"If Jesus had been killed 20 years ago, Catholic schoolchildren would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses."
OBSCENE MOTHERF--KER.
Subtract the wussy dashes and ... "ladies and gentlemen, Lenny Bruce!"
Nearly 40 years after his death, we're still bleeping this f--king brilliant ass---- , a foul-mouthed pr--k who took comedy to the street, gave it the raw sting of truth, and didn't give a s--t what any uptight c--ksuckers thought, spawning a freewheeling generation of comedians, from George Carlin to Chris Rock, in his f--ked-up, drug-fueled wake.
Or, as Newsweek's Paul Zimmerman put it in less Lenny-like terms: "a man driven to mainlining honesty into the arteries of a hypocritical culture."
"If something about the human body disgusts you, complain to the manufacturer."
The crazy f--k who waged war on censorship—and was so strung out on heroin he once thought he could fly and dove out a hotel window screaming, "It's Super Jew!"—is the subject of Julian Barry's 1971 play Lenny (translated into the 1974 film starring Dustin Hoffman), which debuts this week for a three-weekend run at UNLV's Judy Bayley Theatre. Jeffrey Koep, dean of the College of Fine Arts, directs Josh Kleinmuntz in the title role.
"Every day, people are straying away from the church and going back to God."
Among the events covered in Lenny's revolutionary and often rancid life are his tumultuous relationship with his bisexual, unstable stripper-wife, Honey; and his hounding by law enforcement (music mogul/accused murderer Phil Spector said his friend died from "an overdose of police"), his celebrated obscenity trials and arrests in cities from LA to San Francisco and Chicago to New York. Bruce died of a drug overdose in 1966, but last December, he was granted a posthumous pardon from the State of New York (he was arrested in 1964 by undercover cops at Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village for using more than 100 "obscene" words). The pardon was supported by a who's-who of entertainers, including Vegas stalwarts Penn and Teller and the Smothers Brothers.
"The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them."
Let's add a disclaimer—normally an element of passive censorship—that Lenny would no doubt endorse: "Lenny contains scenes of harsh truth and unadulterated passion and may not be appropriate for all audiences."
Of whom Lenny would certainly say: "F--k 'em."