the word "fuck"?" "Yeah." "Well, I couldn't say the word "fuck"" "in 1952, or four or five before Lenny Bruce, because they were banned words." "It was a banned word." "And there were many." "But what happened was his patter, the type of speech he used, became very personal on a level that all the comics of the fifties, couldn't do, wouldn't do, and they were, you know, protective of the fact" "that they wouldn't do that in public." "You know, people would be offended." "Holy shit, I can't say that on stage." "Well, I guess Lenny either wasn't offended, or provoked it." "He went into a direction no one had really gone into." "And, uh..." "And mort Saul in a sense was doing it, but Lenny was pushing..." "Um, pushing further." "He responded to injustice." "And suffering, and I think of him as an alchemist, that he transformed horror into humor." "What Lenny was doing was talking about what was happening in the world." "He wasn't making up bits." "He wasn't a comedian that wrote routines." "He was doing an interesting thing, and that is what he was saying to the audience was the most important thing on his mind at that time, and he tried to make it your most important thing." "He also attacked things in his comedy like the catholic church in Boston, the police commission in New York." "He took on catholics, Jews, protestants, he took on everybody." "So they made him the martyr, but artistically speaking, he went way beyond anything that anyone had done up until that time." "Completely broke every taboo pretty much." ""The bad taste award," ""should be given to Lenny Bruce," ""who out shuttered every other comedian on television this year."" "Okay, now another nice, warm review." "But then finally a newspaper with some integrity came forth, and..." "[Audience laughs]" ""Last night, a star was born."" "It's almost always a comedian that is the first guy to talk about social issues that we don't want to talk about." "Just because of the nature of their job, they stand on the stage and they talk to people, eventually it's gonna get set." "Filmmakers take a little while, 'cause doing a film takes a lot longer, uh, commentators won't grab onto it until it's been said by a comedian." "Rock stars play music, you know, so it's comedians that for the most part in my book, tackle the social issues that we don't want to discuss." "The job of comedy is to attack the powerful." "To examine them." "To hopefully make them examine themselves." "But more importantly to make us examine ourselves and how we fit into this-- this huge thing called life." "What Lenny did was exactly that." "He challenged authority." "He held up a mirror to what was going on in society, and the be-alls of society did not want this mirror being held up." "He did a lot of bits on religion, the hypocrisy of some of these evangelists who..." "Preach give your money to God, and he pockets 70%, stuff like that, you know." "We take you now to the headquarters of religions incorporated." "And seated around the desk on Madison Avenue sit the religious leaders of our country." "Religion, big business, we hear h.A. Addressing the tight little group on Madison Avenue." "For the first time in 12 years, catholicism is up nine points." "[Audience laughs]" "Judaism is up 15." "The big p, the pentecostals are starting to move finally, and now, gentlemen, we've got Mr. netaya, from our religious novelty house in Chicago, he's got a beautiful seller." "The genuine Jewish star, lucky cross, and cigarette lighter combined." "[Audience laughs]" "Lenny Bruce took stand-up comedy in dimensions it had not been taken since, in a smaller way, lord Buckley did." "He wasn't just being dirty, he was using words, you know..." "Pointing out the hypocrisy of words." "Like the-- he goes, you know-- fuck." "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought they were talking to me, you dick." "[Laughs]" "Homosexuality, sexuality, these things that conservative America doesn't like to discuss and definitely doesn't like to discuss in detail amongst even each other, never mind bringing it out in a public forum, which Lenny was doing." "[Cymbal dings] [Bruce] ♪ two prepositions ♪" ""Two" is a preposition" ""come" is a verb." ""Two" is a preposition." ""Come" is a verb." ""Two" is a preposition." ""Come" is a verb." "The verb intransitive." "To come." "To come." "I've heard these two words my whole adult life, and as a kid when I thought I was sleeping." "To come, to come." "It's been like a big drum solo." "Did you come?" "Did you come, good?" "[Drum beats, cymbal crashes]" "Did you come good?" "Did you come good?" "[Audience laughs]" "Did you come good?" "[Drumbeats continue]" "Did you come good?" "[Drumming]" "Did you come good?" "Did you come good?" "Did you come good?" "...I come better with you, sweetheart than anyone in the whole God damn world." "[Audience laughs]" "I really came so good." "I really came so good, 'cause I love you." "[Singing] ♪ I really came so good ♪" "♪ I come better with you, sweetheart ♪" "♪ than anyone in the whole world ♪" "♪ I really came so good ♪" "♪ so good ♪" "But don't come in me." "[Drum beats, audience laughs]" "Don't come in me." "[Frantically] Don't come in me me-me-me don't come in me me-me-me, don't come in me." "Don't come in me." "In me don't come..." "In me in me." "[Cymbal crashes] I can't come." "[Audience laughs]" "'Cause you don't love me, that's why I can't come." "I love ya, I just can't come, that's my hang up." "I can't come when I'm loaded, all right?" "'Cause you don't love me." "Just what the hell is the matter with you?" "What has that got to do with loving you?" "I just can't come, that's all." "[Audience laughs]" "Now if anyone in this room..." "Finds those two words decadent, [Drum beats, cymbal dings]" "Obscene, [Cymbal dings]" "Immoral, amoral, asexual, the words "to come" really make you feel uncomfortable, you probably can't come." "[Audience laughs]" "And then you're of no use, 'cause that's the purpose of life." "To recreate it." "[Klein] Lenny Bruce's political bent and social consciousness was not an accident." "It was a metamorphosis of sorts." "[Titus] He started in like '46 and died in '66." "If you look at where he goes, right about 12 years, in, bam, he starts writing that's the colored people..." "How to make your colored friends comfortable at parties." "He starts writing about-- takes about 10 to 12 years to become a really good comic." "The problem today is a lot of comics get onstage at a coffee house and already think they're Lenny." "I want to hear your pain, I want to hear your story, but put it in joke form." "Lenny learned how to write a joke and create a concept first." "Then he became Lenny Bruce." "And I think today, you know, if you invoke Lenny Bruce, you should have to go back and study him." "Don't just go back to bearded Lenny, you know, with track marks." "Go to early Lenny, when he was really, really, really working his craft as a brilliant comic." "And then you can talk about him, and then you can say, yeah, I'm