Take Your Hicks
http://www.afterhours.ie/articles/167/1/Take-Your-Hicks/Page1.html
John O'Donnell
By John O'Donnell
Published on 05/13/2010
Was Bill Hicks America’s most under rated comedian or was he their most overopinionated? Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas have plumped for answer #1 and have made a documentary about him. Read the review here.
Take Your Hicks
American: The Bill Hicks Story
Was Bill Hicks America’s most under rated comedian or was he their most overopinionated? Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas have plumped for answer #1 and have made a documentary about him. Read the review here.
Take Your Hicks
A film by Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas
Release Date: 14 May 2010 (IFI and D’Ollier St)
Running Time: 103 minutes
Cert: TBC
Featuring: Dwight Slade, Kevin Booth, John Farneti, Lynn Hicks, Mary Hicks, Steve Hicks, Andy Huggins, David Johndrow, James Ladmirault,
If American: The Bill Hicks Story was a story book it would be a pop-up book with loads of those tabs that you pull to make stuff move about.
Documentaries have moved on from disembodied voices chattering over still photographs. Nowadays disembodied voice chatter over photographs that move around like flash advertisements. This tactic makes up the majority of Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas’s film, which is a little odd considering the man himself was patently anti-advertising. Watching pictures of Bill bounce around like an one of those annoying ads where a product rolls about on your computer screen is a tad ironical.
Anyway the majority of the movie is these flashmations with plenty of home movies in the opening act and bits/bobs from Hicks’s stand-up videos towards the end. The disembodied voices talking over the pictures belong to the family, friends and colleagues of Hicks. Despite his public persona as a crotchedy, angry, beligerant young man, the people who knew Hicks all talk about him with nothing but love and affection – although if I was the director I’d cut out any bit where people were slating the guy they’re supposed to be eulogising.
The home movies start off quaint enough with the infant Billy toddling on the beach and the preteen Hicks monkeying around with friends, before some grainy footage of his early stand up. It’s not quite as sophisticated as his grown up material, but he was 14 when he first went up, and as a teenager his prodigious talent made many of the best stand-ups in Texas look lightweight.
The narration for the chapter where Bill falls in love with comedy and launches his career is mainly done by Dwight Slade, a childhood friend who shared a double act with Hicks at the genisis of his career and would work with him as often as possible in later life.
A movie about a guy who has huge a talent and goes on to receive fame and glory without any struggle would be boring. This isn’t just a barrel of laughs and the darker times in Hicks’s life – his failure as a screen writer, his battle with alcoholism, his ultimately fatal fight against cancer – all get their due screen time.
Those expecting to see anything selacious in the life that bred one of the angriest comedians in recent history won’t have it all their own way either though. Hicks came from a very middle class background and had a comfortable upbringing. He wasn’t angry because anything drastically traumatic had happened to him, he was angry at the way society was moving to a place where money came before happiness, and when he emerged from under the boulder of alcoholism he looked to spread that message, finding a much more receptive audience outside the US than in it.
His dissatisfaction with the trajectory of society is crystalised when he takes a camera down to the Waco compound (Google it) while suffering from cancer and is aghast at the fact that the news media report what they are told to report by authorities and not what they see.
At times, it can be a bit jarring to see Hicks delivering some of the messages he put forward 16 years ago that would not be acceptable now. Seeing somebody who hates compulsive consumerism created by PR men giving out about people not liking him smoking around them could be the filmmakers’ way of showing that the man was falible. Or maybe they’re just smokers themselves, either way you wouldn’t get away with that sort of thing nowadays.
Needless to say there are plenty of laughs, and this isn’t a bad way to spend 107 minutes if you familiarised yourself with Hicks’s videos ten or twenty years ago and want a little more Billy. However, if that’s something you haven’t done, you migt be better off seeking out his stand up shows on Amazon (or YouTube if you’re stingy) first.
Was Bill Hicks America’s most under rated comedian or was he their most overopinionated? Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas have plumped for answer #1 and have made a documentary about him. Read the review here.
Take Your Hicks
A film by Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas
Release Date: 14 May 2010 (IFI and D’Ollier St)
Running Time: 103 minutes
Cert: TBC
Featuring: Dwight Slade, Kevin Booth, John Farneti, Lynn Hicks, Mary Hicks, Steve Hicks, Andy Huggins, David Johndrow, James Ladmirault,
If American: The Bill Hicks Story was a story book it would be a pop-up book with loads of those tabs that you pull to make stuff move about.
Documentaries have moved on from disembodied voices chattering over still photographs. Nowadays disembodied voice chatter over photographs that move around like flash advertisements. This tactic makes up the majority of Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas’s film, which is a little odd considering the man himself was patently anti-advertising. Watching pictures of Bill bounce around like an one of those annoying ads where a product rolls about on your computer screen is a tad ironical.
Anyway the majority of the movie is these flashmations with plenty of home movies in the opening act and bits/bobs from Hicks’s stand-up videos towards the end. The disembodied voices talking over the pictures belong to the family, friends and colleagues of Hicks. Despite his public persona as a crotchedy, angry, beligerant young man, the people who knew Hicks all talk about him with nothing but love and affection – although if I was the director I’d cut out any bit where people were slating the guy they’re supposed to be eulogising.
The home movies start off quaint enough with the infant Billy toddling on the beach and the preteen Hicks monkeying around with friends, before some grainy footage of his early stand up. It’s not quite as sophisticated as his grown up material, but he was 14 when he first went up, and as a teenager his prodigious talent made many of the best stand-ups in Texas look lightweight.
The narration for the chapter where Bill falls in love with comedy and launches his career is mainly done by Dwight Slade, a childhood friend who shared a double act with Hicks at the genisis of his career and would work with him as often as possible in later life.
A movie about a guy who has huge a talent and goes on to receive fame and glory without any struggle would be boring. This isn’t just a barrel of laughs and the darker times in Hicks’s life – his failure as a screen writer, his battle with alcoholism, his ultimately fatal fight against cancer – all get their due screen time.
Those expecting to see anything selacious in the life that bred one of the angriest comedians in recent history won’t have it all their own way either though. Hicks came from a very middle class background and had a comfortable upbringing. He wasn’t angry because anything drastically traumatic had happened to him, he was angry at the way society was moving to a place where money came before happiness, and when he emerged from under the boulder of alcoholism he looked to spread that message, finding a much more receptive audience outside the US than in it.
His dissatisfaction with the trajectory of society is crystalised when he takes a camera down to the Waco compound (Google it) while suffering from cancer and is aghast at the fact that the news media report what they are told to report by authorities and not what they see.
At times, it can be a bit jarring to see Hicks delivering some of the messages he put forward 16 years ago that would not be acceptable now. Seeing somebody who hates compulsive consumerism created by PR men giving out about people not liking him smoking around them could be the filmmakers’ way of showing that the man was falible. Or maybe they’re just smokers themselves, either way you wouldn’t get away with that sort of thing nowadays.
Needless to say there are plenty of laughs, and this isn’t a bad way to spend 107 minutes if you familiarised yourself with Hicks’s videos ten or twenty years ago and want a little more Billy. However, if that’s something you haven’t done, you migt be better off seeking out his stand up shows on Amazon (or YouTube if you’re stingy) first.