The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

It is rather unfortunate that since his masterful adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), Terry Gilliam has struggled to not only get funding for his films, but to get them made at all. From the compromised The Brothers Grimm (2005) to the little-seen Tideland (2005), fans of this idiosyncratic auteur have often had to endure agonizingly lengthy intervals between films as he has found Orson Welles’ famous quote about filmmaking – “It’s about two percent movie-making and 98% hustling.” – to be painfully true. After the unevenness of the aforementioned films, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) was seen as a return to form with Gilliam writing an original screenplay with long-time collaborator Charles McKeown (Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen). The end result was vintage Gilliam who was able to cut loose and let his fantasy film freak flag fly free. However, it came at a terrible price when his leading man, Heath Ledger, died suddenly partway through production, which was subsequently temporarily suspended until Gilliam was able to come up with some creative tweaking. He enlisted Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell to complete Ledger’s scenes and finish Gilliam’s labor of love.

A ramshackle traveling roadshow makes its way through the dirty streets of London, England (the shots of homeless people sleeping on the street evokes Gilliam’s ode to them in The Fisher King) before stopping outside a nightclub under a bridge. It is part-theater (with cheap sets reminiscent of the play put on in Baron Munchausen) and part-magic show as the benign Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) offers some kind of New Age-y promise of fulfillment. When a drunken club kid makes some crude sexual advances towards his teenage daughter Valentina (Lily Cole), she takes him through a mirror that acts as a gateway to a surreal magical world allowing Gilliam to cut loose with his trademark flights of fancy. A person’s experience in this realm reflects their personality and so a self-absorbed little boy finds himself in a slightly menacing version of Candyland.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus resembles Time Bandits (1981) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) in that all three films feature a scrappy small group of outsiders that dwell on the fringes of society and barely get by on their unique skills. Gilliam takes us behind the curtain to show how this small group of dreamers ekes out an existence. Anton (Andrew Garfield) serves as the master of ceremonies, of sorts, and is sweet on Valentina who dreams of leading a normal life. Percy (Verne Troyer) is Parnassus’ confidant and comic relief as well as driver of their caravan. Unbeknownst to Valentina, her father made a deal with Mr. Nick (Tom Waits) a.k.a. The Devil: in exchange for being granted immortality, he must give him any child of his when they turn 16 years of age. Valentina is only three days from this age and Parnassus tries to figure some way out of it.

Possible salvation comes in the form of a mysterious stranger that Anton and Valentina rescue from a hangman’s noose under a bridge. He (Heath Ledger) eventually wakes up scared, disoriented and suffering from amnesia. Parnassus is convinced that he’s been sent by Mr. Nick as a way to change their agreement. Nevertheless, he takes the man in and makes him part of the troupe, Valentina dubbing him George, but whom we son learn is actually Tony Shepherd who runs a sizable charity. His job is to recruit a potential audience and turns out to be quite adept at fleecing people of their spare change.

Christopher Plummer brings a world-weary gravitas to Parnassus. Throughout the film he makes you wonder if his character genuinely has magical abilities or if he is merely a charlatan who resorts to age-old con man tricks. Parnassus does love his daughter and will do anything to keep her from Mr. Nick’s clutches even if it means taking five souls – too bad he’s not very good at it. Much like the Baron in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Sam Lowry in Brazil (1985), and Parry in The Fisher King (1991), Parnassus is a dreamer who believes in “the power of the imagination to transform and illuminate our lives.”

Heath Ledger was a versatile actor that could move effortlessly back and forth form big studio films like The Dark Knight (2008) and small independent films like Candy (2006). The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is somewhere in-between and the actor immerses himself with trademark gusto. Tony is the audience surrogate – the most “normal” of any of the characters, but he soon fits in seamlessly with this ragtag troupe. Ledger plays Tony as a passionate smooth-talker that, in one memorable scene, persuades a female mall shopper to enter the Imaginarium. Tony is a meaty role for the actor to sink his teeth into, allowing him to be broad and theatrical and also to bring it down in intimate scenes. In what could have been a jarring change turns out to be a fantastic decision to have Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell portray the Imaginarium incarnations of Tony. They each use their own unique type of charisma to convey Tony’s seductive powers of persuasion.

Tom Waits brings a wonderfully droll sense of humor to the role of Mr. Nick. He portrays a mischievous trickster patiently biding his time until he can take Valentina as per his deal with Parnassus. Waits has a blast playing this deliciously amoral character his scenes with Plummer crackle with a playful energy. A pre-The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) Andrew Garfield is good as Anton, the M.C. who is relegated to a background role when Tony takes over and becomes jealous of how the enigmatic interloper charms Valentina.

As you would expect from a Gilliam film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus features some breathtaking visuals, like the immense, snowswept monastery that Parnassus lived in many years ago or the grungy, noisy streets of London, which demonstrates the director’s versatility of working in largely imagined worlds while also utilizing actual locations. The obvious artificiality of the Imaginarium sequences is reminiscent of the Moon sequence in Baron Munchausen. It isn’t that Gilliam had to make due with substandard special effects, but that the obvious lo-tech look of some scenes is intentional as he indulges in his love of the theater. Not surprisingly, the Imaginarium is a surreal realm that follows a kind of dream logic and so you have things like a song and dance number with burly policemen wearing dresses and twirling truncheons.

The film’s central theme concerns the lost art of telling a good story, which is best summed up by Parnassus when he tells Mr. Nick, “Somewhere in this world, right now, someone else is telling a story, a different story, a saga, a romance, a tale of unforeseen death – it doesn’t matter … You can’t stop stories being told,” to which the dapper antagonist deadpans, “That’s a weak hypothesis.” In fact, Parnassus believes so much in it that he makes a deal with the Devil so that he can tell stories forever. Unfortunately, in contemporary times it is harder and harder to find people who want to hear a story being told what with the myriad of modern conveniences that compete for our time be it social media or cell phones.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus champions the power of imagination and the art of telling a good story – something that we are in dire need of in an age where our lives are increasingly dominated by technology and our attentions spans are fragmented by a myriad of distractions. Gilliam believes in good ol’ fashion storytelling. As always, the cynic and the romantic are at odds in Gilliam’s films and this one is no different. Sometimes, the cynical ending wins out as with 12 Monkeys (1995) and sometimes it’s the romantic on as with The Fisher King. What sides does Parnassus go with? Ah, well, as a little boy asks late in the film, “Does it come with a happy ending?” to which Percy replies, “Sorry, we can’t guarantee that.”

