Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

H We're the last time we talked, Andy, you and I were planning, wasn't George Lucas nuh Stephen Spielberg? What was that? Right? Was that right? Yeah?

For a for a what is that? A reading of the a marathon link reading of the notes for Raiders of the Lost Art. So now we're putting this out into the world that Mike has to get this out there because otherwise people are going to be like, what is this thing you're talking about? I assume it's coming out with the Raiders, not Raiders, but whatever, the new Indie the Dial of Destiny yet Jesus Safe Christ. But that was the last time we did an episode together.

But we've never done an episode of anything together. That's right, frankly. And on this episode of the Culture Cast, I am still your host, Kristashie, much to the chagrin of many, and I'm joined by my good friend. He is an author. He has written several books.

You have heard him on the Projection booth before. I was just thinking, somebody's gonna wander in here and they're gonna listen, and they're gonna go, holy fuck. That's Steven Spielberg and George lust anybody ever hears the other one first, right, But yeah, author Andrew J. Rousch is right. So Andrew, tell me or my audience, rather tell my audience a little bit about you as an author, what you've written, what people should be checking out if they haven't, where they can find said things.

Before we talk about fear and loving, because you're an author as well, just like our dear friend Raoul Duke. That's right. So I've written a lot of novels, a lot of nonfiction, actually fifty plus books, which sounds crazy, but it's true. Been writing about films since the nineties. I've done several books on Tarantino, one with his help, which was great.

I did a book on Scorsese and de Niro. My next book is on Watermelon Man, so I mean, you name it, I'll write about it. If it's film. So I don't even know what Watermelon Man is, so most people don't. It's Melvin Van Peebles movie, which is one Hollywood movie, and I was hired to do it.

I really wasn't familiar with it, but because an interview I had done with Melvin Van Peebles is in the liner notes for a Watermelon Man, they thought I was obviously an expert, so I am now, but at the time I like that part. I am not right. But write a book about a thing. You know, if you walk away from the book and you're not an expert, then you've probably fucked up somewhere. Well, and then they're real disappointed in you.

Right, They're like, what are you? Why are why are you even here? Again? I don't I don't understand, that's right. What was what was the what was the point of your job?

Sir? So no, I uh, I'm super My wife says, why are you? Why are you here? Who are you? Right?

Number four? Wow? Geez, that's that's it. That's the author lifestyle right there. That's right.

I got her legs tied down to the you know, so she's not going anywhere. Let's talk a little bit about Hunter S. Thompson before we talk about the movie, because I want to know, because again I think it's important before we talk about the movie and the book, we talk a little bit about Hunter S. Thompson because I'm sure we both have a different way we approached him or were introduced him. So I want to know from you, how were you introduced to the doctor of gonzo journalism himself Hunter S.

Thompson. I was actually introduced through the film, and then I started reading his work and it's very up and down. But when he's at his best, like if you're in Loathing in Las Vegas, he's brilliant. His voice is brilliant, and I really, for me, this movie is about his voice. And when he was hitting on all cylinders, I think he was amazing.

But you know, I think he had a period there in right around this time in the early seventies, like sixties, early seventies, where he really did his best work, and then it was very sporadic after that. Well, I think that this is I mean to cop from Thompson himself, this might be his own high watermark unintentionally, whether he knows it or not, I think, is you know what, we'll get into that. But for me, it was the same way I was introduced Hunters Thompson through. I had heard about the movie and I watched it when I was sixteen. Didn't understand it at all, but I went down the path of you know, let's let's look into Hunters Thompson and hundred a lot of drugs, and then you understood it well, that was the thing.

I mean, the whole drug thing. Like I want to ask you, because again it's part and parcel to this drug culture. You are fan of drug culture, Get me away. I mean again, we're both in the creative field here, so our opinions on the world of illicit drug use may vary. But you know, I mean, I'm a user of certain things, but I don't write.

I'm not the person like they are in this so right, I'm bipolar and I have a lot of the same demons as a lot of writers do. And with bipolar I wasn't medicated until I was about thirty one, and so I went down the same path that a lot of unmedicated bipolar people go. And you know that's sex and drugs, and you know, because you're trying to self medic right, But I have to say that a lot of most of the stuff they do in this in this book, in this movie, I have not done. So You're not walking around some smoking or sniffing ether rags. No, no, but God, but it's fascinating.

I feel like, you know what, before we really get into the movie, I gotta say, and I've always felt this way. I feel the same way when I watch Platoon as I and this is gonna sound funny, but I mean when I watched Platoon, I was an in Vietnam. Watch Platoon and I think this has to be what it feels like to be in Vietnam. And when I watch and read Hunter S. Thompson, I think this is what it probably sounds or it feels like to be high on on an ether binge as he says, or mescaline or any of these things I feel like.

And if not, he's created his own, his own image of you know, he's created it for us. So right, either he's lied to us who have not used these drugs, or he's done a hell of a job recreating it for us. Reading his book and then earlier this year reading some william S. Burrows, I agree because Burrows is the same way where you you read it and it's like I've never done Heroin and I'm never going to. But man, here you go like like this, this is as close to using Heroin as I want to get.

And I, like you said, I don't know, I don't want to try it, but I believe you that this is the experiences that you're having, or this is what it evokes in you. So but yeah, So on this episode of the Culture Cast, let's get into Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Universal Pictures invites you to come to Las Vegas, where the people are friendly, hire Department, the rooms are comfortable, and the atmosphere is out of this world. Johnny Depp, Benicio del Toro. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Ye rated R starts Friday, May twenty second of theaters everywhere.

So. The film is directed by the one and only Terry Gilliam. It was released in nineteen ninety eight and it stars Johnny Depp and Benecio del Toro, has Ral Duke and Doctor Gonzo, and they're on a trip from hell through Las Vegas, where we find out all about well, the American dream, the shitty thing we call capitalism, and uh well, you know, like Andy already mentioned drug use. So Andy kick us off with this episode on Fear and Loathing. Tell me a little bit about your feelings on the movie the first time you saw it and what you thought rewatching it for this episode.

So, the first time I watched the movie, and I didn't see it in the theater, I saw it on video right after it came out, and I kind of didn't know what to make out of it, you know, and I think that's the right that's the right reaction the first time you watch it. And like I said, I hadn't read him, didn't really know any I didn't know anything about Hunter S. Thompson. I think I may have seen with the Buffalo Rome, but at some point I did watch it, which is a less good kind of version of Hunter S. Thompson's life, even though it's got Bill Murray and you think Bill Murray and Peter Boyle Boyle.

But you know, when I walked away from this, I didn't really know what I thought. I knew there were some amazing visuals. I knew there was a lot of crazy shit going on. But I over time, I watched it again, and then I read the book. I probably read the book more times than I've seen the movie.

