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Hi. I'm Steve Hicks.

I'm the older brother of Bill Hicks, by five years.

I'm a college graduate.

My older sister is a college graduate.

Both my parents are college graduates.

And when Bill came along,

he said, one week out of high school,

"I'm gonna go to L.A. and be a comedian."

And we didn't really understand at all what that meant.

And my parents, who were always very supportive

and continued to be, they were very confused about that

and didn't know exactly how to handle it.

So Bill said, "Well, I've got this guy

that I'm gonna go out there with.

He's another comedian, and he'll--

We're gonna have him over to dinner,

and he can tell you that, you know, this is legitimate,

and we're good, and we're gonna make this happen."

So it was from that that Sam Kinison

ended up at dinner at my parents' house

out in a suburb of Houston.

Sam Kinison, at my house

with my very conservative southern Baptist family,

convinced them that he was gonna protect Bill

and watch after Bill when they made their trek out to L.A.

Sam was much older than Bill,

seven, eight, nine years older maybe.

I'm not exactly sure, but much older.

Bill was just a teenager.

And Sam was a big influence on Bill,

and they really hit it off.

Bill did, if you saw some of his early comedy,

very clean, very cute, you know,

sort of high school-type comedy.

Very good, but that sort of perspective,

because that's what he was-- he was a high school kid.

Sam, at that point, was starting to push limits

and did a lot of screaming, as he became known for later.

They'd sort of become top of the heap in Houston

and decided they were gonna go to L.A.,

which was sort of the mecca for comedy,

and they were gonna try to make it out there.

Prayer, you know, right now is illegal in school.

Isn't that weird?

Kids go in the stalls in the bathrooms, you know?

Dear God, dear Lord--

[imitates loud knocking] "What's going on in here?"

Nothing!

"You praying?" No!

"I saw the holy ghost sneaking out of that door."

A few months after Bill was out in L.A.--

actually, five months--

he got hired to do a sitcom calledBulba.

And I think we can all just be thankful

that, these days, that never was picked up as a series.

It was not very good. I thought Bill was great in it.

But we thought he'd made it.

You know, again, us not being in show business at all,

we had no idea.

And then here he was, five months in L.A.,

he's just out of high school,

and he's already hired on a television sitcom.

As he gained perspective later on,

he would not have been found dead in a TV sitcom.

But at the time, 18 years old,

it seemed like a reasonable thing.

But when Sam found out that Bill made quite a bit of money

out of one week of work at this sitcom,

Sam demanded that Bill pay him some of that money

and sort of strong-armed him and bullied him.

And Bill would ignore him and try not to run into him,

but, being in the same field and being from the same place,

Bill finally acquiesced, just to get Sam off his back,

and gave him some money.

And that's where they sort of drifted apart at that point.

Right.

Oh, God, what a great crowd. What a great night.

Isn't a beautiful night for a stinky fuckin' day, huh?

Big shiftaroo by God to keep us on our toes.

Oh!

In 1988, when Bill quit doing drugs

and quit drinking and really cleaned up his life

and things began to sort of start happening for him,

he got booked back on Letterman a couple of times.

He'd been on there twice early on, in '84 and '85,

and then wasn't on again until about '88

because he was just so sporadic and inconsistent.

He wasn't getting a lot of jobs during that time.

But, anyway, he cleaned up his act completely,

and things began to happen for him.

So the first special that he did

was a little five or seven minutes

on a Rodney Dangerfield HBO Young Comedians Special.

Years later, I met Rodney Dangerfield.

And someone introduced me

and told him I was Bill's brother--

and this was after Bill died--

and he called me over to his table

and he told me the story of how he chose Bill

for that first HBO special over Tim Allen, of all people.

And basically the story was

that they were very close in his mind,

in Rodney Dangerfield's mind,

but he liked Bill because of his edginess,

that Tim Allen was sort of more mainstream

and Bill was edgy, and he wanted edgy on there,

so he chose Bill.

