Houston’s Bill Hicks performed his biting, often angry and profane comedy tirelessly all over the world before his death in 1994 from pancreatic cancer at age 32. But despite achieving virtual rock star status in the United Kingdom and Canada, Hicks never received comparable recognition in the United States.

British director-producers Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas hope to change all that with American: The Bill Hicks Story, a new documentary that will have its Houston premiere at the WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival Wednesday (5 p.m. at AMC 30).

Informed by a wealth of interviews with Hicks’ family and closest friends, plus a treasure trove of previously unseen performance footage and photographs (many of them from Hicks’ personal collection), the film offers a fresh new look at a man who many consider the finest comedian of his time.

Harlock and Thomas “repurposed” the archival photographs with narration from friends, body doubles, and location shots in a distinctive animation technique to showcase key moments in the comedian’s life. Photographer David Johndrow, a childhood friend of Hicks who provided many of the stills in the movie, has said that the technique was so artful that he didn’t recognize a number of his own photographs within the animation.

Hicks wasn’t born a Texan (he hails from Valdosta, Georgia), but he moved to Houston when he was seven. As the city where Hicks got his start and honed his craft for much of his short life, Houston plays a key supporting role in this documentary.

An Early Rebel

One memorable recreation from the film shows a 15-year old Hicks sneaking out of his family’s Nottingham Forest home for his first stand-up performance. Hicks’ friend and first comedy partner, Dwight Slade, although only 14 at the time, already had an agricultural driver’s license.

Hicks would climb out of his second-floor bedroom window and hop the backyard fence into the parking lot of St. John Vianney Catholic Church, where Slade, who had commandeered his family’s recreational vehicle, awaited to drive into town. Trippy animated sequences show Hicks and Slade in the RV, cruising down the highways of Houston on the way to the Comix Annex. And in no time, the Stratford High School sophomore was making weekly appearances at the club.

The film goes on to chronicle Hicks’ ascendancy as a Texas outlaw comic, as well as his struggles with drugs and alcohol and subsequent cleaning up. Although Hicks was now selling out large theaters in the United Kingdom, in the U.S. he was still playing many of the same clubs he got his start at, never achieving the mainstream success he sought.

Hicks appeared multiple times on David Letterman’s show, but his most famous (or infamous) appearance (which receives only passing treatment in the documentary) didn’t air until 15 years after his death. His final routine, recorded in October 1993, was taped but did not air because CBS and Letterman feared the jokes would be too controversial.

In January 2009, Letterman invited Hicks’ mother to appear on his show, apologized, and played the routine in its entirety.

In addition to his gift for comedy, Hicks was also a talented musician. “A lot of his better bits were influenced by music,” Johndrow said. Recordings of Hicks’ band Marble Head Johnson flow through the film and provide the soundtrack for his all-too-short life.

The WorldFest screening is an early one – 5 on a Wednesday night. It’s a film well worth sneaking away from work a little early to see. It seems like Hicks would have wanted it that way.