Name: The Genius of Bill Hicks
Uploaded: 2022-09-07T17:08:28.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Genius of Bill Hicks' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-09-07. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Genius of Bill Hicks' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-09-07. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan Experience.
- The other thing I like about this place is that,
we were talking about before,
that it's a blue city surrounded by a red state.
- I love that, yeah.
- It keeps it in check.
- Sure.
- You know, there's something about that.
And it's just, this whole town,
it's like Texas itself is a very rebellious place.
And this is where Kinison started,
and this is where Bill Hicks started.
- Sure.
- And there's something about that,
that's like, it's baked into their appreciation
for comedy.
I mean, those guys put Texas on the map
as far as comedy because people thought about comedy,
they thought of New York, thought of LA,
maybe San Francisco, maybe Chicago,
Boston for sure.
But they didn't think of Houston.
And two of the best of all time,
came out of Houston, Texas.
- Houston's a great comedy city.
- Great comedy city.
- And also, you look at the,
you can tell they're Texas comics
because religion is such a big part of both their acts.
- Yeah.
- And you feel that, that's like the Texan in them.
I mean, I connect, I mean, Bill Hicks is,
Bill Hicks is, he's like the Biggie Smalls of comedy.
- Hmm.
- Because the amount of work he did, it's gold.
And he died so fucking young.
He had like five albums, dude.
- I think he died at like 34 or something like that.
- Something like that.
Pancreatic cancer. - Yeah.
- And you re-listen to those albums, dude.
Those albums, whenever comics call Bill Hicks overrated,
I'm like, you're a fucking idiot.
- Yeah.
- Bill Hicks is great.
And he, and you know what's great about Bill Hicks?
So many comics now, with his ideology,
would only perform in like SF and Portland
and Burlington, Vermont.
That dude's doing, he's taking that act to Alabama.
That's fucking cool.
- Yeah.
- That's why he's bombing.
So.
- He did the road constantly.
- Oh dude, the flying saucer tour.
- Yeah.
- When you're like, those albums, I'm dying laughing to.
You're listening to one of the greatest comics of all time,
bombing.
And he released this for us.
He's fucking bombing.
He's, he's calling the crowd dumb.
- Yeah.
- And it's not like just some comic who saw,
it's a great comic calling crowds dumb.
There's something beautiful about that.
He's so fucking angry on stage, but it was like beautiful anger.
It was earned anger.
- Well, everything was interesting.
Even if he was bombing, what he was saying was interesting.
- Brilliant.
- Yeah.
It was just in, that was like one of his tenants of comedy is,
even if you're not going to be funny, be interesting.
- He was Lenny Bruce for us.
I listened to Lenny Bruce and I'm like, it's a little,
it doesn't resonate for me.
I understand that he's brilliant.
I understand that we need him, but like Bill Hicks was like that
for guys like us who were like, we, he made it,
he made it cool, you know?
- He made you feel like a hack.
Like you were just telling jokes.
And he was up there talking about young man on acid,
thought he could fly, you know?
- It's a great bit.
- What about positive drug stories?
Yeah.
- That's a brilliant bit.
- It's a brilliant bit.
It's a pro drug bit from a guy who was clean and sober
at the time.
You know, he was talking about the great times
that he had when he was doing drugs.
I mean, it was also, everything was so well worded.
It was so smart.
You know, it was a, it was just a completely interesting
kind of comedy and it changed so many people's way of comedy
to the point where the punchline in Atlanta,
when you had performed there in the green room,
somebody wrote in the green room,
quit trying to be Hicks.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- He had his rules of comedy.
And he also, some of them, I'm like, all right.
He was like, never asked the crowd how they're doing.
I'm like, that one's our, we can get, we can do that.
That's fine.
- So many people imitated him was what the point of quit
trying to be Hicks was.
- Of course.
- They were all trying to do that.
They were all trying to be him, you know?
And they would go on stage with some fucking half-baked
point about the government or taxes or something.
- Well, they, they, it's like so often with great comics,
you miss what the beauty of them was,
is that Hicks at his core was silly and funny.
And when he got self-righteous,
that's kind of when he lost me sometimes.
When he was like, kind of condescending to the crowd,
I was kind of like, I don't love this as much
as when you're just doing great jokes.
Like, I love the bit he does.
I love, you know, it's in his half hour on HBO.
And he's like, I hate when, he's like,
I love watching people in Aspen smoke cigarettes,
not know when they're done inhaling.
And he does the act out and he just keeps blowing
'cause of the smoke.
And it's like, that's a great fucking bit.
- Yeah.
- That's a silly observational joke.
And you're like, oh, that dude was great at political stuff,
social commentary, religious stuff,
but then he could just do a fucking observational bit.
- Yeah.
- He's one of the all time greats.
So when people write him off as being overrated, I-
- It's all in the context of time.
You have to think about it that way.