I think I've read the book through four times. And again. For me, it's the voice, you know, I love that voice, you know, the first person waiting through this crazy world voice, and you end up with these great lines. So many of the great lines are directly in the movie. You know, all of these things, like and I wrote this one down.

There's nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether beinge I love these lines, you know, so I don't know. In the beginning, I didn't know what the fuck to make out of it, But now I love it. And I will say this. I talked about being married four times. I've been in a lot of relationships since this movie came out, and I think I've tried to show it to just about every one of the women along the way, and none of them have life.

I mean, I feel like there is a reason for that. I think the movie, the movie, and again the source material text, and I'm like yourself. I saw the movie, first, read the book. Second, I have read. I've read the book.

I think I've read it at least three or four times now, and I was rereading it today or at least, you know, I got two thirds of the way through it just listening to it, because it's a quick read. It's a six hour listen. It's a two hundred two hundred something pages two hundred and four, so it's an easy read. It's easy to get through. Again, if you can deal with like you've mentioned first person diatribes about tripping on ether, mescaline, looking a dream of chrome at one point.

If you can stomach all of that, it's a pretty easy read because it's all told in first person from his perspective of again a fictionalized version of Hunter S. Thompson. But I think for me, the movie and the book serve two purposes. The movie is an amazing adaptation of a book that I don't understand why anyone thought was an adaptable book, right, which like, there's no plot, right, no plot whatsoever. It's just them wandering around Vegas, and the movies ending and the books ending are both very abrupt, let's just put it that way.

And again, it almost feels like a narrative list movie. But it's almost not the point that there's a narrative. It's more about the musings on again, all of the things, you know, the heart of the American Dream, which is what the subtitle of the book is. So and I really think it's about the counterculture. And you know, uh, he presents Las Vegas as being this very stiff, very you know, Perry Como, You've got you know place where you've got all of these these cops that are having a you know, a big what do you call it, like a cop meeting.

You know, they're anti drug confesace, the corny ist anti drug convention, and you have these two things meeting, you know. And so even though this book comes out in nineteen seventy one, it's heart is really in like sixty eight sixty nine in San Francisco, you know, where the hippie movement takes place, and and you know, there is talk in the book sort of about um, you know, the movement not really achieving what they wanted to do. You know, there's a lot of questioning about where they're at and where society's at. And so to me, it's kind of this this meeting of these two worlds that are completely different. And I imagine that's really but it was like with Hunter wandering around trying to hie, trying to come up with these stories for Sports Illustrated or any of you know, any of these magazines that he wrote for and not and just everything going past him and him sitting down to write something and going, I fucking got high for three days, you know, right, Well, and that's the I mean, that's the crazy thing about it is the thing I love about the movie and not the book so much, but the movie you do get to see this idea that Hunter S.

Thompson is like, I don't know what the fuck they want me to do, Like I don't like why would you have me do this for you? Like? And again you get that sense of just he's a dude who just Hunter as Thompson talks about doctor Gonzo right in the movie, the Benicil doctorial character, and he says one of the more famous lines, the too strange to live, too rare to die. And obviously that's as much a phrase to describe, you know, doctor Gonzo, who was based off of a real person, Oscar Zeta Acosta. It's as much about him as it is about Hunter S.

Thompson. And that's the thing, I mean, the thing that always brings me back to Hunter S. Thompson is the voice. And I don't know how to put this any other way, and trying not to be hyperbolic, but Johnny Depp evokes Hunter S. Thompson in a way that like no actors really do as well, Like there are a few actors who can do what he does in this movie.

So we'll take all the weird hallucination, shit Out and the misogyny. It's a character piece where Johnny Depp gets to play his real life hero like and you know it's funny is he totally becomes Hunter S Thompson. You see things like you know where he's shooting, and he's got those shorts on and the buyaser and he's leanedo and it's just like footage that we've seen of Hunter S Thompson, right, and he acts just like he is Hunter S Thompson and yet oddly enough, and I think it's because his character is so high and subdude. The Benicio del Toro kind of steals every scene he's in because he's just he's so fucking crazy and amazing and fun. And half the time we don't know what he's saying in the portories, in the bathtub, he sounds like Toshido Mefuny in like seven smy and I don't even know what the fuck he's saying.

And it's so weird and awesome, And it never gets less weirder or awesome no matter how many times you see it. I'm never less stupefied by the weirdness. And that's the crazy thing about this movie. And I'm totally with you. Is this idea that I've seen this movie so many times, seen it three times in the last seventy two hours now, and every time I watch it, I'm focusing on something else.

And if you just sit and watch, just zone out and zone Johnny Depp out of the movie completely, which is hard to do. This movie is a insane master class in acting from Benicil del Toro, and he is not that far into his acting career at this point, right, he's like, what in his early thirties at this point, Guys still acting at fifty six. I mean, I love Benicio del Toro somewhat playing the villain of this movie. It's hard to tell, but it's well, it's almost like he's a different guy when we catch him and he's back in the office. He's so different than what we've seen him before that you almost wonder if he was even really there or this was a hallucination.

And it's so bizarre. And the other thing to mention about Benicio del Toro is, you know, there's a guy that becomes twice Oscar nominated, like a one time winner for Traffic, and here he is just this wildly stumbling around crazy high guy that he's just amazing and he didn't get nominated for this. Like, I don't know, I don't get it because again, like you mentioned, it's weird for old Academy voters. You know, it's it's very it's very of a time, of a place. And look, I mean, on top of everything else, this movie is made in ninety eight.

What else is coming out of ninety eight that's even approaching ground? No, no, no, nothing is subversive or transgressive. Again, like this movie is glorifying drug use. A lot of the older Academy voters you can almost see them as those cops in the hotel. They're you know where they're like, no, you're dope fiend and all that stuff in that in that meeting.

And I feel like a lot of the older Academy voters, even though they were awesome in their time, you know, there were things that they weren't getting. And that's the same old story about the Academy. It's almost always that way, right, You've got some of the people that are so stiff that the good things passed them by, they missed them because they're voting for things that were like movies twenty years ago Ers Wolves, and you know, and I'm a huge Costner fan, but which is weird? I know? But no, Danswers with Wild should not have won.

It should not have not over good Fellas, Over good Fellas my favorite movie. No, right, I'm with you. Well, and here's the crazy thing, and I a plug, a randomly plug a book. The Oscar War's book is a very good book all about this, the subject of the oscars. And I think for me it gave me a good perspective on exactly what you're talking about, which is this idea that something like this is so atypical of what I want from a quote serious acting movie.

