American: The Bill Hicks Story

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Everyone comfy?

Get comfy!

Get comfy!

Cos the show's about to start!

Who do you ever pay to talk?

Maybe a preacher.

Maybe a lecturer. Possibly a politician.

But even those rarely.

Comedians are the only ones

that you pay to hear 'em talk.

Talk to me, make me listen.

News is supposed to be objective.

Isn't it supposed to be?

The news!

But every drug story is negative.

Oh, well, hold it!

I've had some killer f*cking times on drugs.

Let's hear the whole story.

What Bill said will never change,

because it is the basic truths

and they are never wrong.

Plenty of people say

he is the best American comedian

the country has ever produced

and he was only 32 when he died.

- His influence lives on.

- Bill Hicks!

Get out. You're everything that America

should be flushed down the toilet.

You turd. Get out!

"Hey, buddy, we're

Christians. We don't like what you said."

I said, "Then forgive me."

# The sergeant sent me

and my men on a search

# He wanted us to go out

and get the lay of the land

# We were to find

# Any people who might be

# The enemies of man...

Free yourself, folks. You're right.

You're right. Not those f*ckers

who want to tell you how to think.

You're f*cking right!

Sorry, wrong meeting. Again.

I keep getting my days mixed up.

From the moment I met Bill,

throughout our life, it was about laughs.

Cos I think our parents were just happy

being comfortable. "Can we just be quiet?

"And can we just go to church and be

distracted by our religion? It's orderly here. "

Growing up in that environment

you start to get a little antsy,

because clearly

there has to be something more.

Lyndon Johnson talked

about the great society back in the '60s

and I think he was keying into something

and that was

that America's so wealthy and powerful

that we have to do

something responsible with it.

We're gonna defeat poverty,

we're gonna do the Peace Corps

or we're gonna make the world a better place.

And then I think that Vietnam stalled that.

So the generation that Bill and I came out of

was, we were looking around going,

"Well, there's got to be something else

we can do with all this. "

Bill was, uh...

I don't know, I just... He was interesting.

All of my children were special.

I had a girl. I had only a girl.

Then I had a boy.

And then I had a baby.

There was definitely something there that was

different from Steve and Lynn growing up.

But Bill... You should have known him,

is all I can say.

They were so much older.

Five and seven years' difference

is a lot of difference.

You couldn't do anything with him.

He was too little at that point.

Bill was seven

when we got to Houston.

Then we stayed there 12, 13 years.

Yeah.

He was just another kid

playing sports, you know.

It wasn't evident yet

where his life was gonna go.

And, of course,

by then he had met Dwight.

What I noticed about him is

he was fast. He had a real strong constitution.

He could do things better and longer

than everyone else.

An unbelievable scrambler.

I was fast but I wasn't a very good scrambler

but I watched him and I just picked him apart

about what he was doing,

then I was scrambling all the way

to the end zone, no one would touch me.

After we'd played a few times,

I just remember everyone leaving

and us being alone

and me thinking to myself,

"I think this is gonna be a friend of mine."

The first time I ever met his parents,

Bill did not want to introduce me.

He just wanted me to go straight up the stairs.

He would look at me and just go, "Look,

don't talk to them. Just follow me upstairs. "

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