20/20 Filmsight - Film Criticism by David O'Connell

It’s hard to overstate the influence of Bill Hicks. The infamous American stand-up comedian may have passed away in 1994, but his counterculture clout still runs deep.

And ‘infamous’ seems to slowly be turning into ‘famous’. Ever since he succumbed to pancreatic cancer at the young age of 32, Hicks’s popularity has been on the rise, the rapid-fire logic of his routines remaining startlingly relevant.

It’s a little odd then that American: The Bill Hicks Story is the first real silver screen look at the Texan comic’s life. Still, good things come to those who wait: this is an exceptional documentary, put together with some style by British filmmakers Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas.

In the most basic sense, this is a straightforward document of Hicks’s life, beginning with his birth in the early sixties and running a 100 minute b-line to his death in 1994. But the trick is in the telling. Harlock and Thomas have for the most part done away with talking heads, the film buzzing along on continuous stream of cut-and-paste animation, photos of Hicks, his family and friends being manipulated into a world that is totally immersive.

It can be disconcerting at first, Hicks’s family members and friends not appearing onscreen as they run through the anecdotes, but the After Effects-created world that the filmmakers set up turns out to be far more interesting. It keeps everything well-paced and on-point, the film galloping along towards its conclusion.

Not that you should interpret the technique to be in any way corner-cutting laziness. The sheer number of photos gathered, of Hicks, his friends and family, is simply astounding. You get to know the comedian far better than you would have ever thought possible when he was alive.

Hicks had a fairly unremarkable upbringing, the son of Baptist parents and youngest of three children by five years: the filmmakers – and Hicks’s mother – suggest the age gap as a reason for his individualistic nature. By the age of 15, he and partner in crime, Dwight Slade, were sneaking out of their houses at night and driving down to a Houston comedy club. The partnership would be broken up with Slade’s family moving interstate, but Hicks continued in stand-up and soon made a name for himself.

The film dexterously charts these early years, Hicks’s subsequent move to Los Angeles, his slip into substance abuse in his early twenties, and then his sobering up – proposing that the booze and drugs left him with the permanently pissed-off personality that would light a fire in the bellys of many audience members, and put a flame under the arses of others.

The animation is cut in with plenty of live footage, some of it that won’t have been seen by even the most die-hard Hicks fan. It only takes a few of these performances to remind you of the guy’s succinct genius: every joke was couched in political or social commentary, delivered like the American smart bombs he loved to hate. Harlock and Thomas diligently show the more hopeful side of Hicks too – he could on occasion be remarkably tender, both in his private life and onstage.

If there’s a weakness with the American: The Bill Hicks Story, it’s that it perhaps doesn’t go quite deep enough into some aspects of Hick’s personal life, plot sometimes taking precedence over the character. Still, this is a brilliantly executed and very touching documentary, the kind of film you suspect Hicks himself would be very proud of.


I say: A superior documentary and a fine testament to the life and times of Bill Hicks.

See it for: If not the stand-up routines, then the brilliant way in which the filmmakers have applied story to screen.