Dead Man

BLOGGER'S NOTE: A slightly shorter version of this article appears at the Wonders in the Dark blog for their 50 Greatest Westerns Countdown.

Dead Man (1995) is the western that I always imagined David Lynch directing if he had any inclination towards the genre. It was, in fact, written and directed by Jim Jarmusch and marked a significant evolution for the filmmaker thematically while keeping consistent stylistically with the rest of his body of work. Where his previous films managed to avoid any clear categorization, Dead Man clearly resembles a western, however, it still adheres to the road film structure that is synonymous with Jarmusch’s other efforts. Dead Man also continued his preoccupation with outsiders in its depiction of the misadventures of William Blake (Johnny Depp), a meek accountant who travels to the decaying industrial town of Machine with the promise of employment. When he is subsequently rebuffed by his prospective employer, he finds himself on the run after a confrontation with a former prostitute (Mili Avital) and her jealous ex-boyfriend (Gabriel Byrne). Blake ends up with a bullet lodged near his heart and meets a Native American called Nobody (Gary Farmer). Together they make not only a physical journey to the West Coast, but also a mystical, almost metaphysical one as well.

Jarmusch establishes a disquieting, almost Lynchian tone right from the get-go with sounds of machinery clanking and the steam hissing of the locomotive that takes Blake to Machine. It’s as if the director is suggesting that the Industrial Age is making its way out west, that it is as inevitable as Blake’s journey – a slow march to his own demise. The first (and only) person to speak with Blake on the train is its boilerman played by a coal-stained Crispin Glover who acts and speaks like he just came in from a David Lynch film to take a brief respite in Jarmusch’s. The man speaks rather cryptically, but is actually prophetically describing the last scene in the film. He rather ominously refers to Machine as “hell” and the “end of the line,” warning Blake that he might just die out there before many of the train car’s passengers suddenly fire their guns out the window at passing buffalo. This rather enigmatic prologue sets the mood for the rest of Dead Man and immerses us in a decidedly nihilistic world where life is brutal and short.

As Blake approaches Dickinson’s metal works factory, Jarmusch’s establishing shot is of an imposing structure, smoke billowing out of it. It’s certainly a nightmarish vision, which is reinforced by Blake’s journey through the town. There is a building whose façade is covered with animal skulls, their hides lying in piles out front. A horse urinates on the road and a prostitute is performing oral sex on a man (Gibby Haynes) who points a gun at Blake when he looks at him. Jarmusch presents much of the familiar iconography of the frontier town seen in countless westerns, but there is something not quite right about the place. Blake encounters outright hostility at every turn. The only person who shows Blake any bit of kindness is a former prostitute and she is soon accidentally killed by her ex-boyfriend.

Fortunately, this oppressive mood is punctuated by moments of levity, namely in the form of Robert Mitchum’s ridiculously macho John Dickinson, who talks to a big stuffed bear in his office instead of the three hired guns he’s brought in to find and catch Blake after he kills the factory owner’s son. Mitchum’s presence bridges the gap from classic Hollywood cinema, as the actor was active during that time, and the revisionist western in the way his character is portrayed. Dickinson is a sly parody of the traditional western tough guy, but the actor plays it straight in way that suggests Jarmusch is at once celebrating and critiquing the genre.

Dead Man opens up, both figuratively and literally, when Blake meets Nobody as he tries to dig out the bullet that is lodged near the accountant’s heart. Gary Farmer gives the film a rare, unfiltered portrayal of Native Americans. Not only does he rescue Blake, prolonging his life, but he is also the most intelligent, well-spoken character in the film. He quotes the poetry of William Blake (much to the so-called cultured accountant’s confusion) and is savvy enough to know that they are being followed by Dickinson’s hired guns. He’s about as far as one can get from the stereotypical savage usually portrayed in classic westerns, often by caucasions. In fact, Farmer is himself a Cayuga and also speaks in Cree and Blackfoot languages, which Jarmusch refuses to subtitle thereby having dialogue that only Native Americans will understand and appreciate. Nobody’s backstory, which explains not only his name, but where he developed his love of Blake’s poetry, is fascinating and tragic. Like Blake, Nobody is an outsider who doesn’t fit in anywhere.

