Be more punk

This is an excellent video essay about art, punk, edginess, featuring many of my favorite directors, musicians, and comedians. I can’t remember everyone but man, there’s Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Frank Zappa, Marilyn Manson, Patrice O’Neal, John Waters, Lars von Trier, Bill Hicks (“an anti-corporate, anti-authoritarian dark poet”), Paul Mooney, Andrei Tarkovsky, Alejandro Jodorowsky…the list goes on.

Nothing is punk anymore… by The Cinema Cartography (YouTube)

Bill Hicks, at 33:35 (cited from Rants in E-Minor),

“Bill HicksLet me tell you something right now and you can print this in stone and don’t you ever forget it; Any, ANY performer that ever sells a product on television is—for now and all eternity—removed from the artistic world. I don’t care if you shit Mona Lisas out of your ass on cue; you’ve made your fucking choice.”

I weep when I watch television in the States and watch one actor, comedian, and musician after another hawk mobile-phone services, financial services, and medications.

“Why are all these millionaires selling us insurance? And clothes? What? They don’t have enough money?”

It’s a tragedy. I always think of Bill Hicks. Good thing pancreatic cancer took him young—before he could sell out.

The video concludes with the plaintive,

“People miss out on so many things, they don’t know they don’t know.”