# Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

### reviewed by
Will Fitzhugh

Review: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

Hunter S. Thompson claims he finished some of his ground-breaking gonzo work by ripping pages out of his notebook and feeding them directly into a fax machine, or whatever similar device they had back in the 70's. Unfortunately it seems like Terry Gilliam followed this model in writing the screenplay for his movie adaptation; ripping whole pages out of a beat-up paperback edition and labeling them "narration". I've read the book at least a dozen times but as much as I enjoyed hearing Johnny Depp recite paragraph after paragraph of tales about lizards roaming the halls of Las Vegas hotel or of Thompson's early, freaked-out drug experiences, I could have gotten more or less the same thrill by soaking my pillow with ether (those fruitflys can meet their maker tomorrow) and popping the audio book, narrated by Sonny Bono with some amyls shoved up his nose, into the Walkman. If those Kentucky gentleman want to vomit on their shoes, it's fine with me; they can stagger out onto the track and get run down by sixteen pickup truck-size thoroughbreds ridden by what look like eight-year-old kids with arms like tennis pros and I'd be happy to just rip up my losing tickets and try it again next race. It's probably wishful thinking, but I'd to think Alex Cox had better ideas. Shoot, he already filmed the highway patrol scene for Repo Man, with alien corpses instead of the hundred bars of translucent soap from the Tropicana gift shop. Walker had the buzz of Thompson, too, except with a South American country instead of Las Vegas.

You didn't see Irvine Welsh get all snitty when John Hodge took some characters, about five lines and a couple of vague scene ideas from Trainspotting and pretty much ran with it. The point is, Hodge and Danny Boyle stayed faithful to the book without regurgitating it more or less whole. I may be stating the obvious (but hey, this is the internet) but a book is not a movie. If some filmmakers wants to be considered artists they need to convince us, at least occasionally, that they made a better film than some Spielberg-worshipping drone could have. In some cases the creative thing to do is recognize your limitations as a screenwriter and hire somebody else to do the job. Gilliam made some good choices, bringing his twisted Python/Brazil/Munchausen visual skills to bear, getting some right-feeling performances out of Johnny Depp (Thompson) and Benicio Del Toro (his bloated Samoan attorney) and not sanitizing the violence and occasional pointlessness of the tale. But if I remember correctly from an interview, Gilliam said that the book was pretty cinematic so he kept faithful to it. I don't know if Thompson fed him that line over pitcher-sized rum drinks up in Woody Creek or if he made it up himself but either way it sounds like laziness. Or Fear. I'm just sorry it caused him to shy away from wrestling a good screenplay, and ultimately a good movie, out of this book.

It occurred to me when this movie first came out that if Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was an early summer blockbuster then Gilliam/Depp/Thompson could become a Broccoli/Connery/Bond kind of franchise. As with Ian Fleming's works, the full-length ones (Hell's Angels, Fear And Loathing on the Campaign Trail) would get used up first, followed by the shorter pieces (Great Shark Hunt, Kentucky Derby), and finally new works barely inspired by newspaper columns or notes jotted on crumpled hotel stationery. Eventually, Depp gets too old to be convincing as a speed-crazed young journalist and gets replaced by Dennis Hopper's grandson Victor who looks the part but can't act, lasts for one movie and gets replaced by some relation of River Phoenix who took a few acting lessons. Gilliam continues to attach his name to each movie even after he's dead, his daughter taking over the directing duties. Thompson defies all odds and lives longer than any of them, hanging around the set, muttering about rabid hyenas in his dressing room, asking where Steadman is so he can find someone to listen to him. Alex Cox will eventually release his own version with a British actor who does a good American accent (Tim Roth II, Gary Oldham, Jr., that sort of thing) and the goddamn thing will sink without a trace, an unrecognized classic that will play a few cult theaters and resurface on college campuses occasionally, only to be truly appreciated when distant relation of mine writes his 100th film review for the New Yorker and names it one of the 10 best movies of the 21st century. So far.

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