In rather sharp contrast, all the white men in Dead Man are either ignorant or downright savage, bickering and fighting amongst themselves. Take the three men that Dickinson hires to find Blake. Johnny “The Kid” Pickett (Eugene Byrd) is a young bounty hunter out to gain a reputation for himself, Conway Twill (Michael Wincott), is a motormouth in love with the sound of his own voice, and Cole Wilson (Lance Henriksen), is a ruthless cannibal. In some respects, they echo the three hapless escape convicts from Down by Law (1986) as sources of humor. They are almost upstaged, or at least out-weirded, by another trio of rather eccentric fur traders played by Iggy Pop, Billy Bob Thornton and Jared Harris and who may have been out in the wilderness a little too long. These three characters are grotesque parodies that come dangerously close to breaking the hypnotic spell Jarmusch worked so hard to achieve up to that point, but he maintains the tricky balancing act and this scene actually rescues Dead Man from becoming too overloaded with the pretention of its overtly arthouse look.

Jarmusch had been carrying around a lot of notes for what would become Dead Man for years and had even collaborated with screenwriter Rudolph Wurlitzer (Two-Lane Blacktop) on a cowboy epic called Ghost Dog. For research on Dead Man, he had been reading about American Indians and while taking a break, started re-reading Willam Blake’s poetry. Jarmusch was struck by how similar Blake’s stuff was with what he had been reading about native tribes. He decided to incorporate Blake into his film. As often happens when writing a script for his films, Jarmusch wrote the two main characters with two specific actors in mind: Johnny Depp and Gary Farmer. Jarmusch had known Depp for some time, having met him while shooting Night On Earth (1992) with the actor’s then-girlfriend, Winona Ryder. They had remained friends over the years and Jarmusch felt that the character of William Blake was ideally suited for Depp’s talents.

Jarmusch had seen Farmer in a Canadian film called Powwow Highway (1989) and really liked what the actor had done with his role in that movie. And so, with that performance in mind, Jarmusch wrote the character of Nobody for Farmer. Nobody avoids the usual pitfalls that befall most Native American characters. This was very important for Jarmusch who wanted to get away from the Hollywood stereotype: “I wanted to make an Indian character who wasn’t either A) the savage that must be eliminated, the force of nature that’s blocking the way for industrial progress, or B) the noble innocent that knows all and is another cliché. I wanted him to be a complicated human being.” Fortunately, Farmer brings to his role a mix of anger, humor and wonder that makes Nobody one of the most fascinating characters in Dead Man.

On the technical side of things, Jarmusch scored a real coup by not only reuniting with cinematographer Robby Muller, but he also convinced musician Neil Young to compose and perform the film’s soundtrack. Young’s eerie, minimalist score perfectly complements Muller’s atmospheric black and white photography to create a grungy, dirty world that looks like someone actually went back in time and shot the entire film in the 19th century. Jarmusch met Young backstage at a concert in Arizona during a day off from filming. To record the score, the musician set up everything in a big warehouse with monitors and equipment running to a remote truck. Jarmusch remembers that Young, “recorded it direct to the picture, straight through the film like old-school accompaniment to a silent picture. He did that three times in two days. He wouldn't allow anyone to stop the recording session or the picture. That's very odd. It was Neil's idea, and it's a very Neil Young kind of approach.”