Oh, man, I felt today I had some money in my pocket,

which in and of itself is a novelty.

I had some cash, I had some jack, I had some green.

And I had this deep emptiness within me heart,

and I didn't know what it was for.

And I wandered through the streets of Houston

until I came to a pawn shop,

and something led me through the door.

You ever been to a pawn shop? Interesting, aren't they?

You can tell by my clothing I'm a bargain shopper.

At a pawn shop you can get

all sorts of things that people had to give up

'cause they had to pay their rent

or they're, like, due on their phone bill.

You can see a whole line of guitars,

but I didn't need a guitar.

I saw a bunch of TVs, but I hate TV.

Then, lo and behold, I came to the gun rack,

and a light went off in my head.

I said, "This is what I've been missing...

one of these phallic-shaped weapons

that shoot hot lead sperm

at 3,000 miles per hour.

I could use this in my life."

So I bought a .45 caliber automatic eight-clip...

[makes popping sound] pistol

for several different reasons.

One of them: Next time I'm at an intersection behind a guy

and we're in the right lane and it's a red light,

and his right blinker is blinking and there's no traffic,

and he does not make the turn,

I'm pulling him out of the car. [imitates gunshots]

You can make a right on a red, you fucking asshole.

And then after that, he and a couple of friends

down in Austin, Texas,

decided that his material started to take on that tone

and become the signature material

that people have known him so much for

all these years later,

that they wanted to film their own version

of Bill doing a show in Austin, Texas,

his sort of adopted hometown.

So they filmed it one night in July of 1989, I believe,

and that later became Sane Man.

[audience cheering]

Come on.

Yeah. It's good to be here.

I haven't been here in two years.

Thanks.

It's that warmth I've missed in Austin.

"So? We've been here.

Not our fault you gotta travel around. Shit.

We supposed to follow you around?

You're supposed to be back here. What are you doing?

Where are you?"

And then after that,

as he was beginning to get some notoriety,

in 1991 HBO contacted him

and wanted him to do his first half-hour special,

and that became the HBO One Night Stand.

[announcer] Please welcome Bill Hicks.

[audience cheering]

Chicago!

[audience cheering]

Yeah!

-[cheering] -Hey, yeah!

[audience] Yeah!

All right.

[Steve] It was filmed in Chicago,

and I flew up there with Bill.

We went out to lunch one day, and I said,

"Hey, Bill, out of curiosity, if you don't mind me asking,

how much are they paying you for this half hour?"

He said, "Thirty thousand dollars for a half hour."

I said, "You buy lunch then, you sucker."

I find that commercial a tad insulting to my intelligence.

You know the one. "Here's your brain."

I've seen a lot of things on drugs,

but I have never ever, ever looked at an egg

and thought it was a fucking brain, not once.

I have seen UFOs split the sky like a sheet,

but I have never looked at an egg

and thought it was a fucking brain, not once.

I have had seven balls of light come off of a UFO,

lead me onto their ship, explain to me telepathically

that we are all one and there's no such thing as death,

but...

I've never looked at an egg

and thought it was a fucking brain.

Now, maybe I wasn't getting good shit, but, uh...

[audience laughing]

Now, the first special filmed was Sane Man.

The first special released was One Night Stand.

Sane Man didn't come out till much later.

Saw a sign by the road in Tennessee once

that said "Dirt For Sale."

[audience laughing]

What a great country we live in, huh?

Dirt... for sale.

How'd you like to get inside that guy's mind

and look around for an hour, huh?

That guy sees opportunity at every glance, doesn't he?

It's a big world for this gentleman.

"Oh, my God. Honey!

Honey, quit serving waffles. Come here, baby.

I'm gonna sell dirt.

Look. It's everywhere.

You need it for a planet. Honey!"

[audience laughing]

Place was called Landland.

[audience laughing]

Hmm.

That got him sort of some international notoriety,

and people began to take notice in other places.

And the first place that came up

was the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal,

and it's the largest comedy festival in the world,

and Bill went up there.

