American The Bill Hicks Story

Pepe SilviaPepe Silvia Posts: 3,758
edited January 2012 in A Moving Train
don't compete; coexist

what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?

"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama

when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments

  • Can't wait to see what the movie's like, hicks was an absolute legend. By far my favourite stand up comic.

  • I guess you'd be into him, given his connection to tool (I make reference to the quote from pushit in your name)
  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    I look forward to seeing this.
  • Pepe SilviaPepe Silvia Posts: 3,758
    matt_baker wrote:

    I guess you'd be into him, given his connection to tool (I make reference to the quote from pushit in your name)


    well, i do love tool but i'm a bigger radiohead fan who also dedicated an album to him
    don't compete; coexist

    what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?

    "I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama

    when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
    i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
  • catefrancescatefrances Posts: 29,003
    read his bio dont need to see a film. :P
    hear my name
    take a good look
    this could be the day
    hold my hand
    lie beside me
    i just need to say
  • StarfallStarfall Posts: 548
    I like Bill Hicks, and not just because I resemble him. :lol:
    "It's not hard to own something. Or everything. You just have to know that it's yours, and then be willing to let it go." - Neil Gaiman, "Stardust"
  • catefrancescatefrances Posts: 29,003
    Starfall wrote:
    I like Bill Hicks, and not just because I resemble him. :lol:

    yeah but are you funny???
    hear my name
    take a good look
    this could be the day
    hold my hand
    lie beside me
    i just need to say
  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    read his bio dont need to see a film. :P

    I read both his bio's. I still wanna see this film though. :P
  • StarfallStarfall Posts: 548
    Starfall wrote:
    I like Bill Hicks, and not just because I resemble him. :lol:

    yeah but are you funny???

    Absolutely! I ask a woman out and I'm met with howls of laughter every time. :lol:
    "It's not hard to own something. Or everything. You just have to know that it's yours, and then be willing to let it go." - Neil Gaiman, "Stardust"
  • timctimc Posts: 664
    true genius he was!
    Brad was inspired by bill for this print! Glad I have one!

    0:126660.jpg
  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    Starfall wrote:
    I ask a woman out and I'm met with howls of laughter every time. :lol:

    That's why it's advisable to lay off the Daffy Duck impersonation when going in for the kill.
  • StarfallStarfall Posts: 548
    Byrnzie wrote:
    Starfall wrote:
    I ask a woman out and I'm met with howls of laughter every time. :lol:

    That's why it's advisable to lay off the Daffy Duck impersonation when going in for the kill.

    Well darn... I had my "Sylvester does Star Wars" act down pat too.
    "It's not hard to own something. Or everything. You just have to know that it's yours, and then be willing to let it go." - Neil Gaiman, "Stardust"
  • catefrancescatefrances Posts: 29,003
    Byrnzie wrote:
    Starfall wrote:
    I ask a woman out and I'm met with howls of laughter every time. :lol:

    That's why it's advisable to lay off the Daffy Duck impersonation when going in for the kill.

    especially if you wear no clothes like he does. ;):lol:
    hear my name
    take a good look
    this could be the day
    hold my hand
    lie beside me
    i just need to say
  • catefrancescatefrances Posts: 29,003
    Byrnzie wrote:
    read his bio dont need to see a film. :P

    I read both his bio's. I still wanna see this film though. :P

    i have an aversion to film versions of books ive read.

    both? i read the one by cynthia true.. american scream.
    hear my name
    take a good look
    this could be the day
    hold my hand
    lie beside me
    i just need to say
  • mehayyyyahhhhh!!!! I love Bill. He is my hero. I'm a shmuck.
    Everything not forbidden is compulsory and eveything not compulsory is forbidden. You are free... free to do what the government says you can do.
  • Drowned OutDrowned Out Posts: 6,056
    I love Hicks and watch his stuff on youtube frequently...but I've noticed recently that he doesn't make me laugh like other comedians I like...:? He makes me think more than laugh...he's like this manic self-help preacher guy....awesome.
  • Pepe SilviaPepe Silvia Posts: 3,758
    Byrnzie wrote:
    read his bio dont need to see a film. :P

    I read both his bio's. I still wanna see this film though. :P

    i have an aversion to film versions of books ive read.

    both? i read the one by cynthia true.. american scream.


    that's the one i've read, the last chapter or 2 were hard to get through, i took a break for a few weeks when i got near the end reading about how much pain he was in. i think a biography being made into a movie is different than a novel being made into one and am hoping this will turn out good like that bio on the trio channel a few years ago, the outlaw comic or whatever it was called
    don't compete; coexist

    what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?

