love it and we ll give you an award for it. carson: and so it has come to this. fallon: i thought that johnny carson came with the tv set. leno: what the hell were you thinking? ray: dave was the new johnny, for me. letterman: i m not exactly a computer. slow down. meyers: it felt. edgy before i was probably old enough to appreciate what edgy was. man: you better be as good as letterman. o brien: i ll give it a shot. o brien: my heart dropped through my butt. it exited my butt. stewart: holy [beep] [beep]. noah: this is madness. absolute madness. kimmel: it makes every hair on my body stand up. kimmel: we re on! kimmel: but nobody s a late night host until they are one. clinton: tomorrow we will drown out the negative voices that have held us back for too long. reporter: after a night of fires, looting, and violence, five people are dead. katie: the end of an era. after ruling late night television for 30 years, johnny carson steps down tonight. [distant applause]
As opposed to sam kinison the man. you never been married? [ laughs ] what s your name? michael? well, michael, if you ever think about getting married, if you ever think you ve met the right woman, you want to settle down, change your life, will you do me a favor, mike? remember this face. [ screams ] [ laughter ] maron: it was really the expression of the heartbroken man. we hold a lot of stuff in because we re civilized 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. nesteroff: 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. dangerfield: very seldom someone comes along who s unusually different and gifted and creative and presents something that s unusual.
[ laughter ] i had one with a birth control pill, and i had one with a diaphragm, and then i had another one with the iud. i don t even know what happened to my iud. it never came out. [ laughter ] but i have my suspicions because that kid picks up hbo. [ laughter ] ahh! watch showtime. get the [bleep] 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. [ cheers and applause ] [ screams ] nesteroff: sam kinison embodies the 80s era of comedy. it was more to like a trend. people were doing characters that were extensions of themselves, so sam kinison was sam kinison, but onstage, he was sam kinison the character
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. burlesque houses were often like going to a a strip club. those guys were there with their trench coats to watch girls. they had 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 going to the point. nesteroff: 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, yeah.
hey, buddy. come here. [ laughter ] hey, buddy, we re christians. we don t like what you said. i said, then forgive me. what we consider offensive or blue evolves with every generation. mankoff: with vaudeville, for the first time, comedy becomes an industry. her poor father, he died of throat trouble. they hung him. vaudeville is created commercially to clean up humor. 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. [ vocalizing ] ha ha! nesteroff: if a vaudevillian did something onstage 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