Bill Cosby: Himself

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bill Cosby: Himself
Bill Cosby: Himself DVD
Directed by	Bill Cosby
Produced by	Bill Cosby James B. Herring
Written by	Bill Cosby
Starring	Bill Cosby
Music by	Bill Cosby Stu Gardner
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	May 20, 1983
Running time	105 minutes
Language	English
IMDb profile

Bill Cosby: Himself is a 1983 stand-up comedy film featuring the comedic routines of Bill Cosby. Filmed before a live audience at the Hamilton Place Theatre, in Hamilton, Ontario Cosby gives audiences his comedics views ranging from marriage and parenthood. Many of the comedic routines presented in this stand-up were the precursors to Cosby's successful sitcom The Cosby Show.

1 Memorable Quotes
2 Trivia
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Memorable Quotes

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

It was because of my father that from the ages of seven to fifteen, I thought that my name was Jesus Christ and my brother, Russell, thought that his name was Dammit. "Dammit, will you stop all that noise?" And, "Jesus Christ, sit down!" One day, I'm out playing in the rain, and my father yelled, "Dammit, will you get back in here!" I said, "But, Dad, I'm Jesus Christ!"

Little Jeffrey. I remember his name, not because he said, "I'm four years old," but because Jeffrey's mother said his name all 2500 miles of the trip.

I said to a guy, "Tell me, what is it about cocaine that makes it so wonderful?" And he said, "Because it intensifies your personality." I said, "Yes, but what if you're an asshole?" (Note: this is one of the few, if only, known instances of Bill Cosby using profanity in his act.)

Parents are not interested in justice; they want QUIET!

Now you've got to go. So you come into the bathroom, close the door; now, don't forget: you owe this to yourself. You've worked hard all week. It's come to this: (kneels beside the chair and pretends to lift the lid off a toilet bowl, then starts moaning] "Ahh, geez... Oh, God, if You get me out of this, I'll never drink again as long as I live..." [groans again] Now... you are ready to put your face in a place that was never built for your face.

I love it when mothers get so mad they can't remember your name. "Come here, Roy, er, Rupert, er, Rutabaga... what is your name, boy? And don't lie to me, because you live here, and I'll find out who you are.'

My father established our relationship when I was seven years old. He looked at me and said, "You know, I brought you into this world, and I can take you out. And it don't make no difference to me, I'll make another one look just like you."

My parents never smiled... because I had brain damage. My wife and I don't smile because our children are LOADED with it. Oh, my parents smile now, whenever they come over to the house and see how much trouble I'm having. Oh, they have a ball! "Havin' a li'l trouble, huh, son?"

I am not the boss of my house. I don't know how I lost it. I don't know where I lost it. I don't think I ever had it. But I've seen the boss's job... and I don't want it.

(Describing his wife's labor pains) The second pain hit. My wife said "WHOOAA!!!", and stood up in the stirrups, grabbed my bottom lip, lifted me up, and said "I WANT MORPHINE"!! I said "But dear..." (imitates Lamaze breathing) She said "YOU SHUT UP! YOU DID THIS TO ME!!" And on the next contraction, she told everybody in the delivery room that my parents were never married.

(After the birth of their first child) I went over to my wife and I kissed her ever so gently on the lips and said "Darling, I love you very, very much. You just had... a lizard." Because the thing changed colors three times. And the head and neck wouldn't work. It just kept (imitating the baby bobbing around) I said to the doctor "can you put this back? Because it's not ready, it needs to cook! About two, three months or so." The hospital made us take it home.

Natural childbirth means that no drugs will be put into the mother's body during delivery, the father can have all he wants.

You know my father's favorite game? "Come here and pull my finger."

"You know, your father comes home, he's gonna shoot you in the face with a bazooka! And I am not gonna stop him this time either! You know he always wanted to kill you. The day you were born, he said 'KILL IT!' I have stopped him from killing you for ELEVEN years... (sobbing) and this is the thanks I get for saving your life!?!"

"That's not the same woman I grew up with, you're looking at an old person who's trying to get into Heaven now."

My mother looked at our baby and said "oh how precious". I don't know why she said it, I didn't know then, I know now. Because my mother put a curse on me. She used to tell me as a child, "I hope you have children who act exactly the same way that you act" and the curse works! My wife and I have not been intellectuals since.

I asked my father to lend me a dollar for the school picnic, he told me how he killed a grizzly bear with his loose-leaf notebook.