Because that's the thing. These serious performances quote unquote serious as in high quality performances are sandwiched in a movie where there are lizards eating one another and frolicking in their filth. And like, there are two amazing performances in this completely batshit insane movie. When speaking of the lizard Heads. Okay, so we talked earlier about even if you haven't done those drugs, you feel like that it must be what it's like, right, Well, the thing about the movie that's interesting is is that while we don't know what's going on.

They don't know what's going on because you know, Hunter s. Thompson is so high that we're seeing these things at the same time he's seeing these things and he's like, what the fuck is happening? Or when he sees the bats and he's like, it's backcountry, you know, and all of this batshit is what this is. But it's fantastic because we're experiencing it as he is. And I'm guessing every high has got to be somewhat different with some of these drugs, and you know, because he just seems so oddly shocked by the things that he's seeing at different times, like the lizardhead people right well, which then shows up later in the movie where he has one of those lizard tails on in a weirdly met and again like it's never explained.

It's a very meta inclusion because then it makes me wonder, what is what is going on here in it? Right? And that is the thing about this movie, I think just its core and I think the reason so many people maybe are put off by this movie is the thing that you've mentioned. There's never a moment of reprieve. It actually saves what you could say the most intensely uncomfortable scene in the entire movie is saved for essentially sending you out the door.

They send you out the door with a kick in the pants, is what it feels like. But again very intentional by Terry Gilliam. But it's crazy to me because, like you said, there's never a moment of reprieve in this movie. The reprieve is the moment you fucking leave, like the moment you step back out into reality. And I think that's why you know you meant and you know, watching the movie kind of paying attention to other things coming and going to it.

I think that's why it somehow works more than just sitting there and watching it two hours through, because you're just being hammered over the head with crazy shit to the point where I mean, I'm sorry to me, even though I've seen it the bazillion times or whatever, it can get a little dull because it's so much of the same thing. Whereas if you're sitting there and you're kind of coming and going with it, Oh my god, there's more crazy shit, and then you fade up more crazy shit, you know, instead of just crazy shitzy crazy shit. If that makes sense, and it's like a fire hose of insanity with the crazy shit, and it's and it's constant. I mean, there's you know, they Terry Gilliam, I think is you know and again we mentioned this before, like how did somebody adapt this?

I still don't know what the fuck anybody was thinking. In a lot of ways, Terry Gilliam is the only person who could have done this justice because he has a sense of bringing the surreal to life on screen in a believable way. See at Brazil sees so many right, like so many of his things. And you know, the book is I won't say that the book is tame, but the book's a lot more tame than the movie. Like, if you're reading the book expecting to see the insanity of the movie, you're going to be disappointed.

And that is shocking. I would feel like to tell someone who's seen the movie that the book is subdued comparatively. When you say that he's the only one to direct it, I think, again, we can look at you know, the lesser movies like Rum Punch Diaries. Oh it's his Chiefs again is Johnny Depp playing Hunter s Thompson. But it's boring.

And then you can look at where you know where, the Buffalo Rum, which isn't bad, but it also isn't good. Those movies in no way compared to this. And there's one big reason for it, and it's Terry Gilliam right well. And also I mean fucking Rum Diaries, Like the story is not exciting. Like did I say Rum Punch Diaries, I don't know.

It's either way. It should be called the Tongue Punch Diaries. Because that movie is the reason we got bombarded with the bullshit about Johnny Depp and Amber heard all last year is because of the goddamn Rum Diaries because they met on the set of that movie. That movie hadn't right exactly, I wouldn't have to hear about all their insanity for like a year. Ben pooping and all of that, stepped on a bee, oh everything about and yeah, she is so hot and I can never look at her again without thinking her pooping on the bed and then just runs it and I am and it's you know what, I really like Johnny Depp.

I like him in this movie. I like you. There's seven movies. I love him in ed Wood, I love him in Dead Man, but if he left and I never saw him again, I'd be okay with that, because that year just felt like, oh my god, you're talking about getting hit over the head with a hammer over and over again. I just it was so bad annoying me.

I wanted to ask you because again we have now, John but this is the first time we've talked about Johnny Depp on this show post all the fun of last year. I'm with you. Like Johnny Depp. Look, I love Johnny Depp and Tusk it's really weird. Yeah, yeah, he's great and that he's great in a lot of things.

He's also really bad and a lot of stuff. And he's also in things that he has no right being own Ranger and shit like that. Like really, yeah, Or what was that movie where he's investigating Tupac's death? Do you remember that? Oh?

I don't even think I've seen that. But I don't want to see that. City of Lies, that's what it's called, came out in twenty eight I have never watched that. I'm actually reading a book about Tupuck now, not that it matters, but I really don't want to see that though. Wow.

But but Johnny Depp, like for me, he's always all over the place, but this this from me consistent, right, He is like Hunter s Thompson, very inconsistent. Good when he's good, way less so when way less. So maybe that's why they connect. Maybe that's why he relates to him. I mean, it's a funny thing to say, and you know that's not really why.

But they are a lot alike in that way, right, And you're and you're totally right, because when I think of the good Johnny Depp, there's nobody better like this, like like this is for me, this is the Johnny Depp performance of all of them. I think if you ask Johnny Depp, he might say that this is his performance of performance. It's either this or Jack Sparrow, Right, it's gotta be. I hate that. I know that I hate those Pirates of the Caribbean movies so much.

Really, even the first one. I thought, well, when I saw the first one, I thought he was pretty cool. You know, I had the swagger, he's, you know, doing the Keith Richards thing. But oh, I just got so sick of them. And it doesn't really matter, but you know, and like the second one, I think it was where I went and I had to review it for the paper Jacally one of the third one, and I kept having these false endings and I really just wanted to leave.

So with every false ending, I like, fuck you the false ending. So I can leave even angry or just right so angry. But I mean, I get it though, with the whole If he went away and never came back, I'd be happy because I mean I feel like I feel like I've seen the thing now right with Johnny. I've seen the Johnny Depp thing, Like it's this, It's Pirates of the Caribbean, It's Tusk. It's like it's there's there are so many things that you can point to and just be like, yeah, like ed Wood, there you go, that's Johnny Depp's body of work.

Tusk, he did something weird. Edwood is pretty straightforward. This is pretty weird and straightforward. And then you know Public Enemies is the gimme bullshit like oh yeah, right, like john to see Mary and Codyard halfway naked and I was okay, that's I mean again, like but it's still Johnny Depp just being Johnny Depp, right, like oh yeah, and that's the thing. Like I'm with you, though, because I don't know.

I like the guy. He's a great actor, but like this is peaked Johnny Depp for me, right, you know, yeah, it's like he's an We found out he's really annoying. Like that was the main thing. They were both really fucking annoying. And people are like, it's her fault, it's his fault.

