Sam Kinison

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Sam Kinison
Born December 8, 1953
Yakima, Washington
Died April 10, 1992
Needles, California
A caricature of Sam Kinison exhibiting the aggression and anger of his stand-up comedy acts.
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A caricature of Sam Kinison exhibiting the aggression and anger of his stand-up comedy acts.

Samuel "Sam" Burl Kinison (December 8, 1953 – April 10, 1992) was an American stand-up comedian and actor.

Kinison was famous for his raunchy humor and wild, colorful outfits. A former revival-style preacher, his standup routines were most often characterized by intense, angry ranting in the vein of his friend and fellow comedian Bill Hicks, and also punctuated by his trademark primal scream.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Born in Yakima, Washington, Kinison later attended high school in East Peoria, Illinois. Sam was originally a preacher before becoming a comedian.. Recordings of his sermons reveal that he used a "fire and brimstone" style, punctuated with shouts similar to the ones he would later use in his stand-up routines. He was forced to leave preaching when he divorced his wife, at which time he took up comedy.

[edit] Comedy life

Kinison's appearance on Late Night with David Letterman on November 14, 1985 is widely considered to be his breakthrough performance. Letterman's introduction of Kinison would prove to be prescient: "Brace yourselves. I'm not kidding. Please welcome Sam Kinison."

Kinison might be considered a "rock and roll comedian," since he was occasionally accompanied by a touring band; he also had a prodigious appetite for drugs and alcohol. In 1988, he had a hit song with his novelty version of the Troggs' "Wild Thing." The video for his version of "Wild Thing" played like a "Who's Who" of rock artists, including bad boy Billy Idol, rock guitarist Steve Vai, guitarist Frank Zappa's son Dweezil Zappa, and a raunchy "roll on the mat" dance with Jessica Hahn. Sam hammered out some licks on a custom Stratocaster, with an airbrushed picture of his face frozen in his famous scream.

One of his albums featured four songs performed by him and his band, and during one notable The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson performance, he delivered what began as a straightforward version of Elvis Presley's Are You Lonesome Tonight, which descended into angry ranting during the spoken breakdown.

Some of Kinison's most spontaneous moments came during his frequent appearances on Howard Stern's radio show. He made an angry phone call on-air to Bobcat Goldthwait, and he embarrassed comedienne Judy Tenuta to the point of driving her off the show, as he sat in with Penn Jillette, Chuck McCann, and Jack Riley. His most notorious stunt resulted in a highly entertaining on-air feud with Stern: he made an on-air promise to bring to the show members of the rock-n-roll band Bon Jovi, with whom Stern was feuding, but they never showed up. It turned out that Bon Jovi had no intention of appearing. Stern's reaction was swift and vindictive, resulting in Kinison's eventual apology, but not before one of the show's funniest moments in which comedian Gilbert Gottfried and Stern both savaged an emotionally-charged phone call between Stern and Kinison, in which both stars used the words "man" and "dude" with each other so often that Gottfried and Stern went into stitches on hearing the playback.

Stern and Kinison eventually made up and paired on Stern's pay-per-view special, U.S. Open Sores. Today Howard Stern remembers Kinison fondly and acknowledges his comedic genius often on his radio show.

Kinison sometimes seemed a romantic at heart, but his routines generally expressed a dim view of love, possibly as a result of a string of failed relationships; but, more plausibly, because of the women he attracted.

[edit] Death

Kinison was working to become clean and sober in the months before his death, and he married his girlfriend Malika Souiri in 1992. Just six days after the wedding, Kinison's black Corvette was struck by a seventeen-year-old drunk driver near the center of the two lane bridge that crosses the Colorado River between Fort Mohave, Arizona and Needles, California. He was not wearing a seat belt, and his head struck the windshield upon impact. A passerby immediately notified emergency services and attempted CPR, but with no success. Kinison was taken to the Needles Desert Community Hospital but died of his injuries on the way. He was 38 years old. Ironically, Kinison had often belittled the dangers of drunken driving in his comedic skits with such statements as:

"You're just trying to get home, right?"
"Yeah…give me a bus pass…"
"Right!"

and

"It's the only way to get the goddamn car back to the house!"