    "I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama

    when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
    i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
  • FiveB247xFiveB247x Posts: 2,330
    Bill Hicks Outlaw Comic Documentary
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAnjWHP7KAc
    that's the one i've read, the last chapter or 2 were hard to get through, i took a break for a few weeks when i got near the end reading about how much pain he was in. i think a biography being made into a movie is different than a novel being made into one and am hoping this will turn out good like that bio on the trio channel a few years ago, the outlaw comic or whatever it was called
    CONservative governMENt

    Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
  • Pepe SilviaPepe Silvia Posts: 3,758
    FiveB247x wrote:
    Bill Hicks Outlaw Comic Documentary
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAnjWHP7KAc
    that's the one i've read, the last chapter or 2 were hard to get through, i took a break for a few weeks when i got near the end reading about how much pain he was in. i think a biography being made into a movie is different than a novel being made into one and am hoping this will turn out good like that bio on the trio channel a few years ago, the outlaw comic or whatever it was called


    yep, that's it!
    don't compete; coexist

    what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?

    "I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama

    when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
    i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
  • FiveB247xFiveB247x Posts: 2,330
    It's a great watch... check it out people.
    FiveB247x wrote:
    Bill Hicks Outlaw Comic Documentary
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAnjWHP7KAc
    that's the one i've read, the last chapter or 2 were hard to get through, i took a break for a few weeks when i got near the end reading about how much pain he was in. i think a biography being made into a movie is different than a novel being made into one and am hoping this will turn out good like that bio on the trio channel a few years ago, the outlaw comic or whatever it was called


    yep, that's it!
    CONservative governMENt

    Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    both? i read the one by cynthia true.. american scream.

    Bill Hicks: Agent of Evolution
    - Kevin Booth

    9780007198306-crop-325x325.jpg
  • CommyCommy Posts: 4,984
    Bill Hicks is the man. Still inspiring.

    Think for yourself. The end.
  • Pepe SilviaPepe Silvia Posts: 3,758
    Byrnzie wrote:
    both? i read the one by cynthia true.. american scream.

    Bill Hicks: Agent of Evolution
    - Kevin Booth

    9780007198306-crop-325x325.jpg


    how was that compared to american scream.? i guess it has a lot more info since they grew up together
    don't compete; coexist

    what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?

    "I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama

    when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
    i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    Bill-Hicks-006.jpg

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/may ... f-comments

    American: The Bill Hicks Story

    A worthy tribute to the late, great comedian and iconoclast Bill Hicks. By Andrew Pulver
    4 out of 5

    Andrew Pulver
    guardian.co.uk, Thursday 13 May 2010



    Ever since Bill Hicks's death in 1994 at the age of 32, the Texan comic has been subject to a creeping lionisation that has promoted him gradually into the upper reaches of those all-time greatest lists magazines and TV channels love to establish. I personally have never had a great deal of time for Hicks's shouty, hectoring comedy – it's like being trapped in a room with a sociology student who's just drunk a dozen espressos – but this is a really interesting film biography of him, mining the deepest reaches of his childhood and adolescence to produce a thoroughly convincing and detailed portrait.

    Film-makers Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas – both British – are lucky that Hicks's family and childhood pals were happy to unburden themselves to camera, and fill in the blanks of Hicks's early years; they're even luckier that they mastered an impressive-looking cut-and-paste animation technique that allows their film to rise above the usual talking-heads-and-snapshots visuals that such films are normally forced to rely on.