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Filmmaker Terry Gilliam once remarked in an interview that "when times are bad, I can't believe you can live without fantasy or imagination." This statement seems particularly valid in contemporary society when you realize all of the horrible things that are occurring. One only has to look in the newspapers or watch the news on television to see how rapidly society seems to be collapsing. Gilliam's statement becomes all the more true when you look at the success of a film like Forrest Gump (1994), which is beloved by many who see it as a hopeful reminder of better times. The problem with that film is that it is too literal in its fantastic elements, leaving little to the imagination. This is the strength of Gilliam's films – from his work with Monty Python to his own films – which transport the viewer to another world altogether. But this does not mean his films leave behind all traces of reality, but rather, like any good fairy tale, they play with and manipulate reality. To this end, watching a film like Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989) is akin to reading one of those great fairy tales from your childhood. His film is the cinematic equivalent of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series or J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy in its ability to tell a good story, present colorful and unusual characters, and take us to places we can only dream about. And like these books, the film is set on an epic scale, spanning all realms, from the legendary city of Constantinople, to the Moon, to the insides of a giant sea monster.

Our story begins in the 18th Century, during The Age of Reason where a small, beleaguered town, ruled by an evil, bureaucratic Governor (Jonathan Pryce), is under constant attack from an equally cruel Sultan and his large army of Turks. Caught in the middle is an inept theatrical company trying in vain to entertain the battle-weary soldiers and shell-shocked villagers of the town with the fantastic tales of Baron Munchausen. During a performance, an old soldier appears, claiming to be the real Baron Munchausen and aims to not only set the record straight about his outrageous exploits, but save the town from the Turks. This sets in motion an epic adventure which has the Baron (John Neville) traveling the world and beyond for his former comrades, an eccentric group that includes Berthold (Eric Idle), a man who can run so fast that he must attach a ball and chain to both legs, Adolphus (Charles McKeown), a sharpshooter capable of hitting "a bullseye half way around the world," Albrecht (Winston Dennis), the strongest man in the world, and Gustavus (Jack Purvis), a small man who not only has unearthly hearing abilities, but can "blow over a whole forest with just one breath." However, the Baron faces many obstacles from the outset of his adventure. He is old and feeble with the specter of death literally and figuratively pursuing him in all sorts of guises, but most notably as a horrific, winged, skeletal demon. Only his love of adventure and the help of his youthful companion, a little girl named Sally Salt (Sarah Polley), keeps Death at bay and his quest on track.

The idea for Baron Munchausen had been running around inside Gilliam's head for some time. He had always liked the 1962 Czechoslovakian film version and the various stories about the famed teller of tall tales. But it wasn't until he had finished his previous film, Brazil (1984), did Baron Munchausen become a viable project. Gilliam had fought Universal studio to release his version of Brazil and not the one they wanted – a more upbeat "Hollywood" ending. Gilliam, exhausted and jaded, was anxious to put that horrible experience behind him. And so, he and producer Arnon Milchan approached 20th Century Fox, pitched the idea for the film, and got the go-ahead from the studio. But then disaster struck. After Brazil, Gilliam and Milchan parted company and Fox lost interest in the project because the people who had made the deal were no longer there. However, Gilliam had going on at that moment and continued to work on Baron Munchausen. The source of this momentum stemmed from Gilliam's desire to finish what he saw as his "fantasist" trilogy: Time Bandits (1981) featured a young boy as-fantast, while Brazil presented an adult as fantast theme, and Baron Munchausen would complete the series with an old man as fantast.

Gilliam finally acquired financial support from Columbia Pictures and began writing the script for the film with his good friend and screenwriter, Charles McKeown (they had worked to get together previous on Brazil). They used the book, Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvelous Travels and Campaigns in Russia as their starting point. Written by Rudolph Erich Raspe and published in 1785, it was based on the inflated exploits of a real German cavalry officer. Gilliam found that the book was merely a series of tales with no narrative connection and so he and McKeown created a story about a town under siege with a group of actors trapped in it, trying to perform The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, only to have the real Baron showing up. There had already been two dozen screen versions of the Baron's endeavors in Europe alone. In addition George Melies had done a silent short, and two films, a German one filmed in 1948 and the aforementioned Czech feature in 1962, were in circulation when Gilliam decided to create his own take on the man. In writing the script, he and McKeown would talk about the scenes in detail and then McKeown would go off and write. Then, they would meet again and talk about what he wrote and the process would repeat itself.

These were the least of his problems. Gilliam had difficulty casting someone in the title role, but one person's name kept popping up – John Neville. At the time, Neville, a veteran British stage actor whose heyday was during the 1960s but had faded from the limelight over the years. He had become the director of the Stratford, Ontario Shakespeare Festival doing 15 productions a season with no time for films. Gilliam approached Neville’s agent and was turned down. Luckily for Gilliam, a makeup lady working on the film knew Neville’s daughter personally, called him up, and arranged a meeting. It turned out that the veteran stage actor was a big Monty Python fan and he agreed to do the film.

Unfortunately, Gilliam's headaches did not end there. The studio forced him to begin production before he was ready and as the filming progressed, the usual budget problems began to rear their ugly heads. Principal photography began on September 14, 1987 at Rome’s legendary Cinecitta Studios (where Fellini had shot his films). After seven weeks of filming, the production was shut down for two weeks with rumors that Gilliam would be replaced by Richard Fleischer or Gary Nelson (The Black Hole). The studio threatened to replace Gilliam if he didn't get back on track. He had to convince the film’s completion bond insurer, Film Finances that he was in control of the project’s increasing budget. This forced Gilliam to cut out portions of the script but he could not decide what to keep and what to remove. Two days before the deadline, Film Finances threatened to sue Gilliam for fraud and this upset McKeown so much that he and the director went through the script in less than an hour and came up with revisions that appeased the financiers. Ironically, despite all of the script revisions they made, and the presence of Film Finances, the budget increased, the filming didn’t move any faster, and the sets weren’t built any quicker. According to Thomas Schuhly, one of the film’s many producers, there was no danger that Gilliam would have been fired: “You must accept the rules of the game, and that’s to make money, not to lose it. We had a better chance of making money with Terry than anyone else.”

Gilliam wanted to make the film in Rome because it gave him the opportunity to work with legendary Fellini collaborators, production designer Dante Ferretti and director of photography Giuseppe Rotunno. However, working in Italy presented its own unique set of problems. "This film was terrifying difficult, even before those other pressures from the studio began. The fact that the film was falling apart at the seams was bad enough – the organization was terrible,” Gilliam said. In retrospect, he regretted filming there because they were ill-equipped to do special effects films and his crew were speaking four different languages: English, Italian, German and Spanish. This resulted in miscommunication among crew members. Gilliam said, “The moment you say something it’s instantly mistranslated.” Gilliam became bogged down by the slow pace of Italian filmmaking and their unusual working methods. Gilliam and Ferretti redesigned the film several times with certain locations in mind only to find out after several weeks that no one sought permission to use them. They had to start all over again.

