The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love (1967)-In The 1960s Time Of Fear And Loathing- The Movie-Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas”

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love (1967)-In The 1960s Time Of Fear And Loathing- The Movie-Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas” 

Zack James’ comment:

You know it is in a way too bad that “Doctor Gonzo”-Hunter S Thompson, the late legendary journalist is not with us in these times both this 50^th anniversary commemoration of the Summer of Love, 1967 which he worked the edges of while he was doing research (live and in your face research by the way) on the notorious Hell’s Angels. His “hook” through Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters down in Kesey’s place in La Honda where many an “acid test” took place and where for a time the Angels, Hunter in tow, were welcomed. He had been there and later as well when he saw the ebb tide of the 1960s coming a year or so later. He would have “dug” the exhibition at the de Young Museum at the Golden Gate Park highlighting the events of the period.    

Better yet he would have had this Trump thug wrapped up and bleeding from all pores just like he regaled us with the tales from the White House bunker back in the days when Trump’s kindred one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal was running the same low rent trip before he was run out of town by his own like some rabid rat. Hunter Thompson wherever you are –help. Selah. Enough said-for now   

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, starring Johnny Depp, based on the gonzo journalism of Doctor Hunter S. Thompson.

Make no mistake I have read everything of Hunter Thompson’s that I could get my hands on. I love Johnny Depp as an actor. However, this film does a true disservice to both of their talents. Johnny makes no sense as Hunter, although he was legitimate wild man Hunter’s friend. More importantly, Fear and Loathing, driven by stuff internally spinning in Thompson’s head, does not translate on the screen as anything but a diffused and nonsensical homage to late counter-cultural self-indulgence, drug division. Of the worse sort.

Thompson always claimed that his literary attempt to use the tenets of ‘gonzo’ journalism in the book was a failure. I disagree with that evaluation for the book but certainly not for the film. Let us face it this is classic case of the film being very, very inferior to the book, although the episodes and language hew fairly close to it. Please, please read the book. And please, please read many times that little gem snippet of his about his take on the high (and low) side of the 1960s experience, what it meant to those who got caught up in the excitement and danger, and when he could see the whole thing literally ebbing. Classic. You will also laugh and be entertained by his drug-induced attempt to find the meaning of the American experience in the post-World War II world. As for the film it will give you nothing but fear and loathing.