Hopedance

It was originally published in England where comedian Bill Hicks had more popularity than in the US. (Soft Skull Press are the same folks who published the almost censored biography of George W. Bush called “Fortunate Son” after St. Martins caved in under pressure by the Bush family and their attorney, whose author allegedly committed suicide about a year after it was released.) In any event, this book is so funny. Damn do we need funny in these crazy times! And his routines are not just your run-of-the-mill jokes. This man Bill Hicks was on a mission to tell the truth, and he used the genre of comedian stand-up performance to be the preacher he always wanted to be. He was in that short line of comedians who are teachers, spiritual mentors and radical activists, as in Lennie Bruce, George Carlin and Bill Mahrer. If you haven’t seen or heard him, you have to learn about this very special man. We showed a film about him last year and not many people came. The striking aspect of Bill Hicks’ life is that he died suddenly when he was at the height of his career. He was about to write a column for The Nation magazine. He had audio tape deals, TV performances, gigs all throughout the country, and suddenly he gets a stomach ache whereby pancreatic cancer is the diagnosis. He has 3-4 months to live. In one story about it in the book, the author says there were no crying spasms, only a serious look at what he could do to complete his work in such a short time.

He was probably the only comic in the world who had only five stand up comedy gigs before he started to get paid, all the while being 15 years of age! He is brutally honest when it comes to marijuana and alcohol, advertisers, smoking, UFO abduction, Waco, sex, fundamentalist Christians, Gulf War I and others.

Here’s one about pot: “Marijuana grows all over the world, serves a thousand different functions. ALL of them positive. To make marijuana against the law is like saying God made a mistake. You know what I mean? It’s like God on the 7th day looked down on his creation, and he said, ‘There it is, my creation. Perfect and holy in all ways. Now I can rest... Oh my Me! I left fucking pot everywhere. I should never have smoked that joint on the third day, shit. Boy, if I leave pot everywhere, it’s gonna give people the impression they’re supposed to use it. Shit! Now I have to create Republicans.’”

We also learn the truth about why his show was canceled on Letterman’s show. The story is quite detailed. In fact Bill Hicks wrote a 32-page single-spaced handwritten letter explaining what had happened, which is copied in the book. Basically, the producer called him and said the CBS Standards and Practices people wanted to edit out certain jokes in his already taped performance, which everyone loved, from Letterman to the producer to everyone after the taping of the show. Bill Hicks was stunned about it all. He asked for a copy of the tape, and even though they promised to mail it to him that day they never did. Never. Well, when word gets out that Letterman was canceling a Bill Hicks performance, the mystery began to unfold. A fan of Bill’s wrote to the Letterman people about how outraged he was and criticized the CBS S&P people. Well, an executive actually wrote back and told him it was a producer decision and had nothing to do with CBS. The fan faxed it to Bill Hicks and flames started to fly. What he slowly discovered since no one wanted to tell exactly why the certain jokes needed to be edited out was that most if not all the jokes that needed to be edited (called hot points) dealt with pro-lifer Christian fundamentalists. And the Letterman show was advertising pro-life commercials. Of course this gave Bill Hicks much more comedic material about the media. Read all about it in the book.

- Bob Banner