At moments like this, I'd like to quote my good friend, Carl Reiner,
who has often said to me, "You don't give awards to comedians.
First of all comedians don't need awards.
Awards are for people that are looking for work.
We're not looking for work. If you're any good as a comedian,
you've got tons of work.
We've all got wrinkled suits and smelly shirts from packing
and unpacking and schlepping all over this goddammed country
doing 10 million different kinds of gigs.
And secondly, and even more important is your whole career as a comedian
is about making fun of pretentious, high minded, self congratulatory,
BS events like this one. The whole feeling in this room of reverence
and honouring is the exact opposite of everything I have wanted my life to be about.
I..I..I really don't want to be up here. I want to be in the back over there.
Somewhere over there saying something funny to somebody about what a crock this whole thing is.
And I don't, I don't want to give you the wrong
impression. I don't want you to think
I'm not honoured by this because I am.
I feel very very, honoured and it's,
but it's just that awards are stupid.
Every real estate office has some framed 5 diamond President's Award thing, by the desk.
Every hotel check-in has some gold circle service thing.
Every car salesman's a Platinum Jubilee Winner.
It's all a big Jerk Off!!
It's, it's the hotel sucks, the real estate person is stupid
and the only thing the car salesman is good at is ripping you off.
And why? Because awards don't mean a goddammed thing!
They're stupid, they're all stupid. All the award shows on TV,
honestly, it's beyond me that we feel the need
to set aside a night to give out these
god awful bowling trophies 6 times a year. So all these people can pat each other
on the back about how much money they're making boring the piss out of half the world.
And if I hadn't already won all these awards I would not be talking like this.
The truth is that the comedian should be the only one getting awards.
We're the only ones that have to actually think of something original and funny
and interesting to say. Do you know how hard that is?
You know how hard it was just to write what I'm saying to you right now. It was hard.
This took a long time, but we can do it. We can do it.
I'm just, you know, sick of all these actors and you know, I don't know why we're
so fascinated with actors in this culture. They haven't had a thought in their stupid,
bed head hairdos, mini brains. Why we must honour this man? Why?
He pretended to be Bob Johnson. He's a genius, I tell you.
It's genius what he's doing. Playing dress up and pretend is not genius,
Ladies and Gentlemen, It's not genius. Roll the cameras, put on these clothes,
stand there ready. Say what we told you to say.
Fantastic, he did it!
Give this man a huge golden trophy. He's a god dammed genius.
Walking down the red carpet in these ridiculous outfits, like the senators
from Krypton. It's just so stupid! But what can I do? I have to thank HBO.
I have to. All comedians even these 3 guys and me. Oh! HBO We owe them, that's why they're here.
You think these guys want to do this? They don't want to do this.
They owe. They gave me a 1 hour HBO special they were the first people that ever thought
I should be on TV for more than 6 minutes.
And I was introduced on that show by Carl Reiner.
And I don't, you know that's it. What can you say about it?
And I'm very proud of this, it's a thrill. I hope they do it again next year,
this could be it, I don't know. But this is a great, incredibly, you know,
sweet thing and meaningful thing in my life.
Thank you very much HBO and thank you all for coming.
Captioning services provided by Michael Lockrey