Dead Man premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1995 to a warm reaction from the European media and a predictably mixed reaction from the American press. In an effort to reach a broader audience, Jarmusch signed a deal with Miramax to distribute his film. However, the filmmaker clashed with the studio's headstrong owner, Harvey Weinstein, who wanted to change some of the content of the film to make it more marketable. Jarmusch said in an interview, “I did not expect Dead Man to be a commercial success. But I wanted it handled in a classy way. And it was handled, as one critic put it, with tongs by Miramax ... he bought a finished film; and then wanted me to change it. This was insulting to me and, ultimately, I felt punished  –  because I didn't do what he wanted, he didn't distribute the film in a classy way.”

Dead Man received mostly negative to mixed reviews from mainstream critics. Roger Ebert gave it one-and-a-half out of four stars and famously wrote, “Jim Jarmusch is trying to get at something here, and I don’t have a clue what it is. Are the machines of the East going to destroy the nature of the West? Is the white man doomed, and is the Indian his spiritual guide to the farther shore? Should you avoid any town that can’t use another accountant?” In his review for The New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote, “When Dead Man is imagining the Wild West as an infernal landscape of death, it is furiously alive. When it tries to reflect on those images, it begins to nod out.” Entertainment Weekly gave it a “C-“ rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “Yet the film’s meandering quirkiness is, finally, a big bore, the desperate ploy of a filmmaker who is threatening to vanish down the rabbit hole of his avant-chic attitudes.” The Washington Post’s Rita Kempley wrote, “His [Jarmusch] revisionist message, while gussied up in flip metaphysical finery, is essentially that of Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven: The frontier was a hellhole.” However, on Salon.com, Greil Marcus called Dead Man, “the best movie of the end of the 20^th century,” while also praising Neil Young’s soundtrack.

With Dead Man, Jarmusch filters the western through a decidedly idiosyncractic approach that includes deliberate, off-kilter pacing, an experimental soundtrack scored by Neil Young, and several characters playfully named after figures in 20th century American culture that provoked film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum to dub it an “Acid Western” in his review for the Chicago Reader. As he points out, the film subverted several conventions of classic westerns to “conjure up a crazed version of autodestructive white America at its most solipsistic, hankering after its own lost origins.” Early on in the film, Blake has bedded down with a former prostitute and afterwards he finds her gun underneath a pillow. He asks her rather naïvely, "Why do you have this?" to which she replies, "Because this is America." This pretty much sums up one of Dead Man's central themes – America was born out of violence and continues to be that way, as if, despite all the modern innovations and conveniences, it continues on in the same wild, untamed spirit of the frontier west.

SOURCES

Chiose, Simona. “Dead Man Talking.” The Globe and Mail, May 23, 1996.

McKenna, Kristine. “Dead Man Talking.” Los Angeles Times. May 5, 1996.

Pulver, Andrew. "Indie Reservation." The Guardian. March 31, 2000.

Rea, Steven. “How William Blake Got Himself into a Picture.” Philadelphia Inquirer. May 12, 1996.

Rosenbaum, Jonathan. “Acid Western.” Chicago Reader. June 26, 1996.

Rosenbaum, Jonathan. “A Gun Up Your Ass: An Interview with Jim Jarmusch.” Cineaste, vol. XXII, no. 2, 1996.

The Rum Diary

I approached my viewing of The Rum Diary (2011) with equal parts anticipation and trepidation. With the exception of Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), writer Hunter S. Thompson has not seen many of his books adapted into films and with good reason. His often crazed and surreal first person narratives are largely internalized with his trademark colorful descriptions of people and places not easy to replicate visually. Just watch Where the Buffalo Roam to see what I mean. Terry Gilliam, however, was able to pull it off with the cult classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which featured Johnny Depp uncannily channeling Thompson. The actor also became quite close to the legendary writer, even becoming an unofficial guardian of his legacy after Thompson died in 2005. This included seeing his novel The Rum Diary made into a film. However, the journey to get it made took 11 years with several actors signed on only to eventually drop out; mirroring the rocky journey Thompson himself took to get his book published.

