American: The Bill Hicks Story

Genre: Documentary
Directed by: Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas
Running time: 102 minutes
Release Date: April 8, 2011

Thank God Mount Rushmore was constructed, because since its creation it has been a seminal way in arranging the greats of any given field of work. You have the film directors: Eisenstein, Griffith, Kurosawa, Kubrick; the economical movements: hunting, agrarian, industrial, technological; the rock bands: Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin, The Who, The Beatles; The Beatles: John, Paul, George….yep. I also think there is one for the presidents. The point is that there is a new documentary that tells the story of the last of the Rushmore comedians.

First there was Lenny Bruce, who is unequivocally the Christ figure of comedy. He quite literally died for the art form, and the freedom to use comedy to the fullest extent of the first amendment (please, please, please watch the Bob Fosse film “Lenny”). Lenny Bruce died so that the comedians whom came after would be able to curse their way out of a bad set. The next two Rushmore comics are the ebony/ivory logical progressions of Lenny Bruce, George Carlin and Richard Pryor. Finally, we have the Georgia born Bill Hicks. Hicks, who died in 1994, is the last of these prophet comedians who traveled the lands in order to preach to us while making us laugh, and opening our collective third eye.

American: The Bill Hicks Story is a telling of his entire life starting from childhood. We get a look into the life of an icon, and we are assured that he wasn’t a visitant that emerged from an amorphous post-modern portal like some kind of comedy Terminator. No, he grew up in the suburbs. The movie has no central narrator, and it guides through the story with the help of all of Hicks’s closest friends/relatives. Actual live footage is surprisingly sparse and in favor of quirky animations that represent moments of the story retold. It is perhaps a bit too quirky and abundant, but it yields a neat trick towards the end of the movie (more on that in a minute).

It is a rough start for the movie, however, as the first twenty five minutes or so are kind of uninteresting nostalgic moments that are only interesting to the parties involved. Do we really need to know what skills Bill Hicks possessed on the junior league football field? Not really. Eventually we get into the comedy and the budding of an amazing career. It is completely engaging but not particularly excellent. The real crux and drawl of the movie is the formation of the enlightened Hicks. There is great interest in the years of addiction that Hicks went through, and how that made him into a better performer as well as a budding philosopher.

‘American’ is the proper word to use for the context of the title. It is because no matter how anti-establishment Hicks became, or how much he railed against the mediocrity of his own country, he was always undeniably American. The Bill Hicks specialRevelations , which is excerpted in the film, is probably one of the best comedy shows ever conceived. It is ironic that the show was filmed in England (where Hicks was most popular), because even the show itself is wonderfully American. We see Hicks dressed in cowboy garb (complete with boots, shirt, and discarded hat) as he preaches his radical ideas in front of a southwestern skyline backdrop, which recalls the great open west and is one of the staples of pure American imagery. Hicks was, despite his distaste for his homeland, extremely patriotic. This is a sentiment clearly defined within the film as one of the narrators explains that all Hicks wanted was for his country to open both its heart and mind.

And speaking of the narrators, the lovely trick I alluded to earlier comes at exactly one hour and twenty five minutes into the movie, which leaves about fifteen minutes of movie left. The trick is that for the entire duration of the film up to that point, we do not see any of the narrators as they tell the tale. With most documentaries, we would at least get glimpses at the people as they spoke of their subject. But for most of this film, we do not even know what these people look like, and all we get are Hicks and the animations. It is fairly clever and not something I’ve seen in a lot of documentaries.

That is probably the most admirable thing about the movie along with the subject itself. If you’re interested in knowing the story of one of the most radical American comedy icons, this is a film for you. It probably all hinges on that conceit. It is especially pertinent if you’re a fan of comedy, and you would like to complete your knowledge of the comedy Rushmore (Hicks is probably the last to be discovered for every comedy fan exploring Rushmore). In other words, if the title of this movie caught your attention then you already know if you want to see it or not. In other other words, this review if of no matter to you, if you really think about it. Thank you.
-Cody Mattox

This film is currently on Video On Demand.