Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

I can't think of a more inappropriate choice to watch F&LiLV with than Requiem

Still, one of my all-time favorite books and a worthy adaptation. Gilliam got the essence of the book correct, and Depp and Del Toro (the rest of the cast seems to overplay it a bit) do a brilliant job.

IMO HST...err, Raoul Duke comes across as vaguely sympathetic; he's a bit of a prick but overall, just wants to get fucked up and see where it takes him. Dr Gonzo is the true "monster" in that he appears be gasoline in search of whatever meager flame might wander into his purview.

My take on Gonzo is probably not clear, but if this thread gains momentum (and anyone seems to give a shit) I'll expand.

Fear and Loathing AND Requiem for a Dream?

Jesus, how are you functional at this point?

Great movie but did you laugh at all Justin? At anything? The way you describe it makes it sound like you didn't.

If I can ask, have you ever partaken in any mind-altering substances yourself Justin?

By the end it's hardly funny at all anymore, but that early stuff is comic gold. I was just clarifying.

My favorite moment is still Hunter S. Thompson's cameo.

"Jesus, there I am!"

Supposedly Gilliam hasn't, either(I have a hard time believing, but it's not without precedent), which makes it an even greater film,. Visually, at least.

By the way, this is one of my favorite comedies. So good.

I can't wait to see how different Rum Diaries is.

Honestly it really is.

A beautiful line, and I like that they moved it from pretty early in the book to the end of the film. It really hammers down the shift from funnyness to sadness.

It seems like you're portraying the shift away from humor as the movie rolls on as a negative, but for a rumination on the burnout of 60s idealism, it seems appropriate.

Does not compute.

Two words, though. Bat Country.

This film came out right as I was in the middle of college and "Bat Country" became a code for me and my buddy for when it was time to get fucked up and for when things were kicking in. Still to this day, working in different states(geographical) phone conversations often open up with, "Jesus, I'm in bat country" just for old times sake.

I'm not certain where you see them as monster's ala Scarface since Montana was a drug dealer wanting to get as rich as possible and therefore expanding his business by any means.

Duke and Gonzo were simply doing with their bodies what they wanted to. The criminal acts they perpetrated whilst intoxicated harmed very few outside of monetary loss. Maybe Gonzo's ephebophilia could be and is somewhat construed as monstrous but the characters as a whole I don't think I would equate with Tony Montana.

Can you elaborate on your perception of their monstrosity?

That's an interesting take on F&L, Justin. Although, to be fair, the drug users that swear by this like it for different reasons than, say, Half Baked. Like many extreme characters, the malaise Duke and Gonzo wallow in is an exagerrated version of universal feelings, especially among users. It's a movie for intelligent viewers, who can relate to being driven to despair by the culture surrounding them, and I honestly believe that a large amount of the F&L cult consists of these people. That it also works as an idiot comedy that will make your average stoner giggle is a testament to everyone involved, but it's not exactly a huge underground hit with this crowd, a la The Big Lebowski. It's still a fairly unremembered curio, sitting somewhere a little bit above Dead Man but beneath Ed Wood on the Johnny Depp backlog, in terms of cultural impact.

I love it a lot, though, it would probably be on my Top Ten All Time. It's an amazing achievement in adaptation, in performance, in editing, in cinematography, and tons more.

EDIT: To Tzu: they're different monsters than Tony Montana. Duke and Gonzo are controlled by their impulses, removed from any higher brain functions associated with civility. It's not so much moral decay as it is the rejection of humanity. The movie is actually pretty explicit with the whole monster symbolism, from the opening Samuel Johnson quote on through the sequence where Gonzo literally turns into a monster. I think Justin is just suggesting that this, like the inherent evil of Montana, is lost on most of the movie's fans, which I'm not sure about.

Nope. It's clear you've never used psychedelics; watching a film is one of the last things one would do, and even then, it's trying to watch a movie.

Moralists need not watch this film! In fact, I encourage them not to. What, Thompson didn't try to make a difference in the world? Huh? The movie is about the insanity of Las Vegas and the American Dream, exaggerated like all good satire, except in this case by drugs.

Your value judgments are making you miss the film's points - the world is fucking insane and full of corrupt bloodthirsty murderers who are high-functioning.

I wouldn't necessarily say they are controlled by their impulses. I feel they willingly adulterated their minds in order to view and present the "American Dream" through the prism of the counterculture movement. It seems to me they may have snowballed away from control but retained a tenuous grasp throughout.

The quote

to me speaks of the disillusionment(failure as HST has said regarding the book) that the counterculture movement feels because they were roaring with the idealistic energy of youth and they ran into the reality of life that comes with age and experience. An almost misplaced sense of failure in fact.

The debasement angle does ring true from quote to transformation but I'm not seeing where it could be the rejection of humanity except in a somewhat scientific pursuit of observation.

Disillusionment, but also recognition of misplaced cynicism (at least on Duke's part). The scene in the mom 'n pop convenience store (outtake on the Criterion release) is further evidence that Duke feels he's out of touch with 'the heartland'.

The commentary track HST provided was, literally, a hoot.

I wish I could find Nick's DVD review. This redesign/reboot of the main site is a PITA. Here's the thread discussing said DVD...

Failed ideals are very much a part of the debasement. I've always gotten a bit of existentialist Beckett-like vibe from Thompson, particularly in F&LiLV. As with many drug users, it has to do with dulling the pain of life, and the collapse of youth and faith is as good a catalyst as any.

In Duke/Thompson's case, there is, quite literally, a scientific, or rather journalistic, aspect to the detachment.

"He who makes a beast of himself gives up the pain of being a man"

I don't think Gonzo or Raoul Duke were portrayed as heroes in the book or the movie, I see Fear and Loathing as an examination of why the sixties went wrong and the wild excesses people can be driven to when in a state of nihilistic despair.

There may be a few 15 year old pot smokers out there who think it would be really cool to live the way they did and commit all sorts of crimes, but I think most people who love the the story and the characters so much love it because it reflects their own sense of despair about our culture while at the same time being wildly funny in the darkest way.

And lets not forget the wish fulfillment aspect, we all may be good respectable people but everyone has a little monster inside them who would love the chance to escape and wreak havoc if given the chance. Hunter S. Thompson went out there and fucked shit up so we don't have to, he is the safety valve to society's overheated boiler.

Really? Nobody else here has had a so-called Gonzo moment?

my whole life is a Gonzo moment.

Great cinematography and set design. Captures being high pretty well. There's not really a story, and the episodes aren't self-contained enough. Depp has an amazing ability to create completely different characters. Del Toro is brilliant as usual. I wonder how they feel now, watching themselves act like cartoons for two hours? Chemical influence probably adds coherence to the film. It's pretty fun to watch from beginning to end. Sober, the day after, it seems like it's only about two guys getting high, and that's it.

Both Fear and Loathing and Scarface feature lead performances that are so go for broke and charismatic that you cannot help but like them no matter how horrible they are as a person. I think the same can be said for Daniel Plainview in There Will be Blood.

I never got the defence that "you have to be high" to watch this film. Surely it should stand on its own merits without the need for you to take drugs to enjoy it?

Totally agree with Justin here and it’s nice to find someone else who shares my opinion of it.

It is uncanny how dead on this film nails the feeling of being whacked out of your skull on psychedelics. It perfectly illustrates just how fun, terrifying and depraved the experience usually is (when you do it right, haha).


I was lucky enough (?) to see this film for the first time the very first time I tried LSD (the first psychedelic I experienced). By the time they had checked into the hotel, I had nearly passed out from a combination of laughter and disbelief that the film was so accurately describing how I felt.

Still one of my favorite comedies ever, and one of the best adaptations I've ever seen.

The arc of the movie is designed to mirror that of an extreme drug binge (something the movie is more focused on than the book): by the time Gonzo and his lawyer end up at the shitty roadside diner, they have crashed hard, and things are ugly. It's absolutely not supposed to be funny anymore - it's supposed to be desperate, unfun, dangerous. Anyone who has experienced that sort of thing will vouch for the accuracy of the movie's tone.

As your attorney, I strongly advise you to read A Pig in the Wilderness: My Night with Hunter S. Thompson (Criterion site).

Did anyone here see this in a theater twelve years ago?

I saw it twice, and it was a truly amazing experience, but the few people around me were getting up and leaving on both occasions. I don't think anyone was ready for this movie in the summer of '98, and it got some of the worst reviews I'd ever seen, even from critics who loved the book but had their heads jammed so far up their asses they couldn't see that it was the book (like Ebert, who at the time was borderline incoherent in many of his reviews).

Yep. Thought it was a great adaptation. Still do, for the most part.

Thanks for that, Rob. Didn't even think to look at the Criterion site for this one because I keep forgetting that the damn thing got a Criterion release.

THIS IS BAT COUNTRY

Best discrimination of Interstate 15 ever. Up tell the end of the 1980s this may have been the spookiest road in the US.

Beneath the humor and the guise of a romp on LSD, it's an extremely depressing story about disappointment, apathy, and inexorability.

An exposé on the ugliness and depravity of existnce when our preconception of life is shattered by the horrors of the world around us.


I love the movie, but most miss the meat of the story's underbelly if they've never been exposed the book. I hate how some druggies love the movie just because drugs are involved.... drugs are extraneous -- it could be sex, violence, gambling, portraits of Barbara Streisand, or in Nixon's case, power.

"Oh Mama, could this really be the end?" Fucking A it is.

I've been beating my head for a while to figure out which movie the diner scene comes from. All I could remember was a guy buying pie at gun point, and then a second guy apologetically paying, or something like that. Just realized it was from this movie. Been baffling me for a while.