Due to delays and studio demands, the King of the Moon character was recast with Robin Williams replacing Sean Connery. The budget constraints forced Gilliam and McKeown to reduce the Moon sequence from a world of 2,000 people with detachable heads to only two people. When this happened, Connery lost interest and left the project. Eric Idle was good friends with Williams, who just happened to be in Rome at the time promoting Good Morning Vietnam (1987). Gilliam had actually offered him the role of Vulcan but he wasn’t available until they had to recast the King of the Moon and he agreed to help out. The role of Vulcan had originally been written for Bob Hoskins but he was busy making Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) and Gilliam cast Oliver Reed instead.

Talk about being born under a bad sign. For months, the production trained horses for Baron Munchausen and then, just before going to Spain to film, there was an outbreak of horse fever and they could not bring them. In addition, the two dogs playing the Baron’s pooch came down with a liver complaint at the same time. A few days later, then Columbia studio head David Puttnam was fired. By the time the production got to Spain, the costumes hadn’t arrived because there wasn’t enough room on the plane to take them! Somehow Gilliam prevailed and finished the film with the help of good friends like Eric Idle providing support and a sense of humor. Gilliam remembered, "At one point, we were out in Spain, and things were at their very, very worst. I was ready to quit. I knew there was no way we would get through the film. Eric really came in there, saying, 'You've got to, if for no other reason, you must make this film to spite John Cleese!' That got me going!"

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was generally well-received by mainstream critics at the time. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “The special effects are astonishing, but so is the humor with which they are employed … These adventures, and others, are told with a cheerfulness and a light touch that never betray the time and money it took to create them.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “With their remarkable contributions, Baron Munchausen is full of moments that dazzle, just for the fun of seeing the impossible come to life on the screen.” Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, “A few episodes test the viewer's patience, and there is considerably more wit in the film's sumptuous design than in its dialogue. But anyone with an educated eye and a child's love of hyperbole can take delight in Gilliam's images and incidents.” The Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “Thanks to such contradictions, the movie’s overall movement often seems closer to that of a boiling cauldron than to any logical progression. But this wild spectacle has an energy, a wealth of invention, and an intensity that for my money still puts most of the streamlined romps of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to shame … A fantasy in which literally anything can happen at any moment runs the serious risk of flying apart without a center; and there is hardly a moment in this movie’s 126 minutes when Gilliam isn’t taking that risk — both eyes open and full speed ahead.” In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe felt that Gilliam had “created another brilliantly inventive epic of fantasy and satire.”

With a budget estimated to be in the $40-45 million range (which sounds pretty small now but back then that was a big deal), Baron Munchausen harkens back to Gilliam's love of old epic "special effects movies" like The Sea Hawk (1940) and Thief of Baghdad (1940), which the filmmaker enjoyed as a child. As a result, Baron Munchausen is a stunning visual masterpiece on a grand scale that depicts all sorts of flights of fancy: characters ride cannonballs through the air, get swallowed whole by monstrous whales, and fly to the moon in a hot air balloon. Everything is set on an absurd mythical level that at times becomes wonderfully surreal. This is particularly evident in a remarkable sequence where the Baron and Sally travel to the moon. At first, it seems that the Baron's ship is adrift along a calm stretch of the ocean, but this gradually changes to the surface of the moon, a barren landscape where the constellations come alive, becoming what they are. One of the joys of Baron Munchausen is that every scene is filled with this kind of atmospheric, incredible attention to detail that sets it apart from any other feature you're likely to see.

As in all of Gilliam's films the large ensemble cast fills out their respective roles admirably. John Neville brings all of his knowledge and years of experience as an actor to the role of the Baron and makes what could have been a wacky caricature, a flesh and blood character. He has to perform the daunting task of portraying the Baron in three different stages of his life: young, middle-aged, and as an old man. Sarah Polley is the perfect foil for Neville's Baron. When he becomes tired and fed up with the quest to save the town from the Turks, she is there to inject some youth and vitality into the struggle, renewing everyone's energy without smugly mugging to the camera as so many child stars are seem prone to do nowadays. The rest of the supporting cast is also superb with Eric Idle and Uma Thurman (as Venus the Goddess of Love) creating memorable scenes with their characters. To top it all off there is even an uncredited cameo by a delightfully unhinged Robin Williams as the King of the Moon who bounces from lunacy to lucidity with the frequency of a schizophrenic on speed and who is also not averse to lobbing giant asparagus spears at our heroes. He would subsequently star in Gilliam's next effort, The Fisher King and expand on the trilogy with a fourth option: crazed man as fantast.

If there is a central theme to The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, it is the notion that fantasy and fun complement science and reason. When the Baron first appears, he is an old man that feels pushed to the margins of a world he can no longer relate to. "The world is evidently tired of me," he says, "because it's all logic and reason now. Science. Progress. Laws of Hydraulics. Laws of Social Dynamics. Laws of this, that, and the other. No place for three-legged Cyclops in the South Seas. No place for cucumber trees and oceans of wine. No place for me." The film not only becomes a battle against the Sultan and his army, but against the stifling sterility of science and reason as represented by the corrupt Governor of the town (an wonderfully campy performance by Jonathan Pryce, who goes all out with his role) who sees a world "fit for science and reason," and not for the "folly of fantasists who do not live in the real world." And yet, Gilliam's film shows that you cannot have one without the other. As he once said in an interview, "Fantasy and reality, or truth and reality – whatever form it takes – that which the world perceives as truth, and that which really is truth. I like the idea that a good lie is probably better than what appears to be the truth – and maybe even more truthful!" Baron Munchausen constantly plays with these notions of fantasy and reality, constantly manipulating them throughout the film to keep us guessing. Eventually, it no longer matters as both blend together to form a new reality where one is not sacrificed for the other, but rather both co-exist peacefully.

SOURCES

Johnson, Kim Howard. “’True Facts’ About the World’s Greatest Lies.” Starlog. March 1989.

Johnson, Kim Howard. “Terry Gilliam’s Marvelous Travels and Companions.” Starlog. April 1989.

Jones, Alan. “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.” Cinefantastique. May 1989.

Twelve Monkeys

"It's one thing to get lost in your own madness, but to become lost in somebody else's madness is weirder." – Terry Gilliam

How do you know when someone is crazy? This is a question that filmmaker Terry Gilliam tries to answer in many of his films, for he is obsessed by the notion of insanity – what makes someone insane and how do others view this person. Is someone really crazy or do they simply have a different view of the world than the rest of society? In the past, Gilliam's films have presented characters that tend to blur the boundary between sanity and madness, but perhaps his most complex treatment of this subject is Twelve Monkeys (1995). It is with this project that the filmmaker combines his long standing obsession of breathtaking visuals with his knack for working closely with actors. This combination has resulted in more mature films for Gilliam who is normally associated with stylish overkill: films that tend to let the visuals overwhelm the story and characters. And make no mistake, Twelve Monkeys contains some of the most stunning images you are ever going to see but never at the expense of the story or its characters and herein lies one of the reasons why Gilliam remains one of the most interesting people working in film today.