Based on his experiences writing for a doomed sports newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1960, Thompson wrote the book in the early 1960s and tried to get several publishers interested until numerous rejection letters later left him so discouraged that he gave up and wrote about politics during the ‘60s and 1970s. Then, in the 1990s, he was motivated by nostalgia… and money to dust it off, finish and get it published in 1998. A film version was put into development as early as 2000 with Depp and Nick Nolte set to star. However, this didn’t pan out and another attempt was made in 2002 with Benicio del Toro and Josh Hartnett replacing Nolte. This incarnation also fizzled out during the development phase. Finally, in 2007, a new attempt gained some serious traction with Depp handpicking Bruce Robinson, the writer/director of the cult classic Withnail and I (1987), and coaxing him out of semi-self-imposed retirement to adapt the book. The final result was a commercial failure and a film that disappointed the Thompson faithful for being a sanitized take on the novel or for not being more like Gilliam’s film.

The latter complaint is a rather unfair one because The Rum Diary is a completely different book than Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in every way – setting, tone and, most importantly, style. Thompson wrote it before he had developed his trademark Gonzo journalism and was still finding his voice if you will. The tone of Fear and Loathing is more jaded, cynical and paranoid – hence the title, while The Rum Diary is more idealistic and romantic, written by a man who still had his whole life ahead of him.

Admittedly, the film starts off shakily as the opening credits play over postcard perfect shots of Puerto Rico while Dean Martin croons “Volare” on the soundtrack. What the hell? Is this going to be some half-assed tribute to the Rat Pack? Fortunately, we meet a bloodshot and disheveled Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) waking up in his hotel room after a night of heavy drinking. It is 1960 and he has just arrived from New York City to start work at the San Juan Star, a local newspaper on the verge of going under, if the angry mob gathered outside its front door is any indication. Kemp wisely goes in through the back way and soon meets Bob Sala (Michael Rispoli), staff photographer, and who proceeds to give him the lay of the land. Kemp has a meeting with Lotterman (Richard Jenkins), the editor-in-chief who admits to him that he doesn’t like reading his own paper! Lotterman is looking for some fresh blood, hence hiring Kemp, but warns him that he doesn’t want any heavy drinkers and puts him immediately to work writing horoscopes.

Sala takes Kemp on a brief tour of the building and, more importantly, the local bar where many of staff reporters hang out. When asked how long he’s been in Puerto Rico, Sala replies, “Too long,” and compares the place to “someone you fucked and they’re still under you.” Over drinks he points out one of the paper’s more notorious contributors – Moberg (Giovanni Ribisi), the crime and religious affairs correspondent and whose “entire sub-structure of his brain has been eaten away from rum,” according to Sala.

While on an assignment for the paper, Kemp meets Hal Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart), a former employee of the paper, now a slick public relations consultant who wears impeccably tailored, expensive suits and drives around in a flashy sports car. It’s all in an attempt to seduce Kemp and convince him to write copy promoting San Juan to Americans in the hopes they’ll buy land there. Kemp is only half-paying attention to his pitch as he is unable to take his eyes off of Sanderson’s gorgeous girlfriend Chenault (Amber Heard), whom he met briefly earlier one night while paddle boating in the ocean and she appeared to him like a mermaid in the water. Kemp is captivated by her beauty but must keep his distance because of his business relationship with Sanderson. At first, Kemp’s freelance gig with Sanderson is good but the writer can’t reconcile the exploitation of the land at the hands of greedy developers with the poverty conditions he sees much of its population living in.

Giovanni Ribisi pops up occasionally as scene-stealer Moberg, a dirty and debauched excuse for a human being reminiscent of the wild, rampaging Dr. Gonzo in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The actor immerses himself completely in the role, adopting a reedy, weasely voice and unhinged demeanor that is introduced in a memorable scene where Moberg confronts Lotterman over money owed, threatening to “come through the roof and turn this place into an insurance claim,” only to then rip off the editor’s badly applied hair piece. Moberg is so vividly portrayed by Ribisi that he belongs in the less is more category because threatens to throw off the balance of the film. Fortunately, Robinson gets just the right mix with this character.

