Today, it’s almost hard to remember just how different the Texas government was back in the 1970s. That’s when Molly Ivins scorched a trail through good-ol’-boy politics like a flamethrower through a cactus patch.

The late opinion journalist Molly Ivins, a syndicated columnist and public speaker, is the subject of the new documentary film Raise Hell.
Photo: Robert Bedell/Magnolia Pictures

“The legislature was fairly corrupt in those days,” she said to NPR in 2006. “And the fact that it was, and that everybody knew it, and that people laughed about it, struck me as worth reporting. And I thought: Why not put it in the way it is?”

That simple but radical idea set Ivins’ writing apart all her days. And a dozen years after her death of breast cancer in 2007, there’s a new documentary about the liberal Texas columnist, speaker and political gadfly. Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins is opening around the country.

In an interview not long before she died, Ivins recounted her life and career.

“Being tall helped — being 6 feet tall,” she said. “You know, nobody ever looked at me and said, ‘Oh, you poor, sweet, dainty, fragile little thing — we couldn’t possibly send you out to cover a fire.’ It was always, ‘Ivins, get your ass out there!’ “

Ivins was affable, funny and a hell of a good storyteller. And politicians liked having Molly around.

At the day’s end, she’d drop by the offices of the lieutenant governor or the House speaker and have a drink or two. She’d tell a story, they’d tell her one; the drinks and conversation would flow. And by 7 p.m., happy hour was over and she’d know things no other reporter did.

“I have drunk enough beer to float the battleship Texas in pursuit of political stories,” she said.

At the left-wing Texas Observer in Austin, Ivins’ prose took flight. She despised politicians who used their influence to further marginalize the powerless.

Ivins was completely unafraid of them. And she used humor to turn her targets into punchlines.

“I think the meanest thing I ever said about one of them was that he ran on all fours, sucked eggs and had no sense of humor,” she said. “And I swear I saw him in the Capitol the next day and all he said was, ‘Baby, you put my name in your paper!’ “

No matter what Ivins wrote about conservative politicians, it wasn’t about to get them in trouble back home in East and West Texas.

Following her time at the Texas Observer, Ivins had a stint in the newsroom of The New York Times from 1976-82.
Photo: Molly Ivins Collection, Briscoe Archives/Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

The new documentary Raise Hell is a six-year labor of love by filmmaker Janice Engel — who, by the way, is not a Texan. Her friend, and eventually partner in production James Egan, recommended that she attend a one-woman play called Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins, starring Kathleen Turner.

“And I said, ‘why?’ ” Engel says. “And he said, ‘Don’t ask. Just go.’ “

She hadn’t really heard of Molly Ivins before, but the play would change Engel’s life. She began her research that night, and by the time she was finished, she’d discovered a treasure trove of Ivins’ life and history archived at the University of Texas.

“She saved everything,” Engel says. “And Molly was very private. She was also, I learned, actually a very shy person — which a lot of people couldn’t even imagine because of her larger-than-life personality and her take-no-prisoners humor. No, but underneath it she was actually quite shy. She was a loner. I mean, you’re a writer, it’s solitary.”

The documentary pulls no punches. All those professionally productive drinking sessions turned Ivins into an alcoholic. It afflicted her for decades until she finally went to what she called “drunk school.”

The movie also draws on footage that lays bare Ivins’ unabashed approach to journalism. A sample statement:

“First of all, there’s no such thing as objectivity. Everybody in journalism knows it and I think we hoist ourselves on our own petard constantly by pretending we’re objective, when there is no such thing. How you see the world depends on where you stand and who you are, there’s nothing any of us can do about that. So my solution has been to let my readers know where I stand, and they can take that with a grain of salt of a pound of salt, depending on their preferences. “

Former Texas Agricultural Commissioner and longtime Ivins colleague Jim Hightower says the documentary does a good job capturing Ivins’ essence.

“Molly was not just a big woman and a big personality, though she certainly was both of those things,” Hightower says. “But she had a heart bigger than a No. 10 washtub and a brain hotter than the sun.”

For the past 30 years, to be a politically engaged liberal in Texas was mostly an exercise in futility. But Ivins believed in and loved the fight.

“OK, here’s the real reason I’m optimistic about politics in this country: It’s because I watched the civil rights movement,” she said. “I grew up in the South before the civil rights movement. I know how much things can change and how fast things can change and how much difference government action can mean in the lives of people in this country.

“And the civil rights movement was not something where, you know, beneficent white people decided it was time to change things. It was poor black people who got up and walked. And that is something I have never forgotten. You can change this country. It’s our right to change it.”

While Molly Ivins lost her life to cancer, she never lost faith.

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