Looking for Lenny Page #4

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 "n*gger."

He was calling

a black dude a n*gger.

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

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