While Ribisi gleefully chews up the scenery, Michael Rispoli delivers a wonderfully understated performance as Sala. The actor first came onto my radar with his way too brief role on The Sopranos but when he’s given a chance to take center stage, like the little seen independent film Two Family House (2000), he demonstrates some solid skills. So, it’s great to see The Rum Diary give Rispoli substantial screen-time and he makes the most of it as the grizzled, seen-it-all photographer biding his time until he can get enough money to take off to Mexico. The actor delivers the most naturalistic performance of anybody in the film as he seamlessly inhabits his character. Perhaps a more interesting film would’ve been one that focused on Sala and this is due in large part to Rispoli’s excellent work.

Johnny Depp does a fine job reprising a younger, more romantic incarnation of Hunter S. Thompson. He wisely dials down the author’s trademark mannerisms, only hinting at the persona that would make him famous later in life. The Thompson of The Rum Diary era has yet to be disillusioned by life – that happens over the course of the film. Depp understands that this film is an origins story of sorts and that by its conclusion, Kemp has started the process of transforming into the man who will one day write Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It is nice to see Depp not playing a pirate or starring in some forgettable Tim Burton film and portraying a recognizable human being.

Much like with Fear and Loathing, The Rum Diary openly criticizes the exploitation and corruption of the American Dream. Lotterman lays it all out for Kemp over drinks late one night. The paper’s readers don’t want to read about what’s really going on in Puerto Rico. They want the romantic dream of blue skies and sandy beaches. It’s Kemp’s job to sell that idealized image to the masses. “You’re paying to be in the dream,” he tells Kemp at one point. It is with this scene that the film gets down to brass tacks and really pulls back the romantic façade to explain how things really work. Once Kemp is privy to that, he can’t go back to being a hired gun, some hack writing puff pieces. He sets out on a path to be someone who is unafraid to report the truth no matter how ugly.

It’s been awhile since I’ve read the book but the film manages to capture its spirit rather well. With the minor quibble of Depp being too old for the role, the cast looks very close to the way I imagined the characters in my head when I read the novel. Thankfully, the filmmakers didn’t go the safe route and cast popular actors but rather got the right people for the roles, which probably hurt its chances with mainstream audiences – that, and the whole exploitation of Puerto Rico thing, which I imagine turned off people expecting some low brow comedy a la The Hangover (2009). No, The Rum Diary has much more on its mind and for that it should be applauded.

Can I say how great it is to see Bruce Robinson directing a film again? It has been too long since the underrated atmospheric crime thriller Jennifer 8 (1992), a debacle production-wise that prompted him to swear off directing and burned what few bridges he had in Hollywood. While it is not as brilliant as Withnail and I, The Rum Diary is a solid piece of work. Robinson manages to translate the core elements of the novel and is unafraid to risk alienating viewers with the subplot of Kemp’s dealings with Sanderson. He could have made a safe, entertaining romp but opted instead to depict the story of a man who develops scruples and becomes someone who is proactive instead of a follower who touts the party line. Robinson wraps this all up in an attractive package with some absolutely stunning cinematography courtesy of Dariusz Wolski (Prometheus) and that showcases the beauty of Puerto Rico’s considerable natural resources. In retrospect, Robinson was an inspired choice to write and direct this film. As he proved with Withnail and I, he knows how to effortlessly mix comedy and drama. He also has a fantastic ear for memorable dialogue – for witty banter and truth-telling monologues. It is these elements that also exist in The Rum Diary. However, the film marred somewhat by a clumsily inserted drug hallucination scene with some badly rendered CGI that awkwardly attempts to bridge The Rum Diary with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The film would’ve been better if this scene had been omitted entirely as it is completely unnecessary.

