I Think I'm Getting the Fear

Fall break is over (sadly), but I did use the opportunities of no classes and no work to my advantage and re-watched some of the great classics stowed away in my DVD collection. One of these was the complete mind-warp Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The movie, starring Johnny Depp and Benecio del Toro as well as a hodgepodge of other celebrity cameos, is a really intense story about two men who basically go to Vegas and spend the next several days in a illegal-drug-induced haze. The trailer from Youtube is below, but I should warn you that there's some adult material (mainly drug use, but hey you've been warned):



As disturbing and somehow equally hilarious as the movie is, though, the book is even more so. It did make one of my lists from my troublemaking post, for the explicit and gratuitous drug use and the chaos that follows. But it still ranks pretty high on the list of my all-time favorite books. I will admit that I first learned about the book only because I had watched the movie, which I had only watched because Johnny Depp was in it.

Yet between the two, the book is my favorite. I managed to find it one day in a secondhand bookstore (where it was buried in the journalism section), bought it without a second thought, and went home to devour it immediately. Fear and Loathing is one of the few books I've read where I spent nearly every page laughing because everything was so comically unbelievable. And thanks to one book, I was introduced to one of my all-time favorite authors, Hunter S. Thompson.

I want to be able to call Thompson my journalism idol, particularly for his unique Gonzo style where the writer becomes the subject and where the journalism almost becomes fiction. Thompson pushed the boundaries of his writing every single day wherever he worked (but especially Rolling Stone) and made quite the impression on nearly everyone who ever met him. That much is obvious from the numerous stories told in the oral biography Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson, which was edited by Thompson's own RS editor Jann Wenner (check out the NY Times review for the book here). But Thompson was way into drugs and alcohol to really prove himself as a good role model, so I scratch his name off my list of role models.

Anyway...back to Fear and Loathing. There's been disagreement on whether the movie is a good interpretation of the original story, but I really have no opinion on that because I'm partial to both the movie and the book for different reasons. So instead, I thought I would share some interesting trivia about both that only a sometimes-obsessive fanatic would know.

Courtesy of The London Telegraph

Trivia Fact #1: Johnny Depp, who plays Thompson's autobiographical Raoul Duke in the movie, lived in Thompson's basement for four months to better imitate the journalist. Also, Depp's entire wardrobe throughout the movie consisted of Thompson's own clothing from the Seventies, and the red convertible you can barely see in the photo at the right is also Thompson's own '71 Chevrolet Impala

Courtesy of zuguide.com

Trivia fact #2: In the first twenty minutes of the movie, we already see our first celebrity cameo, and it's fairly unexpected. Check it out at left and see if you recognize him (this one's hopefully kinda obvious). In case you can't, probably due to the bad picture, it's Tobey Maguire pre-Spiderman days with a really bad hairdo (I think I've read somewhere it's a wig). And it's impossible to tell from this photo, but Maguire's shirt has a caricature of Mickey Mouse that is identical to the one found on the same character's shirt in Ralph Steadman's original illustration for the story.

Screenshot taken from Youtube.com

Trivia Fact #3: Okay, this one really has nothing to do with the book, but it's still entertaining. When Depp and del Toro's characters go to the Circus Circus Casino (called the Bazooka Circus Casino in the movie), they pass by this statue. According to Johnny Depp, this same gorilla now "lives" in his front yard. (Which is interesting because in the book, Duke and his companion Dr. Gonzo contemplate and even buy a gorilla off some guy while they're in Circus Circus.)



Okay, I could go on and on about either the book or the movie because I love them both. But I should probably stop while I'm ahead and leave this discussion where it is. If you're wondering where I get most of this stuff, all the facts I mentioned above, as well as more entertaining trivia, can be found on IMDB's site for the movie.

So if you're looking for whacked-out, and hilarious yet disturbing entertainment, then you have to check out Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. (Just read the book first, trust me.)  And if you have read the book or seen the movie already, tell me your thoughts about it.