FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS

US, 1998, 118 minutes, Colour.
Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro, Tobey Maguire, Ellen Barkin, Gary Busey, Katherine Helmond, Michael Jeter, Mark Harmon, Penn Jillette, Craig Bierko, Lyle Lovett, Flea, Laraine Newman, Harry Dean Stanton, Tim Thomerson, Christina Ricci, Vern Troyer, Christopher Meloni.
Directed by Terry Gilliam.


Normal is not the word for the grotesque experience in 1971 where journalist Hunter S. Thompson spent a multi-drug induced hallucinatory and conventions-breaking weekend with his friend, advocate Gonzo, looking at the American dream, wallowing in it while criticising it. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is performed arrestingly and repulsively by Johnny Depp as Thompson and Benicio del Toro as Gonzo, filmed with his customary off-centre panache by Terry Gilliam, creating as bizarre a world as his Brazil or Twelve Monkeys. This is a spaced-out odyssey which is hard going unless this is what you really want to live vicariously. Bizarre.

1. Audience knowledge of Hunter S. Thompson? His career? Journalism? Gonzo journalism? His life, suicide?

2. The work of Terry Gilliam? Cartoonist? Part of Monty Python? His animation? Imagination? Fantasies? Combined with the drug experiences of Hunter S. Thompson?

3. The American settings? California, Las Vegas, the hotels? The desert? The highways? The realism?

4. The surrealism? The characters, the dialogue, behaviour? Drug-induced behaviour? Loss of control? Imagination and fantasies, delirium and illusions? The reprehensible behaviour? For comic effect? As related to the life of Hunter S. Thompson?

5. The narrative, episodic, real and unreal? The range of characters in the journey? The range of character actors and their cameos? Contributing to the quality and eccentricity of the film?

6. The character of Raoul Duke? Johnny Depp and his performance? As Hunter S. Thompson? His life, journalism? Continually drugged? His travelling with Doctor Gonzo, his lawyer? Their interactions, in the hotels, on the road? The dialogue? The friendship? The madness?

7. Benicio Del Toro as Doctor Gonzo? The reference to Gonzo journalism? The drug lawyer? Expertise – lack of expertise? The range of episodes and encounters with Duke?

8. The incidental characters and their contribution? Tobey Maguire as the hitchhiker, travelling in the back, listening to the two talking, getting out of the car, the later encounter? Ellen Barkin as the waitress at the cafe? Gary Busey as the highway patrolman? Michael Jeter and the satire on L. Ron Hubbard, his speech? Mark Harmon as a magazine reporter? The range of musicians? Harry Dean Stanton as the judge? Christina Ricci as the young girl?

9. The various characters along the way – sketches, cartoons characters?

10. The overall effect of the film experience? As cinema and images? Verbal? Imaginative and cartoonish? For real life, the role of drugs? And the year 1971 – and subsequent drug experiences in the US – and in American films?

11. The title – and the car finally leaving the town of fear and loathing, Nevada?