He is interred with family members at the Memorial Park Cemetery in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

[edit] Famous bits

An end to world hunger
Kinison ranted about people who traveled to such places as Ethiopia and filmed commercials to induce viewers to send money to help feed the kids; meanwhile, he pointed out, the film crews were five feet away and maybe could have given the starving kids a sandwich. He claimed that if you really wanted to help starving Ethiopian kids, then you needed to stop sending money. Instead, you needed to send some U-Haul trucks to take the people to where the food was. He went on to explain -- to the Ethiopians -- that they couldn't plant food in the sand, which, in a hundred years, would still be sand. He ended the routine by screaming "We have deserts in America, we just don't live in them, assholes!" ([1]} and here: watch it at YouTube (Warning: strong language)
Sex
He often claimed "I'm just trying to help" and would offer the audience suggestions for stronger relationships and better sex. One of his more notorious comic routines included the suggestion that while performing cunnilingus one ought to lick the letters of the alphabet. He even went so far as to suggest keeping amyl nitrite by the bedside.
On the subject of safe sex, Kinison maintained a passionate anti-rubber stance: "If you don't trust the pussy, why are you fucking the pussy?...I don't think you should fuck unless you're really in love. It may be for a really short fucking time, doesn't mean it's going to last a lifetime, but it just makes it more special, know what I'm saying?"
Breaking up with his girlfriend
Accompanying himself on the piano, Kinison, in his most earnest voice, told the story of a special girlfriend, their extremely close bond, and how her sudden lack of interest in the relationship coincided with the zero balance of his bank account. As the piano accompaniment built to a climax, he dedicated to her this song: "BIIIIIIITCH! YOU FUCKING WHORE!!! You used me! You never loved me! I hope you slide under a gas truck and taste your own blood! DIE! DIE! DIE! I want my records back! I want my fucking records back!" This bit closed his debut album, Louder Than Hell (which has yet to be reissued on CD), his first HBO special Breaking the Rules, and various other live performances and television appearances. You can watch it here; it's the second to last link--Saturday Night Live (the second one)
Jesus
Religion was a favourite topic with Kinison. He often mocked Christ in his act, saying that Jesus would be coming back "real soon now, just as soon as he can PLAY THE PIANO AGAIN!". He once did a bit in which Jesus was on the Cross, while various Christians were standing around wondering what to do. "It's a shame that he has to die," they commented, to which Jesus replied, "Well, maybe I wouldn't have to, if somebody would get a ladder and a pair of pliers!" Kinison offered some speculations about the Resurrection: "Every horror movie in which the dead come back to life had people freaking out, but when Jesus does it, everyone's really happy to see him." Kinison cited this as evidence that Jesus was never married, because no wife would ever believe that her husband was gone for three days because he was dead and then magically came back to life. He added that he wasn't afraid of going to Hell, because "I was MARRIED for TWO FUCKING YEARS! Hell would be like Club Med!".
In spite of the religious mockery and blasphemy in his comic acts, Kinison professed to be a deeply religious man.
The 1986 Bombing of Libya
Kinison's first record, Louder Than Hell, was recorded shortly after the 1986 Bombing of Libya. This provided Kinison with the opportunity to do a bit that was both topical and patriotic for his American audience. Virtually all Americans at that time considered Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi to be a maniacal tyrant and benefactor of international terrorism, so Kinison was not taking any great risks when he did the following jokes.
"I'm just in that fuckin' mood. Ever since we bombed Libya, ya know, I'm just in that fuckin' tear everything up mood. BLAST 'EM! That was just too cool man, American bombers going in going, 'WHERE'S THE BABY'S ROOM?' BLAM!!!"
"'Where do you keep the little girl?' (ballistic bomb whistling) BLAM!!!"
"We only fucked up one place, we accidentally dropped a bomb on the French embassy. 'Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa! Aw, sorry about that fellahs. I'm sure we would have had better aim if we had more FUCKING SLEEP! Thanks for those 6500 extra air miles, you fuckheads, BUILD A NEW HOUSE!' BLAM!!!"
Marriage
The comedian ardently warns members of the audience against getting married. Screams directly into male audience member's face saying, "This is going to be your face if you get married!" watch it at YouTube (Warning: strong language!)
Gays
Kinison was notorious for his merciless mirth towards gays and the gay lifestyle. In one 1986 bit, he called gay men the source of AIDS in America. He once mused onstage, "I love women. I don't think you oughta be mean to 'em, well, you don't have any choice, what are you going to do? It's either love women, or suck a big dick. Thanks, God! Thanks for the big menu down here, thanks a lot!"
"How does a guy look at another guy's hair-y ass... and find love?"
"I might be a little jealous, I'm a little overweight, but... I guess if you're gay you'd probably lose a lot of weight, folks. 'Cause who the fuck wants to eat after you've had a DICK IN YOUR MOUTH ALL DAY! (gagging)"
"A group of homosexuals were going around to mortuaries offering them money to come in at night to spend a couple of hours undisturbed with the freshest male corpse." [Source: Sam Kinison - Breaking the Rules DVD]

[edit] Trivia

[edit] Discography

[edit] Filmography

[edit] External links

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