trying to do what Lenny did." "He obviously knew there were certain buttons he could press, that would get a reaction." "You know, kind of raise a hot button, get things to go." "That it's going to draw attention to him, but maybe that's not such a bad thing." "When comics throw up, "oh, yeah, you know, like, Lenny did it."" "Yeah, but Lenny didn't talk about pussy for ten minutes." "You know, Lenny talked about racism and segregation, and he says it on national television, at a time when there was like cops showing up, you know, down South, to protect kids going to school." "There are words that offend me." "Uh, let's see, governor faubus, segregation offend me." "Uh, nighttime television offends me." "Some nighttime television." "[Audience laughs]" "Uh, the shows that exploit homosexuality, narcotics, and prostitution under the guise of helping the societal problem." "He gave commentary on what was going on in the world with humor." "The important feature about Lenny Bruce that appealed to me so much, was that he made his comedy meaningful." "He became not only a comedian, and for me the important criteria is making people laugh." "You're not a comedian if you're a preacher or a teacher." "But how much more complex in that he pushed the envelope." "Back in the '50s, things were very sanitized, and very let's look pretty for the camera." "But a lot of very ugly things were not pretty for the camera." "The racism that went on was definitely not camera pretty." "That was a big thing for my father." "Party's in swing, and the humor comes from the now becoming obscure white person's concept of how do you relax colored people at parties." "And in the bit, I play the white guy." "[Audience laughs]" "I didn't get your name." "Miller." "Miller, my name is Mr. Anderson." "Anderson." "Glad to know you." "Pleasure indeed, sir." "Mm-hmm." "Pleasure indeed." "[Ice clinking in glass] [Audience laughs]" "You know that Joe Louis was a hell of a fighter." "[Audience laughs]" "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "You can say that again." "Joe Louis was a hell of a fighter." "Credit to your race." "Don't forget it, you son-of-gun." "Well, thank you very much." "That's perfectly all right." "Uh, here's to bojangles." "[Glasses chink]" "Yeah, here's to bojangles." "[Audience laughs]" "What the hell's that guy?" "You know that guy on the cream of wheat box?" "[Audience laughs]" "Anything said in anger, forget it." "There's no way you can justify it comedically." "You can't do it." "So Lenny Bruce could say" ""cocksucker" or "nigger" on stage." "In a comedy context people could see he's not angry at a specific person or anything in general." "He's working something." "So it makes them pause and absorb it in a different way." "Are there any niggers here tonight?" "What did he say?" "Are there any niggers here tonight?" "Jesus Christ, he had to get that low for laughs?" "[Sighs] Have I ever talked about the shvartzes of..." "Or spoke about the moulignons, or placated some southerner by absence of..." "And rants and raves about nigger, nigger, nigger?" "Are there any niggers?" "I know the one nigger that works here, i see him back there." "Oh, there's two nigger customers and..." "Ah, but between those three niggers, there's one kike." "[Whistles]" "Thank God for the kike." "[Audience laughs]" "Uh, two kikes." "That's two kikes and three niggers and one spic." "One spic." "Two-three spics, one Mick, one Mick, one spic, one hick, fic, funky, spunky boogie." "And there's another kike." "Three kikes, three kikes, one Guinea, one greaseball, three greaseballs, two guineas, two guineas, one hunky, funky, lace-curtain Irish Mick." "That Mick, spic, funky, hunky boogie." "Five more niggers, five more niggers, i pass for six niggers and eight micks and four spics." "[Audience laughs]" "He took these racist ideas, the bigotry, homophobia, he took it onstage, broke it down, and..." "Tried to have some political and philosophical approach." "I never liked that routine." "And never really quite agreed with it." "To become desensitized is to be overthrown." "It is to be beaten down." "And you've been trampled upon." "I believe he would take a lot of heat for the racial remarks, just because the world's a lot smaller because of all this media." "You know, people can tape you on their cell phones now." "Now, if you do something offensive and it's not funny, then that's where pain and trouble starts." "But then again, my people are sensitive." "You know what I mean?" "I made up a saying." ""Sticks and stones" ""may break my bones," ""but words-- except for nigger-- will never hurt me."" "As long as it's funny, then it's okay." "Timing's everything." "And funny's funny, no matter how racial it is." "Sexual or relig-- if it's funny, it's funny." "You can go totally racist, and say something you should be arrested for, but yet all of a sudden, it's hilarious when it comes out of your mouth." "That's an art in its own, to see Lisa lampanelli up on stage, ranting and raving about every race." "Now I got to do a "hispangic" joke to even things out." "What's your real name, sir?" "[Inaudible] John?" "Juan." "Quit fronting." "[Audience laughs]" "How many "hispangics"" "does it take to clean a bathroom?" "None." "That's a nigger's job." "[Audience screams, cheers]" "My comedy, you know, I insult everybody, you know." "Nobody is exempt, it's equal opportunity." "But I know in my heart, some people don't get it, so I'm like "whatever."" "But all I'm saying, if you go to the n-word, and you go to racial shit right off the bat, then there must be something in there that made you do it." "Like when people get drunk and then they say, "but I was drunk,"" "it's like, no, you called me a whore when you were drunk and you hit me in the clit with a shovel when you-- you know, you must have that in you." "What we've seen controversy about in my opinion, is bad jokes." "You see, to me, there's no controversy that Michael Richards was screaming the word "nigger."" "That's not really controversy to me." "The controversy is that he didn't have a punch line." "We're in nuremberg and they're trying people for comedy crimes." "There was nothing loveable about him when he went off on a racist rant onstage at a comedy club in Los Angeles over the weekend." "I don't get it." "It amazes me that people will still go to something like that." "It was such a surprise to find out that Kramer was a racist." "Like there was no signs of it, there were no hints." "Like I started watching old seinfelds for just any sort of clue, you know, as if there would be like a racist" "Seinfeld episode." "As if there'd be an episode that was like..." "[Sings Seinfeld theme]" "Hey, Jerry." "Hi, Kramer." "You know who just moved into the building?" "An n-word." "Oh, no, there's an n-word in the building." "We can't have an n-word in the building, what are we going to do?" "I don't know, Jerry." "I'm scared." "I was talking to mitzi shore shortly after that." "And I said, "wow, I'm sure you heard about what happened to Michael Richards." And she goes, "oh, yeah."" "And I said, "well, he got banned from the laugh factory and the improv." "You going to let him perform here at the comedy store?"" "She goes, "of course."" "I said, "why?"" "She goes, "'cause it's freedom of speech, he can say what he wants."" "I thought, all right, well, I can understand that, you know, because technically, it is." "On the other hand, it's, you know, it's a sensitive word and you're going to offend a lot of people." "It was such a big deal over nothing, really." "And I'm not saying, people go, "what if you were black?"" "You know, first of all, if someone wasn't there with their cell phone to tape it, nobody would have talked about it." "At the improv all of a sudden he started yelling about the Jews." "Well, when was that?" "That was two weeks before, oh, really?" "But nobody talked about that no." "Because Jews, who cares about Jews?" "Exactly." "You just answered your own question." "No one had a cell phone in there." "I mean that's the only thing, no one shot it." "What's he doing now?" "But there was a talmudic scholar." "There was, because right now someone's writing it on parchment." "[Laughs]" "Deer hides." "That's great, we'll roll it up and dance around it." "Richard pryor, at the time he used the n-word." "I asked him very openly," "I said, "Richard, why do you use the n-word so much?"" "He said, "Jamie, the reason I'm saying it," ""I'm trying to take the poison out of it." "I don't want people to get to hurt."" "But Michael Richards was actually hurting people, that's a different thing." "See, again, the difference between Lenny Bruce and let's say a Michael Richards..." "Michael Richards wasn't trying to desensitize the word "nigger."" "He was calling a black dude a nigger." "A Jewish person would never, ever use that word." "We say "shvartze." It's a whole other slur." "[Rimshot]" "[Bruce] The reason I got busted, arrested, i picked on the wrong God." "If I would've picked on the God whose replica is in the whoopee cushion store, the tiki God, the Hawaiian God, those idiots, their dumb God, i would have been cool." "If I would have picked on the God whose belly is slashed as a bank, the Chinese, those idiots, their yellow God." "But I picked on the Western God, the cute God, the "in" God, the Kennedy God." "And that's where I screwed up." "The thought and time that was put in to stopping my father from talking was exemplary." "Happened in L.A., it happened in San Francisco, it happened in New York." "And it was obviously a concerted effort to close him down." "Once they really started going for him, and they're--you know, he'd be introducing the police in the back of the room at every show." "It was a first amendment issue." "It was more about..." "Not just the words as much as what he was talking about, and what they were going after him for was that he was messing with the system." "Lenny Bruce by the time that I met him was a little guy who was just being beaten up." "What I saw in him was a guy who was being relentlessly pursued by bad guys for bad reasons and on trumped-up charges." "[Bruce] Wanna dig what the judge said?" "This was an obvious pay-off." "It was a complete bribe..." "This cat says as soon as I sit down after the intro," ""this looks like a sinister character to me." [Audience laughs]" "I don't think he ever understood why it was upsetting people." "[Kaur] When he was on stage making points about things or saying things, that's just how he talked." "He tried to treat his audiences like adults." "And they wouldn't have it, just like they wouldn't have it today." "He was being called a dirty comic, and he had no concept of himself as a dirty comic." "The Bruce prosecution has to be seen in its time." "Uh, there was a guy named father hill, and he ran something called operation yorkville." "Operation yorkville was fueled by the church." "And Bruce made a lot of stuff that offended, not only the church, but people that the church did not want to see offended," "Jackie Kennedy." "I think that at the hauling ass, dragging ass bit, really drove everybody crazy." "He was being financially exhausted." "He was becoming obsessed with the law, and venues were closing down." "When he got busted, the club manager got busted too for obscenity." "[Kitty bruce] Club owners got to the point to where they were afraid to hire him, and towards the end sometimes, there wasn't food, and we would, uh..." "It would get a little bit weird." "And I would hide food under the bed." "He worked a little during that time, but he really felt like a has-been." "Lenny's getting busted all over the country, but what really just sapped Lenny, and which was really a difficult trial, was the New York trial." "You could see him week-to-week slide down." "You could see him week-to-week become less coherent." "And he started to get more and more involved into drugs." "The last time I saw Lenny, he was very out of it." "Very out of it, and his whole act consisted of him against the system." "And it looked like he was heavily sedated." "So I got to talking to him afterwards with a friend of mine, don Sherwood, and he said to don, "can you give me some methadone?"" "And my friend, don Sherwood, said," ""Lenny, you're so bright." ""You're such an intellect, you're so smart." "How can you give it all up for drugs?"" "And Lenny said, I'll never forget it," ""once you've slept on a feather bed, you can't go back to sleeping on the floor anymore."" "I think at a certain point, as he was progressively working on his cases," "I don't think he ever tried to upset people, but I think he did get a little obsessive with trying to prove his points, and how he would prove them." "He read all the cases." "He would prepare sometimes his own legal papers." "I remember one night I walked into the hotel room, and Lenny said, "this is it, this is it, this is the case." "And this is the case that's going to make a difference." "And the case that was going to make a difference was an 1825 case out of British books, dealing with sheep on land." "And trespass." "And he had worked it out." "So that that case was directly relevant to this case, and that once the judges saw this case, this case had to be thrown out." "And it was..." "You know." "But he believed it, and he was furious when we didn't use it." "And he was furious that we couldn't understand him." "Also what he was doing, which we didn't know until later, and then he wouldn't stop, he was tape recording everything that was going on in court, because he had figured out that one of the reasons" "he was being prosecuted, and then being convicted, was because the d.A. Was changing the transcripts." "In other words, the witness would testify, then there'd be a court transcript, and it would not be as Lenny remembered it." "And he had his own transcript, and he thought his own transcript was more accurate." "The comedy of errors is that a cop comes in to the cafe a go-go and tries to take his performance down in long