Yep. By that time, I'd kind of moved past the blind HST adulation that had marked my college years, but I still regarded his earlier stuff as essential, and I was pleased to see Gilliam capture at least a good bit of the spirit of the book, though (as with Snyder's Watchmen) I think it would have been an even better film if he'd imposed more of himself on it (like Watchmen, it's at its best when it's reproducing the source, rather than interpreting it). I suspect, for what it's worth, it might have been better reviewed, too.

And I'm sure I'm not the only one that, while admiring Depp all to hell, just felt he was physically too slight to be the force of nature that Thompson can be, and who wished Bill Murray's take on HST had been in a film this good.

Yep. Smoked a bunch of weed and saw it at a matinee with only one other person in the theater. I was giggly and hyper-paranoid. Naturally, I loved it.

I never saw this thread before but hot damn if you didn't totally nail it Justin.

And while Duke is entertaining Depp's performance failed for me. I never saw Gonzo the man, only Depp hamming it up, and as much as I can empathise with anyone's dissatisfaction at the society around them I can't relate to the decision to run away from it and into the arms of chemical oblivion. I don't think drugs in moderation do much harm, as long as the user has a realistic hold on what quantities should be considered "moderation", but drugs as escape from society are for quitters. There's plenty to hate about the world around us, but turning away is the weaker decision, and while that's perfectly understandable and I don't judge people for it in real life, when a movie character is presented as such then I can't like him and I can't relate to him, and so as the comedy dies away in Fear & Loathing all that's left is pity for a pathetic soul. I see it in real life, I don't need it in my films.

But even if I did go along for that ride the fact that Depp never convinced me he wasn't Johnny Depp goofing around and playing dress-up means the story never grabbed me. A story can be the most amazing ever, but a misfire of a lead performance will undermine it every time.

I don't have anything morally against drugs like weed, ecstacy, acid etc, and I've ingested my share in the past, but I have to add the qualifier that my take on the film was formed while watching the film straight.

Ever see a picture of HST back then? He's some stout he-beast or anything - a lean, fit* guy.


* - well, fit-LOOKING at least

I think you missed something immensely crucial here. The drugs were deemed necessary, as a way of approaching the American Dream that had manifested itself hideously in the Nevada desert. Saying 'drugs as escape from society are for quitters' is a pretty irrelevant thing to say, when the society in question is Las Vegas. Every vector leading to that place is couched in the terminology of escape. The movie, for what it's worth, is at least ballsy enough to power through the gibberish and show us where that dedication to escapism eventually leads: some real fucked up shit. Granted, the doctor of journalism manages to escape, but just barely. He had seen what became of the American dream, as he understood it in the 60's, and it was a massively fucked proposition.

And at the end of the movie, Thompson is the only character to emerge from the entire clusterfuck that shouldn't be pitied.

That's one way to look at it. But if you're tackling this menacing societal clusterfuck black hole oasis that's sucking in the great nation's escapists what point does it prove to take an even more escapist flight path than the escapists? It's like saying not just "If you can't beat 'em join 'em," it's saying, "If you can't beat 'em then beat yourself." It even felt like, when he pulled this stunt to show that Vegas, as the true heart of Amercia, was a mess by exaggerating the effects chemically, he was only ever preaching to the converted.

The movie's plenty ballsy, I don't have any issue there, and it's an impressive production in a lot of ways. And I agree that HST was a fine, entertaining and important writer and cultural commentator for many people. But even if I agree that what Thompson did was worthwhile in real life, the film doesn't communicate that for me because the kingpin of the whole thing never slid into place. If I don't buy the character then the drug use just seems like a game, not an attack on societal conventions, and even as someone who's enjoyed lifting off pharmaceutically at times that's always been boring to watch.

Yeah, but he was tall and broad-shouldered compared to Depp.

And anyway, it's the mythic Thompson, not the real one, that matters to the story, and I just didn't get that presence from Depp (though he was otherwise good).

It will be interesting to see how Depp (an actor in his mid-40s) approaches the role of a 30-year-old, relatively subdued Thompson in THE RUM DIARY. Physical limitations aside.

Bucho's totally right about Depp. His performance is a collection of surface quirks with little going on underneath, and it nearly sinks the whole film. Nothing feels like a reaction to Las Vegas, it never comes across as anything more than two guys getting completely fucked up and fucking around. And with so little momentum, so little story, and so many scenes playing out the same way, again and again, this movie gets really tired before it's even halfway through. It didn't help, though, that I didn't really find any of it funny. It's fun to watch these two actors ham it up, I guess, but it's so free of sane characters that there's little context for their rambling and most of the dialogue is impenetrable anyway. 

 

That said, Depp's performance aside, I can't think of how this book could have been better adapted. Gilliam's style is a perfect fit and it really does mirror the acid trips I've had at times in an uncanny way. It's a really special movie, for sure, one I'm glad exists, and I can understand why it has the cult following it does, but I don't think it's a very good movie.

I plan to watch it tonight, so I came back to this thread.  What I remember about the film is that it's funny as hell -- until it isn't.  And I think that's the point.