American: The Bill Hicks Story (2009, Dir: Matt Harlock, Paul Thomas)

I’ve been a fan of Hicks since around 1995 – a year after his death from pancreatic cancer – and over the years I’ve amassed all of his official records, plus more than a handful of bootlegs, and devoured both biographies written on him. So there’s not a lot left to say about the great comedian that hasn’t already been said.

Harlock and Thomas’ film paints a portrait of the comedian from his childhood through to his untimely death, with a raft of archive footage and unseen photographs. Of the two books, the film tends to follow the path of Cynthia True’s original biography American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story, telling his story according to everybody who knew him. The film doesn’t get under his skin in the same way as best friend Kevin Booth’s 2006 biography Agent Of Evolution, although Booth is one of the guiding voices throughout the documentary.

Eschewing the traditional talking-head format of retrospective documentaries, the film makes full use of that newfangled computer software that seems to be very popular at the moment: photographs are turned into moving images against interactive backgrounds, to conjure up a visual image of what the interviewee happens to be saying at that moment. Although it’s nice to see this occasionally (I mean, who wants to see repeated close-ups of unfamiliar faces on a huge cinema screen for 2 hours), this gets tiresome after a while. Aside from a few short segments where we actually see the face of the speaker, the entire documentary is presented in this way.

Is the film funny? Yes, without a doubt. There are enough anecdotes relayed by Hicks’ family and friends to keep the audience amused, without even mentioning the wealth of material of Hicks performing stand-up. Although the readily available footage is represented (Sane Man, One Night Stand, Revelations, Relentless: Live In Montreal), there are numerous camcorder clips of him performing from his very early parent-centric years to his very final days obsessed with politics and the death of the American dream.

Thankfully the documentary should serve one obvious purpose – to teach those uninitiated with Hicks of the marvel of his intellect and wit. Watching Hicks perform stand-up is like a breath of fresh air – many comics simply recite jokes and mix in some observational humour. At his best, Hicks is a history lesson, a current affairs lecture and a theory of how things should be. Best not to take it all too seriously; as the man would say, “It’s only a ride.”