In 1960, a 22-year-old Hunter S. Thompson moved from New York City to Puerto Rico with the intention of working as a journalist and writing a Hemingway-esque novel about the experience in his spare time. However, Thompson didn’t adapt well to the lifestyle there and left after a few months for further misadventures in South America. By 1962, he had finished a 1,000 page manuscript entitled The Rum Diary and returned to the United States in 1963 to shop it around to various publishers with no success. He made several revisions including making it more controversial in the hopes it would be sellable. For example, inspired by the emerging civil rights debates that were raging at the time, he added an “interracial sex scene.” Deep down, Thompson may have realized that it wasn’t a very good book and put it aside for several decades. In 1998, Depp found the manuscript while staying with Thompson and doing research for the film version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He thought The Rum Diary had cinematic possibilities and would provide the writer with some much-needed income. Some 600 pages were cut out and the book was published to mixed reviews.

Bruce Robinson first met Johnny Depp when the actor approached him about directing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The actor was a huge fan of both Withnail and I and How to Get Ahead in Advertising: “These two films destroyed me. I knew I had to work with him one way or another, by hook or by crook. So I hooked him.” However, the director was so fed up with the business that he declined the offer. Then, a few years later, the actor contacted him again about writing a screenplay adaptation of The Rum Diary only Robinson wasn’t a fan of the book. “The story is great … It has a lot of faults in the narrative and drive and some of it is very vulgar, which I didn’t like.” However, he agreed to do it. After Depp read it, he asked Robinson to direct and he declined again. The actor was persistent and Robinson was flattered that a movie star of Depp’s caliber wanted him and he finally accepted the job.

In preparation for adapting the book, Robinson read it twice and made extensive notes. He felt that the adaptation had to be written in his voice, but “I’m writing in what I hope would be the same vernacular as him.” Robinson, a prolific alcoholic for years, had stopped drinking heavily in 2003. At the height of his problem, he drank four or five bottle of wine a day. He began writing The Rum Diary script and for a few weeks, “I let the sober side win.” He struggled and realized that to get into the mindset of a character like Moberg he needed to start drinking again. “I wrote the script pretty quickly after that, but I stuck to wine as a medicine. I drank a bottle a day.” Once he finished writing the script, he stopped drinking. To prepare for the film, Robinson found a 1960s tourist guidebook of Puerto Rico and also poured over years of feature articles in back issues of National Geographic in order to give him a sense of place.

The Rum Diary received mostly negative reviews from mainstream critics. Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “We have the feeling that Kemp/Thompson saw much of life through the bottom of a dirty glass and did not experience it with any precision. The film duplicates this sensation, not with much success.” In his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote, “Mr. Depp, drawing in his mouth and lowering the register of his voice, is reliably unpredictable and predictably cool, but as is so often the case lately, he seems to be acting from behind the mask of his own charisma.” Entertainment Weekly gave it a “C” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “We're supposed to be witnessing the birth of a great journalist, but Hunter S. Thompson, as his career went on, got swallowed up by his mystique as an outlaw of excess. In The Rum Diary, that myth becomes an excuse for a movie to go slumming.” The Village Voice’s J. Hoberman wrote, “Robinson is good on sweaty, sodden mise-en-scène and elaborately grubby tropical torpor, but he never quite gets the giddy velocity of a what-the-fuck bender. Truth to tell, The Rum Diary is actually more of a light morning-after hangover—it won’t leave you with a headache.” Time magazine’s Richard Corliss felt that the film was “defiantly tiny, an agreeable time-waster for the onlookers and its star. The Rum Diary isn’t a corrective to Johnny Depp’s kid-centric career, more like a vacation from it, in a resort where the visitors are strange, the natives are restless and the flow of alcohol endless.”