The first year when he went up there

was just as any other comedian,

where I think he had, like, a five- or seven-

or 10- or 15-minute spot

on some show up there in one of the clubs.

And it was from that that producers

really liked what they saw

and wanted him back the next year

to have the signature show,

the one-man show,

at the Just for Laughs comedy festival.

This was a huge coup.

And that's what was filmed

and then becameRelentless.

Pay very close attention at the very end,

when it ends and Bill is walking offstage,

because back when Bill was getting ready to do that show,

he contacted me and asked if I'd help him

pick out the music for it.

He always liked to have intro music

when he came out onstage.

And so the song that Bill picked

for the intro and the exit to that show

was "Tomorrow Never Knows" by The Beatles.

And, um-- But when the DVD came out,

they were not able to get

the licensing rights for those songs.

So at the very end of the show,

as Bill's leaving the stage, you'll see him stop

and he points up and mouths, "The Beatles,"

because that's what the people in the original audience

that night were hearing.

It being Montreal, and this was Bill's first visit to Canada,

he thought it was going to be cold up there.

So he has on a jacket and a black turtleneck sweater,

and the sweat is just pouring off him

during the entire show.

So he realized, when it was over,

he had dressed wrong for that.

So I'm up here, and it's Canada, and I'm thinking,

you know, Canada, cold.

[imitates dog barking]

Huskies, you know.

And I'm wearing, if you noticed,

the blackcotton fuckin' turtleneck.

Because, ladies and gentlemen,

apparently summertime means the same thing

even in the French provinces.

That went so well, and it was so well received,

that then the same producer and director of that show

wanted to film another one of Bill

in England the next year.

And that was filmed at a 2,500-seat theater,

sold out, packed three deep, apparently,

at the Dominion Theatre in London.

And that show becameRevelations.

["Purple Haze" playing]

[audience applauding, cheering]

[applauding, cheering continue]

Bill, throughout his whole career,

off and on would go back and touch Elvis.

Sometimes he would come out dressed as Elvis

and do a routine,

and sometimes he would come out

and talk a lot about Charlie Hodge,

who was the man that brought Elvis his scarves and his water.

[imitating Elvis Presley] So, what else, man?

[man] What was the last thing you said, man, before you died?

Before I died? I'll admit it was very confusing.

I went in there to take my daily constitutional

where it takes up to three or four days to do it.

I call it my weekly constitutional.

I changed the whole name around it

so it would fit, more or less, my personality.

Let's see. My last words were: "We're out of toilet paper."

Then I said, 'Man, I don't remember

the floor being that close.'

[people laughing]

And then I woke up here, man,

and Jerry Lee Lewis gonna get used to it, man."

[people laughing]

What other famous people,

rock 'n' roll people, do you have up there?

Well, strangely enough, it's just me and Jerry Lee.

[Steve] One year, when he was about 12,

Elvis Presley was coming to Houston, Texas,

to perform at the rodeo there.

And so I was going to drive

Bill and one of his friends down there.

And I thought I was very cool.

I used to smoke these real cheap cigars back then

called, uh, Swisher Sweets.

And Bill in the back seat,

who was very pure and young and naive at that time,

doing what later became known as the coughing joke.

I think there's bigger fish to fry

than the fact that a guy enjoys a cigarette now and again.

I really do. You non-smokers are a little too finicky for me.

War in the Persian Gulf, the economy's gone bust.

Recession?

"Quit smoking!

That's what's troubling us."

I'll tell you the worst kind of non-smoker.

The kind where you're smoking, they just walk up to you.

[clearing throat]

I always say, "Shoot, you're lucky you don't smoke.

[chuckles]

That's a hell of a cough you got there, dude.

I smoke all day and don't cough like that.

Have you seen a doctor?

I'm worried about you."

To me, we lost Bill, the brother and the son

and the uncle and the friend,

not Bill, this iconic comedian.

That's not who he ever was to us.