They both suck. Yeah, I'm sorry, but he's a great actor and he's whatever, and you know, but it's almost like Kanye, but not in that same way. Right, Kanye is the worst human. He's made some masterpiece albums, but he's the shittiest human that you will ever meet. Johnny Depp is not that.

But there are so many people that make really good art and then once you find out who they are, it's like, fuck, it would be great. I had a friend that's a novelist that told me one time the best way to consume books would be if you didn't know who wrote them, And I think that's absolutely true, and it's I don't know how you would make a movie and people not unless you wore a mask. But Johnny Depp sucks. I'm okay without Johnny Depp anymore. But he's an amazing actor, but I also don't think we're going to get much range.

Like even these there's very they're very similar, except for I'd say except for Jack Sparrow, which is way out there, because even in this it's a wild movie. But he's subdued. He's very shit is happening around him, right, He's very subdued in this movie, almost almost in a way that again, like he has to almost be the straight man in the movie, right, he absolutely is. So he's kind of reporting on all the crazy shit that Doctor Gonzo's or that he perceives Doctor Gonzo is doing, because we don't even know what's real and what's not in this movie. So I have a question for you then, because you kind of brought this up and I've never thought about it.

Is there a way to interpret this movie where Benicio del Toro isn't actually there until it's just those office scenes Gonzo, you know, I mean, he's the Gonzo journalist and he's right, Doctor gon also calls himself doctor. But even though we know he's based on a real character, I have thought of that, you know, like, is he really there or is this all? Are there two parts to this character? I don't know. And speaking of which, it is fun you mentioned meta, It is fun when we see the real Hunter S.

Thompson top up in a cameo for about two seconds. I love that and there I am. It's and again like when I was watching it with my wife, I was like, that's the real guy there, and She's like, oh, okay, Like but how yeah, he's such as he is such a weird dude to make a movie about like this, because this isn't a bot, this isn't a lot of ways, like it's a biopic almost right, and it's it's about two episodes that are it's so it's such a weird movie. It has no right to be as good as it is. And again, see those other two movies.

I mean, but it is, well, you're You're totally right. Terry Gilliam is someone who I haven't seen enough of his work. I have yet to see Brazil, I know, I know, but I've seen Twelve Monkeys, I've seen Time Bandits right, Munchausen so and again like also weird right and also a huge fan of Python. And he is right, you know, I mean again like Jesus Christ, like I don't know, like I feel like Python is normal without Terry Gilliam, right right. I don't know.

Yeah, I feel like a lot of the weird things that make Python python are due to Terry Gilliam. That's probably right. And I feel like that's the case because you see how unique his voices on his just imagine you could add acid in there to the you know, oh my god, but seeing it on screen, but imagine you know, you had money Python about drugs and that right bridge there for something like Terry, for someone like Terry Gilliam and the ideas and the things that they're already working on bringing it to this does does it feel like he amped up the drug stuff and like the weirdness to make up for a for a lack of quote narrative through line, because that's something I wondered every time I watched. It's like the weird stuff that we're seeing is like doesn't serve anything, and in a lot of ways, like you mentioned, there is nothing to serve, right, No, I think that's absolutely.

I think it's to keep you interested, it's to keep your eyes glued to the screen. I think it's at least that first time, because there's so much weird shit going on, and most of its visual you know, absolutely, And so like when you say it's weirder or it's more over the top than the book, I think that's true. And I think that's why that would be my guess. What I was going to say was, can we talk for a minute about all of the weird cameos? Oh my god, my favorite is Christopher Maloney?

Have you? And again, this movie is made in the nineties, so you can make this. He's not flamboyant, but we know that he's gay from the moment, and in the nineties that's a joke kind of thing. But it's interesting to see Christopher Malone, even though you know he does homosexual acts. I guess in Oz right around that time, maybe a little a little later, but it's interesting to see him play this kind of character because he seems so different than the Christopher Maloney that we are used to seeing.

And you know, and so he's got this weird outfit on that looks kind of like a like a Matadors outfit. If you look at it, it's really weird. And then you have all this, you know, like where he's arguing with the cop and the cop says, can I call you or he asked the co can I call you a cab? And the cop says sure, and I'll call you a cocksucker, which again we're looking at from a book in nineteen seventy one and a movie in nineteen ninety eight. But I thought it was interesting to see Maloney because he's good.

First year, like, is that fucking Christopher Maloney? And it is because it's the Maloney with hair. That's why, you know, the first time I ever saw him and anything, Harold and Kumar go to White Castle where he's under all that makeup, right right, the Great cald and Kumar movie though, right, yeah, that one time he was a foot away from me. I won't much get into it because not a really interesting story, but I was. I was just because there's a lot more.

But I was waiting for a friend that was coming out of the David Letterman Show. And so I'm standing outside and I buy this cavey and this is the most New York story ever. Christopher Maloney walks by. He's a foot away and I'm talking to the cavey. I tell the Cabby hey, And at the time I didn't know who he was.

I'm like that's that's a famous guy. And he goes, yeah, fuck that guy, And there's my New York story. So that is the most New York way to handle a fuck that guy. I like him. I like him a lot.

And that scene between him and Troy Evans of all people, I don't know that's a cameo, I guess, but it's a he's just a great character actor. Oh right. That is directly from the book, where it's like, you know, oh, I've never had the opportunity to tell a cop to go fuck themselves, but I'm going to do it here in the nicest way possible. I love the things that they bring back from the book because again, like that's such a random thing. But yet Gillium and the rest of the screenwriting teams like, that's something that needs to be in the movie.

So let's have Christopher molone where the voice comes through the strongest, because there's another cop one that makes me laugh and it's the whole thing about you know where he's talking about it confuses cops if you just pull over when they catch it for speeding, and he says, if you pull over, it arouses contempt in the cop heart and Brady's thought of that line, I don't know. It's just such a weird fucking line. And it's funny because he takes it as so serious because he's spun out right, and boy, wouldn't you be spun out if? I think that's one of the best cameos in the movie. If the cop that pulls you over is Gary fucking busy in the uniform does not fit him like Belly's really hang over in Yeah, it's not peak Bucy, let's put it that way, but he's proper creepy.

And that's you know, that's the thing about this movie that we kind of haven't mentioned. There are part of this movie that are very scary, like that that really lean on what you would call horror tropes. I mean that moment where Benicio del Toro comes out of the bathroom and Hunter s. Thompson is on adrena chrome, I mean that is actually really scary in the way that it's lit is very i mean not Giallo, but it's Italian horror. It's very bit right.