I can only imagine how disappointed Depp must’ve been about the film’s commercial failure. Clearly, he saw this film as a cinematic love letter to his departed friend. It was a passion project that he stuck with for 11 years, never giving up on it despite numerous setbacks. He should be proud of the fact that he got another Hunter S. Thompson book made into a film and right or wrong he did it his way, independently and not through some Hollywood studio that would’ve watered it down to nothing, much like how Kemp in the film bucks the system. However, the fate of the film once it was released also mirrors what happens to Kemp and Sala when they try to resurrect the newspaper for one last issue in an unfortunate example of life imitating art. Hopefully, The Rum Diary will be rediscovered over the years and appreciated more than it was upon its initial release.

NOTE: My friend over at The Film Connoisseur blog wrote an excellent review of this film. Check it out.

SOURCES

Chalmers, Robert. “Bruce Robinson: ‘I started drinking again because of The Rum Diary.’” The Independent. February 20, 2011.

Harris, Dana. “The Rum Diary Director Bruce Robinson is Grateful for Johnny Depp, Hunter and Withnail.” indieWIRE. October 26, 2011.

Melnick, Meredith. “After 17 Years Away, Director Bruce Robinson Returns with The Rum Diary.” Time. October 27, 2011.

Olsen, Mark. “The Rum Diary Pours Fourth Anew.” Los Angeles Times. October 23, 2011.

Turner, Gustavo. “The Rum Diary: Johnny Depp’s Hunter S. Thompson.” L.A. Weekly. October 27, 2011.

Michael Mann Week: Public Enemies

Public Enemies marks Michael Mann’s fourth foray into American history with The Last of the Mohicans (1992), The Insider (1999) and Ali (2001) being his previous efforts. The director got his start making documentaries and always been interested in achieving absolute authenticity in the depiction of the professions that his protagonists practice, be it safecracking in Thief (1981) or serial killer profiling in Manhunter (1986). Born and raised in Chicago, it is easy to see what drew Mann to the story of John Dillinger, a famous bank robber during the 1930s. He and his crew were the best of the best at the time and so, he certainly fits the kind of protagonist Mann is drawn to.

Public Enemies begins in 1933 during the golden age of bank robbery and Mann wastes no time getting into it as he opens the film with an exciting escape from an Ohio prison orchestrated by Dillinger (Johnny Depp) and his crew. Soon after, we meet FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) in action as he takes down Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum) with a hunting rifle from an impressive distance. In no time at all, Mann has established the film’s protagonist and antagonist. They are smart, super efficient men of action that are single-minded in their respective goals.

Unable to get funding and criticized by his superiors, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) needs high-profile busts and enlists Purvis to find and stop the country’s Public Enemy No. 1 – John Dillinger. The more notorious he becomes the more this angers not just the FBI but also the Chicago mob because his actions put extra heat on them. There is a nice scene where he meets with a mob representative who basically tells him that he is a dying breed. The money he makes knocking over one bank, they make in one day through illegal gambling.

Mann demonstrates that he is a master at orchestrating action sequences. They are cleanly photographed and edited so that there is no confusion. You can always tell what is going on and who everyone is instead of the kamikaze, headache-inducing editing and slapdash camerawork in films by the likes of Michael Bay and McG. The shoot-out at Dillinger’s hide-out in Little Bohemia is the film’s show-stopping action sequence much like the bank heist in Heat (1995) and the nightclub shoot-out in Collateral (2004). It is powerfully executed and full of tension and excitement as well as an impressive display of firepower with the deafening blasts of tommy guns and shotguns.

Public Enemies reunites Mann with key collaborators, chief among them cinematographer Dante Spinotti who has shot his most memorable films (including Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, and The Insider). Mann has come under considerable criticism for deciding to shoot his last two films with digital cameras and even more so with Public Enemies because it is a period film and audiences are used to seeing them done on traditional film stock. However, this new film looks great with crisp, clear images, especially at night where there is an impressive depth of field. Certain scenes have a graininess to them inherent with digital cameras but, in this case, it gives a tangible, gritty texture that works. There are some truly beautiful shots in this film, like one in which a car carrying Dillinger and his crew hurtle down a road surrounded by a vast forest of trees that tower over them.

