Bill Hicks vs Denis Leary

I'm not inside my own mind today... It's like a hero of mine has been broken down.

Now I have a lot of heroes, it's kind of like a recurring joke of sorts but Denis Leary was literally one of them. I'll never forget the first time I heard "No Cure For Cancer" ... I was 12 or 13 tops and I was hanging out with my buddy Bill and my Dad and I talked my dad into letting me listen to it. I knew it was going to be good when my father started with "Well... I probably shouldn't but okay..." and it was hilarious. It was truly where my love for stand up comedy began.

Now I have read about how Denis stole from Bill Hicks but I suppose I chose to be blissfully ignorant about it. Denis' comedy flourished after Bill Hicks death. How much could he have truly stole?

Now my first exposure to Bill Hicks wasn't through his comedy. Searching his comedy one day lead me to this video on Yahoo! Videos where he wasn't doing comedy. No Bill Hicks was on some Podunk public access tv show talking about the Waco travesty and how military personnel allowed a tank to shoot fire into the complex and burn those people alive. It was mind blowing. This man was a comic but the way he handled himself and the way he spoke. He showed intelligence and composure that I have seen out of very few comics. George Carlin was who came to mind for me.

I just recently watched "American: The Bill Hicks Story" and it forced me to see where Denis Leary had certainly... enhanced his own comedy by borrowing mannerisms and style from Bill Hicks. There's no way you can't watch Denis Leary's No Cure For Cancer and then see ANY Bill Hicks stand-up and not draw the same conclusions. Comb the internet for specifics because I am not going to dive into that but what I am going to dive into is a bit of comparison and contrast of sorts. I just wrote about this on Tumblr and Twitter and it motivated me to dive a little deeper.

Denis by no means pulled a Carlos Mencia but what he did was certainly inexcusable. In Denis' second special "Lock and Load" the influence from Bill Hicks is still there but that special is unfiltered and unrestrained Denis. Would Denis have ever been the kind of comedian he became without Bill Hicks' influence? Hell no. Denis' rants about his kids and about Marv Albert on Lock and Load still kill me but it will be No Cure For Cancer that I look at in a different light,  and Denis as a whole overall as well. It's a shame that I have lost the respect I had for him but the parallels are there and cannot be ignored.

Bill Hicks' comedy was very progressive especially for when he was bursting on to the scene. He reminds me of George Carlin as I mentioned before but it's because the subject matter and the overall idealism and the engaging of the audience and the requirement of the audience to be proactive thinkers to truly enjoy the material. Bill Hicks was much more direct than George Carlin was though. George took ideas and he made them funny for everyone to enjoy. Bill Hicks took ideas and forced you to stare reality in the face for what it was and the way that he did it was funny...

Comparing Hicks' comedy to Leary's is like night and day. Denis Leary's comedy kind of makes me think of Will Ferrell in a way, he's so loud but he's still funny you can't help but laugh at this outrageous man who is making ridiculous jokes. I think his style was more exaggarated that Bill Hicks. He took Hicks' tendencies to exaggerate to sell a joke and he pretty much made that his entire style. Denis is way more intense than Bill Hicks. I wonder if he wouldn't had stolen Hicks' jokes about smoking and drinking and drugs what direction he would have taken? There would be many parts of No Cure For Cancer which would be nothing if he didn't lift material from Bill Hicks. I'm not advocating it, I'm just pointing out flaws. That's why I prefer Lock and Load because it's a much more complete act in my opinion...

In the end. Denis Leary isn't even a shell of the comedian that Bill Hicks was. And it's a shame that he was never embraced by the mainstream audiences like he should have been. Bill Hicks was a very funny man and his comedy was ahead of his time. I think a modern audience really would have embraced Bill and I bet you he would have this mystique about him. He said things that a lot of us were thinking and he asked questions that we would never ask. He patronized ignorance and he hated it. I think that's why I really like Bill Hicks and everything he represented. If you have never listened to Bill Hicks' stand up comedy, I will sit here and beg you... no I will spam your Twitter or Tumblr or Facebook with links because I think he is somebody that everyone needs to experience.

Why am I so behind on this? PEACE!