The colors on some of those scenes do look very Giallo, right right, and it's it's really surprising because again, it isn't a horror movie by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, I don't think that this movie has a genre. I think it's in a lot of ways like a movie that the reception to it is because it's genre lists. Some of these would be scary if you were taking a bad trip. I think, you know, right when he's on acid and he's in the casino and everything's spinning and it's it's red and it's crazy colors, and he thinks the carpets sucking him in, and I mean those are crazy, those are creepy.

They look like an Argento movie right well, and I think you know each of the ways that the drugs would affect you in your life. Gilliam tries to replicate that with right, what he's doing. I mean with the Adrina chrome it's very narrow, and I mean that it's very narrow and close up on Beneicil Detro in that scene, whereas the tits on his back and the horns and it's it's horrifying. But again, like you said, I mean, this is him tripping and us experiencing the trip with him, which again, like I think, Gilliam just I'm if I'm going to have someone do it. Terry Gilliam is the person because he just has an eye for it.

That again, we know that he's not actually seeing these lizards having sex with one another and eating one another, but Terry Gilliam does such a good job of shifting in and out of it, like it is kind of creepy in a weird way. And like I said, I think if you're high, you would be creeped out. You would be scared if you saw these or you imagine that you saw these things. Yeah. And another little crazy role to me is Toby maguire.

They make him look so crazy that he looks like something out of you know, like House of a Thousand Corpses or something like right balding and he's got the springy hair and he looks kind of gross and kind of creepy. It's almost hard to believe that it's Tobe McGuire. It's fucking spider Man. And I don't understand what was the idea behind making him look that way again, like that's that's not from the book. Then he looks this like strange.

He look it's just again visually interesting, right, And I think maybe you're sitting there it's so you'll sit there and wonder, like, what the fuck is up with this guy? Like something's going to happen with him. It doesn't really like he's just kind of there. He's the straight man in that scene. Man.

Yeah. And then later on when Hunter sees him and he freaks out and he fucking spins out far down and is Ellen Barkin in her scene wearing a wig on top of her hair because it's I can never tell him that scene, but it's very weird. She like, just like with Toby McGuire, she looks strange. I don't know, like made to look strange again. I mean that scene is beyond uncomfortable.

I mean if if, like you mentioned, you've showed this to your to your four previous wives, if you can make it to that scene, that would be the scene where I feel like most women watching this would turn off, and most of them turned out in the first three minutes. But I mean, Cameron Diaz is one of the only people that looks normal in the movie, you know, Well, then that's the thing. I feel like, in a lot of ways, this is Hunter s Thompson just interacting with a lot of really weird people. Absolutely kind of like something I just talked about After Hours, where it's like there is one or two normal people throughout, but all of a sudden there are dwarfs with telephones and lizard people and pen Galette, And oh that's absolutely what I think makes the Absolutely it's a good comparison to After Hours, because you've got this character just kind of wandering through crazy shit, bouncing off from one thing to the next thing to the next thing, without seemingly any narrative holding it together, right, And I think I think it works here rather well.

I mean, I do understand the reviews of the time kind of taking the movie to task it being not boring but not seeming to have a point. I would I get it. I just I get it. But I don't. I don't think that if you read the source material, you would feel like this would be a great movie, right right exactly, Like I wouldn't think like, oh, this is a good idea.

We're going to adapt something that has a plot that goes from A to B to see like that's that that's was never going to be this. But Terry Gilliam picks weird, you know, like you know, his many years that he worked on that don Keyhote movie, I mean, right, and and it really is not very good. But you know, um, I never saw it. I mean I'm surprised that yeah, yeah, or that the man who killed don Keyhote, right, is that it? I didn't, is it?

I mean you said it's not good to see it. I don't know. The fact that I didn't hear more about it, I think is a bad sign. You know, that's the only thing that I heard is about them making you for like twenty plus years to the point where it came out with Adam Driver, right, and Orson Wells worked on making the same story for many, many many years and nowhere well. And that's I mean, that's the thing about Terry Gilliam.

I mean the things that he's made more recently and he wore works very infrequently, are interesting. The zero theorems interesting. Imaginarium of doctor Parnassis is fine. I mean, he's very tim Burton esque, but tim Burton actually has like an output as opposed to like every ten years type thing, because I think for Terry Gilliam it's like every five years. But you know, again, I think it goes back to what we were talking about.

So many artists have their strong period and then they work and if they're strong, you know they'll continue to have okay, but it never really hits that peak. And I could be wrong. His Terry Gilliams next movie might be fucking amazing, but you know, you have guys like Scorsese that can still do it, but you have to sit through like that nine hour fucking Priest movie to get there, you know. But and I love Scorsese. I wrote a book on scores.

I love scorsesey. But well, and there was I mean, I'm sure, just like yourself, there was nobody more excited to watch The Irishman than you or me or anyone who's in the theater. And I did not see it in the theater. I refused, it was it was fine, It was fine, right, wanted it to be better. In the moment I convinced myself it was better, and I walked out and I'm like yeah.

And then as time passed them, and then I tried to watch it on Netflix and I was like, it made me like, it made me like Casino more. That's what I right, absolutely, And like I will say, like as much as I love Goodfellows, Casino is a good I love Casino just as much I can't love I love them both equally, which is weird to say, might go there, but it's funny. My wife when I met her, and she's not a big movie person, but she loves Casino and she was like, I don't understand why. You know, you're always talking about good Fellows being better than Casino, And I do think it's part of its Casino feels long. Casino feels long to me, right, and it doesn't have as many fun moments.

Casino is so much more serious, dour movie like, and Sharon Stone makes it a lot more serious of a movie. That's true. That's true, I think in some ways, even though Sharon Stone was amazing and at Sharon Stone all of her stuff as the parts I like less. Oh, I don't like her in the movie right now. That's what I'm saying, is I think, But that's her job though, right Like she's made to be like the most.

She's one of the most intentionally awful characters in cinema. Like, She's in a movie that if she wasn't in it, I would love the movie a lot more. But she has to be in it, right, right, Because I love Lorraine Brocco and Goodfellas, so right right, brook Well, well, that's true. But that's the thing about Fear and Loathing that I will say about in regards to like the level of acting, the amount of acting that Johnny Depp and Benisil del Toro do. They have to carry the movie, and they really they do a good job of carrying it.

I mean, again, we do have all these rant they even the characters that reaccur like Toby Maguire, like Christina Ricci, even those characters, they don't feel like characters outside of cameos. It feels like Johnny Depp and Bensiel del Toro are the only actors in the movie and everybody else is just a cameo. You know, As a writer, I never feel like like it's always my outlook that characters don't have to serve a meaning or serve a purpose, if it's like real life. But then I watch a movie and I go as character doesn't really serve a purpose, and I feel like all of the characters and this there are so many people that wander in and you think they don't really serve a purpose. And then I have to think about my my stance on that you know, because it's like they're okay, they're walking through the screen, or you know, they walk across they're like here they are again.

