|
Fear
and loathing in Las Vegas
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Movie
| Book
| Author
| Director
& cast
|
Book: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1972)
Movie: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
Premise
movie:
"The original cowriter and director of Fear and
Loathing in Las Vegas was Alex Cox, whose earlier film Sid and Nancy
suggests that Cox could have been a perfect match in filming Hunter
S. Thompson's psychotropic masterpiece of "gonzo" journalism.
Unfortunately Cox departed due to the usual "creative differences,"
and this ill-fated adaptation was thrust upon Terry Gilliam, whose
formidable gifts as a visionary filmmaker were squandered on the
seemingly unfilmable elements of Thompson's ether-fogged narrative.
The result is a one-joke movie without the joke--an endless series
of repetitive scenes involving rampant substance abuse and the
hallucinogenic fallout of a road trip that's run crazily out of
control. Johnny Depp plays Thompson's alter ego, "gonzo" journalist
Raoul Duke, and Benicio Del Toro is his sidekick and so-called
lawyer Dr. Gonzo. During the course of a trip to Las Vegas to cover
a motorcycle race, they ingest a veritable chemistry set of drugs,
and Gilliam does his best to show us the hallucinatory state of
their zonked-out minds. This allows for some dazzling imagery and
the rampant humor of stumbling buffoons, and the mumbling
performances of Depp and Del Toro wholeheartedly embrace the tripped-
out, paranoid lunacy of Thompson's celebrated book. But over two
hours of this insanity tends to grate on the nerves--like being the
only sober guest at a party full of drunken idiots. So while
Gilliam's film may achieve some modest cult status over the years,
it's only because Fear and Loathing is best enjoyed by those who are
just as stoned as the characters in the movie."
from:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-
/0783229526/103-5853588-8876604?v=glance
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Premise
book:
"Heralded as the "best book on the dope decade" by the
New York Times Book Review, Hunter S. Thompson's documented drug
orgy through Las Vegas would no doubt leave Nancy Reagan blushing
and D.A.R.E. founders rethinking their motto. Under the pseudonym of
Raoul Duke, Thompson travels with his Samoan attorney, Dr. Gonzo, in
a souped-up convertible dubbed the "Great Red Shark." In its trunk,
they stow "two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline,
five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of
cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers,
screamers, laughers.... A quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case
of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls," which they
manage to consume during their short tour.
On assignment from a sports magazine to cover "the
fabulous Mint 400"--a free-for-all biker's race in the heart of the Nevada desert--
the drug-a-delic duo stumbles through Vegas in hallucinatory hopes
of finding the American dream (two truck-stop waitresses tell them
it's nearby, but can't remember if it's on the right or the left).
They of course never get the story, but they do commit the only sins
in Vegas: "burning the locals, abusing the tourists, terrifying the
help." For Thompson to remember and pen his experiences with such
clarity and wit is nothing short of a miracle; an impressive feat no
matter how one feels about the subject matter. A first-rate
sensibility twinger, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a
pop-culture classic, an icon of an era past, and a nugget of pure comedic
genius."
from:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-
/0679785892/103-5853588-8876604?v=glance
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Author:
"Hunter S Thompson was born on 18 July, 1937, in Louisville,
Kentucky, USA." "Thompson and two friends got into trouble with the
law just over a week before he would have graduated from high
school. His friends, being of wealthy families and
having 'connections', got off with little or no consequence.
Thompson himself was sentenced to 60 days in juvenile detention
(reduced to 30 days for good behaviour) to be followed by enlistment
in the Army. Instead he joined the Air Force.
Not surprisingly, however, he rebelled just as much against military
regimentation as he had rebelled against any civilian
restriction. After boot camp he was assigned to electronics school, which he
loathed. 'His only way out of the less-than-exciting world of
electronics would be to take a dishonorable discharge. But he didn't
want such a heinous label following him the rest of his life. That
isn't to say he didn't tempt fate.' [Perry 2, p.25]
He nearly did get thrown out, but several officers sympathized with
the tortured but gifted young Thompson. And so he was honourably
discharged in the fall of 1957." "Thompson had been an avid sportsman from childhood onward. He
participated in local sports, attended every event in the Louisville
area, and even organized an athletic league for children under
14. As he grew older he proved less talented on the field than he had
hoped, but adjusted well by turning to sports writing. He was still
only a boy when he first began writing sports columns for the
Southern Star, a mimeographed paper edited by ten-year-old Walter
Kaegi, Jr. It was thanks to an opportunity in journalism that Thompson was able
to escape the hated electronics school at Eglin Air Force Base
during his brief enlistment. When the sports editor of the Command
Courier, the base's newspaper, was busted for urinating in a public
place, Thompson immediately applied for, and obtained, the position.
Author Paul Perry describes sports writing as the 'journalistic
equivalent of being a dilettante' [Perry, p.26] but there is nothing
to suggest that Thompson felt this way. He has demonstrated a life-long passion for sports, and has written about sports intermittently
throughout his career. If anything, such a nomadic career admirably
suits a man as ungovernable as Thompson; he simply could not remain
confined for long, either at a classroom desk or in an office
cubicle." "After his discharge, Thompson spent the tail end of the 1950s in
South America working for various newspapers.
During the early 1960s he hung around with - and got into scrapes
with - the Hell's Angels, he wrote books (including Rum
Diary), and in 1964 he moved to San Francisco. Anyone hanging out in San
Francisco during this period was going to meet some interesting
people, and Thompson met them all, from Ken Kesey to Tom Wolfe to
Allen Ginsberg. He also did some fun stuff, participating in Kesey's
first acid tests, introducing some of his Hell's Angels friends to
LSD... and, like many people in the 1960s counter-culture,
experiencing at least one fundamentally life-changing moment.
Most people can look back on their lives and pick one momentous
moment, a moment where their whole life turned on its axis and
started spinning in a new orbit: if you'd gone into a different bar
that day you wouldn't have met your wife, if you'd crossed the
street 4.2 seconds earlier you wouldn't have been hit by that bus,
that kind of thing. In June 1968, Thompson had one of these moments
at the Chicago Democratic Convention.
At the time of the Convention, Hunter was a stringer for Scanlan's
magazine and several newspapers, but it was speculative curiosity
that led him to go to Chicago, and he walked unwittingly into the
middle of the riot. The police ignored the press credentials hanging
round his neck and set about him with their batons. He escaped a bad
beating by falling backward through a plate glass window. Always a
combative sort, Thompson was personally enraged by the behaviour of
the authorities, but it would not be until the next US election that
he became involved in political reporting.
By 1970 he was living in Aspen, Colorado, which at that time was the
place to be seen by all the so-called movers and shakers (generally
slimy Hollywood types, some greased-up greasy politicians and some
of the worst sorts of hangers-on). There Thompson ran for sheriff,
calling his ticket 'Freak Power', and he lost by only 500 votes.
This experience led to his own account of these events,
entitled 'The Battle Of Aspen'. This was the first of his articles
to be printed by Rolling Stone magazine, which still publishes his
work today. The piece of literature that he is most well known for it is Fear
and Loathing in Las Vegas. This is the apocryphal tale of Raoul Duke
(aka Hunter S Thompson himself) and a wild weekend spent in Las
Vegas. Thompson was originally sent to report on the Mint 400
motorbike race, but he ditched that idea to examine the American
Dream, which he did, not through rose-tinted glasses, but through
glasses heavily glazed with LSD. At the time Thompson claimed Fear
and Loathing was his most accurate example of Gonzo journalism, but
he later admitted that while the weekend took place, some of the
events didn't. If you haven't read it, buy a copy. If you have read
it, read it again. At the very least watch the 1998 movie of the
same name, directed by Terry Gilliam and starring Johnny
Depp. Fear and Loathing first appeared in Rolling Stone in two parts and
it cemented the relationship between the magazine and Thompson.
Shortly after the book was published Rolling Stone decided to make
Thompson their political correspondent. He reported the Nixon v
McGovern 1972 election from the heart of the McGovern campaign, and
went on to write on many, many more articles over the years."
From:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A246386
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Director:
Terry Gilliam
Cast:
Johnny Depp (Raoul Duke), Benicio del Toro (dr. Gonzo), Craig
Bierko (Lacerda), Ellen Barkin (waitress), Gary Busey (police
officer), Cameron Diaz (TV Reporter), Flea (musician), Mark Harmon
(reporter) and others.
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