SXSW10–Ride, Rise, Roar (2010)/American: The Bill Hicks Story (2009)

RIDE, RISE, ROAR

Directed by: David Hillman Curtis

David Byrne is kind of a genius. His work with the Talking Heads is among the best rock music ever made, especially after they started working with Brian Eno. Since leaving Tina, Chris and Jerry behind, David has never quite made as fulfilling of music, but it’s still been very interesting and, at times, extremely good.

His latest album, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, is his first collaboration with Brian Eno since 1981′s My Life With The Bush Of Ghosts, still one of his best solo albums. He knew that he needed a tour to live up to that legacy.

Ride, Rise, Roar is a film of those concerts. But David Hillman Curtis didn’t want to just show the concert and leave it up to the audience to figure out how it was all done like the classic Stop Making Sense. He wanted it to be a backstage document, too. He filmed the dress rehearsals as well as the shows and put together a documentary that is just as interesting as that older movie without sacrificing the music or the shows themselves.

David is, as far as I know, working with dancers for the first time in his career. Instead of just having nameless, faceless dancers, though, he wanted something interesting going on onstage with him. He wanted people who looked real. What he ended up with was a well-choreographed show that looks like it wasn’t choreographed at all to me. It was less about moving simultaneously and more about making the movement look like the music. They even brought the back-up singers into the dancing fold. (The choreography of I Zimbra was brilliant, with the singers often laying on the floor with the dancers holding their mic stands for them.)

Hillman Curtis did something amazing: He made a concert film that was different from one of the most well-known concert films ever, but made it almost as good. It’s very Talking Heads heavy, but producer Will Schluter said that they had more of the new stuff in there for a while, but it slowed the movie down. The new stuff is very good, but it’s slower and more introspective. In order to make the 90 minute film move, they had to take some of the new songs out and replace them with more upbeat and well-known songs.

It’s not a bad choice, really. It made the movie more accessible than it would have been otherwise. Check it out. I think that, even if you’re not a Byrne fan, you might find something to like in the film.

AMERICAN: THE BILL HICKS STORY

Directed by: Matt Harlock/Paul Thomas

Bill Hicks is a name that not a lot of people know. Hell, I’m from Austin and I only know him by reputation. I’ve seen bits and pieces of his acts, but I’ve never seen an entire show. When he died in 1994 at the age of 32, the world lost one of its shining lights in comedy.

He would hate that, most likely. He would rather be known as the guy who told people the best truth that he could, just in a really funny way.

Directors Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas got him. They got him in a way that, for some reason, most Americans didn’t. He worked a lot of podunk places in America, but in England he was selling out stadiums.

American: The Bill Hicks Story isn’t just a biodoc. It’s an examination of why he never truly made it in America. It shows just enough of his shows to tell us why so many Americans thought that he was just a nut that needed to be tightened.

But it’s also a loving tribute to a man who did his very best, not just on stage, but in his life. He got himself addicted to just about every drug that it’s possible to get addicted to, then he just stopped…and he got funnier.

Matt and Paul had unprecedented access to private pictures and videos that Bill’s family handed over to them. Over 100 hours of video were boiled down into a little over an hour and a half and the pictures were brought to life in a pretty amazing way. It never looked cheesy or wrong in any way. (There were a couple of times where it looked awkward, but that was because of the angle of the original picture.) It was almost an animated documentary.

Bill Hicks was an amazing talent who was cut short FAR before his time. American is a great intro to his work and a nearly perfect tribute to his life. As someone said either in the documentary or at the Q&A, Bill was a true American. He knew that the best thing that we can do for our country is to be a voice of dissent.

Be on the lookout for new releases from Bill in the next year or so. His brother said that they are getting a bunch of his early footage together for a compilation and they are going to be releasing some of his music soon. I can’t wait.

That’s it for SXSW2010. Honestly, I think it was a bit of a weak year. There were some great films, but the selection overall was just kind of underwhelming. I think I missed the two best movies (Kick Ass and MicMacs), but I had already seen them somewhere else. And The Runaways opened the day after I saw it.

Oh well. It was still fun and I can’t wait to do it all again next year.

See you in line.