But so many of them. I mean, if you just you couldn't, I don't know, just make a movie about their interaction, it would not be interesting. It's just this really better than the you know, the sum of its parts or whatever. I mean, it's a really interesting movie overall. But there are you know, Toby Maguire's character, why the fuck is he there?

You said that, why the fuck is he there? Christina Ricci's character is kind of interesting. You know. She makes all these barber strice and these terrible barber strice and paintings, and they're talking about maybe pimping her out, which is so strange. And that's almost feels like it's from something else, like it almost doesn't fit.

Oh it is, no, it is, but tonally it feels different. Well, and I wonder, and I feel like, because it's such a moment that stands out, I feel like it is really rawl Duke or again Hunters Thompson leaning on, like, okay, so let how do we capitalize like capitalism this opportunity and pervert to the American dream of having it all. Well, we have this woman here that we can pimp out, and it's like even even his you know, even doctor Gonzo goes it's too far, that's too far, man like, which is fucking crazy because this is the craziest character we've seen throughout the entire movie, and that's too far for him. Right welln Look, I'm probably wrong on this, but I get the feeling when I'm watching the movie, not the book, when I'm when I'm watching the movie almost that there's almost like this underthing that maybe doctor Gonzo has done some stuff to her sexually before he comes in, because there's such a worry about her being here and if you haven't done anything with her, you know, and she's a miner and all this, who cares?

Just send her away? Right? They're so horrified, And even though they don't talk about it, I feel like he's the gross character that would do it. And I feel like, you know, Uh Hunter's character, Raoul Duke would know this character well enough that it would be an unspoken thing that he would just see her there and go, you know, well, I think that is when next well, right, like, and so maybe I'm just taking it to the next the next level there. But I mean it's never actually said, but I feel like there's just an implication for being there and the way that they act about it.

But she's not naked. I can't remember how it's played in the book. In the book, he says, he doesn't. In the book, he says, like, but what happens if she goes to the cops and then she says to the cops that I was involved in, Like what is it a non consensual sodomy? So and like he freaks out at that.

So again, like you said, it's like implied and that kind OF's like, that's why he's such a terrible character. Jeesus Christ, Yeah, it's and again like but that's the that's the thing that always makes me wonder about that character because then we see him when he's not doped up, and he seems like a whole other person. It's interesting, like a completely different person. It's only when he's on the phone and he's completely away, right, I mean, he's around Raoul. He's this crazy madman.

It is interesting. And there's and then the scene where he's in the bathtub. He's the craziest in that damn well, that's one of his craziest you know, and I don't remember what it is that Raoul is poking at him with, but it's like like it's the He's from the shower curtain. Yeah, oh yeah, that's And that scene is again directly from the book. And it's crazy because Benisiel Doult Torres in the bathtub, blazed out of his mind on an entire sheet of blooder acid, right asking Raoul Dul to throw the record player into the tub when White Rabbit peaks so that he dies.

It's fucking insanity and it goes on forever. And that's I mean, like, that's the thing about this movie, honestly. You know, we we've talked about movies on the show before, like a survey in film, you know, those kind of like movies that are a test of your endurance of what you can endure as a watcher a film. And this movie I think goes in that camp. And I don't think I'm getting talked about enough editing too, you know, I think it's gotta be well edited to keep the rhythm because some of this shit goes on for so long, right to somehow it maintains its rhythm without just if that makes sense.

I don't even know who the editor on this film is, but Leslie Walker, who I mean, she worked a lot with Richard Attenborough and Terry Gilliam and she actually worked on Yeah, she worked on the Man Who Killed Don Quixote movie. So there we go. Yeah, so and I'm with you actually because that's the thing, Like that scene where they're in the bathtub, you know, del Toro is and then Johnny Depp is outside with the record player. It goes on for a long time and it doesn't ever feel like a slog. And there are several scenes in this movie that are actually like that.

That scene, the scene where he's freaking out in the Adrina Chrome, and then that kind of when they first get to the hotel room and it goes on for a while and you have Lacerta coming in and he's like talking to them and they're freaking out. Craig Bierko and like the most random, Mico fucking random. Here's the thing that I wonder, you know, we talk about whether or not those scenes really happen with Doctor Gonzo. I almost wonder if a lot I mean, and we're reading probably way farther than it's intended into this. But I almost wonder if none of this stuff really happens.

And the reason I say that is because when other characters come around, like Craig Bierko or the guy that the bellhop or the guy that comes in with the food, they ever seemed to notice that, you know, you know, here's Raoul hiding under a table, or here's shit broken all over the room and there's stuff on the walls and everything's broken. No one ever seems faced like it's almost like this is a thing that only Raoul is seeing and again probably reading into it. But it's a good read, well and well, and I'm with you though, because again there is there is this sense of and it's later in the movie and I think it's maybe the one part of the movie that I think the storytelling structure kind of fails the movie is when he's talking about when Johnny Depp or you know, Hunter s.

Thompson takes the adrena chrome and he freaks out. He then wakes up, and it's implied that he's waking up like days later, and he then starts listening to the tape recorder and then it starts showing us scenes from the past, and it shows us a lot, and that part of the movie I feel like is a little confusing because we're showing a lot of stuff and I don't think there's any context to any of this, frankly, but we're showing a lot of these things that happened when he was I guess so fucking high he didn't remember it. But what's crazy is and a lot of those scenes he seems lucid. But you know, and this could play in with, you know, the creation of the book. Even though it's it's based on real things, it's also a novel, so half of it's made up, so half of it could be from these weird delusions, if that makes sense.

That's fair, I mean, And again, like there is part of me that one. There's that about, Like some of the things in the movie are just you know, concocted. But again, like the book, The Hunters, Thompson never question We never questioned the validity of the book. But again, like the book, the book does seem like some of it maybe is being embellished. Okay, we're talking about the guy that embedded himself with the Hell's Angels for a year or so I mean, I'm in I'm willing to believe just about anything he says, no matter fucking crazy it is.

But yeah, that's I mean the crazy bastard. Yeah, I mean speaking of crazy bastard real quick. I love all of the shitty things that he calls doctor what the fuck is his name? Doctor? He calls doctor Gonzo throughout the movie, because he always has like something like you know, uh, like you you dumb bastard.