What we began to notice from that

was that people began to fill in the holes of the story

that they thought that there were out there.

And one of the things that always bothered us,

because it's just so not true,

was that Bill was estranged from his family.

When he was a touring comedian,

he had a lot of scheduling conflicts with the family.

But when he was available, he took vacations with us.

There's videos out there of Bill on vacations with the family.

He was there for holidays--

Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays.

And there was never ever

any kind of estrangement from the family.

Back when Bill was, you know, abusing substances and alcohol,

and that's been pretty well--

Bill talked about it a lot in his comedy.

Like I said, I don't drink anymore.

I had to quit 'cause I really drank.

Okay? Okay.

And I was really fucking pathetic.

Okay? Okay.

-[audience laughing] -[woman] How pathetic were you?

Shit, man, I get pulled over by the cops,

I'd be so drunk, I'd be out dancing to their lights,

thinking I'd made it to another club.

[audience laughing]

[Steve] He was not ashamed of it.

It was something that he went through.

But even during those years, when he was with the family,

he didn't drink,

he wasn't doing drugs around us.

He wouldn't do the typical things

that maybe you'd think someone would do,

like they're gonna sneak out to go for a walk, those kind--

You know, he never did anything like that.

So the extent of his problem was unknown to us

because I think that he held his family

in such respect and regard

that, when he was around us,

he just wasn't gonna draw us into that part of his life

and that part of his world.

And only later, as he cleaned all of that up

and got that behind him

and began to talk about it a little more,

did we really begin to understand

sort of the depths that he got into there.

I got a call that someone wanted to sell me life insurance.

Apparently, they don't know how comics live,

or she wouldn't have even wasted the fucking quarter, you know?

"First question. Uh, do you smoke or drink?"

Only when I'm awake.

Uh, I do have priorities here, pal.

"Have you ever experimented with LSD?"

I told 'em I used to experiment with it.

Finally had a breakthrough. [chuckles]

Found a practical monthly use for that shit and, uh...

Yeah, I like acid.

I'll be right up-front with y'all. I ain't gonna lie.

It's a great drug.

Don't take it as a joke, though.

My friends indulge in acid, man. That blows my mind.

My friends are like, "Bill, we're going over to Stop-N-Go.

Wanna do a hit of acid?"

[audience laughing]

No, I don't want to be in Stop-N-Go for 12 hours.

Thank you.

Boy, that sounds fun but, uh...

"This Snickers bar spoke to me!"

[audience laughing]

I went up to the guy working there.

"I understand about Pearl Harbor, man.

You had to do it. You had to do it."

I know one of the things that he's fairly well known for

is not liking kids,

and I think that probably there was some truth to that.

Bill never had kids.

But certainly my kids--

And he just loved 'em, and they loved him

and loved their Uncle Bill.

And they'd stay up all night playing video games.

He may not have wanted kids of his own,

but he certainly appreciated his niece and nephew

every time he was at our house.

You know, I guess there's two sides to Bill.

There's the public persona,

and then there's the private side,

and he kept those pretty separate.

Bill had a real connection with Austin, Texas,

but he never lived there.

This is again another thing. And you talk about, you know,

how you can't believe everything that you read out there,

especially nowadays on the Internet.

Bill never lived in Austin, Texas.

Not one day of his life did he ever live there.

However, there is a strong connection there.

He filmedSane Man there.

He recordedRant in E-Minor andArizona Bay there.

So there's a lot of connection there.

I used to live in Austin,

and when Bill would come to Austin for Christmas

or just to perform or whatever,

he would let me videotape some of his shows.

And what bugged me so much about the election, the sadness,

how fucking, you know, apathetic and docile we are now

as a fucking mass,

is that they made the whole election about money,

and everyone seemed to find that as normal as can be.

You know what I mean?

It's all about money, your wallet.

"Bill, did you vote for Clinton?

Taxes going up. I'm warning you right now.

He may say he's not, right? Taxes going up."

