It was so different. For example, the “if you work in advertising go kill yourself” bit. I don’t love that bit, but it gets a lot of play because it’s emblematic of his later style. And it’s not about the “go kill yourself”. That’s the shock that brings people in and makes them pay attention. The bit is about how the advertisers and marketers react to being told to kill themselves. It’s not about the anger, it’s about using the anger as a springboard for satire. That’s why he is different from someone like Lewis Black (who I like). He isn’t just ranting and raging. He rants and rages a little and then tries to show you why he is ranting by paining his perspective as clearly as possible. If you see things through his eyes the world starts to become absurd.
The anger is the hook, but the rest of it is the meat. It’s layered. Leary comes closest to doing the same sort of thing, and I think he is a lot less subtle.
Personally, I like the stuff like the Jack Palance bit a lot more, or the early bit they showed about his father, and a lot of his stuff is like that if you watch his whole act. But the stuff that people remember, that they link to, is the the more shocking stuff like the “go kill yourself” bit.
in terms of the view that he’s sometimes interesting but not too funny, i’ve laughed harder at other comedians, but he’s given me some belly laughs. i have to say though, that i love his stuff even when i’m not rolling around. i just love watching the guy speak. he makes me think and he makes me care. there’s worse ways to spend an hour
See, this conversation is getting me somewhere. I can understand how these points, if true, would be very important to the profession.
To me, this might be a bit of a zeitgeist thing, because in the age of the internet, we’re all marketers and advertisers and promoters. People like Marc Maron are trying to be honest and real, but they’re also working hard to promote themselves, and they’re happy to bring commerce into it. I think society has matured into the view that art is also commerce, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe Jimi Hendrix would have considered endorsements a bad thing, but today I wouldn’t hold that against my favourite artist.
I understand what you go on to say here, but I find that rather disgusting. In any case I don’t think this really addresses the substance of the bit.
I’m not sure who would do his gays in the military bit today either. Have you heard or watched that one?
“Here’s how I feel about [gays in the military], alright: Anyone dumb enough to want to be in the military should be allowed in. End of fucking story. That should be the only requirement. … I’ve watched these fucking Congressional hearings and all these military guys and all the pundits ‘oh, the esprit d’corps will be affected, and we’re suck a moral’- excuse me, aren’t y’all fucking hired killers? Shut up!”
I think it does address the substance. Can we look behind his statement that marketers and advertisers actually ruin everything? Is that true? Aren’t we all given access to all kinds of things that we value due to someone’s act of advertising or marketing? Now, one might argue that certain spheres of life – such as schools – should be free of advertising and marketing to some extent. But, really, we are all selling something, aren’t we, even if we believe that what we’re selling offers more than just commercial value?
What it doesn’t address is the aesthetics, and the aesthetics are that I didn’t find it funny.
Yes, that was part of the documentary. And, yeah, maybe no one would say it that way, but at the same time, I’d have to say that he’s really just preaching. One might agree or disagree with him on a question of politics or social morality, but it wasn’t funny. He wasn’t performing or entertaining. He was lecturing. I’d say the same thing about his flag-burning bit.
Now, if as Biffer Spice says, this kind of courage encouraged other comedians to go downthis path and to produce work that was courageous as well as entertaining and funny, then yeah, I can see what Hicks’s importance is. But Standing alone, I don’t see how Hicks was all that great a comedian.
Hey, I’m with ya. According to some in this thread, Hicks was a trendsetter, a groundbreaker, an insightful man who spoke truth to power. Some of that may be true, to varying degrees, but one thing he ain’t is funny. And I don’t know what you call a ranty, unfunny comedian – a lunatic? A street corner performer? Pathetic? Not worth caring about, that’s for sure.
Meh, says I. And I’m really easy to please in the comedy department!
Possibly a case of what TVTropes likes to call Seinfeld is Unfunny. While there was angry stand up before Hick’s act, most of the popular angry comedians who followed were influenced by him.
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I’m not a fan myself, but I didn’t hear him til long after I’d heard Black, Leary, and Paravonian . . .
I think, simply, a comedienne is one who highlights hypocrisy, novelly, in a “buffet” market is simply the contemperaneous best. We want to be reminded of the painfull parts of ourselves in a nouveau and horse laugh manner. A jewish way. If you don’t get it… then you are probably a polititically rigid, self absorbed, retarded receiver of comedy who wears their own special prejudiced back brace. You are the scoleosis of comedy.
I guess what I like most about Hicks was the range his comedy had. He could say something incredibly thought-provoking and follow it up with one of his self-described :“dick jokes”.
I always loved his pithy summary of hellfire and brimstone Christianity: “Eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God’s infinite love”.
And I find it downright eerie that he predicted, the WMD brouhaha in the runup to the Iraqi war, which happened nine years after he died (although the coincidence of a second president Bush made it seem even more prescient):
Reporter: President Bush, how do you know Saddam has weapons of mass destruction?
President Bush: We looked at the receipt!
And possibly his best ‘dick joke’ was his lamenting of the for-cable editing of porn movies in the hotels he stayed at. When he checked out the next morning, the clerk asked him if there was anything that could have made his stay better.
i think he’s funny. why not just say “he’s not for me”. it’s not a right or wrong thing. it’s a taste thing. he’s not yours. that’s fine. is he my taste? yes. yes he is.
