WELL, I'VE SUDDENLY got two separate outlines to juggle. Always the way. So I'm going to keep this short.
There is only one thing to watch on TV tonight. No, not Flashpoint. (Sorry Mark, you know I love you.)
An infamous Showbiz wrong is being righted, finally. And it also stands to be a prickly and uncomfortable mea culpa.
Bill Hicks, a standup comedian whose tough, take-no-prisoners fearlessness has influenced every comic with an ounce of edge working today, was only 32 years old when pancreatic cancer took him in 1994. In 2003, Virginia Heffernan described his style in Slate thusly:
A hard-left Texan who considered George H.W. Bush an apocalyptic tyrant, Hicks also had an incongruously effortless style. On the many tapes of his club act, he doesn't gear up for a joke at all; he seems indifferent to how he looks. His impressions, too—of a seductive little girl or a loud bird or Jay Leno—appear unstudied, just accurate enough to keep a story moving; it takes a minute to realize they are also pitch-perfect.
Hicks' career was cut short and stalled by his death, but also by another weird footnote in history: he was arguably the only comic ever to have an entire routine censored from David Letterman's show, after it was taped.
Ironically, this happened on the same stage where Elvis Presley was censored in the 50's -- when he could only be shown from the "waist up."
Hicks appeared on Letterman's show 11 times before. But this night, the show judged the comic's entire routine "too much" and had it excised from the broadcast. Five months later, Hicks was dead.
I remember this incident well. I was a big fan of Hicks' comedy at the time (and shared much of his anger) and I remember the censorious move as the first (and probably the last) time I was ever truly disappointed in David Letterman.
Supposedly, that unsavory history has bothered Letterman ever since. So tonight, in recognition of the fifteenth anniversary of Hicks' death, Dave's guest is Hicks' mother, Mary, and the censored last network appearance of her son will finally be shown. Reportedly, Letterman also apologizes to Hicks' stoic and unbending mother.
That's TV history, folks.
Tune and and marvel at what this guy would have had to say about the last eight years under George W. Bush. 11:35, CBS.
3 comments:
I was kicking around Worldwide Pants in the mid nineties on another project when the topic of Bill Hicks and that infamous show came up with one of Letterman's senior writers ...
He told me Letterman was really torn up about that because, at the time, he thought he didn't have enough juice with CBS to tell them to bite it.
It was actually a turning point in the history of the Late Show according to the writer .... Letterman never again made the same mistake and told his staff that just after it happened.
Hicks gave it to him in a variety of venues and never accepted his apology ( again according to the writer )
Not too vague DMc ?
Thanks for the tip-I set the DVR. I'm a big Hicks fan, although I came to him late. I read about the incident in a Hicks biography and it really did seem to embitter and obsess him--even more than usual. He seemed to take it as a Lenny Bruce-like moment of artistic injustice. Thanks again.
This is an amazing move on Letterman's part and long overdue.
The ones who should really be apologizing are the Late Show producer and execs at CBS who were terrified by the potential backlash against material that is tame by current standards.
But I'm sure they all moved on in successful careers in Hedge Fund management, leaving Dave to take 15 years of abuse.
This is a moment I will not miss seeing.
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