If you go and listen to Lenny Bruce,
it doesn't make any sense to us
because everything has already been understood and covered.
Like all the things that he's talking about
that are groundbreaking.
Back then, people were like, what is, oh my God,
what is happening?
Like this guy's breaking down society.
No one can do this.
No one had done that before, but now everybody does it.
So when you hear him do it, and then the things he's saying,
the world has moved on so much from 1963 to today,
that it's impossible to like, it's impossible to,
he still had some jokes that work today.
He had one joke, he goes, you know,
it's against the law to be homosexual.
So what do they do?
They put you in jail with a bunch of men
who want to have sex with you.
- That's a great bit.
- That's a great bit.
And that's a bit from like, what, 65 or something like that?
- That's the thing.
It's like watching basketball in the 60s
and you're like seeing Chamberlain and you're like,
well, there's no Jordan without this shit.
- Exactly.
- And you know, who's Jordan?
Carlin Pryor, right?
- Yeah.
- So you got to take Pryor.
Also, I love that he was like a cool Jew.
Like so often like Jews are like, oh boy, I'm fucking nervous.
I love when, how often did cool Jews pop up and show,
but like.
- He's one of the coolest.
- One of the coolest, Elliot Gould.
I was like grateful for Elliot Gould.
I'm like guys like that.
And I'm like, well, you're not just doing the,
oh, shucks, my fucking, I'm so nervous and I have allergies.
I'm like, no, be fucking, be like, be yourself.
You'd be cool.
- Is Jeff Goldblum Jewish?
- I don't know.
- His name is Jewish as fuck.
- That's a Jewish name.
He's a cool guy.
- He's a very cool guy.
That's what I was going to get to.
- Great fucking actor.
- He's a smart science guy.
- I've been rewatching Larry Sanders
and he's so fucking funny.
- Oh, he's great in everything.
- That's a great show.
- He's great as the scientist in Jurassic Park.
Yes, he's Jewish.
There you go.
Cool Jew.
Thank God.
- But Lenny Bruce was like, he was a real pioneer.
Like there was no other, I mean,
there was Mort Sahl who was doing political.
- But he doesn't get his shine.
- No.
- He just passed away.
I mean, he's like.
- Mort Sahl.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Mort Sahl didn't get his shine.
- Because he was so of his time,
like the guy holding the newspaper.
And like Lenny Bruce broke through,
whereas Mort Sahl, I guess, you know what the problem is,
sometimes you live too long.
You ain't Che Guevara if you live till fucking 78.
- Right.
- You're Che Guevara when you die in your prime.
- Right.
- And your young picture is shown everywhere.
- Right.
- But when you live too long sometimes,
it ain't as cool.
- Yes, that's cool.
So a guy like Lenny Bruce died
in the most romantic way possible.
Heroin overdose on the bathroom floor.
- Yeah.
- That's what you want from that kind of hero.
- You want to go out like Hendrix or Janis Joplin.
That's when you become fucking this shit.
I mean, Bill Hicks too, like who knows?
Maybe he would have had a shitty podcast.
Maybe he would have been great.
Who the fuck knows how people age, right?
I think he would have been great.
- He would have been great.
He was never not.
I don't, I don't think, I mean.
- Damn, imagine if he had like a, like HBO show
where he just did like, like almost like Bill Maher style
where he just did that.
You're like, whoa, that'd be fucking cool, huh?
- Do you know who had a great story about him?
Carrot Top.
- Really?
- He used to make fun of him in Carrot Top's act.
Or in Bill Hicks' act, he'd make fun of Carrot Top, brother.
And he had this bit about, he goes, yeah, Carrot Top is for people who think.
He goes, uh, uh, Gallagher's too heady.
It was just a prop joke.
- Yeah.
- And, um, Scott Carrot Top is a fucking sweetheart of a guy.
- I heard he's the man.
- He's so cool.
And I always felt like he got fucked with for no reason.
Like his act is funny.
It's funny shit.
But he was always like a punchline to comedians.
Like that he was not one of us, not a real comic, fuck him.
And it was always like, people would shit all over Carrot Top.
- I don't think Norm did him any favors in that interview when he just kept trashing
him.
Cause Norm was so cool that I think like, when you see a guy as cool as Norm
doing that shit,
I think it hurts.
- Well, it hurts if you're sensitive, right?
Like if you're a comic and someone's trashing you, it should be funny.
- Yeah.
- There should be some humor to it.
You know what I mean?
- Yeah.
- But sometimes guys get isolated and he was very, Scott's very isolated.
You know, he's out there in the world on his own, not really connected to
comics in the same way.
So Hicks before he died was really sick and, uh, he came to one of Scott's
shows.
So Carrot Top's doing a show and Hicks came to the show and hung...
- He wanted those last few months to last forever.
- He said, I thought you hated me.
He goes, "No, man, I don't fucking hate you. It's just jokes. I'm sorry."