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Sam Kinison

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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. He 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 punctuated by a trademark primal scream.

Contents

Early life

Kinison was born in Yakima, Washington, and originally became a preacher. Upon obtaining a divorce from his wife, he was forced to leave preaching. However, his background as a preacher proved to be highly influential upon his new career as a comic. This was particularly evident in the near-fire and brimstone style of screaming used in his routines. Shortly before his death he took to the pulpit one last time.

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. Sam Kinison."

Kinison might be considered a "rock and roll comedian" since he occasionally was accompanied by a touring band, as well as having 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, from bad boy Billy Idol, and rock guitar god Steve Vai, to guitar god 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 airbrush 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 beautifully rendered version of Elvis Presley's "Are You Lonesome Tonight," but 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. 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 going. Kinison, upon discovering this, decided not to call Stern out of fear of embarrassing Bon Jovi. Stern's reaction was swift and vindictive, bringing about the eventual apology of Kinison, but not before one of the show's funniest moments in which comedian Gilbert Gottfried and Stern both savaged an emotionally charged phone call Stern had with Kinison, during which both stars used the words "man" and "dude" toward one another 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.

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

Death

He was working to get himself clean and sober in the months immediately before his death and married his girlfriend Malika Souiri in 1992. But just six days after the wedding, his white Trans Am was struck by a seventeen-year-old drunk driver on a two lane highway in the Mojave Desert near Needles, California. He was wearing no seat belt and his head struck the windshield upon impact. A passerby immediately notified emergency services and attempted CPR, but with no success. He was taken to the Needles Desert Community Hospital but died from 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 statements like:

"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.

Famous bits

An end to world hunger
Kinison talked about the people that go over to Ethiopia and film commercials to get you to send money to help feed the kids; meanwhile the filming crew is five feet away and maybe they could give the kids a sandwich. He claimed that if you really want to help starving Ethiopian kids, then stop sending your money. Instead, send some U-Haul trucks to take the people where the food is. He went on to explain to the Ethiopians that they can't plant food in sand, and in a hundred years it will still be sand. He would end the routine by screaming "We have deserts in America, we just don't live in them, assholes!" [link]
Bringing forth liquor from the barren land
Kinison also had a reputation for coming through to keep the party going. Once, after two shows and the following party, all his hotel mini bars had run dry, so he went down to the main bar but was told that after legal serving hours, the bar was locked and the hotel manager didn't even have the key. So, Sam found a phone book and called a local limousine service. He asked "All your limos have stocked bars, right?" "Well, yes,” the limo service answered. So Sam ordered a fleet of limousines to restock the party.
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 amyl nitrite by the bed side, in one routine.
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 disinterest 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, "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 always a favourite topic with Kinison. He would often mock Christ in his act, saying that Jesus is coming back "real soon now, just as soon as he can PLAY THE PIANO AGAIN!". He once did a bit where Jesus was on the Cross and there were a bunch of Christians standing around wondering what to do. "It's a shame that he has to die," they would say, with Jesus replying, "Well, maybe I wouldn't have to, if somebody would get a ladder and a pair of pliers!" Kinison has 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. He also 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 also said that he wasn't afraid of going to Hell, simply because "I was MARRIED for TWO FUCKING YEARS! Hell would be like Club Med!".
In spite of all of this, Kinison was a deeply religious man, with a highly unusual relationship with his God.
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 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!!!"

Trivia

Discography

Filmography

External links

 

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