Not that, but it's always like these really pointed shitty things, like every time he speaks to him, like there's what a good six times where he calls him some shitty different barb well, and I love that he's like not even sure what nationality is. He's like, what are you Samoan? And I guess he is Simone, Not that it matters, but right, And he also just you know, one day disappeared, that's right. And then we call and then he sends him a message and he touched him on the phone, like he sends him the message, and I love that. The guy at the hotel's like, well, we were under the impression he's still here because the room is in his name.

I love that, right, And then he just he's like, yeah, he's been back later, and then he drives away basically yeah, but but I love the idea that, you know, all of this takes place in Las Vegas. And then he's like, we've like you mentioned, He's like, all right, I'm leaving. I'm getting out of here. I'm going back to la and he gets all the way you know, to Baker and then he has this you know, oh my god, I gotta go back. And then we have what feels like the second act of the movie, because essentially that's the first act is up until you know, doctor Gonzo leaves in the night, and then we have the set.

And I'm not personally, I'm not as big of a fan of the second act of the movie as I am the first, because it's in a way a repeat of what we've already seen, you know. I mean, I mean it's different, but it's it's kind of like you know, clockwork goings. Like once I get to the part where he goes and now we come to the you know whatever part of the story, I got tune out because even though it's cool, it's we're going to go back and see them go through all this ship we've already seen in the movie, you know what I mean, And it's so it does it feels like it's just a sort of a repeat. I mean, it's different, but it's I wish you could have gone anywhere else but Las Vegas at that point, right. Well, and that's the thing.

I mean, you you have this kind of pointed commentary in the first half of the movie about the American dream and kind of you know, the chase and the need for it and what happens when you don't get it and the people that were disillusioned by it and what happened to them. And then you have the second half of the movie, and it's like trying to maybe lambast the police and their treatment of drug culture, and it doesn't it doesn't have the teeth that the first half of the movie does at all. It's just like it's coasting on what we've already seen well, and it's like, you know, the characters are crazy, and isn't it crazy that they're now at the Flamingo surrounded by cops on drugs and they're gonna and they're gonna have still doing the same shit, even though right surrounded by cops, right, and even I mean, even ral Duke says that He's like, isn't it crazy that we can go from one side of Las Vegas to the other and it just like fuck one place up and then go and fuck somewhere else up.

It's like, yeah, it is kind of crazy, because you would think some somebody would say something to someone else, like don't let these people in your hotel. But to what end? Because again, it's like he talks about the food bill, how they're amassing forty or something like forty eight dollars per hour for forty eight some shit, and it's some ridiculous amount of money, and it's like, god damn, And but you never do you ever see them? I was gonna see do we ever see them eat? But I guess it's they talk about eating fish and shit, so I guess it's sometimes.

But so much it's just them running around fucking shit up, and I'm thinking, how much food are they ordering to this room that's just going to waste is right in the corner with the Oh, that's the thing. They just seem like such agents of chaos, that's right, that's who they are, right, And I know real purpose, just they're just there to well, and again like this, and there's this idea that like, oh, we're here to do this Mint four hundred race and we're going to cover it. And those scenes at that race are fine, but similarly to the scenes at the cop kind of convention, right, they go on for way too long, and I'm like, just get them away from here, back to them just fucking around, right, right, I mean, there's there's some quality to just watching two guys being weird on screen in seventies Las Vegas.

That is enticing for me, And like, that's why I like this movie. It's I can just be in this world with them for a while, live in it, and then be done and put it back on the shelf. I really feel like this is something like Catcher in the Rye though the book, where so much of it is just about the writing style, right. I Mean, Terry Gilliam has made a really interesting movie, but the book to me, is primarily about the writing style, because there's really nothing happening, right. You get a lot of you know, rite remarks for you know, two hundred pages, but it's really about the writing, and to me, that's one of those things they always started about you could never make a movie out of Catcher in the writing, well, you could, it would probably be shitty.

Maybe if Terry Gilliam made it would be amazing. But you know, I really think some of these books are just sort of exercises and you have to admire the writing because this movie is so much more, absolutely because this book or this movie is I mean, the visuals are so good, and when you read the book, you certainly don't see those visuals in your mind, right, You're amazing. And that's the thing, Like I almost don't and it sounds crazy, but like I almost don't think the book matters in regards to the movie, right, Like it doesn't. Like you can watch the movie and never read the book, and I think, and I think you'll get Maybe you won't get as strong of a message as Hunter S. Thompson makes in the case that he makes in Fear and Loathing and the kind of the subpositions and the observations he comes to, maybe you're not going to pick up on it as as much.

But you know, by adding narration in the movie, they do a pretty fucking good job at replicating what the book is getting at. And I mean, we haven't really talked about it because it's almost like the third character of the movie. But Dep's narration is amazing. Right, that's where he's That's where he's Hunter S Thompson, Right. I mean Raoul Duke is the character on screen, but that narration is Hunter s Thompson because it's all none of it is like, oh what am I seeing here?

He's like, oh, there was something on that. It's like it's very just like the whole thing with the reptiles, Like just listening, if you just listen to that scene, it's just like you're listening to the book. Right, No, it does, and it does all of it. You know, we were somewhere near Barstow when the right on the edge of the desert, when the drugs started to take hold. I mean it's Hunter, right.

I think if you were listening to an audiobook of a Hunter reading it, that is exactly what you would hear. And honestly, it boggles my mind that Johnny Depp has never done the narration for the audio books of Right of Fear and Loathing like I would. I would. I would fucking listen to that because you know he would do the Hunter S. Thompson voice amazing, and you know what here.

Just just get him and beneath Aldultur to come back for the audio book. I mean, I mean that would be amazing making noises though. But that's the thing. The character of doctor Gonzo in the book is also subdued comparatively. I mean, he is a is a bigger character on screen than the character isn't.

Absolutely. I love all the times he says stuff like, as your doctor, what did you say? As your lawyer, doctor? Or as your lawyer, I recommend you, you know, take more drug space. Well that the moment that he's like, all right, we have to go cover the Med four hundred, he's like, we're gonna go kill a skag baron named Savage Henry, It's like, oh, I've made a mistake by bringing you with me, haven't I.

Well, that's the thing that's the subversive thing about this movie that I do love is that, at the end of the day, if you take all the social narrative out, it's a road movie about two dudes high off their asses, being complete assholes in seventies Las Vegas. It's it's Harold and Kumar out here doing this with right like crazy, you know. I mean, if you had the light version where you had no social commentary. But I'm only saying that because you mentioned that earlier. But it's an apt comparison.

Some heavy, heavy dopers here going all right, But it's an apt comparison, right well, and the Knife. But that's the thing I mean, like Harold and Kumar Go to Whitecastle is a good comparison to this movie because it's a drug based road movie, and this is a drug based road movie. I mean again, like it's not a stoner movie. It's much more intense than that. It's glyndare both what is that word, peak arresque.

