American: The Bill Hicks Story

Watching recordings of Hicks, I am impressed at how his stand up shifts from vulgar bathroom humor to such profound social commentary. He truly was unique and ahead of his time. I guess it figures then his life was taken at such an early age. That seems to be the pattern we see in history with great thinkers (Ghandi, Jesus, etc). When I hear him speak, I caught myself saying, "He should've been president!" Instead he was regulated to doing comedy in two-bit clubs in the redneck south. Also of not is the wonderful picture-animation technique, which I have not personally seen before. It helped to fill in the gaps left by not having the titular character being present for an interview.

See it and learn something.

Your father didn't die for a flag. He died for the symbol that the flag represented, which is the freedom to burn the flag. -Hicks

I am an enormous Bill Hicks fan. Obsessively so. I think I have all the bootlegged concerts on my computer, and a DVD of rariety camcorder shows as well as enough official CDs and DVDs that I have basically all his material available in one form or another. I also have about three books - two biographies and a book of transcripts and scripts and other writings. So that's the background I took into this documentary.

First of all, it's a beautiful film to look at. There's the usual audio history going on in the background, but what the directors have done is taken still photographs and created pseudo-animated sequences to support the narrative. It's odd at first, but very quickly you stop even noticing that the still faces aren't moving in their animated environment. Very clever.

Secondly, where has all this new footage come from? There are several camcorder recordings which must go back as far as the early 1980s that I have never seen before. There's some bits (about his father) which I'd never heard before which were used to accompany the section on his early shows. I don't think they are quite as old as that (he looks a bit older than 16) but it's not far off. Some of these early clips also show later material in an earlier form - like the fantasy about the grotesque death of woman that broke his heart seeing him on the Tonight Show as she breathed her last.

The best thing about the film, however, is they way everything is brought back to the comedy. With enough reading, you'd already know about the drug stories and the depths of his alcohol abuse and his tragic early death from pancreatic cancer. While all of these are important parts of the story, no-one dwells on the more sensational details, but instead uses them in partnership with recordings to show how they motivated what he was doing on stage. There's clips to show him drinking excessively on stage, clips about his growing dislike of governments (including from Hicks and Kevin Booth's trip to Waco in 1993), clips contrasting his rapturous reception in the UK (the huge rock and roll entrance of the Revelations show at the Dominion theatre) adjacent to the small audiences ("staring blankly back at me like a dog that had been shown a card trick") of a backwater comedy club in the US South. I like this because it feels like the best use of the documentary medium, and gives fresh insight into a topic I (and many other fans) already know well. I mean, I can read and re-read an autobiography of his life but only in a film can I really see the effect on his work. Very much recommended, for disciples and neophytes alike.

Bill Hicks did not live an extraordinary life. Born into a middle-class suburban home with doting parents and overachieving siblings, the teen found his calling in furnishing extraordinary insights into the ordinary life that he, and most other Americans in the 70s and 80s, led. Getting his start as a teen comic in a local Texan comedy club, he was the young upstart coming at issues from a fresh angle, the ease and confidence with which he delivers his jokes distinguishing him as a special talent.

Dropping out of school and chasing the dream in LA, Hicks struggles with failure and fitting in with what the world expects of his humour. Falling into patterns of drug abuse and alcoholism, his comedy mirrored an outlook on life that was not mainstream. He was cynical, he was rash and he was jarring, and for all those reasons, he was an acquired taste. His anti-American routines particularly did not bode well for his career; in an industry where shock is now the norm, Hicks was ahead of his time, but that was to prove little consolation.

Eventually, ousting himself from the cycle of rejection and abuse, Hicks winds up in New York where he gets himself clean and his magical touch returns. Though he never sacrifices his right to say and joke about whatever he wishes (and highlights from various gigs are used as proof of this), in doing so he pushes back against the mainstream tide that flirts with but never embraces him. Diagnosed with cancer in his early 30s, Hicks never receives the true acceptance of the American audience that he perhaps craved, but he died in the knowledge that he stuck to certain values that never let him compromise what he believed in to merely give audiences what they wanted to hear. Many would argue that, in itself, that is a very American value.

Harlock and Thomas' film joins the growing collection of posthumous albums and features that have attempted to reclaim Hicks' image, to wonderful effect. Whether it is guilt for ignoring him whilst alive, America has finally embraced the humour of a man whose only really fame was an ocean away in the United Kingdom. As only a proud American could care enough to write the jokes about the fatherland that Hicks managed, his emotional emigration to the British Isles is as tragic personally as it was a highlight professionally.

If the documentary has a flaw, it is that Hicks wasn't around to truly finish it. This is a half-finished documentary because it was a half-finished life.

Concluding Thought: As a resident of the UK, the portrayal of Hick's success in the British Isles being down to his anti-Americanism is somewhat simplistic. The UK has a wonderful tradition of supporting comedians regardless of background or content, purely because they make them laugh.

Namaste, Venakam, Salaam Alaikum, Sat Sri Akal.

Bill Hicks' comedy has been a godsend in my personal life. Being a native of the Balkan region of former Yugoslavia trying to acclimate to American society without acculturating and losing my identity, his work was invaluable. He has said the things that most people don't even acknowledge or think about.

Bill hicks was an amazing artist and human being on many levels. In particular, on a spiritual and philosophical level, he is easily the most relevant and profound comedian of all time. No other individual has managed to take the unpalatable truths of "modern society" and deliver them with the intellectual poise, sincerity and utter hilarity of Bill Hicks.

He is in our hearts and minds for all eternity, and its a joy to have known his eternal individual nature through his recordings.

May we meet again in the cosmic energy pool of eternity.

Peace, Love & Light,

Almir

"It's just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one."

• William Melvin "Bill" Hicks

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

Coming from a country famous for making an institution out of stand up comedy, for many an insincere route to bigger things, Bill Hicks is certainly a name that stands out in many 'best jokes ever' polls over here, despite being, interestingly, American, where people are known to be a little more sensitive. And, it would seem he got his big break over here, his true talent and potential not being explored in his native country enough, where he either caused too much offence or was simply a misunderstood genius. Basically, the guy has a massive cult following that has continued many years after his death and this documentary attempts to cast light on his life and times, without reflecting too much on the influence he still has today.

Hicks didn't seem to let how much he was far away from where he went to become famous stand in his way at all, chasing his small town boy dream with all the confidence and gusto of a tornado, a character possessed by a dynamic mind that refused to be restrained who, like the best of anyone, ended up living fast and dying young. People are appreciated more in death, for sure, but it's undeniably often the case that people with an unquestionable talent in whatever medium they are in can be taken away in their prime, and it's definitely sad to see all that potential and talent taken away.

This is a sincere, honest, insightful, revealing and well made enough expose of Hicks, opening up his unique observations and comedy stylings to a new generation of viewers. ***