I'm getting a lot of e-mail about Bill Hicks…and I don't really have any interest in debating how funny he was. Obviously, he made a lot of people laugh and if you can do that, you're funny. You don't have to be funny to everyone to be funny.
Several folks wrote to express a sentiment that is well represented by this paragraph in an e-mail from Andy Rose…
What respect I did have for Hicks (as an okay comedian) was lost after the Letterman incident…not because of what he said on the show, but because of his obnoxious behavior afterward. He seemed to think that being on TV was some sort of birthright. How dare the country be shielded from his speaking truth to power about what a buffoon Billy Ray Cyrus is! At any rate, I just wish Hicks fans could accept that some people don't find him funny, rather than assuming that detractors are intolerant or "just not ready for him."
Yeah, I think that kind of speaks to some of what leaves me cool to Hicks. There's a certain arrogance, if not in his performances then in much of the hype that surrounded them, and the performances I've seen have not lived up to that hype. On the other hand, I never got to see the guy in a club and I would never have appreciated all that Sam Kinison had to offer if I hadn't seen him in person. If you only knew Sam from the short bits he did on SNL or talk shows, you'd wonder what all the fuss was about. So I'm willing to give Bill Hicks the benefit of that doubt.
I could even make the case that Mr. Letterman is beating himself up too much for his decision to cut the routine. It was a mistake, but it probably seems like a bigger one than it was because of the comedian's untimely death. And it's not like Dave had anything to do with that. On the whole, Letterman was probably more supportive of the career of Bill Hicks than just about anyone else. An awful lot of the clubs that booked Bill Hicks and an awful lot of the people who paid to see him were because of his many appearances on Dave's show.
In his defense, Letterman might have pointed out that his show was new to CBS at the time. There was a lot of tension about the ratings and a lot of mistakes were being made. That wouldn't make it wise to cut the segment but Mr. Hicks might have viewed it in that context and not treated it as an all-out assault on Free Speech and Truth. Another comedian in that situation would probably have tried to use it to his advantage, having his agent pressure the Letterman people to "make it up to his client" with more and better bookings.
Two other things. A couple folks wrote to ask if I thought Letterman's decision to run the segment and apologize was due to rumors that Ron Howard will soon make a movie about Bill Hicks with Russell Crowe in the lead. Perhaps. Even if the incident with Dave isn't included in the film, it's likely to be mentioned in the press coverage, and it wouldn't be a bad idea to deal with a lingering issue before then. As for the movie…I never like to prejudge a movie — especially one that hasn't even been made yet — so I'll just say that I hope that if they make it, it does more for the memory of Bill Hicks than that Jim Carrey pic did for Andy Kaufman.
Lastly: Jeri Rainer wrote to ask, "After they cut [Hicks] from that episode of Dave's show, what did they replace it with to make up the time?" Answer: They edited in a stand-up routine by Bill Scheft, a writer and performer who works with Letterman, usually handling the audience warm-up. A few weeks earlier, before he debuted on CBS, Dave taped a couple of "test" shows, not to be aired but just to get the bugs out. On one of these, Scheft performed so they had that material available.
But it probably wasn't just a matter of tossing out the tape of Hicks and cutting in the Scheft spot. Hicks was announced in the opening. Dave probably mentioned him in the monologue and maybe in other teasers throughout the show…and then there was the matter of Dave's intro. They must have gotten Dave back into the outfit he wore during that taping and recorded a new intro, and maybe some other bits. I seem to recall that the show's announcer, who was then Bill Wendell, was either unavailable or unwilling to return to the studio to tape a new voiceover for the intro so Dave himself did it. It was a lot of work to remove Hicks's performance…so at least that night, someone (probably Letterman) must have felt strongly that it would have caused problems to leave it in. Which makes the decision to apologize and air it all the more meaningful.