Review of American: The Bill Hicks Story (2010) by Mike M — 11 May 2010

The chronological approach points up the progression (or evolution, as Hicks himself would have phrased it) in the comedian's stagecraft. The harder Hicks drank, the more ferocious (and thus compelling) he became - but when he sobered up, and had to reconstruct both himself and his worldview, his act achieved a greater clarity, one able to distill that rage into something altogether more edifying and constructive; only then did he find the message and the rhythms that have since entered into lore.

There is a sense, within the film, that Hicks's story counts for less than the routines, that the biographical element comes as filler between each provocative snatch of performance; here was a man who (in all senses) found himself, and continued to find himself, on stage, even as his body was subject to the agonies of pancreatic cancer.

(And talk about clarity amid chaos: these early 90s routines - sets that managed that rare combo of funny *and* angry, which managed to pin down exactly the right image or turn of phrase - suggest there was no sharper critic of American foreign policy or the crass commercialism of the period.

) As a primer for the unenlightened, or an illustrated companion to John Lahr's Hicks anthology "Love All the People", it'll do just fine.