Magnolia Pictures & Magnet Releasing
Raise Hell: The Life & Times Of Molly Ivins
If you want to explain to someone what it is to be a genuine populist; or what real politics looks like and why it actually matters; or how to fight the bastards and still have fun . . . take them to see Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins.
Watching this short rollicking documentary about the firebrand journalist from the Lone Star State is more instructive than a semester full of college classes, and it’ll inspire you as it edifies—plus you get popcorn. I’ve seen the film twice, and not just because I have a bit part in it. Rather, producer Janice Engel and crew correctly saw in Molly’s life and career much, much more than a big, boisterous, irreverent, muckraking, fun-loving, maverick spirit—though she certainly was all of that.
This doc is not simply another worshipful paean to a progressive icon who, in this case, was a master hurler of hilarious one-line stingers. (For example, a nutball GOP Congress critter earned this gem from her: “If his IQ slips any lower, we’ll have to water him twice a day.”) While the movie is spiced with plenty of Mollyisms, they’re not free-floating barbs but satirical exclamation points for the powerful substance of her populist message.
The importance of Raise Hell is that it’s not only directed at today’s gray-haired Molly lovers who knew and delighted in her work back when (including a treasure trove of columns she wrote for this magazine, from 1986 to 2007), but that it also speaks to the next generation of activists. They might not know her writings, but they can be moved by her example to do more, dig deeper, get a little noisier, and become more creative and more insistent on whacking pompous plutocrats and asinine autocrats right in their collective snouts—then go have some beers and an uproarious laugh.
Yes, Molly was funny and fun, but she was not just some cynical political humorist. She understood that laughter is the key that opens minds and lets big, important ideas enter. It’s also the fuel for serious populist rebellion. As she put it, “Keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doing it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce.”
In my last dinner with her, Molly turned to me and said out of the side of her mouth: “This has been a hell of a ride.” She meant the months of trying to stay atop the cancer bucking within her, but it also sums up her life of writing, speaking, teaching, and agitating to advance the progressive cause. She did her part—and our happy task is to carry on the fiery, loving, laughing essence of Molly.