(Music)
We can't stop here.
This is bat country.
>> 20 years ago a new generation was introduced to Hunter S Thompson's crowning
jewel of Gonzo journalism, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,
A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream.
Fear and Loathing was originally published in 1971 as a two-part article in
Rolling Stone magazine.
It's a semi-autobiographical account of two separate trips to
Vegas made by Thompson and infamous Chicano attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta.
Immortalized as the characters Raul, Duke, and Dr. Gonzo, the two search for
the American dream while they gobble up every drug known to man since 1544 AD.
A series of events feel fragmented or misrepresented.
It's less of a story and more of an experience.
>> With no real plot or character development to speak of it's no wonder
film makers tried and failed to bring it to the silver screen properly.
Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Even Art Lint'z Where the Buffalo Roam attempted
and ultimately fell short of capturing the essence of this freak piece of literature.
Gilliam utilizes his iconic production design extreme camera effects and
zany comedic voice to adapt Thompson's novel into a film that is
visually stunning aggressively pointed and very badly behaved.
>> All right enough of this pageantry let's get crackin.
>> It's time to ask what's the difference.
>> What's the difference you bastard?
>> Panic.
>> The first hurdle for Gilliam's adaptation was context.
Thompson's articles were combined and published as a novel in 1972.
By this time, president Nixon reigned in the White House.
Charles Manson was convicted of murder, and the Vietnam War had been raging for
nearly two decades.
>> Gilliam sets the stage with archive footage of protests set to
My Favorite Things by the Lennon Sisters.
Alluding to the greed of capitalism and the large collection of narcotics,
the film will eventually dive into.
Then by fading the soundtrack out with an echo,
Gilliam conveys a sense of disappearance, a final cry from a revolution long dead.
(Music)
>> Get in.
>> In an effort to keep the film focused,
Gilliam cuts any deviations from the primary events in Vegas.
For instance the time a friend of a friend got hassled by the cops and
experienced injustice due to a lack of social standing.
The film just sticks to the story's main nerve.
>> The introduction is nearly identical to the book.
>> We were somewhere around Barstow,
on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.
>> Since this line kicks off the story,
we know the narrator is completely unreliable, putting what is real and
what is hallucinatory into questions, something like this.
>> What are these goddamn animal?
>> Good.
>> But Gilliam is able to utilize the visual medium to further question reality.
As Duke and Gonzo peel off into the desert,
the camera reveals a physical bat corpse.
>> I don't know, it might be real.
(Music)
>> One toke you poor fool.
>> Both the book and the movie reveal how Duke received an assignment the Mint 400
dune buggy and motorcycle race in Las Vegas.
So, he and his attorney Gonzo pack a rental car full of drugs
where they find a hitchhiker, lose the hitchhiker, and roar
into the city with a head full of acid and a quest to find the American Dream.
>> I need this right?
>> I remember your face.
>> Let's talk about drugs now shall we?
>> Yes no, I'm hip to that scene.
>> I bet you are.
>> So yes, let let's do it.
Both the book and the movie contain a whole bunch of drug use, uppers, downers,
screamers, laughers, damn near the entire gamut.
But where the novel describes their effects using simile and imagery,
the film is able to communicate the experience through sight and sound.
>> Duke and Dr. Gonzo check into the mental hotel after taking LSD.
In the book Duke describes seeing faces changing, swelling, pulsing.
Gilliam uses special effects to mod facial features, and the floor changes in
a shutter speed illustrate acids effect on the perception of time.
And Dutch angles evoke feelings of paranoia.
In a scene taken directly from the novel the hallucinations peak and
the bar crowd turns into a den of filthy reptiles.
Gilliam saturates the colors, makes chaotic changes to the light, and
slips the sound in and out of sync.
(Inaudible) >> Eventually the background audio
drops out completely isolating Duke's dialogue.
>> Tell me you brought the (Bleep) golf shoes.
(Sound) >> Once they make it into the room,
Book Duke watches a neon sign outside their window,
which turns into an electric snake slithering in the sky.
>> In the movie, he watches a TV broadcasting images of Vietnam.
Gilliam uses projections to illustrate Duke's hallucinatory state with an dded
carpet bombing pun for kicks.
Sure he could have kept the glowy colorful neon sign, played with the light
levels and color saturation just like the previous scene but
that would have been a bit repetitive, no?
This way he's able to do something different visually while increasing
the level of anxiety in the room.
>> God. Hi.
>> This (Bleep) guy.
Okay, let's talk about Lacerda.
In both mediums, he's the photographer assigned to cover the Mint 400 race.
But the film is able to use this character as a means of skipping over a chapter in
the novel.
>> Hey, too bad you guys missed the bikes backing in.
(Laugh) Man, what a sight!
>> In the book, they don't miss that Check in.
Duke has a nasty interaction with Dustman and
Gonzo thinks that the gun club's trying to kill him.
>> By introducing Lacerda instead, the film saves valuable runtime and
sets up his irritating enthusiasm so that by the time Duke fires him at
the end of the race scene, you almost feel relieved.
>> Awful jackass.
>> In the book, it's the driver that gets fired.
Someone the reader hardly even knows.
>> This is the police.
>> We get to circus circus and a new drug is introduced, the devils ether.
In Thompson's words, the ether makes you behave like the village drunkard.
You experience total loss of basic motor skills.
You can watch yourself behave this way, but you can't control it.
The camera takes a low angle and
a wide shot evoking the voyeuristic feeling described in the novel.
The pitch in the circus music dips and rises,
aural imbalance representative of the characters lack of physical balance.