hand." "And then he would go to court, and Lenny would say that's not my act, that's not what I did." "Lenny begged time and time again," ""please let me do my routine for you."" "But there wasn't a single judge that would let him do it." "When he starts reading transcripts from the trial, you can really track that he's no longer being funny, he's really outraged." "He became obsessed with the arrest itself." "It impacted the nature, and not always in a positive way, it impacted the very nature of his act." "[Bruce] In one of his anecdotes relating to New York policemen dressed up as women to apprehend mashers, he stated, "this would never stop a real rape artist, because some of those cops really have nice asses."" "Now, I didn't say this." "He took me out of context." "What I said, I said there were many trans-- dig how they hear, now they-- here's what I said." ""There are many transvestites posing as policemen."" "[Audience laughs] There's a big difference." "And I said, "and they are doing this to thwart--" [Approaching siren]" "[Audience laughs]" "Oh, really?" "Well, I hope they got a big van." "You're all going, you know." "I think every performer can relate to how nuts he went at the end, when in court." "You just want people to understand." "You want to drill it through their thick fucking skulls." "And you have to read line by line in a transcript to get it done..." "I mean that's how crazy he went with it." "[Man] Yeah." "I think anyone can relate to going to that point." "[Garbus] He didn't act nuts." "He acted irrationally in an irrational situation." "Now I don't know how else, how more appropriate you could be in the situation." "He lived in a world of justice," "I lived in a world of the law." "They're two different things." "And Lenny didn't understand that." "He really believed in the constitution." "I mean he really believed in the government, he really believed in the legal system." "And he couldn't believe in the injustice of it." "And he was just almost fighting for his belief in the system, rather than fighting against the system." "[Man] So you are saying then that you feel the jury had in fact heard of you before the trial." "No, I don't feel that." "I have these affidavits, and they're voice recorded, where they all state-- six of them, they have heard of me before." "You feel that this prejudiced the case?" "No, I'm not concerned with that." "I'm concerned with the fact that crime was committed." "[Kaur] The reason I think he had such fight in him is 'cause he believed that he would win." "That he would get vindicated because he had this belief in truth, which is what motivated him." "[Gov. Pataki] When Lenny Bruce was convicted back in the mid '60s, the perception was it was the heavy hand of government, the right coming down on someone who was a spokesperson more for the left." "Today, we have a lot of political correctness, where it's almost the other way around, where if you express in private or in a forum some politically incorrect view, all of a sudden you are in some way reprimanded," "or held up for some type of sanction." "[Imus] Girls from rutgers, man, they got tattoos..." "Some hardcore hos." "That's some nappy-headed hos there." "[Imus laughs]" "Man, that's some--whew." "The girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so..." "It's kind of like..." "I don't know." "A spike Lee thing." "[Imus] Yeah." "The jigaboos vs. Wannabees." "Isn't that that movie that he had?" "He needs to be fired no matter what because he injured a whole group of people, not just a basketball team." "It's not the kind of language I would ever use, it's just not me." "But I don't think they should have fired him." "The comedy that he brought was talking about a disenfranchised." "Talking about people who are powerless, that's the mistake." "That's the drama." "Do I think he should have lost his job for it?" "No." "Who gives a shit?" "Let him keep doing his terrible radio show, and let no one listen to it." "Never apologize for a joke." "I got protested at Rochester institute of technology 'cause there's a big deaf population up there, and I said on the radio that deaf people weren't really deaf, they were retards trying to make themselves be upgraded" "by saying they're deaf." "So they came up to me, they start protesting my show, they start signing shit at me," "I don't know what they're saying, and the news crew comes to the radio station where I am, and she's like, "are you going to apologize?"" "I'm like, "no." "If they can't see that I insult everybody" ""and that I don't mean any harm, they're not only deaf, they're blind, too."" "It was the best quote of my life, by the way." "You have don imus being compared to Lenny Bruce, and what does he do?" "He goes out and he hires the same attorney," "Martin garbus." "Don imus had always been an extraordinary fan of Bruce, and he chose me because he saw a connection between Bruce and the kind of work that he does." "It's been characterized as a free speech case, but it's really a contract case." "In so far as the fcc is concerned, in so far as free speech is concerned, he's perfectly safe." "The major issue is the interpretation of the contract." "And what the contract says basically, it says two contradictory things." "It says, one, that CBS hires don to do the kind of shows he's done in the past." "Because they understand that there's an audience for that kind of material." "Then there's something else in the contract, which contradicts what I just said is in the contract, which says they shouldn't-- uh, he should not do anything which would hold CBS up to scandal or disrepute." "He was a shock jock." "You don't hire a guy to paint a wall, and then you come in and go you painted the wall," "I wanted you to wallpaper." "You hired me to paint the wall, what are you fucking talking about?" "The really unfortunate part of it is that the media, at no point or time, did they talk about what imus has devoted a great deal of his life to, which is helping kids who have cancer." "So to me, for a man who's devoted a lot of his life to a fairly philanthropic cause, to all of a sudden be demonized." "That's where I think the media is entirely irresponsible." "It's funny to watch the way the media, will, you know, these fucking vultures, like Al roker saying imus should be fired, and meanwhile those cunts at nbc two weeks later show the Cho manifesto," "even though that type of shit has been proven to spawn copycats." "And Al roker had nothing to say about that." "It was like, "where's your anger?"" "Where's the integrity of the news department with that, motherfucker?" "Where is it?" "I think it was overblown." "For the first three days, there was no life to it." "And then some of the sponsors started to get edgy." "And then Al sharpton met with the CBS president, and the day after, he was fired." "Rumor has it." "I heard from a couple of good sources that they fired him after what Barack Obama said." "I don't think he should be working for nbc and have access to the