Well, I have news for you, folks.

There's other reasons not to vote for Bush than taxes, okay?

The reason I didn't vote for him--you ready?--

is that Bush, along with Ronald Reagan,

presided over an administration that for 12 years

their policy towards Central America included genocide.

Now, see, the reason I didn't vote for him

is 'cause he's a mass murderer.

-[audience laughing] -Yeah. See? Yeah.

See, there's other reasons to vote than your fuckin' wallet.

See, I weighed taxes, mass murder.

[audience laughing]

I thought, "You know what?

I can pay an extra nickel on gas a gallon,

just knowing little brown kids

aren't being clubbed to death like baby seals

so Pepsi can put a plant in Nicaragua.

-Yeah. See? Yeah. -[audience applauding]

There's other reasons to vote

than your own fuckin' selfish, fat fuckin' needs.

Okay? Okay.

[audience laughing]

All righty. That's all I'm saying.

You know what I'm getting real sick of

is them talking about the deficit.

"Oh, we have to tighten our belts, pay that deficit.

You know, we, your government,

misspent you your hard-earned tax money.

So you're gonna have to tighten your belt."

You know what would make it a lot easier

to tighten my fuckin' belt

is we tighten it around one of those cocksuckers' neck

every week on TV.

I would eat bologna for a week

if I could see Jesse Helms' cracker ass

hanging by his fuckin' colostomy bag cord.

[audience applauding, cheering]

You know, this bologna ain't that bad.

I kinda like bologna.

Who are these fuckers? Burn 'em. Kill 'em.

I guarantee you any raise that went on in their part--

took part is their own security.

One day everyone's gonna realize these fuckers--

You know, forget it. Wrong meeting. All right.

See you at the dock.

See you under the bridge Saturday.

What I remember is, on a couple of the Christmases,

Bill wanted me to take him downtown.

So we'd go downtown to the main drag, it was called there,

right across from the University of Texas.

People-- Homeless people down there.

And Bill would walk up and down the street,

giving them all five-dollar bills.

And he would look them in the eye,

and he would shake their hand,

and he would say, "It's gonna be all right, brother.

It's gonna be all right."

And he'd give 'em these five dollars.

And what was so poignant about that to me is,

if you remember when Bill talked about in his act,

you know, about recovering from alcoholism and all of that

and talking about it would just take a--

You know, it's just a very fine line.

And he knew how close, I think, he had come in his life

to possibly being in that position.

And he was very humbled by that, and he never forgot that.

Give them some love, God.

Dang it, give 'em some love.

There's still a lot of controversy

surrounding the connection between Denis Leary

and Bill Hicks.

You know, what I know is

they were touring comedians at the same time.

I suppose they were friends,

at least friendly with each other.

Because of their friendship or knowledge of each other

when Bill first heard No Cure for Cancer

and realized that was basically his material,

he was really hurt and upset by that.

Hammer.

There was another boat that left me on the island, man.

[audience laughing]

"Bill, you gonna get on the Hammer boat with us?"

No, I'd rather stay here and eat my own flesh.

[imitates ship horn blowing]

So Bill was in Austin one time.

We were driving from one place to the next place,

and he wanted me to hear something.

So he put on the Denis Leary album, the CD--

I think it might have even been a cassette back then,

not even a CD.

We listened to it for a little bit,

and Bill kind of getting agitated in his seat over there.

And he said, "Well, what do you think?"

And I said, "Well, it sounds like a really shitty you."

And he said, "Exactly."

And he pushed the eject button, he grabbed the tape out,

he rolled down the window, and he threw it out the window.

And he said, "That's all we need to know about that."

I think what he did from that point

was just go and create more material

and sort of get away from that.

I stay in hotels a lot. I'm beginning to think

"do not disturb" means "knock immediately" in Spanish.

This is the only conclusion.

[audience laughing]

I mean, my theory about it is,

if you're in a hotel, it means you're in a city

you don't know anyone you could stay with.