>> Blurred vision, no balance, numb tongue.
The mind recoils in horror.
>> Once inside, the cameras undefined depth of field makes judging space and
distance difficult.
The overwhelming Maison scene is crammed into a single flat plane as wide angle
lenses distort size like a funhouse mirror.
(Music)
The events play out the same as they do in the book,
although this whole trapeze skit with the baby delivery is unique to the movie.
(Music)
>> In the book, The Trapeze Show, consists of a 14-year-old girl being chased
by a wolverine, which is locked in a death battle with two silver-painted pollacks.
All three of which bounce off the net and
are snatched by members of the vocal group Korean Kittens.
(Music)
>> Duke wakes to find himself with a sudden urge to flee.
As he attempts to drive away, he's held up by a telegram,
movie Duke ignores the message and focuses solely on getting out of town.
>> Book Duke reads the telegram right away, detailing a new assignment.
The district attorney's conference on narcotics and, dangerous drugs.
He spends the next couple of chapters contemplating whether to continue on to
Los Angeles, or take the assignment return to Las Vegas to experience the horrors
that certainly await.
>> By, keeping the telegrams message unknown, the movie stream lines the entire
Vegas escape sequence, taking out all the contemplated stops and instead,
going straight into interaction with the highway cop and Hitchhiker.
>> (Bleep) Didn't get my telegram?
>> What telegram you worthless bastard?
>> Gonzo convinces Duke to take the new assignment until we find ourselves back
in Vegas at the Flamingo Hotel, and that is when Lucy attacks Duke like a dog.
>> Shut the (Bleep) >> In the book however,
Duke enters his new room to find Lucy idly sitting on the floor whacked out on acid.
Meanwhile, Gonzo exits the bathroom totally nude.
It's terribly uncomfortable as Duke notes the girl's age, which is young.
With her drug-addled state of mind and Gonzo's nudity,
plenty of assumptions can be made about what they've been up to.
(Cough) >> Gross.
>> The movie softens this scene by wrapping Gonzo in what appears to be
a muumuu.
Now, don't get me wrong, the scene is still plenty uncomfortable.
But by simply putting clothes on Gonzo, the film provides the audience with just
enough doubt to keep them from absolute repulsion.
At least for the time being.
>> Duke convinces Gonzo to ditch the girl and
we won't see her again in the movie until after the drug conference.
Hey, look at that, a segway.
(Music)
>> Know your dope fiend.
>> The movie boils multiple chapters' worth of convention down to one,
succinct scene, cutting only one moment.
When posing as police, book Duke, and
Gonzo tell a visiting DA all about the drug addicts crazy for human sacrifice,
cutting off heads for Satanic rituals.
(Laugh) >> After the conference, movie Duke and
Gonzo go back to the room, where Duke tries extract from a human adrenal gland.
In the book, this happens before the conference.
Duke describes his body feeling like it had just been wired to a 220 volt socket.
He and Gonzo then discuss the theoretical effects of taking extract of pineal gland,
instantly gaining 200 pounds, growing claws and hairy tits on your back.
>> By placing this scene later in the story,
Gilliam is able to construct a horrifying climax.
Extreme close ups create a claustrophobic effect.
Occasionally, the camera rotates and colors become oversaturated, and
changes in the hue indicate the psychedelic effects are kicking in.
>> What about the clowns?
>> Gilliam takes the opportunity to have Duke hallucinate the effects of pineal
extract, falling into an American nightmare until everything goes dark.
>> In both mediums, Duke wakes up alone in his hotel room,
which has been abused to an obscene degree.
>> (Bleep) man. That's (Bleep) crazy.
>> The big difference here is memory.
(Sound) >> Jesus, God man!
>> Movie Duke views the scene in horror and confusion.
He relies on a tape recorder to piece together the previous events.
>> Splintered movies looming up out of the time fog.
Just press Play.
>> However, book Duke never listens to any recordings,
what he's coming to terms with is the reality of his decisions.
>> Movie Duke needs to know what the (Bleep) Happened.
Playing the tape recorder we see a montage of flashbacks derived from longer chapters
in the novel.
>> This is it.
>> Gilliam's use of the tape recorder may refer to Chapter 9 in which
an editor's note tells the reader that Duke had a complete mental breakdown.
And rather than deciphering a splintered manuscript,
the editor transcribes a recording of Duke and
Gonzo asking a fast food clerk where they could find the American dream.
>> Gilliam skips this entire interaction and
goes straight into Duke's commentary on the death of the 1960's drug wave.
>> What Leery took down with him was the central illusion of a whole lifestyle that
he helped create.
A generation of permanent cripples, failed secrets.
We never understood the essential old mystic fallacy of the Aztec
culture with desperate assumption but somebody or
at least some force is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.
>> With that, the film ends as suddenly as it began, driving through the dessert back
to Los Angeles, getting out before the film hits the two hour mark.
>> But the book takes its time winding down.
Duke returns the delapidated Cadillac, then endures an airport
full of cops while holding a briefcase full of narcotics and a gun.
He wakes up at the Denver airport, buys more poppers and acosts some Marines.
>> God have mercy on you swine!
>> Just one last contradiction before heading to the nearest bar.
>> And so it was.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
One of the all time great adaptations.
Too weird to have been a hit release, too rare to fade into pop culture obscurity.
Do we leave out any of your favorite differences?
Sound off in the comment section below, and don't forget to like this video and
subscribe for more What's The Difference, right here on CineFix.
>> Would you fade to black already?
It's (Bleep) Damn it.
(Sound)