and
The Appropriate Tune: 'Viva Las Vegas' by Elvis Presley
When I was a teenager I was at the height of my weird writing phase. As a child my mind had been shaped by the retro futurism of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, and as I matured that malformed imagination metastasized into something all the more bizarre, and it needed food to maintain it. Franz Kafka, H.P. Lovecraft, Mick Farren, Kurt Vonnegut, William Burroughs, surface level stuff for those who consider themselves alternative literature connoisseurs but mind-blowing to the isolated me. However I don’t know if there has ever been a writer that has been more influential in my attempts at being a writer than Hunter S. Thompson.
There were two main reasons this was the case. One was that I was a big fan of the Venture Bros. and the comic series Transmetropolitan, both of which featured a Thompson-esque character, and his wild lifestyle was fascinating to someone who had entered his love of music through the 1960s and 70s. The main reason however was in the writing. It was magical to me; A speeding bullet train of razorwire thoughts and ugly feelings that brought to mind the freewheeling work of Kerouac, but unlike Kerouac never veered off course. As a kid who consistently struggled with expressing myself in words and especially in writing I was in awe of Thompson’s ability to not only to write down exactly how he felt but to do it so eloquently and effortlessly. Everything I’ve ever written since then, whether it’s this blog or other things you readers aren’t privy to, has been in an effort to reach that level of writing, that smooth-as-silk translation of the fluidity of thought into form. I don’t think I’ve ever reached that level, but I guess until the day I stop writing for good there’s still a chance.
Anyway, movies.
Released in 1998, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was directed by Terry Gilliam, written by Gilliam, Tony Grison, Alex Cox and Tod Davies and produced by Patrick Cassavetti, Laila Nabulsi and Stephen Nemeth through Rhino Films and Summit Entertainment, based on the novel of the same name by Hunter S. Thompson. Johnny Depp plays Raoul Duke (a pseudonym of Thompson), a doctor of journalism who is tasked by the magazine he works for to cover the Mint 400, a motorbike race in the desert outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. Duke does make it to Vegas, but it’s not to cover any race; rather he, his attorney ‘Dr. Gonzo’ (Benicio del Toro), a cherry red muscle car, and a briefcase of every drug known to mortal man, are in Sin City to find the fabled American Dream, preferably while blitzed out of their mind. What follows is a sort of hedonistic Odyssey, as Duke and Gonzo go on the mother of all benders in the nation’s capital of debauchery, from the highest highs to the lowest of lows. It’s time to experience some true fear and loathing in Las Vegas.
It’s worth noting that this wasn’t the first time that the work of H.S.T. had been put to film -- A decade or so prior had seen the release of Where the Buffalo Roam, with Bill Murray in the role of the infamous journalist, which was somehow not able to save the film from obscurity despite being a comedy movie from the 80’s with Bill Murray in it. Although the two films revolve around similar material however, Where the Buffalo Roam is cartoonish farce pretending to be an adaptation. Buffoonish even, noteworthy mainly for Bill Murray trying his best Thompson impression and Peter Boyle of all people playing Chicano lawyer Oscar Acosta. Maybe I’ll give it a proper review one day, but it’s not exactly high on the queue.
Terry Gilliam on the hand has never been interested in just doing comedy. His entire directorial career had been about going into weird, dark directions that dabbled in comedy from time to time. While he had started off the decade relatively wholesomely with The Fisher King (which still featured mass murder, PTSD and homelessness), he followed that up with 12 Monkeys, his most openly nihilistic and depressing film since Brazil. Fear and Loathing isn’t quite as depressing, but true to its title there’s a violent miasma to this world that taints everything with a terrible ugliness. Duke and Gonzo’s can be amusing but more than anything else they’re disturbing, base expressions of paranoia, violence, and psychopathic antipathy spurred on by the copious amounts of psychoactive drugs warping the excess of Vegas into a pandemonium of sights and sounds. When Gonzo is a tub full of water and grapefruit, threatening to murder Duke unless he throws an electric tape player into the bath at the climax of Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit’, thus killing him, the sheer absurdity of the situation lends itself to comedy, but rather than being funny it feels more uncomfortable and sad. If a Marx Brothers movie were set in the real world, it’d feel like Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.
The classic rule of storytelling is that you should always show and not tell. It’s one that Gilliam has built his career around and it’s one that’s showcased in full force in Fear and Loathing. Everything in this film is literal; Duke goes into a bar and the narration says that he was in a ‘reptile house’ and suddenly the room is filled not with people but extras from ABC’s Dinosaurs, when Duke takes a few too many hits of ‘adrenochrome’, a hallucinogen supposedly derived from the adrenal glands of children that Gonzo got from a Satanist client, Duke watches Gonzo transform into a demon before his eyes. Even during the more sober moments of the film the camera can’t sit still, leaning in close or contorting as if it’s as inebriated as the characters themselves. This, combined with the puppetry, the CG, the art direction all adds up to one of the most artistically ambitious films in an incredibly ambitious filmography up to that point, right up there with Brazil and Baron Munchausen.
Of course on the flip side there’s an argument to be made that visuals can be detrimental, or at the very least not helpful to a film. Monkeybone was a visually interesting film. Most of Ralph Bakshi’s films were visually interesting. That doesn’t make them good films, it makes them good wallpaper compilations. There are a few moments where we pull back and we actually get into something with substance, Duke soberly reflecting on the death of the 60’s social optimism and the dispelling of the grand illusion that was acid culture as the cure for the ills of society. Duke and Gonzo aren’t taking LSD and mescaline in the 70’s to expand their consciousness and thus become better people, they do it to get fucked up, because trying to get through Vegas and to a greater extent life completely sober has become increasingly tolerable. But then we get right back to the wild and bizarre stuff, and it makes you wonder if that’s just how the book is written or if Gilliam is missing the forest for the trees in order to be ‘out there’. That was certainly true years later with the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, a flashy production utilizing the hip new technology that all adds up to a dull viewing, although by that point Gilliam had been all but forced into the realm of ‘has-been’ filmmakers. In 1998 though Gilliam was at his peak, and it’s because those moments of introspection are so few and far between are why it works. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas isn’t a story about answers, it’s about questions. It’s about being lost, morally, spiritually, chemically, and the desperate struggle to find purpose in nothingness. And even if we manage to distract ourselves with chaos, as Duke and Gonzo do, that taint is etched into our souls, rising up in those moments of lucidity before we force it back down again.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas gets the recommendation. While these days films and TV about the darkness of the post-Flower Power era are commonplace, in the 1990s when pandering to 60s nostalgia was at an all time high (they tried to reboot Woodstock twice), films like Fear and Loathing and The Basketball Diaries provided a nice counterpoint to the jam bands and tie-dye shirts. And since disillusionment with America has only increased with the years, this film has so far aged like a fine wine. Not to mention adding yet another feather to the caps of both Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro, who had both had a pretty good decade and would only get bigger moving forward. A damn good, damn crazy movie. For best results, pair with Apocalypse Now! or Taxi Driver for the full burn out 70s experience. And avoid bat country if at all possible, you’ll thank me later.
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