public airwaves after making what were profoundly derogatory statements." "Ann coulter." "She even thought that firing him was a little bit too strong." "You know, good lord, when Ann coulter defends freedom of speech," "I'm just going to go kill myself." "It's bad to the point of scary frightening bad." "That you could just fire someone for a dumb comment on the air." "I went to Iraq this year, and we did shows for the troops, and the week after we left, 167 guys died." "And I think the day the imus thing came out, it was on the cover of time magazine or something." "Are we really fucking worried about the word "nigger"?" "Are we really worried about someone being called a redneck or a cracker or a kike?" "What the fuck?" "What's wrong?" "And Lenny, it's weird, because Lenny when you watch him, is so far ahead of his time, just so far ahead of his time." "And, you know, and he's dead now." "And that's what happens to all those people that are ahead of their time." "Hi, welcome to the comedy documentary." "[Laughs]" "Holy shit." "You have Lenny Bruce being censored by the government and by district attorneys in the 1960s." "And you flash forward 40 years, and you have don imus who's being censored by corporate America." "The argument is is like, should imus be allowed to say what he's saying?" "Yes, but that doesn't mean that nbc has to put him on, or anybody has to put him on." "But he's put on not because nbc thinks he's great, or whatever, infinity or whatever the hell it was, 'cause he was making money, that's why." "That's not free speech or no free speech, that's just the marketplace." "The whole thing about imus has to do with money." "Staples, the big office supply chain, telling our sister network, cnbc, that quote:" ""Recent comments on the show" ""have caused it to discontinue" ""its advertising on 'imus in the morning.'"" "Al sharpton actually said something that was very interesting which was he didn't try and fire him." "He goes, "I never tried to get don imus fired."" "There was no federal or government regulators that fired him." "What fired him was when advertisers were told by their customers that they're not going to support them if they support this kind of stuff." "Those advertisers were riled up by media people." "I remember because I went through this." "The people you are referring to, bill, had the ability to rile up advertisers, they would have" "I mean, you can't tell people that don imus has the right to say what he wants but we don't have the right to respond." "Free speech goes both ways." "In the imus case, this was public broadcasting across the country." "And it's very different, I think, than when you have someone at a club, speaking." "But even in that case, the action wasn't taken by government, the action was taken by his broadcast company." "I think you have corporate sponsors and all that, you got to be so freakin' careful, it would make me sick." "And then you're a pandering, watered-down douchebag like Bob and tom, it's horrible." "The special interest groups, which under the guise of sort of caring about America, are really driven by commerce and money and big business." "And the sponsors directly, have an incredible amount of influence over what, you know, over what the powers that be want to put in their film, in their movies, in their television shows, and their radio broadcasts." "And I don't think things have changed very much." "For a different set of reasons, it's the same result, and that's scary." "And so, you know," "I don't know where that leaves, you know, where that puts Lenny's legacy, you know." "[Perelli] I don't hear from him for a long time, it's August, it's very hot." "And he calls up, he says, "Frank?"" ""Yeah?"" ""You know what I got a taste for?" ""I got a taste for that pasta..." "That your mother used to make."" ""Yeah?" I said, "do you know it's 7:00 in the morning?"" "'Cause those guys have no hours." "And he says, "yeah,"" "he says, "but tell Mary--" my mother, you know," ""that I'd appreciate it," so now I gotta wake up my mother." "Right over here, down the street here." "I said, "ma, would you do me a favor?"" "She says, "why certainly, you're my son."" "My mother was a little wacky that way." ""Of course I would do that."" "And she started making the pasta at seven in the morning, packed it real nice, went there, and he pulls the bowl out of my hand, and like a horse eating oats, puts his head in there..." "[Eating sounds]" "And when he came up, he had all pasta here." "And then he says, "Frank, I promise you next time..."" "I said, "okay," but I wasn't paying any attention." "And I says, "okay," and then I started to laugh." "He says, "schmuck, what are you laughing at?"" "I says, "you got all that gravy around there."" "He says, "well, what's funny about that?"" ""Oh, nothing." "Everybody does that."" "But it does remind me in an Italian neighborhood, every Sunday when you went out to play, all the kids had pasta, and they all had that gravy around their mouth." "So I told him then he started laughing and everything, he said, "well, I'll talk to you later." "We're going to do something."" "I went home, and it was real hot." "And my father had some homemade Italian wine, he said, "take a glass of this,"" "and it knocked me out, I fell on the bed, went to sleep." "I get a call from jojo d'amore." "And too bad he's not alive, 'cause he could really tell you a lot of things about Lenny." "And he says, "Frank?"" ""Yeah." He says, "Lenny's dead."" "I said, "what?"" "He says, "he died in the bathroom." "Somebody brought him uncut heroin or something,"" "and they didn't tell him, and he was, uh..." "One of those guys who pumped it into his arm and all that." "And he was dead." "And that was the end of Lenny." "♪♪ [Guitar music]" "[Kaur] I think Frankie called me, and he asked me to go tell Sally." "And Sally was staying out at the beach at that time with kitty." "[Kitty bruce] I was at singer sewing in Santa Monica, California, in a sewing class, and I remember coming out and seeing satsimran." "So I went out to the beach, it was in Santa Monica, venice, somewhere, and kitty was there, you know, "hi, kitty, blah, blah, blah," "I'm just waiting for your grandmother."" "She was with my grandma Sally, and she sat down and there was like a water fountain, and I was sitting there, and they wanted me to go into the car." "And something was just like weird." "Sally came, and I mean, I remember just, I mean I just said to her," ""Sally, Lenny's dead."" "I mean, I just, I didn't know how to cushion it, or I just said it." "And so then we went back to the apartment, and she told kitty." "She said, "you remember that daddy was always sick?"" "And I said, "yes." And she said," ""well, daddy died."" "And I remember feeling like it was a really bad joke." "And I remember screaming hysterically." "Um, I did not take it well." "And the icky part is in school, kids were bringing the newspaper, and the-- when he died," "Phil spector was kind enough, he tried to buy the negatives