What was interesting about this particular documentary was that it was made as (what I've googled and found out to be called) a 'photo-animated' feature. Basically to illustrate events without the aid of video footage, the producers overlaid cutouts from photographs onto appropriate scenes and animations. So for a story about how as kids Bill and his buddies had driven into town in a camper van, there was an animation of said van burning along a road, with the cutout faces of the boys leaning out the windows. It may sound a bit tacky and Monty Pythonish, but it actually worked very well, not only providing a nice visual backdrop to the narration, but also allowing for underlying themes to be brought out via the drawings.
Probably because I listened to his stuff last when I was young and fired up myself, I remembered Hicks's comedy mainly for its acerbic wit and unconventialism. He was stuck in my mind as an angry rebel, not least because of his frank admission of drug and alcohol abuse, and this tapped into my mood at the time - impatient to find answers in the world, and scornful of the accepted ones. Knowing that he had had his vices, and also had died young, I admit I had an image of him which was too dominated by these facts, not least that I assumed they were related. This seemed to be confirmed as the story got to his dark phase, showing not just how he had dived headlong into the wild and rough life, but how it had seemed to prove beneficially catharthic for him, allowing him to really break completely free from convention and find what was to be his unique groove. Being under the impression that this was the final stage of his life, and that he had simply self combusted in a blaze of fame and pharmaceuticals like so many before him, I have to admit at this point while I still was impressed with the guy, I was slightly scornufl. I guess my thoughts were that its all well and good having this crazy phase, but no one can live like that forever, and what I'm always interested in is how great people handle the mundane times, as well as the mad ones; to be able to say something about real life, they have to live it too. But soon I realised I had wronged him, as the movie went on to detail not only how he had kicked his worst habits, but also how he had realised (and gone on to prove with his continued success) that although they might have once been what was needed to liberate him, he no longer needed them and in fact they were holding him back. Given his formative relationship with these things, and how young he still was, this I found a very impressive insight. Often it's so easy for such young talent to be too entwined with this kind of lifestyle, and its rare to see it truly break free, probably because it so often kills them before they even have the chance, (and we never do find out which is the dancer, and which the dance).
But with all due respect, Hicks didn't follow this path, and manage to keep his style, without the substances. Which makes it then so tragically ironic that he died young anyway, snuffed out by pancreatic cancer, something which, no matter how prejudiced one might be inclined to be, I don't think can be linked to his lifestyle (it's an odd coincidence that the day after I watched this Steve Jobs, died of the same condition).
There were two other things that hit me from this movie. One was from seeing the clips of his early teenage sketches juxtaposed with his later adult stage work; you could see the same look in those eyes, the same expressions, albeit padded out with age, and it was thought provoking to see the same person show through despite the long duration. There's a way in which we die many times in our lives, as our former selves fall by the wayside, so it's good to see examples of how the underlying personality can still live on. The other was how he seemed to always have a healthy and strong bond to his family, despite using them a source of comedy, and being notably different from them (they seemed to be quite fundamentalist, but in way seemed almost to treat it like Woody Allen sometimes protrayed being Jewish : it was a cultural lifestyle rather than an actual belief; religion first, and meh, maybe God later). He was a bit of a rebel, but he was kicking against the world, not against them as such, and his abrasive wit wasn't an outpouring of bitterness or resentment, it was just taking no shit from this world, nothing personal. This 'normal' side of him was brought into extreme focus in how he ended his life, spending his last days alone with his family and friends. A long way from a bathtub in Paris which is the sort of final scene I had always had in my head. This normality I think imbues him I think with a seriousness that would otherwise have been lacking; with it in mind, he can't be dismissed or ignored as some simple maverick outside the fold. He was very much in society, and acknowledged and appreciated its better parts, even as he castigated the rest.
But even still, he did die young, and it is worth wondering how his style would have developed. Would he have continued, do any of them? I think I read once that mathematicians peak in their early 30s, and wonder if the Hicks style of comedy, would also have followed such an arc. It's hard to push the envelope for ever, since one can only be surprised with the world when one hasn't been in it that long.
Is that really the case? Does habituation settle in as we settle down? Is it just the young who are angry with the absurdity of the world? Is it only the young, like Hicks was, who can produce such vivacious vitriol, and, on the otherside of the lights or screen, only we when we're young who have the stomach to consume it? What happens us when we get older? Did we find the answers we were shouting for? Or have we just given up looking? I guess roles and responsibilities come to dominate our lives, and there's just less time to tut and think about how the world should be, since we're so busy dealing with how it actually is. Would Hicks have mellowed out if he'd lived to an older age? It's an interesting question, and one I have to wonder about when I realise I'm older now than he ever reached.
At the very least, watching this documentary about a man who broke the mould in many ways,reminds me how easy it is to become stuck in the 'feathered rut' . We need to occasionally pinch and remind ourselves that we don't need to placidly accept the world as it is, become inured to its what's bad in man or good in nature, or the absurdity of both. Not that that the settled mature life isn't fine place to be, but it's always good to remember that even if not in the gutter, we still should keep on looking at the stars. And shake our fist at them the odd time too. And be grateful for the likes of Bill Hicks, who even when gone from this world, can jolt us out of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment