Profiling: Bill Hicks, Misanthropic Humanist

Today marks the fifteenth anniversary of a tragically little-known event in television history. Comedian Bill Hicks had just taped his twefth appearance on the Letterman show, and, as he later said, the first in which he felt he had truly been himself, when the phone rang in his hotel room. A producer on the show informed him that, despite the fact that his act had been screened and approved prior to the taping, CBS’s Standards & Practices division had found it “unsuitable for broadcast” and that his performance would not air. Among the “hot button” topics he touched on were abortion (“If you're so pro-life, do me a favor – don’t lock arms and block medical clinics. If you’re so pro-life, lock arms and block cemeteries.”) and religion (“I think it's interesting how people act on their beliefs. A lot of Christians, for instance, wear crosses around their necks. Nice sentiment, but do you think that when Jesus comes back, he’s really going to want to look at a cross?”). As Hicks would later write, “Not since Elvis was censored from the waist down has a performer, a comic, performing on the very same stage, been so censored - now from the neck up - in America. For telling jokes.”

Unbeknowst at the time to anyone outside of his immediate family and his managers, Hicks was dying of pancreatic cancer, to which he would finally succumb on February 26, 1994, at the age of 32. On that day, freethinkers everywhere lost a great champion. A fearless enemy of hypocrites, warmongers, and simpletons, Hicks was often demonically crude in his condemnations of the puritanical strain of American culture, but he was ever optimistic about the potential for humanity to “evolve ideas”.

Bill Hicks grew up in a suburb of Houston, but he always felt like some alien Moses whose parents had discovered him in a basket on their perfectly manicured lawn. Hicks sometimes reminds me of a sort of layman’s William Burroughs, who once said to Kerouac, “Besides I’m just a hidden agent from another planet and the trouble is I dont know why they sent me, I’ve forgotten the goddam message dearies.” Hicks spent his entire life trying to find that message, at first through Transcendental Meditation, later with psilocybin mushrooms. The mushrooms helped him to the conclusion that humans have a unified consciousness; the problem was reconciling this idea with the reality of widespread ignorance. The paradox is aptly summed up in his statement to the effect that if you don’t love everyone equally, you can shut the fuck up. But one of the most touching and revealing stories of Hicks’ character is his attempt to get his dad to take mushrooms with him. It’s a microcosm of his mission, of his faith that humanity is better than the “suckers of satan’s cock” on TV, that people would understand him and join him in his quest for a rational, free future for humanity, if only they would listen. Unfortunately, many people never got the chance. So I’ll let him speak for himself. Here are some of my favorite Bill Hicks moments.

Perhaps the best document of a full Bill Hicks performance is his self-produced video, Sane Man, now available on DVD. Videos from later in his career show him in a large theater setting, but here Hicks is truly in his element, in a nightclub in Austin, Texas.



The masterpiece of Hicks’ discography is unquestionably Rant in E-Minor. In this and his other posthumously released album, Arizona Bay (a concept album about Los Angeles falling into the ocean), Hicks introduced musical interludes and backgrounds. The result is a comedy album that stands up to repeated listening, just as Hicks wished.



Hicks’ combative style predictably caused tension between him and his audiences, as can be heard in any number of bootlegs. This clip is perhaps the most infamous incident, but note how he returns to a self-deprecating attempt at reconciliation at the end.



When he had a responsive audience, as he often did in England, where this video was filmed, Hicks was a genius. He ended this performance in his customary way, wrapping up with a heartfelt call for peace, followed by miming his own assassination.



Looking back on Hicks’ work now, it strikes me how prescient he was. He railed against all the most disturbing trends in contemporary American society: the shameless branding of absolutely everything, the cozy relationship between government and media, and the rise of Christian fundamentalists, to name a few. The amazing thing about him, though, was his brilliant balancing act between righteous indignation, biting wit, and plain old goofiness. And God, was he funny. He was one of a kind, but I wish there were a couple more of him around.