The late Hunter S. Thompson hardly needs a two-hour documentary to illustrate the fact that the man was a crazy son of a bitch. But lest we forget, he was brilliant, too. At his finest moments, he broke down doors, cast decency aside and went straight for the throat of the American establishment.
Through the drug-fueled fog of myth and embellishment, Thompson’s legacy has lived on past the man who ended his life so cowardly with a self-inflicted gunshot to the head in February of 2005.
Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney’s (Taxi To The Dark Side) Gonzo: The Life And Work Of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson does little to tease apart the man from his ethically (and often factually) challenged hijinks. The film errs toward the celebratory, culling a load of Thompson’s famous friends to shed a little light on his life.
Perhaps appropriate considering the subject matter, Gibney’s over-reliance on dramatized footage and psychedelic illustrations occasionally mars the exploration of Thompson’s life. However, Johnny Depp’s (Sweeney Todd) narration adds a nice counterbalance to the stylish production elements. Once again, Depp steps in as Thompson’s voice, reading passages from his works to accompany Gibney’s hokey footage.
But past the over-wrought imagery – the opening of an imagined Thompson typing away in response to Sept. 11 goes way too far as his mountain view gets replaced with scenes of global carnage – Gonzo gives an incredibly entertaining peek into the oft amusing, inevitably tragic life of the Wild Turkey-slogging man in the Panama hat.
Largely skimming past Thompson’s childhood and stint in the military, Gibney begins with Thompson’s big break: following notorious motorcycle gang, the Hells Angels. The ensuing book on the Angels catapulted Thompson into the public spotlight. From there on, his story follows as any historical account – a catalogue of conflicts.
For Thompson, the Kennedys’ deaths and the Chicago riots at the 1968 Democratic convention signaled his last flash of optimism and the death of the American way. As his first wife, Sondi Wright, attests, it was the beginning of the end.
He saw America through LSD-colored glasses and realized what a bad trip it had all become.
At the Kentucky Derby, in the Scanlan’s Monthly article that would come to embody the birth of gonzo journalism, he saw the most disgusting manifestations of greed and Old Southern ignorance. In President Nixon, Thompson found a powerful adversary, the representation of all things evil and wrong with the country he loved so dearly.
And then there was Las Vegas, Sin City, the neon-lit compost pile under which the American dream lay suffocating.
Of course, Thompson was not entirely alone in his convictions, and whether or not his allies completely supported his maddening intake of drugs and alcohol along the road to Fear and Loathing, Gibney elicits many great anecdotes from his interview subjects.
Fellow writer Tom Wolfe and the once-great Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner provide a lot of insight on Thompson the writer. When asked about his friend and onetime employee’s suicide, Wenner sheds genuine tears.
From the political spectrum, Jimmy Carter (a personal hero of Thompson’s), George McGovern (whom Thompson covered during the ’72 presidential election) and even Pat Buchanan add their two cents on the world’s most unlikely member of the presidential campaign press corps.
But for all the impressive and occasionally surprising interviews, the archive footage of Thompson proves the most illuminating. Although the narration and interviewees tell us plainly of Thompson’s rise and demise – from starving writer, to literary rock star, to self-parody – Thompson was the definitive authority on all things Gonzo.
While running for sheriff of Aspen in 1970, his mischievous idealism is palpable. It’s no wonder the years, drugs and guns bore down on the ideals and left Thompson so empty on Feb. 20, 2005. As Wolfe puts it aptly, the man was “trapped in gonzo” and only saw one way out.
Although the film ends with a glorified fireworks celebration – Thompson had written in his will that his ashes should be fired out of a giant, gonzo fist-shaped canon – Wright’s sentiments on her ex-husband’s death ring out loudest. In these times, she says, we could really use a (together) Hunter S. Thompson.
Very true, though it seems rather unlikely anyone could possibly fill those shoes.
zherrm@umd.edu
RATING: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars
