{"id":484,"date":"2012-08-13T16:22:47","date_gmt":"2012-08-13T21:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/skullduggery.us\/wordpress\/?p=484"},"modified":"2017-08-29T13:27:24","modified_gmt":"2017-08-29T18:27:24","slug":"fear-and-loathing-in-las-vegas-book-and-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/skullduggery.us\/rants\/fear-and-loathing-in-las-vegas-book-and-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Book\/Movie)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fear<\/a>It was only on\u00a0my actual flight to Vegas, when I\u00a0had already read the first 100 pages of this cult classic mid-air, that I noticed the irony of\u00a0my book choice. What an idiot. But after I’d driven\u00a0across the Mojave Desert three times in a single week, having finished the novel and actually experiencing the hot, lonely, stretch of roads described within, I decided to view the movie for\u00a0my second time with the wife. Y’know, just to round out the trip. Hunter S. Thompson’s drug-fueled binge across the same area in the early 1970’s resembled my vacation to the surrounding parklands in no way whatsoever, but the movie\/book combo still struck a familiar nerve and resonated with me somehow.<\/p>\n

You can’t really expect or ask for a plot since all you will receive are the incomprehensible, slightly-funny, slightly sardonic, musings of a man deep in a hallucinogenic stupor while simply trying to walk straight. What you will receive are the inane babblings of a journalist who loses sight of\u00a0reason and is\u00a0bent on pushing the boundaries of his own sanity, on setting mental hurtles in a self-destructive run through one of the most demonized cities in American history. What you will receive are the nigh-incoherent insults hurled from a moving convertible as a man looks desperately for something to push him back, to put him in his place. Hunter S. Thompson mixes fact with fiction in this quasi-autobiographic tale of drug-induced fear, a fear of change, a fear of fading away. A fear of never understanding the meaning behind it all. The loathing…. the loathing is written on every face he encounters, from cops to maids to waitresses to salesmen to runaways\u00a0and hitchikers. The loathing is a reaction to Thompson’s haphazard tear across the Southwest, his disregard for the status quo as he destroys public property and goes against the general will of all civility.<\/p>\n

You can’t ask for plot, but you can at least have a premise: a journalist and his lawyer load a rental car up with an insane amount of drugs and try to survive the hell they create for themselves as they consume their entire cargo. Paranoid, filthy, and non-sensical, they eviscerate all that they touch in a half-assed attempt to cover a large motorcycle rally and a policemen convention (against drug use),\u00a0all\u00a0on the company dollar.\u00a0During the process of getting as high as possible for as long as physically tolerable, they threaten the very foundation the city operates on. Their world, their Vegas in that time period, is actually filled with seemingly decent folk who become fodder in the aftermath of their passing. The duo can barely stand or think, but play an immensely negative impact on their surroundings. In fact, they make\u00a0Vegas look like a squeaky clean oasis in contrast to their vile and chaotic bile and depravity.<\/p>\n

