CRIX NIX HIX PIX? : Harlock & Thomas’s ‘American – The Bill Hicks Story’ [6/10]

Published on: May 25th, 2010

This biographical documentary on seminal American stand-up Bill Hicks (1961-1994) manages to be both “funny ha-ha” and “funny peculiar.” The ha-ha isn’t a surprise – directors Harlock and Thomas wisely include generous extracts from Hicks’ incendiary performances from the eighties and nineties, iconoclastic and savagely acerbic routines that are as valid and fresh now as they were then. Any movie with this much Hicks in it can’t be anything other than a Good Thing.
   Hicks’ ferociously independent, questioning, iconoclastic voice certainly comes through at full, persuasive volume. Which is where the “funny peculiar” aspect of American comes in. It’s bizarre that what is intended as a tribute to the achievements and style of this take-no-prisoners performer/thinker should itself be so very MOR, a white-bread, blandly semi-skimmed hagiography seemingly designed for mainstream audiences unfamiliar with Hicks and his material. Which is presumably why the directors get through 107 minutes without once mentioning either of the closest parallels to Hicks among post-war American comics, Lenny Bruce or George Carlin (or even Denis Leary, with whom Hicks shared a notably stormy personal and professional relationship.)
   If the intention was to evangelise – to further spread Hicks’ flourishing posthumous acclaim – then fair enough. But one can’t help thinking that the man himself would have had little patience with his “own” movie, just as Lester Bangs would surely have ripped Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous to shreds in one of his Creem columns had he lived to see it. As for the rumoured Hollywood biopic to be directed by Ron Howard and starring Russell Crowe – let’s just say it’s a damn shame Hicks isn’t around to comment on that stomach-churning possibility himself (not to mention his take on the whole of geo-politics over the last 16 years.)
   Hicks’s life was short and – as showbiz careers go – relatively uneventful, the only real melodrama being his absurdly untimely death from stomach-cancer at the age of 32. But the directors waste endless time on the minutiae of his childhood and early career, quite imaginatively reconstructed using semi-animated old photographs as his surviving friends, family and colleagues reminisce on the audio track. The style is relentlessly easy-going, so that when Hicks pops up on stage or on TV, sweat flying and spittle spraying with each volley of invective, the effect is all the more jarring. Ideally, what we’d get is a welter of Hicks’ greatest hits with only a functional smattering of biographical info. It’s not who Hicks was that mattered – it’s what he thought, said and did that counted. And it still does.

Neil Young
25th May, 2010

AMERICAN – THE BILL HICKS STORY : [6/10]
UK 2010* : Matt HARLOCK & Paul THOMAS : 107m (BBFC) : {15/28}
seen 20th May 2010 at The Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle (£7) – digital projection

*IMDb says 2009; film premiered at London Film Festival in 2009; copyright-date on UK release ‘print’ is 2010