from the LAPD, from photos, said that they wouldn't be used for the public to see." "And they repositioned my father's body, they stuck the needle back into his arm for 8x10 glossies, and..." "You know made sure that his jeans were pulled way down so that he would be lying there naked with the needle in his arm." "His death was a hideous publicity nightmare which they would never do today." "I'll always think that that famous photo of him naked in his toilet, dead," "I'll always think that's a posed shot." "They found him one way, they pulled his pants down before the photographers got there, and said take a photo of that." "They did it to black guys all the time." "I don't think he wanted to die," "I think he wanted to get high, and I think somebody brought him some bad shit." "The beard, the heroin, he died that way, and you have to really-- he was portrayed that way when he died, but most of the time, he wasn't like that." "That's a small-- that's unfortunately-- that is perceived as a big part of his life, but the way that he was for a little time for a few months when he felt really bad, at the end of his life," "actually he felt a little better, he wanted to make that comeback." "He said, "I'm a fighting Jew." ""I'm not someone who's going to bow my head." "I'm a fighting Jew," and he fought to the end." "I said at the time, I said, "Lenny died for our sins."" "And I think it's true." "I feel that his Christian sacrifice" "I say this because I think he was crucified, you know, has been so ill-served in many ways, by the kind of "anything goes" profanity and vulgarity you see today." "It would offend him that so many comedians today get their laughs on the four-letter words." "Like Jesus, people took what he said, bastardized it, took his ideas, bastardized it." "The national consciousness of Lenny Bruce, probably more people know about him maybe from the movie, Lenny, which was a total-- I won't say a total fabrication, but it wasn't" "I love Dustin Hoffman, but he wasn't Lenny Bruce, and so people have all their preconceptions and ideas of what they think he was like." "I'm amazed that he's become the figure he has." "I was amazed when they made the film of him." "And I think what happened is, and what made me more aware, is maybe, that some people were aware of the fact of how seminal he was, how important he was." "Lenny Bruce laughed about that." "'Cause he said usually when people march for you, they lead you to the chair." "So he didn't believe in that, and he certainly didn't want to be seen as a martyr." "Maybe as a comedian, but as Lenny Bruce." "He wanted to be Lenny Bruce himself." "My opinion is, at the beginning, he didn't have any intention of breaking new ground and changing the world." "He just got up there and said what was in his heart, and the world started changing." "I don't think back then Lenny Bruce was trying to inspire anybody, because when Lenny Bruce was doing it, there weren't that many comics." "You know, buddy hackett had told me a couple great Lenny Bruce stories, unfortunately buddy's gone and I don't remember the stories." "But I think Lenny was just trying to stay alive." "And I don't think Lenny had enough time to really even come into his own." "I think he wanted to tell it like he saw it." "I don't think he wanted to be a martyr." "I'm sure a part of him knew at some point." "I mean how can you be that..." "That groundbreaking and that profound in so many different ways and not know it's going to have some kind of impact?" "You know it is." "I remember saying to him that people would realize." "I mean, unfortunately it would be in some future time that people would understand who he was, and, you know, he would be vindicated." "I remember I did a show in San Francisco, there's a big article, some gay guy, but a really uptight gay guy." "I mean, just an annoying little faggot." "Like Chris rock, black people are niggers, this guy was a faggot." "You know." "A little faggot." "And keep that on there, too." "Just a little fucking queenie faggot." "Um, and it's silly to say we have gay friends, but we call them the gaybors, they live right down the street, they come over all the time, okay, so I have gay friends." "This guy was a faggot." "And anyway, at the show I was doing a whole bit about how gay people are gay because they're happy." "The word "gay" means happy." "You're with your friends, you still get blowjobs." "How great is that to be with your friends and get blowjobs?" "Even gay guys, they're still guys, and I don't care what color, what race you are, you don't like foreplay, you don't want to talk after sex, you blow your friend, he blows me," "you go to sleep, whatever." "Um, and it was all going on and on." "Why gays want to get married?" "Why do you want to be miserable like us?" "Do we look happy to you?" "I wish I was gay because I don't know what to buy my wife." "If you're a gay guy, you know what to buy another guy." "You buy him a sweater." "He doesn't like it, you get to wear it." "So basically, it was so pro gay, but all this little faggot heard was me doing gay jokes." "And that's all that he heard, you know what I mean?" "And it's almost like a buzz word." "Nigger, aids, faggot, cunt, you know, there's a word, and it doesn't matter what you're saying." "Some people hear the word and just shut down totally to the rest of your show." "I think we think we have progressed more than we have as far as the civil rights movement to now, or what Lenny Bruce was enduring to now." "And I think that he'd be repulsed by what a dishonest nation we are now." "I think on the surface we've progressed." "And I think it's very cool for white people to embrace what is so appealing about the black experience." "But I still think there's that weird, like," ""ooh, I'm hanging out with somebody black."" "You know, that kind of awkwardness, for a lot of people." "I think it's few and far between where the races have integrated in a comfortable way." "Lenny Bruce should be taught in universities." "All young people should listen to a handful of Lenny Bruce records, and say, you know, just be told, "look, the reason that you" ""get to write 'fuck' on your pee chee notebook, it's guys like him took it on the snout for guys like you."" "There has never been a comedian that pushes the boundaries of taste, of political correctness, etc., etc., who would not genuflect in Lenny Bruce's presence." "Nobody." "They did a thing on the 100 most famous comedians, and Lenny was right up there." "You have to pay him homage, because he started it." "You know, he was first." "And he took the risks, and didn't back down." "He'd get arrested and do it again." "Many people wouldn't have the balls to do that." "Like every comedian I think that's my age, or my generation or younger, they're influenced by him." "Whether they know it, or not." "All we have to worry about when we're on stage, is are we going to get laughs." "Are we going to be funny?" "It's all we have to worry about." "Is this going to be