Cast: Bill Hicks, Kevin Booth, John Farneti

Directors: Matt Harlock, Paul Thomas

Routinely voted one of the best, all time stand-ups, Bill Hicks’ death at the age of 32 was tragic. Tragic for his family and friends and legions of fans, of course, but tragic for the world of comedy too, as his was a star that shone brightly (albeit never as brightly as deserved in his native United States) but all too briefly. Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas’s sterling documentary looks at Hicks’ life, exploring what drove him to stand-up comedy’s front line, and presenting the story of the man behind the on-stage agent provocateur.

Assembled from a collection of archive – some never before seen – material, interviews with family, friends and colleagues, and employing an innovative visual technique to manipulate static photographs of Bill into moving, three-dimensional sequences, Harlock and Thomas plot the story of Hicks from his formative years as the young son of a southern baptist couple (southern baptists were ‘even worse’ than fundamentalist christians, according to Hicks Sr) writing and performing comedy sketches with childhood friend and accomplice Kevin Booth, through his ascension amongst the comedy ranks, his flirtation with screenwriting, his much-, perhaps over-, documented substance abuse, and the contradiction at the heart of his overseas success yet native anonymity.

Ever since the young Bill Hicks crept out of his bedroom window to drive to the only open-mic comedy night in Houston, his career path was sealed. A natural on stage, he possessed a “strong constitution”, as his mother would put it, and a steadfast determination which not only steered him, as a minior, to local and later national comedy success, but which would, along with his religious upbringing, be integral in the formation and channeling of his own unique voice.

A staunch advocate for freedom of speach and opponent of censorship (his final TV appearance on the Letterman show which was contentiously never broadcast, is featured here), and inbued with an ever-present disgust at the so-called ‘the land of the free’, Hicks was a pioneer who, cliched as it sounds, was ahead of his time. A lone voice in the comedy scene of the 1980s and early 1990s and talent very much in the Lenny Bruce mold (after his initial Woody Alllen influence had been banished, that is), Hicks began a traditional gag and storyteller and morphed into a shock jock with a brain, before discovering his true purpose as a voice of right, reason and, in equal measure, revulsion in attacking and condemnining corruption, capitalism and religious hypocrisy.

Deeply personal, American paints the picture of a man who loved his family yet struggled to fathhom that which they stood for and supported, a man who loved his country and what it could, or should, be but loathed that which it was. Lovingly assembled, it is a look at the man as well as the myth which is heartfelt and, at times, moving – Hicks could not fail to see, when diagnosed witih cancer, that “the last laugh” was on him – and portrays a side of Bill rarely if ever captured in the collection of numnerous live recordings of his shows that exist. Slightly unevenly weighted perhaps (his later year clashes with mainstream America are presented in less detail than his school and early years) and interview footage with the man himself a conspicuous omission, American: The Bill Hicks Story is as much a tribute as exploration, but it is honest, powerfully told and refreshingly unsensationalist. More than that, though, it is a telling reminder that there are too few fighting his fight today.

By Alasdair Morton

American: The Bill Hicks Story is released 14th May courtesy of Verve Pictures.