Therefore, who would the "do not disturb" sign be for

but the one person who might come to the door?

The fuckin' maid.

The maid's the cleaner. Do not disturb.

That can be pretty disturbing,

'cause let's say you were, I don't know,

asleep or something, you know.

[knocking] Maybe waking up.

It's possible.

Yeah, every morning I get

the fuckin' "Flight of the Valkyrie" maid attack.

[humming "Ride of the Valkyries"]

[imitates loud knocking]

"Housekeeping. [imitates loud knocking]

You need fresh towels?" [imitates loud knocking]

Yeah, I'm gonna need it to wipe up your fuckin' blood

if you keep knocking on that door!

[imitates loud knocking]

That'll usually get rid of 'em for a couple of minutes, right?

I'll have room service send up a body bag.

You never know.

They'll even walk in with a pass key.

Have you ever had that?

You're in a hotel room you paid for.

"Do not disturb" on the door. They just walk right in.

You're sitting there going, "Hey. Hey!"

[audience laughing]

"I'm here to change the sheets."

Come back in five minutes, Consuela.

You're going to be working overtime

on this crusty, yellow pillowcase.

-I want you to know-- -[audience groaning]

Do I seem shallow?

[audience laughing]

They got a thing in hotels now called SpectraVision.

You know what that is?

It's a box that sits on top of your TV.

It has different movies. You push a button,

the movie is billed to your room, six bucks.

Good deal? You bet.

I'm on the road six weeks.

I have not seen my girlfriend in six weeks, right?

I come into the hotel, look at the SpectraVision movie guide.

There's a movie called Sex Kittens.

Shit, I got six bucks.

Boom.

You know what it is?

It's a pornographic movie

with the pornography cut out.

[audience laughing]

There's no fucking.

You wonder why people run through malls

with automatic weapons, you know?

A rumor--it's been going on a few years,

but it keeps kind of picking up steam a little bit--

is that Bill, in fact, is not dead,

that he has reinvented himself as Alex Jones,

a right-wing talk show host based in Austin, Texas.

I suppose, by a very far stretch of the imagination,

there's a similarity in their looks.

Beyond that, I don't get it.

I can assure you, sadly, although I'm smiling,

Bill is dead.

He did die. I was there. I saw it.

We buried him. He is not alive.

And the irony in these conspiracy theories is

Bill would probably get a little bit of a kick out of it,

if you remember his bit about JFK.

But, uh, is that, uh...

no matter how hard you try to convince 'em that it's not true,

they just spin that into more conspiracy.

I love talking about Kennedy.

I was just down in Dallas, Texas.

You know you can go down there

to Dealey Plaza where Kennedy was assassinated,

and you can actually go to the sixth floor

of the school book depository.

It's a museum called...

the Assassination Museum,

I think, named that after the assassination.

I can't be too sure of the chronology here but...

Anyway, they have the window set up

to look exactly like it did on that day,

and it's really accurate, you know,

'cause Oswald's not in it.

-[audience laughing] -Yeah, yeah. So--

-[audience applauding] -Wow.

Hmm.

Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Painstaking accuracy, you know.

It's true. It's called the sniper's nest.

It's glassed in. It's got the boxes sitting there.

And you can't actually get to the window itself.

And the reason they did that, of course,

they didn't want thousands of American tourists

getting there each year going...

"No fuckin' way!

I can't even see the road!

Shit, they're lying to us!"

Back when Bill, uh...

when Bill was in the midst of his substance and alcohol abuse,

he was at my house one night, and we were drinking beer,

and he started crying.

It was just me and him. Everyone else had gone to bed.

And he started crying,

and he said, "My life's out of control.

I'm losing it. I can't go on this way."

And I didn't understand that.

I didn't know what to do, so I told him

that he just needed to quit doing all that stuff, then.

You know, then just stop if it wasn't good for you.

