The following review of a biography of comedian Sam Kinison was written by Turk Pipkin for Texas Monthly.
Brother Sam: The Short, Spectacular Life of Sam Kinison
by Bill Kinison with Steve Delsohn
William Morrow and Company, Inc.
$22.00
If you ever heard the gut-wrenching primal scream of comedian Sam Kinison, then you will not be surprised to learn of the miseries he suffered in 38 years on earth. Having survived being hit by a semi-truck at age three, a broken home, and miserable failure at marriage and the ministry, it was not until making the leap into stand-up at Houston’s Comedy Annex that Kinison finally discovered his natural ability to rail against the injustice of it all.
The heart of this biography, written by his brother and former manager Bill Kinison, lies in the lengthy (often x-rated) excerpts of Sam’s act which, even without the scream, prove he was a brilliant comedy writer. “Lenny Bruce at ramming speed.” wrote Tom Shales.
The book’s cheap thrills chronicle Kinison’s ability to royally screw things up, including a feud with his buddy Howard Stern, a disastrous affair with Jessica Hahn, and a really stupid public insult of industry giant Michael Ovitz which nearly ended Sam’s career. Behind it all was an insecure and self-destructive genius with a death-wish appetite for booze and drugs (Brother Bill once found Sam snorting cocaine off the back cover of John Belushi’s biography, Wired).
In an attempt at revisionist history, the book maintains that Sam was neither anti-gay, anti-women, nor anti-Christian, but who Sam offended was rarely his concern; the fact is, Kinison would say or do anything for a laugh. In those first years in Houston, 1979 and ‘80, when Sam was twice named the Funniest Man in Texas by the Dallas Morning News, he’d drag redneck cowboys out of the audience and dry hump them on the stage. Anything for a laugh.
This was the take-no-prisoners approach that caught Rodney Dangerfield’s attention one night at the Comedy Annex (after Rodney’s concert at Houston’s Jones Hall with this writer as his opening act). The next day, Rodney was still talking about Sam. Five long years later Dangerfield would give Sam his big break, casting him in first an HBO comedy special, then as the history teacher who snaps in the movie, Back to School.
Since his untimely death in an automobile accident two year ago, it’s clear that Sam’s pain has been passed along to his brother who does not hesitate to include his own story at every turn. But even though there’s too much of brother Bill in Brother Sam., there’s more than enough Sam Kinison to go around.