Bankrate: How did you come to do the 10-10-220 commercials?
George Carlin: In the early '80s I discovered that I had made bad business decisions during the last half of the '70s and was deeply in debt to the IRS. It was still 70 percent tax at the time. I was behind. The penalties and interest were burying me, and I had no career to speak of. So a friend of mine, a promoter, became my manager, and we began to dig out of this, and it's taken me 20 years. When the people from 10-10-220 came to me, I said, "Well, it's a phone service, it's not a poison gas, it's not gasoline, let me listen to these people." They gave me full creative control over the imagery and the content, and they wanted to use me doing my stand-up.
Lesson learned:
Penalties and interest on back taxes make a mountain out of a mole hill.