Twelve Monkeys is a film that constantly plays with, distorts, and more often than not, manipulates time. The film begins in the year 2035. A deadly virus has wiped out almost all of humanity, leaving the survivors to take refuge deep underground. Only the occasional foray up to the surface in protective gear by a select group of "volunteers" offers any clues as to what went wrong. James Cole (Bruce Willis) is one such volunteer who is particularly good at retrieving information. As a result, he soon finds himself being sent back in time to find out how the virus originated and who was responsible. Unfortunately, he goes back too far, arriving in 1990 and is promptly thrown into a rather nightmarish mental hospital in Baltimore where he meets Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), a fellow inmate with a loopy sense of reality that feeds all sorts of paranoid delusions of grandeur. Cole also encounters Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe) a beautiful doctor who feels sympathy for him and his plight.

As Cole travels back and forth in time he begins to realize that one of the most important clues to the source of the deadly virus may lie in the rather enigmatic underground organization known only as The Army of the 12 Monkeys. Soon, Railly and Goines begin to play integral roles in Cole's search as he consistently crosses paths with them. But is this all taking place in Cole's mind? Is he really humanity's only hope at averting a catastrophic disaster or is he just insane? From the first shot to the film's conclusion we are never quite sure of Cole's sanity or lack thereof. It is just one of many questions that the audience must think about not only during the film but long after it ends.

The seeds of Twelve Monkeys lie in an obscure French New Wave film called La Jetee (1962) made by Chris Marker. The film was composed entirely of black and white photographs and set in Paris after World War III. It was an apocalyptic vision in reaction to the threat of nuclear annihilation that became prominent in the 1950s and 1960s. Writers David and Janet Peoples were approached by producer Robert Kosberg to do an adaptation of La Jetee. The screenwriting couple wasn't that keen on the idea, however. "We couldn't see the point. It's a masterpiece and we didn't see that there was anyway to translate that masterpiece," David remarked in an interview. And he was no slouch to the art of screenwriting, having rewritten the screenplay for Blade Runner (1982) and penned the brilliant Clint Eastwood film, Unforgiven (1992).

Kosberg got the Peoples to watch La Jetee again and the couple began to see possibilities for a different, more detailed take on the material. "How would we react to people who showed up and said 'Oh I've just popped up from the future' and in turn how would that person deal with our reaction." With this in mind, David and Janet set out to write a challenging piece of fiction that not only manipulated our conventional views of time but that also dealt with the notion of madness. Janet explained in an interview, "We were very interested in asking questions like 'Is this man mad? And how about the prophets of the past, were they mad? Were they true prophets? Were they coming from another time? What are all the different possibilities?'" The film's script argues that certain people who are classified insane by society at large may not really be crazy at all but are in actuality presenting ideas that are way ahead of our time. And perhaps the blame for this misunderstanding should be leveled at the psychiatric profession which, as one character in the film observes, has become the new religion of a society that has deserted traditional faith for modern technology.

After showing the finished screenplay to Marker and getting his blessings, the Peoples were faced with the daunting task of finding someone who would not only click with the material but also have the visual flair that the story needed. The couple figured that the only director to handle such tricky subject matter was somebody like Ridley Scott or Terry Gilliam. The theme of madness that plays such a prominent role in the script fit right in with Gilliam's preoccupations and so he seemed the natural choice to direct. As luck would have it the filmmaker was between projects and looking for work after several years of seeing potential projects fall through for various reasons.

Gilliam was also eager to take a lot of Hollywood money (a $30 million budget) and create a strange art film that would fly in the face of the traditional mainstream movie. "The idea that someone's writing a script like this in Hollywood and getting the studio to pay for it was pretty extraordinary. So I thought let's continue to see how much money we can get the studio to spend." Gilliam's battles with Hollywood studios are the stuff of legend – most notably his struggle with Universal over the release of Brazil (1984). They wanted to revoke the director's final cut privileges to insert a happier ending instead of Gilliam's decidedly downbeat ending. Gilliam's vision prevailed in the end, but the ordeal left him understandably wary of further studio involvement. He had reconciled somewhat with Hollywood by making The Fisher King (1991) which turned out to be a surprise commercial and critical success.

Architecture plays an important role in Terry Gilliam's films and Twelve Monkeys is no different. "I've always used architecture as if it was a character." To this end, Gilliam found all sorts of intriguing architecture to populate his film. This included the transformation of an 1820's prison into a 1990's mental hospital where the film's protagonist, James Cole first meets the Jeffrey Goines. The director found that the structure was designed like a wheel with spokes and hub. And so Gilliam used one section where three spoke-like parts headed off into nowhere. "It seemed to me [that] this trifurcated room was right for multiple personalities." This feeling of madness is further amplified by the extensive use of skewed, off-kilter camera angles that are often shot at low angles to constantly distort and disorient the scene. "We started doing it and it got more and more fun to see how far we could push it because I wanted to create an atmosphere that you don't know whether this guy is crazy or whether he actually does come back from the future." The unusual camera angles not only mimic Cole's confused state but also reflect Jeffrey's manic, hyperactive worldview. By presenting the mindsets of these two characters in such a fashion, Gilliam is inviting us to see the world through their eyes and in the process offer a new, unique take on the world that we might not have been aware of before.

Gilliam was not just content to challenge mainstream audiences with unusual visuals and subject matter, but he also wanted to mess with people's perception of certain movie stars by casting box office names like Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis against type. "One of the reasons [for doing Twelve Monkeys] was taking Bruce and putting him into situations and asking of him things I don't think he's ever done before or that people haven't seen him do ... and with Brad Pitt it's the same thing. Brad is pretty laconic in some ways. Suddenly he's a blabbermouth, jabbering away at high speed. I love doing that, playing with the public's perception of that star; otherwise, it wouldn't be fun." As a result we get a very different Bruce Willis here than we have come to expect. Gone are the wisecracks and smart-aleck attitude and instead we see Willis impart a real wounded sensibility to the character of James Cole. The reluctant time traveler always seems to be flinching at every little thing, often appearing disoriented or distracted as he struggles to understand what is going on around him. Willis displays great skill in this role – perhaps the best of his career – as he creates a truly tragic figure that may or may not be losing his mind.

Brad Pitt's character, Jeffrey Goines, resides at the exact opposite end of the spectrum. Where Cole is a sad, brooding figure, Goines is a frenetic psychotic oscillating wildly between paranoid ravings and calm interludes where his madness is kept in check but still resides behind wild eyes. It's a daring performance for Pitt who lets it all hang out as he gladly chews up the scenery with his loony radical environmentalist cum revolutionary that all but steals every scene he's in. It's a performance that Pitt worked long and hard to achieve and it paid off in a Golden Globe Award that year for Best Supporting Actor and an Academy Award nomination in the same category.

