Movie Review - Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins

Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins **** (out of 5) (NR) Most documentaries are not funny. Here’s a wonderful and fitting exception, since it covers the life of perhaps the most straightforward, insightful and laughworthy writer any newspaper’s op-ed pages have carried. She was also a popular speaker and TV guest who covered the corrupt and cockeyed in politics like she saw it, with a delightful mix of country coarseness and Texas charm.

Ivins was an unabashed liberal who started in Austin covering state politics. The biggest boon for her career came from Governor George Bush, who some called Dubya, while Ivins tagged him with Shrub. Of Dan Quayle, her analysis was that if his brain were put in a bumblebee, it would fly backwards. Ivins was a big woman with a bigger personality, and what used to be an essential quality in her biz - the ability to drink most men under the table while gleaning inside info on the workings of the Statehouse. Even though her leanings were decidedly to the left, she could come down just as hard on those from her side of the aisle - especially the Clintons.

This narrative spans her entire life,starting as the shy daughter of an ultra-conservative oilman, through her education and career as a journalist and public figure. She went from a few Texas papers to the New York Times and a couple of other stops before returning to her native state and eventually becoming syndicated in 400 others across the country. We learn how many public officials she (gleefully) offended with her blunt critiques, and how her course was severely limited by gender in the 1960s - ‘80s. The Times shipped her out to their Denver bureau (of which she was the only member) after her coverage of Elvis Presley’s funeral included the descriptive term “plump corpse”. Eventually, she convinced the stuffed shirts and Old Boys she was a force to smart and popular to be denied.

We’re treated to footage of Molly’s live appearances and a slew of the great one-liners that made her so iconic, along with many interview snippets from family, friends and peers, including her college pal Governor Anne Richards, who was similarly funny and direct in her speeches.

Ivins was doing strong political satire in print and in person before there was a Daily Show, Colbert Report, or even the news update segment on Saturday Night Live. The East Coast had the various forms of The National Lampoon, while the heartland had Molly, fellow Texan Jim Hightower and Chicago’s Mike Royko. She was railing against racism, income inequality, the clandestine power of the one-percenters and the evil of big money in politics decades ago. Just imagine how she’d write and speak about today’s climate and set of characters, if breast cancer hadn’t taken her from us in 2007. A huge loss to our cultural landscape. (9/20/19)