funny?" "Are we going to get laughs, and can we go home feeling like we're not terrible?" "Right." "And, he, in his mind, as he's telling these jokes, going," ""am I going to be in jail later tonight?"" "Later tonight." "Right." "That's insane." "How am I going to shoot heroin in jail?" "Where do you get heroin in jail?" "If he paved a path for anything, it wasn't really for comics." "He really paved a path for people being able to criticize and say it." "Whereas they never were able to before." "And it really wasn't about his language that he got arrested for." "It was about what he was saying." "Lenny represented something that is important." "Was important then, and it's important now." "And I think your documentary reflects that." "It's an indication of the extent which free speech requires eternal vigilance." "We have George carlin, and there's Richard pryor and Eddie Murphy, but before all those guys, it was Lenny." "Lenny is a legend." "I wonder if he had lived longer what would have happened." "How cool would it have been to have him live as long as Milton berle and sid Caesar and red buttons?" "It would have been the greatest blessing comedy could have." "I'll say this last thing about him." "Lenny Bruce was the kind of comic that at his best when I watched him, he makes me want to quit comedy and be a welder, because I know I'll never be that good." "That's how good he was at his best." "Are you trying to convert when you work?" "Oh, no." "Not at all." "I'm trying to make a buck." "All right, granted." "No." "Oh, how terrible of you." "That's not my motivation for being up there." "What is?" "To have fun." "Yeah." "I really dig being up there." "♪♪ [Jazz music]" "♪ All alone ♪" "♪ all alone ♪" "♪ oh a joy to be ♪" "♪ all alone ♪" "♪ I'm happy alone don't you see ♪" "♪ I'll convince you ♪" "I don't know what I get so dramatic about." "You're better off alone, man, I gotta-- that's it, I want to get a whole bunch of new suits." "You know, I've had the same dumb suit for ten years." "You walk into her closet, you can't even breathe." "That's it, I'll get a whole bunch of suits," "I'll get a chick that likes to hang out, man." "I'm having a vodka party." "That's smart." "A vodka party, bring it up, ball it up, I'll get a chick." "I'll get a chick who likes to drink." "Oh, my wife sure used to look good, standing up against the sink." "She's the lowest, though." "I really put her down, no, no, I really miss her." "I don't want some sharp chick that can quote kerouac and walk with poise." "I just want to hear my old lady say," ""get up and fix the sink." "It's still making noise."" "♪ All alone ♪" "♪ all alone ♪" "♪ like a near-sighted dog where's the bone ♪" "♪ ah, but it's better ♪" "♪ to be all alone ♪" "♪ no more taking out the garbage ♪" "♪ hear her yakking on the phone ♪" "♪ I gave her everything ♪" "♪ even my mother's ring ♪" "♪ but to me she was so petty ♪" "Sometimes I wish that she were dead, but it'd probably take her two hours two get ready." "[Audience laughs]" "When she's old then she's going to be sorry." "That's it." "Like she's young and swinging now, and she can get a lot of guys, but when she's old, I can see her about" "20 years from now." "How're you doing, Annie?" "I haven't seen you in a long time, you look pretty good, baby." "You're still washing your hair with Dutch cleanser, I see." "[Audience laughs]" "Yeah, you look good, you gained a few pounds, what happened to your neck?" "I heard you got married a few times, huh?" "Me, no, I've always stayed single." "I've been investing in property." "I picked up a little place in Mexico, maybe you've heard of it, it's called acapulco, I don't know." "[Audience laughs]" "Where are you living, a furnished room?" "That's nice, you cook on the radiator, the paper drapes." "Sit in the lobby and watch television and all." "That's cool, yeah." "Yeah, that's cool, you have the diner's club, you sign, you go first class in those joints, I know it." "Yeah, that's it." "Her future spells a murky gloom." "I'll be rich and famous, and she'll be living in a furnished room, but it's going to be too late." "I won't hear her moan." "I'll be living in my Nob Hill mansion rich and all alone." "♪ All alone ♪" "♪ all alone ♪" "♪ I'll be rich ♪" "♪ but so ♪" "♪ all ♪" "♪ alone ♪ [Audience applauds]" "Some people think that Lenny's problems with the law had to do with dirty words." "Uh, it was the ideas that got him into trouble." "Uh, in strip clubs, you could hear the dirty words." "But you couldn't hear the kind of insights, the truly revealing insights that were a part of Lenny's act." "And when they did get him into, into-- after the arrest in Chicago as a matter of fact, in the months that followed," "I was doing this editorial series called" ""the playboy philosophy,"" "uh, I wrote about the arrest, and accused the administration in Chicago of being too interconnected to the church." "And subsequently, the cops came and arrested me." "And charged me with obscenity for a pictorial we ran on Jane Mansfield, which was no different than any other pictorial we've run in the months before." "But it was because of our..." "Defense of Lenny." "You have this brilliant guy who got addicted to drugs." "And it's like Jesus' words still live every day, they're important words, because no one ever found Jesus in a bathtub with a needle hanging out of his arm." "You know, all of a sudden, the context of the guy changes." "And I think if you look at Lenny's arrests and stuff, it wasn't because he was on stage saying things, once the personality becomes bigger than the message, then people will go after you." "And once he became not Lenny Bruce, brilliant comic, but Lenny Bruce, heroine addict, that's when people started attacking him, because they saw a chink in the armor they could get to him." "That's what I think." "I think had he kept clean, he could literally have changed comedy" "100 times more than he did." "He got fucked by the law, a law which he respected." "But when you really look at his body of work, he loved the law." "And it was so sad to me once I read and found out more about him that he got fucked by the law that he respected so much." "Because the puritanical way they looked at things back then had no concept of what this guy was doing on stage." "I mean, this guy was..." "This guy was not just a genius, but he was saying things that no one before him said, said things then about certain things that were going on then that he would say now that no one would say." "No one will be like Lenny Bruce again." "No one was before him." "And, you know, it's a very simple thing to say, but guys like myself and thousands of other comedians with different styles, they have to owe everything to Lenny, because even Richie pryor who I knew and I loved," "because without Lenny getting fucked, nobody else would have had the right to go on stage." "Who knows what laws would have been passed." "It would have been insane." "So Lenny died, basically, for us." "In a lot of ways, it sounds