Twelve Monkeys was well-received by critics at the time. Roger Ebert wrote, “the more you know about movies (especially the technical side), the more you're likely to admire it. But a comedy it's not. And as an entertainment, it appeals more to the mind than to the senses.” The Washington Post’s Desson Howe wrote, “In a movie in which time travel is used to rectify the past, it's too bad scriptwriters David and Janet Peoples didn't go through the time/space tunnel to work on that first draft again. But Willis and Pitts's performances, Gilliam's atmospherics and an exhilarating momentum easily outweigh such trifling flaws.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin praised Bruce Willis’ performance: “Mr. Willis holds the film together with his poignant, battered physicality, the suffering of a man fighting desperately for sanity and survival.” However, Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, “Intent on both dazzling and punishing the viewer, Gilliam gets lost in creepy spectacle and plenty of old film clips (notably Vertigo).”

It is easy to see what attracted Terry Gilliam to a project like Twelve Monkeys. In keeping with his past films, this one also played "with the same old things – time, reality, madness – so I was intrigued." Even though it was one of the few projects he did not originate himself, Gilliam quickly made the film his own. In fact, it is Twelve Monkeys' unique look that prevents any easy categorization. As Gilliam observed in an interview, "I'm determined to make it indefinable." It is this avoidance of any clear cut genre that makes the film a riddle waiting to be solved. The film is also structured somewhat like an onion. On the surface, the audience knows very little at the beginning, but gradually as it progresses and the layers are removed, more and more of the mystery is revealed. However, this is not readily apparent after an initial viewing. Only after subsequent screenings does the full impact and brilliance of what Gilliam and his cast and crew have created sink in. It is this great amount of care and detail that has clearly gone into this film that makes Twelve Monkeys worth watching.

SOURCES

Cullum, Paul. "Monkey Man." Film Threat. April 1996.

James, Nick. "Time and the Machine." Sight and Sound." April 1996.

Morgan, David. "Extremities." Sight and Sound. January 1996.

Thompson, Andrew O. "Wanna Buy A Monkey?" Sci-Fi Universe. February 1996.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

After more than twenty years of failed attempts and missed opportunities, Terry Gilliam did what many thought impossible — he transformed Hunter S. Thompson's classic novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, into the cinematic equivalent of a having sledgehammer whacked across your frontal lobes. The book had finally been fully realized and brought to the big screen in all of its demented glory. The film crashed and burned in theaters, infamously debuting at the Cannes Film Festival where it was roasted by critics, but it has aged very well, attracting a devoted cult film following that quote from its numerous memorable scenes.

Gilliam's film faithfully adapts journalist Raoul Duke (Johnny Depp) and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo's (Benicio Del Toro) trip to Las Vegas to cover the 1971 Mint 400 motorcycle race for Sports Illustrated magazine. The competition, however, is merely an excuse for the duo to abuse their expense account and indulge in a galaxy of drugs. What was initially a simple journey to cover a motorcycle race mutates into a bizarre search for the American Dream.

"As true gonzo journalism, this doesn't work at all, and even if it did, I couldn't possibly admit it. Only a goddamn lunatic would write a thing like this and claim it was true." – Hunter S. Thompson

Originally, Thompson was assigned to write captions for a photo-essay on the Mint 400 off-road motorcycle race in Las Vegas for Sports Illustrated magazine. Along for the ride was his attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta whom he had met through a mutual friend. Thompson remembers, "I dragged Oscar away while he was working on the 'Biltmore Seven' trial because we couldn't talk in that war zone. So I said, 'Let's get the hell out of town!'" At some point, the editor for Rolling Stone magazine heard that Thompson was in Vegas and asked him to also cover the National District Attorneys Association's Third Annual Conference on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, which was being held at Caesar's Palace.

When Sports Illustrated rejected his work Thompson took the Rolling Stone gig. It was at this point that he began to put his weird journey on paper. Truth was truly stranger than fiction as he remembers one incident with his wild attorney: "He would do things like drop me off at the airport in my rental car, and then two months later I'd get a bill for three weeks that he used the car. He'd forget to take it back." Acosta had inspired Thompson to take his writing to a new level: "gonzo journalism," where the journalist participates in the story he is writing about. Taking refuge in a Ramada Inn in Arcadia, California, Thompson wrote relentlessly, frequenting a 24-hour coffee shop and breaking only for the odd swim in the pool. By the time he had returned home to Aspen, Colorado, the writer had a first draft done. In his basement, Thompson blasted the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" while he "anguished over five or six drafts until I got it right."

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was first published in Rolling Stone magazine in 1971. Thompson invented the Raoul Duke moniker because he was worried that his debauched misadventures depicted in the book might ruin his chances of acquiring press credentials from the White House so that he could cover the 1972 Presidential campaign. He got his credentials and allowed the book publishers to use his real name when the story was released in book form in 1972.

The newsreel footage that plays at the very beginning of the film sets the time period – a turbulent time in American history with the war raging over in Vietnam while anti-war protests raged in the United States. Duke and Gonzo reflect this anti-authoritarian stance as they wage their own war on the establishment armed with a trunk full of alcohol and drugs. They are introduced already drunk and high with Duke feeling acutely paranoid, talking to himself about imaginary bats in the sky. “Our vibrations were getting nasty but why? Was their no communication in this car? Had we deteriorated to the level of dumb beasts?” This foreshadows the “savage journey to the heart of the American Dream” (the subtitle of the book) these two men will take as they debase themselves to the level of animals as a way of dealing with how dark and ugly America has gotten.

Early on, Duke lays out their mission statement: “Our trip was different. It was to be a classic affirmation of everything right and true in the national character. A gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country.” Las Vegas epitomizes everything that is grotesque about the American Dream. It is even weirder under the influence of LSD as upon arrival at his hotel Duke sees people’s faces distort hideously and the lobby carpet moving ominously. He and Gonzo go into a bar filled with grotesque caricatures that, on acid, are transformed into slimy, human-sized lizards. Gilliam warps the scene with garish colors and echoey audio where it is impossible to understand what is being said.

Gilliam presents Vegas as an intentionally artificial place, intentionally using rear projection with vintage footage of the town as Duke and Gonzo cruise around in their rental car. This technique enhances the surreal aspect of ‘60s era Vegas when the likes of Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra ruled. By the time, Duke and Gonzo arrive the town is in a state of flux as it was being transformed into a family friendly place. This is evident in the circus-themed casino they eventually visit as Duke hilariously observes via voiceover: “Bazooko Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing on Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This was the 6^th Reich.” This scene shows Duke and Gonzo in a less than flattering light as the latter has a bad drug trip, insulting a waitress and making a scene while Duke, the slightly straighter of the two, gets increasingly paranoid.

Some of their worst behavior comes when they get back to their hotel room where they take more drugs and completely trash it. Gonzo gets increasingly upset, threatening violence. Benicio del Toro excels at these scenes with his scary, intimidating presence as evident in a brief scene where he and Duke share an elevator with people covering the motorcycle race. When one of them questions Gonzo’s assertion that he’s a rider in the race, he pulls a knife and threatens them with it in an unsettling moment. This results in Duke musing via voiceover, “One of the things you learn after years of dealing with drug people is that you can turn your back on a person but never turn your back on a drug, especially when it’s waving a razor sharp hunting knife in your eye.”

What saves Fear and Loathing from being nothing more than an exercise in excess are the moments where Duke takes a break from the alcohol and drugs and thinks about what he is doing and what is going on – not just where he is at the moment but in the world:

“Who are these people? These faces. Where do they come from? They look like caricatures of used car dealers from Dallas and sweet Jesus there are a helluva lot of them at 4:30 on a Sunday morning. Still humping the American Dream. That vision of the big winner somehow emerging from the last minute pre-dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino.”

This is spoken over footage of Duke walking through a casino populated by several older white men by themselves sullenly gambling. It ties in rather well with a later scene (and the best part of the film) where he ruminates on the idealism of the ‘60s in San Francisco:

“But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world…There was madness in any direction, at any hour you could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, we were winning…That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense. We didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum. We were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.”

These poignant words play over vintage footage of ‘60s counterculture. This scene and its speech perfectly captures the idealism of that era and a lament for its failure as ushered in by a darker more selfish attitude that came in the 1970s – a paranoid time spawned by political assassinations of important leaders and the Watergate scandal.

If the beginning of Fear and Loathing is akin to 1967 and the Summer of Love with everything groovy, funny and we’re laughing along with these guys, then the last third is the Rolling Stones at Altamont. The film goes to a dark place as the drugs get worse, much like the mood of the country over the years. Duke and Gonzo are products of the  ‘60s, taking no responsibility for their actions and not paying for anything. These aren’t likable guys and the film doesn’t make any excuses for them.

This is particularly evident when Duke and Gonzo trash another hotel with the former taking a drug called adrenochrome. It conjures up all kinds of nightmarish imagery as he hallucinates the latter as some kind of demonic beast. As horrific as this scene gets, it is a warm-up for the next one – a flashback where Duke and Gonzo take late night refuge at the North Star Coffee Lounge, located in a rough Vegas neighborhood where we see three cops beating an unarmed man. The joint is grimy and imbued with a sickly yellowish green hue. They are served by a disheveled waitress (Ellen Barkin) that Duke describes as a “burned out caricature of Jane Russell.” Gonzo insults her and she gets angry at him. She threatens to call the cops and he replies by pulling out a knife and threatening her with it. There is no actual violence in this scene, only the implication of it that hangs thick as does the palpable tension between Gonzo and the waitress as he intimidates and humiliates her. Del Toro is a revelation in this scene, unafraid to portray a repulsive person that goes over the line.

Duke does nothing but watch and at the end of the scene Depp gives a brief, subtle look that conveys shame as he did nothing to stop Gonzo. This is the duo at their worst – one was the instigator of bad behavior while the other condoned it in his silence. This is truly the apex of their “savage journey” and while the rest of the film allows the characters go out on a high note, matching the gleeful tone of the beginning, it does little to diminish the ugly truth on display in the North Star scene.

Many attempts to get a Fear and Loathing Las Vegas film going were launched by the likes of Martin Scorsese and Jack Nicholson but nothing ever materialized. It took actor Johnny Depp and his friendship with Thompson to get any kind of serious attempt at an adaptation even possible.

Depp first met Thompson in Aspen, Colorado just before New Year's Eve, 1995. Depp left that initial meeting wondering why Fear and Loathing had not been made into a film. The actor subsequently invited Thompson to do a one-night gig at Depp's nightclub, The Viper Room on September 29, 1996 with the intention of asking the writer about doing a film version of his book. The opportunity never materialized but the two began corresponding via faxes. Early one day, Thompson called Depp on the phone and asked him if he would consider playing Raoul Duke if a film was ever made of Fear and Loathing. "Without hesitation, I said, 'You bet!'" Depp recalls. By the Spring of 1997, Depp had moved into the basement of Owl Farm, Thompson's home in Aspen in order to do proper research for the role.

"I've been dealing with these yo-yos buying options on things for years. Options have been essentially paying the rent." – Hunter S. Thompson

Rhino Films was the latest in a long line of people trying to bring Thompson's vision to the big screen. Head of Production (and one of the film's producers) Stephen Nemeth originally wanted Lee Tamahori (Once Were Warriors) to direct. However, Tamahori wasn't going to be available until after the January 1997 start date. Rhino asked Thompson for an extension on the movie rights but the author and his lawyers said no. As Thompson later remarked in an interview, "They just kept asking for more [time]. I got kind of agitated about it, because I thought they were trying to put off doing it. So I began to charge them more...I wanted to see the movie done, once it got started."

Rhino countered by green-lighting the film and hiring Alex Cox to direct. According to Nemeth, Cox could "do it for a price, could do it quickly, and could get this movie going in four months." Judging by his past efforts, films like Repo Man (1983) and Straight to Hell (1987), Cox was no stranger to the same kind of Gonzo sensibilities evident in Thompson's books. He started writing the screenplay with Tod Davies, a UCLA Hunter S. Thompson scholar. Depp and Del Toro committed to the film at this point. However, during pre-production Cox and another of the film's producers, Laila Nabulsi (and an ex-flame of Thompson's) had "creative differences" and she forced Rhino to choose between her and the filmmaker. Despite having no background in movies, Nabulsi did have an arrangement with Thompson to produce the movie.

The fatal blow came when Cox encountered Thompson with his own ideas of adapting the Fear and Loathing into a film. Johnny Depp remembers that "Alex had some dream that he could make Thompson's work better. He was wrong. He had this idea about animation in the film.” Cox and Davies, met Thompson at his home and it was at this point that Cox expressed his desire to incorporate animation into the movie. Thompson took offense to his book being reduced to a cartoon and promptly kicked Cox and Davies out of his home. When all the dust settled, Rhino sided with Nabulsi, fired Cox, and paid him $60,000 in script fees.

"I want it to be seen as one of the great movies of all time, and one of the most hated movies of all time." – Terry Gilliam

The studio approached Terry Gilliam's agent. There was an air of desperation because the option on the book was about to expire and Rhino had another project they wanted to start in 1998. Hunter S. Thompson granted the studio an extension for the rights but they didn't have a definite deal with Gilliam. Thompson would only grant another extension if Gilliam was given a concrete deal. Rhino did not want to commit to Gilliam in case he didn't work out (like Cox). They threatened to make the film with Cox and without Depp or Del Toro if the two actors didn't like the possibility of Gilliam being ousted. Nabulsi told them about Rhino's plans and Gilliam and Depp were furious. Universal stepped in to distribute the movie and Depp and Gilliam were paid half a million dollars each. Ironically, Gilliam ended up making Fear and Loathing without a firm deal in place.

Gilliam was the perfect choice to direct an adaptation of Fear and Loathing. The theme of insanity and altered states of reality had always figured into his films but had since taken a more prominent role with his previous couple of projects. Fear and Loathing completes an informal trilogy based on madness that included The Fisher King (1991) and Twelve Monkeys (1995).

When Gilliam had first read Fear and Loathing back in 1971, he "immediately identified with what Hunter was saying. I'd left the States to move here for the very same reasons that Fear and Loathing was written—that feeling the ideals of the '60s had died and that it was all fucked. I was so angry I was going to start throwing bombs. So when I read the book it was like, 'Jesus! He's got it! That's exactly how the fuck I feel!'" Gilliam enjoyed the book but didn't think about it for years afterwards.

Ralph Steadman, who illustrated the book, was a good friend of Gilliam and began to bug him over the years to do a film version of Fear and Loathing. In 1989, Gilliam remembers a "script turned up which briefly got me excited about the book again, but I was busy with another project and I ultimately decided that the script didn't capture the story properly."

Gilliam and his friend, Toni Grisoni, were originally working on a project about Theseus and the Minotaur. Grisoni read in a magazine that Alex Cox was set to direct Fear and Loathing. Grisoni called up Cox (they knew each other) and expressed an interest in adapting the book into a film. Cox said that he was doing it himself and that was that. In April 1997, Cox was out and Gilliam got the call from Laila Nabulsi to direct. Gilliam said in an interview, "she sent me a script, and it reminded me of how funny and good the book was. I didn't really care for the script, but it inspired me to go back and read the book again.” Gilliam scrapped Cox and Davies' screenplay and asked Grisoni to help him write their own. Together they hammered out a screenplay in only ten days at Gilliam's home in London, England in May of 1997. As Grisoni remembers, "I'd sit at the keyboard, and we'd talk and talk and I'd keep typing.” Gilliam felt that the structure of the film should be organized much in the same way as the book:

“We start out at full speed and it's WOOOO! The drug kicks in and you're on speed! Whoah! You get the buzz—it's crazy, it's outrageous, the carpet's moving and everybody's laughing and having a great time. But then, ever so slowly, the walls start closing in and it's like you're never going to get out of this fucking place. It's an ugly nightmare and there's no escape. And then they get out into the desert and it's light again. But it's a really rough ride for a lot of people to climb inside that head.”

Gilliam also felt that the more surreal parts of the book could be transferred onto film if done right. For example, the imaginary bats that Duke sees on the highway at the beginning of the book was one such passage the director felt could be translated into visual terms.

“Right at the start I thought, 'Well, we can't show them in the sky, we can only show them inside Duke's eyeball. So in the film we push in really tight on one of his eyes, where you can see these reflections of bats flapping around. We then cut to a wide shot that shows Duke waving his arms at nothing. I wanted to some how convey that this was an internal problem.”

When Gilliam first joined the production there wasn't even a set budget. "I went out there and said all right, to start with just double it, whatever the budget is, seven and a half? I want $15-million, whatever it is just double it. And at the same time we're running around doing location scouts, discovering we can't use this, which we thought we could use, and we're trying to invent everything at the same time. I've never done a film like that, but on the other hand that was part of the fun of this one." From there, the pace never slackened as Gilliam and company shot Fear and Loathing on location in a fast 56 days on a lean budget (by Hollywood standards) of $18.5 million. "One of the reasons I made this film,” Gilliam remembers, “was to push myself and see if I could still work the way I used to: fast, furiously and cheaply."

Visually, Fear and Loathing is a masterpiece with an inspired kaleidoscope of colors and insanely inventive camera angles and perspectives that make you feel like you're actually on drugs. Each drug consumed by Duke and Dr. Gonzo had its corresponding cinematic look to simulate its effects on the characters' perception. As the film's cinematographer, Nicola Pecorini points out, the effect of ether was done with "loose depth of field; everything becomes non-defined,” while the effects of amyl nitrate were done so that the "perception of light gets very uneven, light levels increase and decrease during the shots."

The look of Fear and Loathing was not inspired by Ralph Steadman's famous artwork that accompanied Thompson's words. Robert Yarber, an artist who paints pictures of people inside hotel rooms using fluorescent colors, influenced the look of the film. His paintings captured the hallucinatory feel that the filmmakers were looking for: "the paintings use all kinds of neon colors, and the light sources don't necessarily make sense," Pecorini said in an interview. As Gilliam remembers, "people inside hotel rooms in really fluorescent colors. His work is very strange and extraordinary and the colors he uses are extremely vibrant. We used him as a guide while mixing our palette of deeply disturbing fluorescent colors." This is evident in the scenes set in hotel rooms that each has their own garish Las Vegas decor that Duke and Dr. Gonzo subsequently transform into a twisted disaster area.

Depp was given complete access to every memento the writer saved from his 1971 trip to Las Vegas. "We went through the manuscript and the notes. There's notes on napkins and everything. He saved it all." The actor read through the writer's notebooks (which included an unpublished chapter entitled, "The Coconut Scene," which Gilliam placed in the film) only to realize that "the freakiest thing was that it was all real, that the reality was as insane as the book."

Thompson was disappointed that the film's costume designer wanted Depp to wear "bizarre Hawaiian zoot suits, and shit like that." The writer let Depp rummage through his wardrobe at the time of the book: Hawaiian shirts, a patchwork jacket, a safari hat, and a silver medallion given to him by Acosta. Thompson graciously allowed Depp to wear it all in the film. Gilliam remembers that the actor would "come back from Hunter's house with shirts and bags that Hunter had taken on the trip. In fact, Johnny drove the original Red Shark—the 1971 Chevrolet convertible in the film—down to Vegas from Hunter's house in Colorado."

All of these items only enhance Depp's performance. In the film, he has literally transformed into Duke/Thompson, complete with the man's unusual bow-legged walk, sweeping arm movements, mumbling speech pattern, and the trademark Dunhill cigarettes in a holder between clenched teeth. It's an incredible performance that transcends simple mimicry. Depp's research culminated after a week when Thompson shaved almost all of the actor's hair for the film and entrusted him with the very car he used in the trip. The actor soon became Thompson's roadie and in charge of security for The Proud Highway (a collection of Thompson's letters) book tour.

If anything, the concern was that Depp would get too into the role and never emerge intact afterwards. While making the film, the actor received a phone call from Bill Murray who had also spent a lot of time with Thompson while researching for his role in Where the Buffalo Roam. Murray had had a very hard time shaking Thompson's distinctive persona after filming ended. Murray warned Depp to "be careful or you'll find yourself ten years from now still doing him...Make sure you're next role is some drastically different guy." Depp seemed to heed Murray's advice and went off to do The Astronaut's Wife (1999), a lackluster rip-off of Rosemary's Baby (1968), where he played an astronaut who is possessed by an alien entity.