Mann is also reunited with composer Elliot Goldenthal who worked on Heat. Since The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Mann has relied on soundtracks comprised mostly of disparate tracks from various sources. Being a period piece, obviously Public Enemies really doesn’t lend itself to that kind of a soundtrack and Goldenthal expertly augments the drama that unfolds in various scenes, creating one of the best scores in a Mann film to date.

The attention to period detail is fantastic with classic trains, cars, and classic gangster iconography like tommy guns, fedoras and trenchcoats permeating the film. Mann really immerses us in the time period but not in a way that calls undo attention to itself. It’s just there in the background of every scene with vintage period architecture. Ever the perfectionist, Mann shot on location, often at the actual locations that Dillinger and his gang frequented. Whether you are consciously aware of this or not, the film just oozes authenticity.

Dillinger certainly enjoys the fruits of his labor but is always planning his next job. He follows his own personal code: he doesn’t kill unless absolutely necessary and doesn’t think about the future, living only in the present because he could easily end up in jail or dead. He is also very conscious of how he’s perceived by the public, enjoying the notoriety his exploits create. Depp portrays him as a very confident guy who is always in control. There is often this mischievous glint in his eye like he’s in on a private joke. Depp plays Dillinger with a lot of charm, like when he addresses the media while being booked in an Indiana jail. He knows how to work the crowd and the charismatic actor is excellent in this scene. However, Public Enemies is not afraid to point out that Dillinger is no hero. The man has no problem with killing someone if they get in his way but the film goes to great lengths to point out that he did so only when there was no other option. Dillinger was clearly a man who didn’t believe in wasting time, much like Frank, the safecracker in Thief. Depp inhabits the role with his customary dedication, adopting a specific voice, accent and effortless delivery of period lingo that sounds natural and genuine.

Christian Bale is quite good as the very determined Purvis. While Mann doesn’t create the balance of cop vs. robber as he did in Heat, Bale is in the film more that I had anticipated. Like other law enforcement figures in Mann’s films, Purvis uses state-of-the-art technology, for the time, to track Dillinger and his crew. As determined as Purvis is, Mann allows some humanity to seep in, like when he stops the brutal interrogation of Dillinger’s girlfriend Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) and personally helps her get cleaned up. It is this small moment that adds a welcome layer to his character.

There are all kinds of parallels between Public Enemies and Heat. In both films we are meant to sympathize with the bank robber. Also, the two leads only meet face-to-face in one scene. There is a climactic gun-battle where both sides take on significant casualties that alter the conclusion of the story. And, like McCauley in Heat, there is an inevitability to Dillinger’s life; that he will run out of time and luck; that Purvis and the FBI will close the net around him. That being said, Public Enemies not a carbon copy of Heat. Personality-wise, Dillinger and McCauley are very different people with the former being a risk-taker and the latter being overtly cautious. The same goes for the lawmen. Purvis is not the larger-than-life extrovert that Hanna is, but rather a no-nonsense man who gets the job done and that’s it. There’s even a loose cannon in the form of Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham) who is to Public Enemies like Waingro was to Heat. A psychopath that the bank robbers initially ally themselves with but end up cutting loose when he proves to be too unstable. Structurally, both films couldn’t be different as Mann continues to experiment with narrative structure in a fascinating way. This isn’t your typical, cookie-cutter A to B to C plotting, which may frustrate some (see Ali or Miami Vice) but if you the patience and can get into it, watching Public Enemies is a very rewarding experience.

Public Enemies certainly held my attention for its entire, lengthy running time and is an incredible achievement – easily the best period gangster film since Miller’s Crossing (1990). I’m not sure where I would rank it among Mann’s films as I’ve only seen it once and really need to give it some time to sink in but it is a very welcome antidote to the glut of mindless action films that are being released this summer.

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

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

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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.

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

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

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

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