She was an Amazon among puny mortals. As if she wasn't already unusual enough as a progressive in Texas, the smart, savagely funny political journalist Molly Ivins also stood six feet tall. Not gifted with conventional proportions, she felt entitled to hold outsized opinions expressed with outsized gusto.
The zenith of her popularity came as a syndicated columnist in some 400 US newspapers during the era of George W. Bush (she called him "Shrub") —giving her plenty of fodder for her trademark blend of savvy political insight and stinging humor.
As Ivins herself once said about American politics: "You can laugh, you can cry, or you can throw up. Crying and throwing up's bad for you, so you might as well laugh." There's plenty to laugh at — and get riled up over — in Janice Engel's documentary, Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins. Ivins succumbed to breast cancer in 2007, at age 62, but Engel's film celebrates all the ways Ivins raised hell in her own life as a pioneering woman in a world and profession run by good ole boys.
Through documentary footage and interviews, Engel allows Ivins to tell much of her own story in her own words. When back-up is called for, Engels solicits commentary from folks like Rachel Maddow, and political columnist Jim Hightower, but it's the particular zing of Ivins' own voice that makes this movie so irresistible.
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