Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

Duke, Dr. Gonzo, and us in the backseat.

Originally Published in The Daily Nebraskan, 2/11/2014

The cult classic “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” based on Hunter S. Thompson’s novel and directed by Terry Gilliam, is one of my favorite films. This drug-frenzied journey is brash, wild, loud and a little angry, aiming to give traditional American values and plot structure the finger.
Johnny Depp plays Raoul Duke, a fictional version of Thompson, who is sent to Las Vegas for a weekend to cover a low-rent motorcycle race called the Mint 500. He trumps up his assignment into a grand odyssey, calling it “the American Dream in action.” Along for the ride is Dr. Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro), his lawyer and partner in crime. Dr. Gonzo advises Duke to “get a very fast car with no top. And you’ll need cocaine. A tape recorder for special music. Acapulco shirts … and we’re gonna have to arm ourselves to the teeth.” These are two men on a mission.

The film begins breathlessly, as Duke and Gonzo tear through the Mojave desert in a convertible with a large suitcase full of drugs in the trunk. Their trip to Las Vegas is a nightmarish experience. The city takes on a fluid, unsavory nature as the two of them consume more and more mind-altering chemicals, trash hotel rooms, order endless carts of room service just because they can, threaten people, go to a carnival stoned on ether and so on. They try anything they can think of in a city of endless possibilities.

"Can you hear me?!"

"How much for the ape?"

It’s easy to miss the point in a movie such as “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” That’s because the characters are looking for a plot to get involved in and constantly failing. The point is that they can’t find a purpose. They don’t know how to use their freedom. There are quite a few moments when the characters declare a mission of importance, follow through some, then give up or forget about their plan altogether. The first of these moments is when they tear through the desert and pick up a hitchhiker (Tobey McGuire), then stop on the side of the road.

Dr. Gonzo growls and asks the hitchhiker if he wants to know the “truth.” He tells him that he and Duke are heading to Vegas to kill a heroin dealer named Savage Henry, then pulls a revolver out of a paper bag and points it to the sky. Savage Henry is never mentioned again, and there are no bullets in the gun.

Some of these plot threads are superfluous, bubbling up in the background or in throwaway dialogue and scenery. Others build upon themselves and come forward as the film moves along. LSD users would liken this plot structure to tripping acid, seeing things in the corner of your eye and those things disappearing when you try to look at them.

Ultimately, our two antiheroes are adrift on the winds of vice in a microcosmic representation of American greed. As they try to survive a three-day bender full of hallucinations, sinister vibes and technicolor debauchery, the camera makes us take the ride, twisting and dropping and forcing new perspectives, fixing us at certain angles to watch things we don’t want to see, in ways we don’t want to see them. The vital cinematography is underlined by a rollicking classic rock soundtrack, screeching and riffing with the angst of the 1960s and ’70s.

A scene that sums up the attitude of the entire film involves Duke and Gonzo visiting a hotel lounge while tripping on acid. Duke sits at the bar, wobbles around and mutters something about golf shoes, then abruptly snaps around to see that everyone in the lounge has become a giant, monstrous lizard. He sees beneath the glitzy façade of Las Vegas, and into the reptilian hearts of what he perceives to be droves of venal people seeking vice and pleasure in a modern day Gomorrah.

"I was right in the middle of a fucking reptile zoo!"

Toward the end, Duke sits alone in yet another trashed hotel room as he types out an essay about “the wave” of the ‘60s counterculture. He laments the misguided drug use that led to its downfall: “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 – that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” The hippie movement became a victim of its own directionless nature, and many of them became hopeless drug addicts.

“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” is at once a funeral dirge and a bestial cry, a celebration of life and freedom and the “American way.” Duke’s sordid journey in Vegas represents a culture-wide drug bender as a result of the disillusionment with the promise of the ’60s. The film explores this iconic moment in American history through Duke’s directed madness, and his jaded acceptance of chaos. Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro both give performances so electric and often terrifying, you might think they dropped some adrenochrome before the cameras rolled.

During one of the first screenings of the movie, novel author Hunter S. Thompson is reported to have jumped out of his seat during the opening scenes, screaming “Bats!” and running out of the theater. That should give you an idea of the logic on which this film operates.

“Buy the ticket. Take the ride.”