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When I get hungry for car windows, I dress my frog in blackface.<\/pre>\n
The story, as it unfolds,\u00a0reflects all the highs and lows of an untamed binge, itself. With moments of hilarity mixed with overwhelmingly oppressive moments of discomfort, Fear and Loathing plunges you head-first into the life of a junkie, into the dark heart of chaos and the thrilling uncertainty of driving full speed while blind-folded. All factors are thrown carelessly into the horizon, left to fall as they may, as cosmic law would command. Not as a reasonable person would hesitantly weigh the benefits of feeling “wild” for a few fleeting moments, the defining moments of their long and planned lifestyle, but balls-out caution-to-the-wind leaving your fate to the Gods to sort out…. that kind of risk and gamble. Just to see if they can. Indeed, much of the journalist’s actions seem to be testing, probing the wrath of some divine judgment to strike him down, perhaps the long-awaited finale to a streak whose ending was way overdue. Every line reads like an epitaph; every spoken narration seems like a lament for a time period gone by or maybe a sonnet to a purpose he no longer feels. Thompson and his “[maybe] Samoan lawyer” both have a deathwish, though they hit the concept from opposing emotional angles. Thompson himself is strangely-measured, quirky, a fast-speaking calm that is unique in monologue as spastic as Johnny Depp could possibly portray. (Think mumbling Captain Jack Sparrow with a lizard tail.) Benicio Del Toro plays the depressed psychotic of a “sidekick”: an unstable thug of an addict, whose pistol and hunting knife are the main sources of tension throughout the picture.<\/p>\n
My\u00a0wife, whom finished the movie at gunpoint,\u00a0wished Depp would sit still and\u00a0walk without flailing for once but was ultimately sympathetic to the people who would inevitably clean up their messes. She was\u00a0infuriated at the thoughtless and wreckless behavior of the duo\u00a0and believed, like in “The Hangover”, that this bleary-eyed bender across Sin City glorified the self-destructive spiral without conveying the after effects or the innocents caught in the cross-fire. Indeed, movies such as “Requiem for a Dream” conveyed THAT particular message much better, much clearer, though I heavily believe that there was a different message at stake here.<\/p>\n
In essence, there was no message, but in its place was the residue of a time period, the curtain call on an era comprised of genuine love and good intentions. While Requiem was about individuals, I believe the journalist sees himself as representing a generation. Thompson frequently refers to the hippie movement, to the general drive of progress and the wholesomeness of being a part of something strong and standing firm in an era of definable evils. But those fond memories are in the past. Thompson expresses, in not so many words, that he no longer has a place in the world or is in the very least a superfluous piece left out of the bigger picture when the world changed around him. The author refers to mind expansion, to those who were swept up in the movement, but\u00a0neglects to detail\u00a0how it all got perverted, twisted into something unrecognizable to the Peace, Love, and Happiness of the previous decade.<\/p>\n
To me, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is about a couple of disenfranchised relics who hopelessly lost their path, mindlessly clawing for\u00a0a wave of good feelings long gone.\u00a0Desperate and set in their ways,\u00a0they have the courage for a suicide attempt only when in the cresting throes of a drug frenzy to the tune of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit”. The sunset of the ’60s gives way to a culture that dies out before its people did, whom stumble about recklessly once the path into the future is muddied, when the only way to fight a discernible evil is to become it and simply hate themselves. Their story is without an ending, without a conclusion, in\u00a0a world that refuses to kill them off for whatever demented reason.<\/p>\n
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Depp spent enough time with Hunter that this mind state could be real.<\/pre>\n
If you don’t have any clue what I’m trying to say, that’s okay. Neither does the journalist, whom has difficulty putting his thoughts into words, whom relies on describing the secondary characteristics of his dilemma without ever tackling the problem head on. Regardless, you get a “sense” of it all, a “feeling” whenever that last sweep of the second destroyed hotel room pans out. You know that something awful has happened though you don’t have the memories to support the theory. You are left confused and hazy, used and dirty, a good shower seeming appropriate but strikingly insufficient to rinse off the grime. Fear and Loathing is seemingly structured around a drug spree, and will similarly leave you filthy, disillusioned,\u00a0and yearning for the good times that occurred and ended way too early. What you are left with is remorse, regret, and the tainted memories of a trip gone sour. This is not “Dazed and Confused” where the addicts are rampant, youthful, and carefree. No, these are the addicts grown up: pathetic, resentful, angry, but mostly looking for a rest stop on the highway to Nowhere even though they’re gassing the damn thing at top gear.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, sadly, confusingly, I believe that these and other drug-abusers fall prey to their vices intentionally for the most part, at least sub-consciously. They seek relief in their pills and syringes for almost the same reason that people pursue “worthwhile and wholesome” endeavors such as holding a steady job, raising a family, practicing a craft, or even enlisting in the army: they can, they’re compelled to, they’re bored, or they simply see no other purpose than to do so. They’re not inherently evil people, or if they are, that evil exists in all of us. The difference is that their malfeasance is enhanced, brought to the surface or maligned through the use of these substances and worsened when they suck others down with them or lean too heavily on loved ones for support. A mooch is annoying while a mooching addict is intolerable.<\/p>\n
In this way, dedicating one’s life to drugs seems to fall somewhere in the realm of dedicating one’s life to the arts, to family, to the military, to spending a career in authoring books or to fighting political opponents in light of analyzing compulsions. In fact, the line between drugs and these\u00a0other pursuits\u00a0is easier to blur and comprehend when you realize that Hunter S. Thompson, the author and\u00a0bestial centerpiece of Fear and Loathing, did everything in this paragraph almost seamlessly, mixing the qualities you might expect from an under-appreciated and terrifically honest\u00a0author with the stained and unsavory lifestyle of the “lower-crust”.<\/p>\n
In all likelihood, you will have a visceral reaction to the infuriatingly hazardous behavior of the main characters and become [even more]\u00a0pissed at drugs in general. But, if you’re lucky, you\u00a0just might\u00a0glean\u00a0some insight into “the scene” and\u00a0find some\u00a0shred of\u00a0entertainment by the time the final page turns or the credits roll.\u00a0There is no glory in this\u00a0title to emulate, so don’t even kid yourself. If you’re looking for cheap laughs on the incredulous, benevolently-spirited nature\u00a0of substance abuse, then look elsewhere. If you’re itching for a realistic nightmare of “bad vibes” amid the highs, of hopelessly searching for dreams and finding only tar residue, then Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas may be your fix. As your lawyer, I advise you to consider the ramifications of reading\/watching this title. Or better yet, whip those balls out and take the plunge, throwing yourself into the title without looking back. Fate be damned.<\/p>\n
\"contempt\"<\/a><\/p>\n
Not a good time to solicit girl scout cookies.<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was only on\u00a0my actual flight to Vegas, when I\u00a0had already read the first 100 pages of this cult classic mid-air, that I noticed the irony of\u00a0my book choice. What an idiot. But after I’d driven\u00a0across the Mojave Desert three … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-tv-and-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/skullduggery.us\/rants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/skullduggery.us\/rants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/skullduggery.us\/rants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/skullduggery.us\/rants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/skullduggery.us\/rants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"http:\/\/skullduggery.us\/rants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2406,"href":"http:\/\/skullduggery.us\/rants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions\/2406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/skullduggery.us\/rants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/skullduggery.us\/rants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/skullduggery.us\/rants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}