hokey, but he died for the rest of us to be able to say what we wanted to say." "And I wish he was hanging out with winters now at 83." "You know, in the last 20 years." "You know, everyone says that." "I wish hendrix played another 35 years-- my God, imagine?" "And on and on." "The list is endless." "But he set the bar, he did it first, and he got crucified..." "By the first amendment, which is something he respected more than almost anybody I can think of." "So it's a real tragedy." "Shakespearian." "For me, all comedy comes from the heart." "And if you're going to make social commentary, it should be very personal." "You know, one of the reasons I go on these trips to Iraq is so I can be a witness to what I'm talking about and thinking about." "Not just reading it in the paper and commenting on it." "For me, when Lenny was feeling his pain and putting his pain out there in his comedy, that was the best stuff." "I really wonder if anybody listened to early rush limbaugh the way I did." "He was off his" "I mean, the stuff that he would say would be like, "did you hear that?" "That's insane."" "And, uh, you know, the Ann coulters of the world frighten me because he and" " Ann coulter and rush limbaugh don't have any jokes on the end of that." "No, there's no comedy there." "They're actually serious." "Bill maher is not." "Howard stern is not." "I respect what anybody says, don imus, spent his career telling jokes." "As did Michael Richards." "You want to persecute somebody?" "Go listen to what Ann coulter's saying." "Go examine what, you know, limbaugh has said." "There are people worth examining who are not joking." "We have our crosshairs on the wrong people." "We really, we truly do." "I mean, bill O'Reilly's saying some very interesting stuff." "No one seems to care." "It's okay if he says it." "Not okay-- the double standard is alive and well, you know." "It makes me sad on a certain level, that Lenny could have died for naught." "But I feel like moments like this, in situations like this, where a group of people come along and want to talk about something that is truly important and interesting and real and noteworthy, is exactly why I'm sitting here," "because I'm convinced double standard killed him." "And tried to silence-- and trying to silence him." "Well, the thing that was so bad when they started arresting him two or three times a week-- it just broke my heart when he'd come home at night." "I just wanted to hug him and let him cry on my shoulder, things like that, it was so pitiful." "When he came back from London, it was even worse." "When they wouldn't let him perform in London." "He flew over there and then had to come back the next day." "He was just broken hearted." "And I thought how fucking unjustcan you be in this world?" "What's wrong with these people?" "But he was very upset by it, very hurt by it." "My favorite thing was that he had that kind of courage." "I just loved that." "I love it." "Because one person can change the world." "One person." "People don't realize." "They think that it has to be a group of people, you know, but one person can do it." "It was Harriet tubman." "It wasn't Harriet tubman and her Uncle Joe." "You know?" "One person can change-- it can change the world." "It wasn't Martin Luther King and the temptations." "It was Martin Luther King, you know." "So people have to be brave." "They have to stand for something." "They have to just stand up." "And have courage." "He made, he ennobled what I already think is a nice high calling, making people laugh." "He went beyond that, he ennobled it." "He was like, this guy is a genius, this guy is out of sight." "He's just unbelievable." "He's not like the ordinary comedian, and yet he was hilariously funny." "I think they were more open-minded then, it was a decade of hope, you know what Kennedy said, you know, at the end of this decade, we'll put someone on the moon." "That's not where we are now." "Now we're all closed off and afraid because of terrorism." "And so, at that time, people felt like they could do anything." "So I think that allowed Lenny to say, as a comic, and this is from my own head as a comic, you always want to try to find the next level of your art, if you look at it as an art, right?" "So, okay, I'm doing jokes about shoes." "Nah, I'm not really pushing the envelope," "I want to up it a little bit." "As you get more confident on stage, and as a performer, you feel you can free yourself up to really go for something." "And so with mort Saul and Shelly, but mainly mort Saul, kind of really being the guy to go after the politicians before anybody was really doing it that way-- it was, like, unheard of to go after the president." "Um, my bet is that Lenny looked at that and go," ""I want to push the envelope a little bit," you know." "And um, you know, Lenny kind of really pushed the envelope about life." "Richard pryor pushed the envelope about his life." "You look at pryor, it always comes back to him, through him as the prism, there's a lot of interesting observations about mankind." "Lenny, like in terms of you understood how he thought, but like not what he felt and what he was really about, because it was always observations about outside forces-- religion, politics, the ku klux klan," "whatever it might be, so." "So I think the time allowed him, combination of him feeling like, probably like a good artist feels like I want to push the envelope of the art," "I want to be the guy on top, and the time-- combination of that and the time allowing him to do that, you know, where people were sort of open-minded to that kind of thing." "I told this to Oliver stone many months ago." "I said my theory is all the monuments in DC have those massive pillars." "I think that's to represent the weight of freedom, that it's so much weight to bear on an American, to bear the weight and responsibility of freedom." "It's like putting four cinder blocks in your backpack." "That's like, [Groans]." "It's an extra 50 pounds just to lug freedom around, and defend it and maintain it." "You need to clip the grass, you need to make sure the roof doesn't leak, you cannot squander it, or take it for granted, or hide behind it." "You must always be in front of it." "And I think Lenny Bruce was one of those guys who always stood in front of it." "Sometimes naively." "Or sometimes in a confrontational way." "Well, let's see what happens when we do pretend the constitution's going to work." "That we do pretend that we're living in the land of the free and the home of the brave, let's see what happens." "And he found out what happens." "The cops pull your pants down and take an embarrassing photo of you, and you are looking at enormous legal bills and strife because you said a word." "That girls say all the time now at girl scout meetings." "I mean..." "He leaves behind a real lesson." "And the only danger in America is that we we either don't-- we choose not to learn it or we choose to ignore it or we choose to forget it." "Or we choose to ignore it"