"Isn't eating at six o'clock bad for your stomach, they just ate twelve hours ago."

My wife comes downstairs with the broken stick, throws it on the ground, sits down and begins to talk out loud to... NOBODY! "Gonna tell me to do something when I tell you to do something! I mean you MOVE when I say move, think I carried you in my body for nine months so you can roll your eyes at me, I'll roll that little head of yours down on the floor. You don't know who you're fooling with, I'll beat you till you can't grow anymore!"

My wife said, "Bill, get out of that bed and go downstairs AND COOK BREAKFAST FOR YOUR CHILDREN!!!" I said, "Well, I...I don't know what they want to eat." She said, "It's DOWN THERE!!! NOW YOU GET OUT OF THE BEEEEDDD!!!!"

(Imitating his children's reaction to being given chocolate cake and grapefruit juice, singing) Dad is GREAT!! Give us CHOCOLATE CAKE!!

You also notice that the right side of your face feels like it's sliding off of your skull. And your bottom lip is in your lap!

And I looked, and there was chocolate cake! The child wanted chocolate cake for breakfast!! HOW RIDICULOUS!!

Ribbinse?! You ask me to ribbinse?! Ibe habve no bobbom libbip! How can I ribbinse?!!

I've always heard about people having a conniption but I've never seen one. You don't want to see 'em. My wife's face split. My wife's face split and the skin and hair split and came off of her face so that there was nothing except a skull. And orange lights came out of her hair and there was glitter all around. And fire shot from her eye sockets and began to burn my stomach and she said, "WHERE DID THEY GET CHOCOLATE CAKE FROM?!?!!" And I said, "They ASKED for it!!!" And the children who had been singing praises to me LIED ON ME, and said "UH-UHHH!!! We asked for eggs and milk, and Dad made us eat THIS!!!" (points and refers to the "chocolate cake") And my wife sent me to my room...which is where I wanted to go in the first place! So you see? We men are dumb, but we are not so dumb. It takes great brain power and work to avoid working.

(about a talk with his son) So I looked at him. And I noticed that from here all the way around to here... (pointing to both sides of his head) ...there was no hair. I said, "Son?" Called him "son". "What... happened to your hair?" He said, "I don't know." I said, "Son, take your hand and put it on top of your head and tell me what you feel." He said, "There's no hair." I said, "Right! Now, tell Dad what happened to your hair." He said, "I don't know." I said, "Son, was your head with you all day today?" He said, "Uh-huh." I said, "Was this the hair you wanted?" He said, "Uh-huh." I said, "A reverse Mohawk?!" He said, "Uh-huh!" I said, "Did you cut your hair off?!" He said, "Uh-huh!" I said, "Well, why didn't you tell me that in the beginning?!?" He said, "I DON'T KNOW!!"

(About his mother always saying, "I'm sick and tired!") "And tired" always follows "sick". Worst beating I ever got in my life, my mother said, "Well I am just sick," and I said, "And tired." I don't remember anything after that.

The weirdest thing about drugs is that people on it start to laugh, and no one knows what their laughing at, they just go: (he talks in a high-pitch tone of voice) "Ahh... no, wait a minute... I went over to the... WHOOO!... Ahh... I went over to the Burger King... and so a guy took a piece of meat... and threw it on the grill... I said, 'Oh wow!'... then he turned it over... it was all brown!... I said, 'Far out!'... and then he put it in between two pieces of bread... I said, 'Oh no!' and a guy ate it."

[edit] Trivia

Much of the material from this performance, including the "Come here" bit and the mother speaking to no one in particular, were used in the pilot episode and first season of The Cosby Show. A good amount of the material is also reprised from the album "My Father Confused Me…What Must I Do? What Must I Do?", most noticeably the dentist and drug routines.

There are three different musical endings of the film. The original version ended with a melancholy composition co-penned by Cosby titled "It Was a Good Idea at the Time". Versions after this would end silently with no music at all. Finally most modern versions on tape and broadcast end with an upbeat instrumental cover of "Just the Two of Us" (retitled "Just the Slew of Us") with Cosby acting out situations related to the theme of the performance in the background. The original version containing the Cosby composition is rare but can still be seen periodically.

One of the bits that Cosby did about a father raising a future football superstar (and then having the son thank mom) was later ripped off by Carlos Mencia, [1] whose career has been tarnished with allegations of plagiarism. Neither Cosby nor Mencia have commented on this issue.