Really? You need me to explicitly say that comedy is a subjective matter of opinion and one’s mileage may vary? Really? You need that clarification? Fine, pretend I said it rather than took it as obviously implied.
I think you’re trying to be clever, but really, you’re not very good at it. You can’t mix phrases like “nouveau” and “horse laugh manner;” it’s just awkward. But I know you’ve got it in you to do better, champ! Here’s a tip for when you get back on that horse (which is hopefully laughing) and try again: don’t refer to Hicks as a “comedienne.” That word (a) is currently being deprecated and (b) applies only to females, which I’m pretty sure Hicks was not.
On a related note, I was recently informed by a real estate agent that Bill Hicks used to live in my current Manhattan apartment building*. Which means he could have possibly lived in my actual apartment (a 1/15 shot)! I live on W 51st, just a few blocks from the old **Improv **and the current Caroline’s - where Hicks did his last stand up performance.
*The agent was helping me attempt to move out of this building, so it wasn’t like he was trying to make the building sound more appealing. Not exactly a GD worthy cite, but still pretty cool I think.
Hicks is tricky to handle. His work was very, very topical and rooted in the early-90s zeitgeist. A lot of his work is very dated, and elements of his style have been refined by later performers.
But the guy was groundbreaking, bold, and absolutely died too early. I think it’s worth noting that most really good comics start finding widespread acceptance and really polishing their material right around the age Hicks died. His work was on an upswing, and I think his last couple albums hold up well.
I cannot bear it when comedians mistake ear-puncturing noise for comedy. It’s obnoxious and almost always unintelligible, and leaves me irritated.
Kinison (whom I met several times and found to be very sweet) was about the only one I can think of who knew how to scream without being irritating and without garbling what he was trying to convey.
I don’t find that Hicks spends much time at all yelling. He is usually very calm and conversational in tone and volume occasionally punctuated my angry tone and more rarely by a raised voice. Not that he never yelled ever but yelling wasn’t his thing like it was with, for example, Kinison.
With a few exceptions, I don’t really think Hicks did.
His screaming and noisemaking seemed mostly to stem from actual freakouts, either at hecklers or due to being a severe alcoholic for much of his early career.
I think he may have seen screaming as a fundamental element of his act, but I don’t think he thought it was funny.
Hicks is one of the only comedians whose material, in my opinion, often works better on paper. When I was in the UK a few years ago, I bought a book that collected transcripts of many of his recorded concerts. It’s a funny read, and it’s really interesting to see how his jokes morphed over time.
But that’s not what the bit is about, at all. It’s about people who are so greedy that everything is about money. It’s exactly what people still think today, and the reason the RIAA and MPAA are both hated so much. It’s why free software is such a big deal. People object to a society where value is established solely by money.
More people likely identify with him now than did then. That’s why, when he said it, it was so shocking.
I remember thinking his Iraq War, “looks like we’ve got a reader” and Cure for AIDS bits were amazing. I don’t find him as funny now but I suppose 20 years have passed. He died very young . His comedy is a bit of a time capsule of the times he lived in.
That’s entirely untrue. The people whomhate the RIAA and MPAA are the ones who have taken it upon themselves to decide for someone else when and how they should rank monetary value. It’s Group A deciding on behalf of Group B “Hey, you know what? I think you’ve made enough money by practicing your profession, so what I’m going to do is take the ordinary exchange for value (A’s money for enjoyment of B’s output) and just eliminate the part that obliges me to contribute value to the exchange without giving you the option to turn down the deal.”
No, they’re not doing that. They just want something for nothing.
If that were true, people would be making copies of works only when they have permission to.
You can fucking bet if ahicks were alive today he’d still want to get paid for doing the work that he had spent a lifetime working on. His “marketing” rant is pretty lazy because he never really identifies specifically what the problem is. Anyone who produces something – like standup comedy – wants to find the people who are willing to pay for it. And that’s exactly the role of advertising and marketing. That’s true whether you’re a doctor or a teacher or a musician or an author or a plumber or a software engineer or a video game developer or a comedian. Anyone who has spent a life perfecting a skill wants 1. Consumers who are interested in consuming the product of that work and 2. The option to set terms for exchange. While some people might choose to make their work product free for some of their activities, there is always something that they’re going to want to demand the right to exchange monetary value for. And the basis of such a decision is yhe right to withhold your wirk product from
people who reject your terms. And it shouldn’t be in the hands of only one side of that transaction to decide unilaterally, “Know what? I am an engineer and I only give my work product to those who are willing to negotiate for it, but you? What you produce is “art” and I value it enough that I’m going to take it and enjoy it, but I’m going to deny you the right to withhold your work product from me mid you don’t like it, there’s nothing you can do about it. You should have liked engineering instead if art if you wanted that right.”
It seems to me that Hicks struggled his whole life trying to do exactly that –
More people likely identify with him now than did then. That’s why, when he said it, it was so shocking.
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. His comedy is a bit of a time capsule of the times he lived in.