    Hicks, it turns out, had a fairly unexceptional upbringing in Houston, the child of strict Baptist parents; his main motivation, at the start, was to get the hell away from them. His sometime writing and performing partner, Dwight Slade, tells some sweet little stories about how they discovered the local comedy club as high-schoolers in the 1970s; it was there that Hicks had his first taste of fame, as an unlikely teenage star of the Texan comedy circuit. His early inspirations were Woody Allen and, more revealingly, Richard Pryor; it was on the latter he apparently modelled his ambition to push the comedy envelope whenever possible. But it's one detail that makes sense of Hicks's later self-destruction; he'd never tasted alcohol until he was 21. And when he did, he fell off the wagon, big time. Ironically, the booze was the main weapon in triggering the abusive, pissed-off persona that gave him his subsequent comedy identity.

    Harlock and Thomas take us through Hicks's turbulent career: after stand-up success in Texas, he headed off to LA where, like every two-bit John Belushi wannabe, he and Slade tried to get a movie script off the ground. Their script, The Suburbs, never got made; for some never-explained reason, Hicks lost interest. Had it happened, Hicks could have gone global like his idols; instead, he ended up back in Texas hugging a microphone and making the best of it.

    This, no doubt, accounts for his status as the comedians' comedian; he was never sullied by Hollywood success, he remained purely a club comic. Harlock and Thomas detail his heart-rending battle with alcoholism, which at first inspired and then impaired his rapport with his audience. Fortunately Hicks's career coincided with the age of the camcorder: there's quite a bit of grainy footage of his hard-stare, high-decibel sermonising to give us a flavour of his live act.

    You don't have to be genius, though, to see that by the end it was getting out of hand, and there's a fascinating switch of Hicks's mood in the year before he died. Hicks, as a Texan, was appalled by the Waco siege in 1993, and used it as a focus for his anti-government tirades. You can actually see an American tide turning; the moment where the leftwing rage of the 1970s and 80s morphed into the rightwing libertarian paranoia that is still with us today.

    Be that as it may, Harlock and Thomas have done their subject justice; you can understand, if not necessarily applaud, Hicks's pre-eminence among stand-up comics. It makes it all the sadder that David Letterman, one of their own, should have cut Hicks's last TV performance. He didn't deserve it.
  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    Byrnzie wrote:
    both? i read the one by cynthia true.. american scream.

    Bill Hicks: Agent of Evolution
    - Kevin Booth

    9780007198306-crop-325x325.jpg


    how was that compared to american scream.? i guess it has a lot more info since they grew up together

    Yeah, it's bigger and has more detail. They're both very good books, but the Kevin Booth biography is the better book all round.
  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    I watched this today. It's very good. Very cleverly made.

    There's also a lot of footage of him I've not seen before, including some of the his earliest shows.
  • Pepe SilviaPepe Silvia Posts: 3,758
    Byrnzie wrote:
    I watched this today. It's very good. Very cleverly made.

    There's also a lot of footage of him I've not seen before, including some of the his earliest shows.


    have you seen that little boxset they released a month or so ago? two cds and two dvds of stuff, though, one dvd is his and kevin booth's early movie ninja bachelor party and things like that.
    don't compete; coexist

    what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?

    "I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama

    when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
    i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
  • within the comedy community of the anarcho/dick joke ilk (The Unbookables, see "Jesus Loves Doug Stanhope") there is a general disdain for Kevin Booth, and it's spreading. Kevin Booth is generally seen as a great friend of Bill's who used his death to make money. "Hey, I knew Bill Hicks, want to buy some merchandise that I've licensed?" But I'd still like to see this.
    Everything not forbidden is compulsory and eveything not compulsory is forbidden. You are free... free to do what the government says you can do.
  • BinauralJamBinauralJam Posts: 14,158
    This man is my Absolute Hero, i had no idea this was being made, Outstanding!!!
    Going to see this, going to own this.

    I never disagreed with a single point of his, kind of freaks me out, but then, maybe he got it right.
  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    Byrnzie wrote:
    I watched this today. It's very good. Very cleverly made.

    There's also a lot of footage of him I've not seen before, including some of the his earliest shows.


    have you seen that little boxset they released a month or so ago? two cds and two dvds of stuff, though, one dvd is his and kevin booth's early movie ninja bachelor party and things like that.

    Nah, not seen that.
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