So the only point of me telling you that

is that years later,

when Bill got sick in June of '93

and then was going to move all of his stuff

back from Los Angeles to Little Rock, Arkansas,

to our parents' house,

he asked me to fly out to L.A.

and drive back with him, which I did.

And one of the things on that trip was

he told me that, you know, it wasn't my problem to solve,

it was his problem to solve

and that I should never blame myself for it

and never think about it again,

that it wasn't until he was ready

to resolve the issue for himself,

there was nothing he was going to be able to do.

I am a very open-minded person.

I mean, I really am.

Being a fellow such as myself

who, over the course of his life,

has several times taken his body weight

in psilocybin magic mushrooms...

[audience cheering, applauding]

I've had my mind fairly opened.

My third eye has been squeegeed.

[makes squeaking sounds]

UFOs? Seen 'em.

Okay? You know what I mean?

I'm out on a limb with Shirley MacLaine.

She's clinging to the trunk.

I'm hanging by a twig at the end of the limb.

Come on, Shirley. Let's go!

Take another cap. The UFOs are honking.

Let's go!

"Bill, you're really out there, dude."

I'm pretty open-minded.

After Christmas of 1993,

as we got into January and February

when Bill started to get real sick--

too sick to perform anymore, too sick to travel anymore--

he ended up back at my parents' house in Little Rock.

The first time I went up there,

Bill was in the hospital,

and he was still doing chemo treatments,

but he was very, very sick.

And you could really tell

it had physically taken a toll on him.

But we were in the hospital one night,

and Bill was taking morphine

for the pain, for the cancer,

and he asked if I wanted to take morphine.

And I said,

"Well, I really don't want to do morphine either."

But he said, "Well, you're in a hospital.

I mean, if it goes bad, you're in a hospital."

And he said, "In fact, I'll tell the nurse."

So, you know, Bill was a real charmer,

and he had gotten to know the nurses.

And he told the nurse

that he was gonna give me one of his morphine pills

and could she just sort of keep an eye on us through the night.

So... I did,

and I'm admitting that for the first--

Bill gave me this pill. It was a big, old blue pill

about that big.

And I gagged, getting that thing down,

but it was morphine, he told me.

And all I remember through the whole night

was I just sat in a chair

gripping it with all of my might

because I felt that, if I let go of that chair,

I was gonna shoot up to the ceiling

and not be able to come down.

And Bill just sat in the bed laughing hilariously

for eight hours, all night long.

Anyway, folks, I appreciate you coming out.

It's a very sentimental evening for me,

and a very exciting one.

But this is my final live performance

I am ever going to do, stand-up comedy-wise.

-[audience murmuring] -True.

Nah, don't get me wrong. It's not sour grapes.

I've loved every, you know, moment

of the 16 years I've been doing it

in total anonymity in the country I love, and, uh,

-[audience laughing] -every delayed flight,

every Econo Lodge.

I've loved it all.

Playing the Comedy Pouch in Possum Ridge, Arkansas,

every three months.

It was my treat.

Every broken relationship was a hoot, but...

No, the reason I'm quitting is actually good news.

I finally got-- I found out today

I got my own TV show on CBS, coming out in '94.

-Yeah. -[audience cheering, applauding]

Thank you.

It's not a talk show.

[imitates crowd cheering]

Thank God. Thank Krishna. Thank Buddha.

Thank Muhammad. Thank Allah.

[imitates crowd cheering] Calm down.

[imitates crowd cheering]

No, it's not a talk show.

It is a half-hour weekly show that I will host

entitled Let's Hunt and Kill Billy Ray Cyrus.

[audience cheering]

Thank you. Thanks.

Thanks. So you all will tune in?

Cool. Cool.

The very last thing he wrote in his will

were the words that he wanted spread out there,

and they're the ones

that he's become very, very well known for,

and they're very moving, and it is:

And that sort of, to me, sums up Bill's frame of mind

as he came towards the end of his life.

And he wasn't afraid,

and he didn't have regrets, and he wasn't bitter.

And, um, you know, that's how he went out.