Closure, after all these years, for Bill Hicks

[Disco_Destroyer]

http://blogs.kansascity.com/tvbarn/2009/01/closure-after-a.html

Closure, after all these years, for Bill Hicks
UPDATE/SPOILER ALERT: The third comment below is from an audience member from the taping. Based on what another source told TVB, I believe the comment is authentic. On a semi-related note, B&C is reporting that Dave has begun talks to stay at CBS past 2010. -- AB

Here is how long it's been since David Letterman and his then-producer, Robert Morton, decided to cut Bill Hicks' controversial monologue out of a "Late Show" broadcast -- in one of the very first editions of Late Show News that I wrote, 15 years ago, I was already referring to the Hicks incident as old news.

Since then it's gone on to become one of the most fabled TV moments of all time, probably because it never aired. Until now. Actually, it's possible it aired in 2003. Trio -- remember Trio?, the network Lauren Zalaznick ran before she became Queen of All Cable? -- did a documentary on Hicks called "Outlaw Comic," of which the Letterman excision was the central moment. (It was subtitled, "The Censoring of Bill Hicks," which Virginia Heffernan, citing Stanley Fish, high-handedly asserted was not censoring according to the First Amendment ... although I would point out that according to the original Latin, it actually is.)

Anyway, I searched through reviews, including my own, of the Hicks docu and couldn't find confirmation that the excised Letterman routine actually aired. But it doesn't matter, since only about five million homes, at most, ever saw the Trio channel. For all practical purposes, what Dave will be showing America on Friday night is something America has never seen: the routine that he, Dave Letterman, kept off his show 15-1/2 years ago. Joining him will be Mary Hicks, the late comedian's mom. Details at TVS.

Several in-depth pieces have been written about the incident over the years; here's one that includes a portion of the original New Yorker piece that effectively blew the whistle on Dave. And here's an interview Hicks gave about the incident to a Texas cable access show:

The explanation given over the years was that Letterman was new at CBS, was riding high in the ratings, and didn't want any trouble, so in an impulse act fed by his own anxieties, he agreed to cut the Hicks routine. I assume that explanation will be repeated on Friday ... and while I know what Bill said, I can't wait to see and hear how he actually said it.



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