It seems like it's pretty rare these days, to see someone publicly apologize for a mistake that they made that wronged another person. It also seems like it's pretty rare to see genuine feelings expressed in mass-market media, such as TV. So I was pretty stunned to learn yesterday that on Friday's "Late Show", David Letterman went back and revisited a mistake that he made over 15 years ago, and dedicated an episode of his show to correcting it as well as he could.
The mistake was in cutting Bill Hicks' final performance on "Late Show", months before he died of pancreatic cancer. While I'm a huge Bill Hicks fan, I had no idea that his mother, Mary Hicks, was going to be on Friday's episode of "Late Show", followed by the entire Bill Hicks performance that was excised from the show so long ago.
I learned of this yesterday from AICN, which unfortunately meant that I missed the show. I tried checking it out on cbs.com, but they only had clips and a transcript -- not the full video stream. But fortunately, YouTube has come to the rescue (for the time being anyway):
- Bill Hicks remembered on Late Show with David Letterman - Part 1
- Bill Hicks remembered on Late Show with David Letterman - Part 2
- Bill Hicks remembered on Late Show with David Letterman - Part 3
It's really amazing to watch -- Dave isn't trying to crack any jokes, or make fun -- he really does seem genuine in his feelings of regret over how things went down with Bill Hicks' final performance. And Bill's mother, Mary Hicks is amazing. She's funny, she's smart, and although it seems like she wanted to break down at times thinking about her son, she didn't, and displayed tremendous courage going on national TV to talk about what appears to have been a painful time in her past.
Fantastic television, and highly recommended. And if you like what you see of Bill Hicks, I recommend his four comedy albums -- they are all excellent:
-Andy.
Update #1: fixed YouTube links. Oops.