Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream is a novel by Hunter S. Thompson, illustrated by Ralph Steadman. The story follows its protagonist, Raoul Duke, and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, as they descend on Las Vegas to chase the American Dream through a drug-induced haze. The novel first appeared as a two-part series in Rolling Stone magazine in 1971.
Plot
Journalist Raoul Duke and attorney Dr. Gonzo travel from Los Angeles, California to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1971 to cover a motorcycle race for a sports magazine and enjoy a haphazardly planned vacation. The vacation turns highly irresponsible and reckless as the two consume copious amounts of illegal drugs, commit various acts of fraud, and generally reap mayhem upon the citizens of Las Vegas.
Set in Las Vegas, a symbol of American consumer and tourist culture, during the height of the Vietnam War and the closing of the 1960’s counter-cultural movement, Duke and Gonzo find themselves as outsiders in a unique position to analyze the present state of America and chase down the “American Dream”.
Origins
The book is largely a fictionalized account of Thompson and attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta's actual trip to Las Vegas around the same time period. In real life, Thompson was to cover the Mint 400 motocross race for Sports Illustrated magazine in 1971, for which he was contracted to write photo captions. While en route, coincidentally, he was also commissioned to cover a law enforcement convention for Rolling Stone magazine.
Before being asked to cover the race, Thompson was in Los Angeles, reporting on the murder of Reuben Salazar and the race riots that resulted from his death. Acosta was a prominent figure in the Chicano community and therefore a natural source for Thompson's story. Finding it difficult for a Hispanic to talk openly to a white reporter in L.A.'s tense atmosphere, Thompson and Acosta decided that Las Vegas would be a more comfortable place to complete the story (later published as Strange Rumblings in Aztlan).
What was intended as a 250-word photo-captioning job/road trip snowballed into a novel-length feature for Rolling Stone magazine in November 1971. The text was eventually published as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The novel was heralded as the "best book on the dope decade" by the New York Times and a "scorching epochal sensation" by author Tom Wolfe.
In the book The Great Shark Hunt, Thompson refers to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as "a failed experiment in gonzo journalism," a guerrilla style of reporting that Thompson championed and publicized throughout his career. Allegedly based on William Faulkner's idea that "the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism — and the best journalists know this," it blends storytelling, fiction, and traditional journalism.
Themes
The book was an attempt to place the radical activism and drug culture of the 1960s into the context of the (then) present-day mainstream American experience. It explores the idea that 1971 was a turning point in hippie and drug culture in America, the year that the innocence and optimism of the late 1960s turned to cynicism.
Throughout the novel, the main characters go out of their way to degrade, abuse, and destroy symbols of American consumerism and excess. Much of Las Vegas is used to symbolize the ugliness of mainstream American culture, to which the characters give little respect. In the DVD commentary of his film version of the novel (See Below), Director Terry Gilliam characterizes these actions as a theme of anarchism.
Some have suggested that the book's themes resemble those of The Great Gatsby, which deals with the state of the American Dream and the lives of the rich and careless. Others have surmised that the white Cadillac the pair drive (referred to as the "White Whale" in the book) is an allusion to the white whale in Moby Dick, symbolically representative of good and evil and a metaphor for elements of life that are out of people's control.
The "wave speech"
The "wave speech" is an important passage that takes place near the end of the book, after much of the chaos has subsided. Thompson considered the "wave speech" to be "probably the finest thing I've ever written." The wave speech describes 1971 as a turning point in the hippie sub-culture. "There was no point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
Film version (1998)
 | It has been suggested that this section be split out into another article titled Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (film). (Discuss) |
| Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas | |
|---|---|
| File:Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (DVD cover).jpg DVD cover | |
| Directed by | Terry Gilliam |
| Written by | Terry Gilliam Tony Grisoni Alex Cox Tod Davies Hunter S. Thompson |
| Produced by | Patrick Cassavetti |
| Starring | Johnny Depp Benicio del Toro Christina Ricci |
| Music by | Ray Cooper |
| Distributed by | Universal |
Release dates | May 22, 1998 |
Running time | 118 min |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $18,500,000 |
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The film version was directed by Terry Gilliam and starred Johnny Depp as Raoul Duke and Benicio Del Toro as Dr. Gonzo. Released on May 22, 1998, it only earned about US$10.5 million at U.S. box offices (it was budgeted at approximately US$18.5 million) but has since become a cult classic.
The lead actors undertook extraordinary preparations for their respective roles. Del Toro gained more than 40 pounds (18 kg) before filming began, and extensively researched Acosta's life. Depp lived with Thompson for months, doing research for the role as well as studying Thompson's habits and mannerisms. Depp even traded his car for Thompson's red Chevrolet Caprice convertible, known to fans as the Great Red Shark, and drove it around California during his preparation for the role. Many of the costumes that Depp wears in the film are actually reproductions of genuine pieces that Depp borrowed from Thompson, and Thompson himself shaved Depp's head to match his own natural male pattern baldness. Thompson also had a brief cameo in the film as his character, portrayed by Depp, has a flashback to a San Francisco music club, The Matrix, where Thompson can be seen sitting at a table as Depp walks by narrating his inner monologue, "There I was ... Mother of God! There I am!".
Both actors were cast by the film's original director, Alex Cox, who wrote the original screenplay with his longtime collaborator, Tod Davies. When Gilliam became director of the project, he rejected the Cox/Davies screenplay. Thompson himself disliked it and did not approve of Cox's approach to the movie. Gilliam then decided to attempt his own screenplay with collaborator Tony Grisoni. When the film approached release, Gilliam learned that the Writers Guild of America (WGA) would not allow Alex Cox's and Tod Davies' names to be removed from the credits even though none of their material was used in the production of the film. Angered over having to share credit, Gilliam left the WGA and, on certain early premiere prints of the film, made a short introductory sequence in which an anonymous presenter assures the audience that no screenwriters were involved in writing the film, despite what it says in the credits.
Thompson's disapproval of the Cox/Davies script treatment is documented in the film Breakfast with Hunter, wherein he rails against the writers for planning an animated portrayal of the "wave speech" in the original book, which he considered "probably the finest thing I've ever written." By the time Fear and Loathing was released as a Criterion Collection DVD in 2003, Thompson showed his approval of the Gilliam version by recording a full-length audio commentary for the movie as well as participating in several DVD special features.
The 1980 film Where the Buffalo Roam was based on several Thompson pieces including Fear and Loathing. The movie, though not a strict adaptation of the book, was directed by Art Linson from a screenplay by John Kaye and starred Bill Murray as Thompson and Peter Boyle as Acosta, renamed "Carl Lazlo" for the screen.
Trivia
- An image of Johnny Depp as Raoul is shown on the 1,000th issue of Rolling Stone Magazine.
- A song, titled "Bat Country", by Avenged Sevenfold, was inspired by this movie.
- An episode of G4's X-Play parodied the movie as hosts Adam Sessler (dressed as Raoul) and Morgan Webb traveled to find missing cartidges of the E.T. video game.
ISBNs
External links
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas at IMDb
- The Great Thompson Hunt
- Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas Original Script
- archive of film-related material from Dreams, a Gilliam fanzine
- Comparison of Terry Gilliam/Tony Grisoni and Alex Cox/Tod Davies screenplays for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
- J. Hoberman essay at criterionco.com
- Hunter S. Thompson essay at criterionco.com
- Book Review by Nick Christenson