*** (out of ****)
A documentary directed, written, & produced by Wayne Ewing, with appearances by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Ralph Steadman, Alex Cox, Terry Gilliam, Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro, John Cusack, and Warren Zevon.
2004
91 min NR (should be R)
Hunter Thompson is a great American eccentric, finding the limits of the human psyche so that the rest of us don’t have to. If everyone were to live like he does the world would not be a safe place. It would probably be one long traffic accident. But we need someone willing to burn an entire Christmas trees in his fireplace while zonked out of his mind, and then turn around and write some really piercing literature. The next generation’s own Hunter is probably out there somewhere already, and is probably being ruined by Ritalin.
The short answer to “who is Hunter Thompson?” is the founder of Gonzo journalism, the author of “Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas,” alcoholic, substance abuser, libertarian libertine, chronic mumbler, inspiration for the Doonesbury character Duke, and an influential writer for “Rolling Stone” during the turbulent ‘60s and ‘70s. Roger Ebert has a handy definition for “gonzo journalism:” “getting stoned out of his mind, hurling himself at a story, and recording it in frenzied hyperbole.” Hunter’s coverage of George McGovern’s run for president is described by McGovern’s own people as “the most accurate and least factual account ever made of a presidential race.” All this is more than the new documentary “Breakfast with Hunter” is willing to tell you, which is both its failing and to its credit.
With its shaky digital video and auto-focus, “Breakfast with Hunter” does not begin promisingly. It feels like a DVD extra, like something we can only truly understand if we’ve already seen or read the source material (in this case, the works of Hunter). Certainly it’s cool to see Johnny Depp and John Cusack up to no good with this alternately loud and mumbling old drunk. Then the movie starts to jump around, from place to place, among past, present, and future. We begin to wonder where, if anywhere, this will lead, and when it will get a steady rhythm.
But “Breakfast with Hunter” is doing its best impersonation of something written by Hunter himself. Even if you’ve never read anything by him it will work on you the same way. A straight A&E style biography of Hunter—where he grew up, who his parents were, how he did in school—would just not do. The rawness and immediacy of DV reflects his wild, curse-laden personal and literary style. In his writing and in his spoken train of thought, he jumps back and forth in time, a very, very streaming stream of consciousness. What gradually comes to dominate your senses—more than any story he’s telling you, more than what’s happening to him—is his personality. The movie, like his writing, does not set out to appease you right away, but describes that stream. You just have to stay afloat until you start to see the pieces coming together. His writings are the intense myopia of his vision. “Breakfast with Hunter” can’t quite achieve that because it’s looking at him, not through his eyes, but it’s a lot of fun anyway.
The movie’s jumps-all-over-the-place include a recent attempt by the cops to send him to jail for DUI; his run for sheriff in Colorado in the 1970s; a friendly meeting with longtime illustrator Ralph Steadman; various public events in honor of “Fear & Loathing’s” 25th anniversary; and the birthday of former presidental candidate George McGovern. Everywhere he goes he drinks, drinks, drinks, not beer and wine but rum and scotch poured over ice and sipped from glasses for breakfast, while he’s walking to court, even while he’s driving through Hollywood. Then he sprays people with fire extinguishers and puts on funny hats. Because Hunter is not big on explanations “Breakfast” is not big on them either. We hear a passage from one of his autobiographical books, in which he is driving to party with two lesbians and a brain full of cocaine, and it’s written as if the cosmos just began with the three of them in that predicament and no exposition will do it justice.
Not surprisingly, there are many occasions in which Hunter behaves like a giant child. His meeting with Alex Cox (“Sid and Nancy,” “Repo Man”), the original director of “Fear & Loathing,” would be embarrassing for him to watch if he only understood it. Hunter latches onto the tossed-off idea of turning what was a metaphorical wave in his book into an animated wave. He hates it immediately and without consideration, and from that point on no longer gives Cox the time of day. Cox and his screenwriter have probably been driving in the snow for a long time just to reach Hunter’s Owl Farm in Colorado and when they get there he hasn’t even read the script they sent him so long ago.
Yet, for all his hatred of cartoons, his books have long been illustrated brilliantly by Ralph Steadman, and he has no issues with “Fear & Loathing” being directed by Terry Gilliam, the former cartoonist for Monty Python, who transforms the book into a colossal special effects and animatronic extravaganza. Eventually, Hunter is shadowed wherever he goes by Johnny Depp, who would play him in the 1998 film and is no lightweight in the eccentricity department. And then there’s Benicio Del Toro who, in a film full of weirdos, manages to be as absently unsettling as he always is. The film of “Fear & Loathing” is loathed by many, but I enjoyed it on the level of a delirious, insane rollercoaster through a madman’s vision of America.
I lack the belly to become a serious acolyte of Hunter’s and some consider his later works to be the rambling inanities of a man once-gifted but now burnt into oblivion. But it’s good to know he’s out there, in case I start thinking my worldview is the only one and I need him and his ilk to shake me out of my arrogance, like two shots of vodka after I only asked for one. “Breakfast with Hunter” captures him, as best he can be captured. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that it holds onto him, desperately, for 91 minutes before fearing for its life or its dignity and then letting him go.
Finished July 23rd, 2004
Copyright © 2004 Friday & Saturday Night
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