"I don't think it was a well-organized film. Its birth was not easy. Certain people didn't...I'm not going to name names but it was a strange film, like one leg was shorter than the other. There was all sorts of chaos." – Terry Gilliam

One of the biggest obstacles Gilliam faced while shooting Fear and Loathing was working in the casinos in Las Vegas. He was only give six tables to put extras around and "the only time they'd give us was between two and six in the morning. And they insisted that the extras did real gambling!" In order to alleviate this problem, Gilliam decided to shoot the exterior shots of the Bazooko Casino in front of the Stardust hotel/casino with the interiors built and filmed on a Warner-Hollywood soundstage. That way, the director could exert more control over his surroundings instead of relying on the casinos that weren't always that co-operative.

To make matters worse, Gilliam faced another battle after Fear and Loathing was made. The Writer's Guild of America wanted to give sole writing credit to Alex Cox and Tod Davies even though Gilliam and Toni Grisoni had written their own script. According to WGA rules, if you're a writer-director, you have to produce more than 50% of the script, while other writers involved only have to produce 30%. However, as Gilliam pointed out, "there have been at least five previous attempts at adapting the book, and they all come from the book. They all use the same scenes." The WGA determined that Gilliam and Grisoni had not written the film. To add insult to injury, Gilliam wasn't even allowed to know who the arbiters were that made the decision or see their reports.

Universal brought in their lawyers and Gilliam and Grisoni had to write a 25-page document to prove that they had written more than 60% of the film. By early May 1998, the WGA revised its decision and gave writing credit to Gilliam and Grisoni first and then Cox and Davies second. This hardly satisfied Gilliam who burned his WGA card in protest.

"I always get very tense in those (test screenings), because I'm ready to fight. I know the pressure from the studios is, 'somebody didn't like that, change it!'" – Terry Gilliam

Fear and Loathing debuted at the Cannes Film Festival and Gilliam said, "I'm curious about the reaction...If I'm going to be disappointed, it's because it doesn't make any waves, that people are not outraged."

To say that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas received a mixed reaction from audiences and critics alike is a gross understatement. In The New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote, "Even the most precise cinematic realizations of Mr. Thompson's images (and of Ralph Steadman's cartoon drawings for the book) don't begin to match the surreal ferocity of the author's language." Stephen Hunter, in his review for the Washington Post, wrote, "It tells no story at all. Little episodes of no particular import come and go...But the movie is too grotesque to be entered emotionally." Mike Clark, of USA Today, found the film, "simply unwatchable." Perhaps Gilliam and company made too faithful an adaptation that only really appeals to devotees of the book. Or, as Gilliam suggests, people were scared off because they had to think about what they were watching. "You've got to work out what it's told you, and that's not what America's about. They want their morality clear.”

Gilliam found that the American press refused to "even talk about Fear and Loathing. They won't say, 'Ban the film'—they're too liberal for that—so instead they seem to have adopted this attitude of, Oh, maybe if we don't talk about it, it'll go away. That's modern America all over.” And judging by Fear and Loathing's quick demise at the box office and subsequent disappearance from theaters, this strategy worked. While most critics praised Depp and Del Toro's performance, most found Gilliam's film to be a muddled mess with no coherent structure: just one long debauched road trip.

Regardless of what the critics thought, Gilliam hoped that one person would at least appreciate his efforts: Hunter S. Thompson. "Yeah, I liked it. It's not my show, but I appreciated it. Depp did a hell of a job. His narration is what really held the film together, I think. If you hadn't had that, it would have just been a series of wild scenes,” Thompson said in an interview. Gilliam remembers Hunter's reaction to the film when he saw at the premiere: "He was making all this fucking noise! Apparently it all came flooding back to him, he was reliving the whole trip! He was yelling out and jumping on his seat like it was a rollercoaster, ducking and diving, shouting "SHIT! LOOK OUT! GODDAM BATS!”

Fear and Loathing is a genius film, but in a really demented way — a 128-minute acid trip from beginning to end with no respite, no rest stops, and no objective distance from which to view the whole insane picture safely. You are plunged headlong into this weird, wild world along with the characters. It contains many funny moments, bits of dialogue, and visual zingers as Duke and Dr. Gonzo make their way through the surreal landscape that is Las Vegas. The humor in this film is simultaneously disturbing and hilarious — a pitch-black satire of American culture and excess.

The film starts off as a kind of period piece snobs vs. slobs comedy as Duke and Gonzo thumb their noses at authority figures wherever they go. Whereas in most of these types of comedies there is something likable about the slobs this is really not the case with Duke and Gonzo who are violent, vulgar human beings. Gradually, Gilliam introduces the darker, unseemly aspects of these characters. What saves the film from being nothing more than just another stoner comedy is the emotional and socio-political depth to it. Like the book, the film provides a snapshot of 1971 and what it was like to be alive then. Late in the film, Duke says via voiceover narration, “We’re all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the ‘60s.” Prescient words indeed and ones that still apply today. We are all trying to survive as the world continues to get darker and weirder.

Fear and Loathing became an instant cult item. It endured the critical brickbats of the day and has been reappraised as one of Gilliam’s best films. As Thompson put it in the book, "There he goes, one of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind, never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, too rare to die." Fear and Loathing is pure Gonzo filmmaking for people who like weird, challenging films.

SOURCES

Brinkley, Douglas. "Johnny, Get Your Gun.” George. June 1998.

Brinkley, Douglas. "Road to Ruin.” Sunday Mail. July 26, 1998.

Doss, Yvette C. "The Lost Legend of the Real Dr. Gonzo.” Los Angeles Times. June 5, 1998

Ebner, Mark. "Fear and Bleating in Las Vegas: Hunter Thompson Goes Hollywood.” Premiere. January 1998.

Elias, Justine. "Behind the Scenes: Terry Gilliam.” US Weekly. June 1998.

Gale, David. "Cardboard Castles and Chaos.” Icon. June 1998.

Holden, Michael John Perry, Bill Borrows. "Fear and Loathing.” Loaded. December 1998.

Houpt, Simon. "Going Gonzo with Fear and Loathing.” The Globe and Mail. May 21, 1998.

McCabe, Bob. "Chemical Warfare.” Sight and Sound. 1998.

McCabe, Bob. "One on One.” Empire. December 1998.

McCracken, Elizabeth. "Depp Charge.” Elle. June 1998.

Pizzello, Stephen. "Gonzo Filmmaking.” American Cinematographer. May 1998.

Pizzello, Stephen. "Unholy Grail.” American Cinematographer. May 1998.

Rowe, Douglas J. "Terry Gilliam Can Fly Without Acid.” Associated Press. May 29, 1998.

Smith, Giles. "War Games.” The New Yorker. May 25, 1998.

Willens, Michele. "How Many Writers Does it Take...?" The New York Times. May 17, 1998.