'One of my big fears in life is that I'm gonna die and my parents are going to come to clean out my apartment and find that porno wing I've been adding on to for years." – Bill Hicks.
Comic, addict, dead person. It’s a horribly familiar description of some of the great talents who are no longer with us – Lenny Bruce, John Belushi, Chris Farley, Freddy Prinze, Sam Kinnison, Tony Hancock, Richard Pryor. Bill Hicks certainly came close – as portrayed in Matt Harlock’s and Paul Thomas’ American: The Bill Hicks Story, the Georgia-born stand-up comedian was an alcoholic and drug abuser for a significant portion of his career. But in the end, he got clean and died of cancer. Good for him.
Granted, that’s a bit dark, but having seen how Hicks’ fear of impending death and passion for life so infused his final comedy routines and his relationship with his family, one can’t but help to be similarly inspired. Harlock and Thomas have created one of the finest film disseminations of the artist’s creative process ever captured. Their film honours a twisted, profound, frightening stage presence and the personality from which it emerged. Bill Hicks was never the breakout comedy star of his time – public favour went to Robin Williams and the safe (but no less brilliant) Steve Martin – but Hicks, as is captured in this fine film, was the comedian that comedians went to see.
As co-directors, Harlock and Thomas take a few risks themselves in capturing the life story of Bill Hicks. Utilising faded photographs from his childhood years, the filmmakers employ multi-layered animation techniques (not dissimilar to those used by Ari Folman in his award-winning Waltz with Bashir, 2008) to define the ambitious, talented teenager. Hicks let nothing stand in his way of achieving his dream of becoming a comic – the film chronicles the time the 15-year-old aspiring performer convinced his friend, a special-needs carer with permission to drive in the case of an emergency, to take him to a Houston open-mike night.
For most of the films first half, friends and family narrate as the cut-and-paste images swirl by, depicting a man on his way to inevitable mainstream stardom. But the first filmed glimpses of Hicks’ performance – the first video footage that Harlock and Thomas use in the film – are deeply disturbing and decidedly uncommercial. Usually fuelled by alcohol and/or drugs, Hicks observational tirades would both amuse and frighten his audiences; he was not a man who coasted on 'airplane peanuts’ and 'mother-in-law’ jokes. His 'What’s the deal with..." routines spoke of vicious resentment towards failed loves, political ambivalence and moralistic intolerance. ('I'm tired of this back-slapping, 'Isn't humanity neat?’ bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are.")
Recounting Hicks’ life are comedy club friends (John Farneti, James Ladmirault, David Johndrow), family members (mother Mary, sister Lynn, brother Steve) and his first comedy partner and lifelong best friend, Dwight Slade. Each imparts insight and profundity on Hicks’ talent, demons and mortality.
But it is the late Bill Hicks himself, first via his comedy and ultimately via his adjusted perspective on the importance of family, that provides the greatest insight into who he was and what it was that he contributed to American culture. American: The Bill Hicks Story is the kind of film that every artist hopes will be made of their life’s work some day. In truth, very few are as worthy of such insight and reverence as Bill Hicks.
