Love to Foul Mouthed Lenny Bruce

Would He Survive the Current Age Comedy?

The main question sitting on the table was, do jokes and ad libs get registered for copyright? Are they given the time of day as an intellectual property? And as the newest person on the table with the least work assigned, I took it as my job to read every detail that existed about comedy and copyright.

Zoning out, a habit that I didn't have in school but have developed through my puberty and adulthood has become a really good source of entertainment. The work at hand was tossed outside the window (for some reason lawyers want to sit closer to the files and not to world outside?) and I went down a really specific rabbit hole. Lenny Bruce. Being a huge fan of Mrs. Maisel, I am not unknown to the charming and sarcastic, Lenny Bruce. However, I didn't ever consider reading his autobiography; when you get to know people in depth, they often lose their charm.

But sitting on my desk, behind the heaps of folders. I decided there is no better time than now to read How To Talk Dirty And Influence People by Bruce.

From what I gathered was that the need to be exemplary and a hater has very little to do with success. He was performing on the biggest stages in front of the largest crowds that any comedian could ever imagine and yet his sets were riddled with anger. New York Times in 1959 called him a sick comic. The contention of the article was that the audience at the time was in love with comics who indulged in social criticism, death, sex and other salacious topics in their material and thus Lenny Bruce was at his peak.

He died in 1966.

In 1965, he published the book that I have grown rather fond of.

Don’t be under the presumption that this will be a review. It won’t. This book is a commentary on the life of a comedian who would probably be highly critical of the comedy scene today. How can I as an audience of the modern comedians, say anything about one of the most “foulmouthed, freethinking comedian” that the world has ever seen.

Lenny was known to throw profanities around like confetti. He wound up with sedition cases against him and was the first person in New York state to be posthumously pardoned. Not that it did benefit him in any way but he was probably laughing in his grave. But while almost every article I read about him called him foul mouthed, or potty mouthed, his jokes didn’t depend on the use of the colourful language to be funny. Unlike some of our current comedians who use the versatile Hindi language to get a laugh; without the use of the curses, I really wonder if their jokes had any meaning.

One of the reasons for me reading this book like it was oxygen was because I wanted to understand what drove Bruce to be what he is. As most comedians say, they had a hard childhood. They were either bullied or rejected or lost; every laugh needs a veiled trauma story. But Bruce was too self confident about his jokes to weild his life story to get fame. He had too many interesting and critical observations to speak off instead.

“Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students who now smoke pot will some day become Congressmen and legalize it in order to protect themselves.”

The books are riddled with these.

One more-

“I want to help you if you have a dirty-word problem. There are none, and I'll spell it out logically to you.

Here is a toilet. Specifically-that's all we're concerned with, specifics-if I can tell you a dirty toilet joke, we must have a dirty toilet. That's what we're all talking about, a toilet. If we take this toilet and boil it and it's clean, I can never tell you specifically a dirty toilet joke about this toilet. I can tell you a dirty toilet joke in the Milner Hotel, or something like that, but this toilet is a clean toilet now. Obscenity is a human manifestation. This toilet has no central nervous system, no level of consciousness. It is not aware; it is a dumb toilet; it cannot be obscene; it's impossible. If it could be obscene, it could be cranky, it could be a Communist toilet, a traitorous toilet. It can do none of these things. This is a dirty toilet here.

Nobody can offend you by telling a dirty toilet story. They can offend you because it's trite; you've heard it many, many times.”

I don’t know why he was renowned for being foul mouthed when the only thing I could think while reading the book was, “boy, this man can ramble.” It was all super witty ramble but still.

What I realised from this book is that if Bruce lived in this day and age, his comedy would be probably hidden. His greatest nemesis was censorship. He probably would hate that social media has made everyone a star and that comedy has become about who gets the most likes. He would hate that observational comedy has become secondary to the dirty and innuendo cloaked roasts. He would be disappointed that even the most socially critical comedians have to sometimes sacrifice their views to fit the norms and get to the big stages. Even we as audience would have failed him. We are in love with art that shocks us. We are in love with art that is no longer about thinking but more about surprises.

Lenny Bruce could ramble on stage and still get laughs because he was given the time to shape out his criticisms. Are we giving any time to any of our artists?

Think about any observational comedian (no, not Latent,) consider what their observations were. Was it marriage or sex? Was it college life? Was it the differences between men and women? I am not saying that these aren’t important topics, but I think everyone who tries to make a joke about anything more dry, critical, political (and not just about which party is in power) and culturally insightful, is scrolled away. Or worse, subjected to trolls in the comments. Like yes, crack more jokes about organised religion and ignore the weird and angry comments that could probably have death threats.

I love some of the comedy sets we see today. I love how there exists a few really big names who are challenging the audience to think while also catering to the changing times. It is also interesting how we live in a time where everything needs to be at least a little funny. News tend to have a comedic touch to it. We want easy laughs.

Lenny Bruce’s book is one that should be a must read for everyone. It can shape the way you look at art and consume content. It can also make you crave for writing that you don’t find on video anymore.