It's one of those things when you read a lot, you see words and you don't hear them, right, peak arresque travels, you know, where they encounter all these weird fucking people. They kind of are the same kind of thing. Yeah, and I love but I love that about this movie again, Like even as crazy as Doctor Gonzo and Raoul Duke are, they almost feel like the sanest people in the movie is everything else that we see around them is so insane, so insane. I mean, there is a moment where they're in circus circus and the flying Fellini family or sisters are throwing in the book, it's a wolverine, So I assume it's a wolverine in the movie, and they're throwing a wolverine above people gambling in a casino and right, and I mean Hunter s.

Thompson says it in the book, He's like, you know, a dope fiend gets normalized to seeing his grandmother climbing up his leg with a knife in her mouth. But the idea of a guy, just some random asshole with two dollars going in on the strip is insane to them. Like that in the movie, they're doing things that the book doesn't do that's not in the book, Like that's all in the movie. And that's why it feels so weird. Thing is, no matter what crazy shit is going on, it is so different from them, like it's somehow still button up, white collar, weird, straight right imperatively, do you know what I mean?

So no matter even this fucked up ship with the wolf being thrown around or whatever they're looking at, or the ape, you know, like you know, let's not what does he say, and let's not cut corners or whatever, just you know, how much do you want for the ape? Like there's so much weird shit going on, but everything that they do is almost presented as being normal and all the other stuff which is square and normal, and you know, that's the weird shit, and it's interesting in that way. Again, that's kind of a countercultural thing. But to those people, everything else is the weird shit, not down right. Well, I'm that kind of fascinating and I feel like for me, that is what Terry Gilliam brings to this is visualizing a satirical version of the American dream and that and that's I mean, that's what Las Vegas is.

I mean, I'm sure you've been to Las Vegas. I've been, right, Las Vegas is a fucking is a weird place. If you've ever been, It's strange and there's no way to describe it. And I think that this is a very interesting way of using Las Vegas as a prism to view the American dreams through right. And I mean, it's not the first time somebody's done it, and it's not the last time, but it's one of the best times because you have, like you mentioned, you can juxtapose it against the sixties and the era of change, because, like Hunter, as Thompson says, you know, we knew that we were going to win against the old and the evil.

We knew that we had the momentum on our side. But then the wave broke and it's like that. You know, there hasn't been a cultural time in this country since, and there may I mean hopefully there will be again. It feels like we're in the middle of that in a lot of ways sometimes, but there is right. I mean, that's the thing, and that's what it feels like.

But at the same time, I appreciate that this is the time and place that it happens to be taking place, and that is what makes this such an such a important story. I feel like to tell or to retell the on the screen. I wonder what Hunter would think of Las Vegas today, where everybody's taking their kids like it's Disneyland, you know, And what would Raoul Duke, Raould Duke say about these kids, you know, like they brought their fucking children to play, you know, I mean it's a weird place. It's almost like Disneyland. And yea, who the hell wants to go?

Well, yeah, who the hell wants to go and take all their to me? You know, as somebody that grew up watching all these movies, and you know, going there and seeing all these fucking children was really weird because I thought, this isn't the Las Vegas I was sold in the movies, you know, and right of seeing money, it's about you know everything Now everything has always been about money, but eventually it takes over and it ruins literally everything. And I'm not saying Las Vegas was good to start with, but whatever it was has now been Every dollar has been wrung out of it to where now it's a it's a big fucking theme park, to the point where they're building a theme park. Right of course, a Universal Studios Halloween Horror Night's permanent, permanent attraction in Las Vegas.

It's insane. It is go down to the brothel and you know when you take your kids into that like that. Next I got the hell like the so weird. Well, and it's that weird juxtaposition of and I mean Hunters Thompson mentions it in the book of These you know, car salesman from Dallas, which I grew up in Dallas, Bible thumping Bible belt. I mean you and I live in the Yeah, you live, you and I live in the South.

So we get it. But then they go and they spend their hard earned money in America's sin city and don't think anything of it. Just like that fucking sign in the movie where it's like, you know, gamble with marijuana and spend your life in jail, and it's like, what are you talking about? You have people smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol and gambling and those three things are somehow not as bad as marijuana. Very selective, right, it's but it's that like insane hypocritical juxtaposition that the movie does really well by being like, well, it's four thirty in the morning in Las Vegas, and look at all these people trying to get the American dream by gambling a quote sin unquote.

And that's what I love about Hunters Thompson. But that's what Terry Gilliam brings to this project that I don't think anybody else could have, even though doing the research, Larry McMurtry was going to write the screenplay Oh wow originally and would be yeah, that would be interesting, right and imagine that. And the other three names that were attached were Martin Scorsese, Ralph Backshe Oh my God, and Oliver Stone. You know what's funny, those last three names I could all see in a different way because because that was their time, you know, that was their generation, and they're all like kind of crazy in different ways. Right.

Oh. I would love to have seen the Scorsese version of this, like my God, to be in the universe where that happened, because I've been screamed at by Ralph Backshe multiple times. This is that's true. I mean, just when you do a lot of a lot of interviews, as you know, you're going to have something that go sideways, and when you have somebody that's different, like Ralph Backshi run into that. To anyway, I would to see the Ralph Backshi version.

That would be weirdest fun That would be the craziest of animated, but animated, I mean you could pull off shit you're not even seeing in this movie, and well that's the imagine how crazy that would have been. And that's the thing. If they ever redid this in any form or fashion, that's the way you would do it. It would be animated like that. To me, it's fucking crazy that somebody made this into a live action movie.

I mean, with the with the artwork, with the Steadman artwork, that you can just do a movie off of like why nobody was like, let's just do that. Instead they're like, no, let's make a movie out of this really impossible narrative. And it's what's fucking insane is it does. And what's fucking crazy is if I think about another piece of literature that has to do with drugs that I feel like would be impossible to adapt, it's Naked Lunch. And they don't even adapt it in the way that this adapt This is a almost one for one adaption of the book right effectively, right, like the things that happened in the book happened right.

Naked Lunch the book and Naked Lunched the movie are two completely differently than different things. Yeah, And it's crazy to me because I would never have thought somebody could have made this movie the way that Terry Gilliam made it with Depp and del Toro were just playing those characters, because it just it shouldn't work. It really shouldn't work. No, it's great. I mean, it's just so weird and great.

And I've never been high and watched this movie, but I would think that being high and watching this movie would be kind of amazing. Either that are really fucking slow, because anytime I've drawn, like most of the times I've ever smoked and tried to watch a movie, like it just gets slower and its animated or some kind of some sort of some kind of yeah, like some kind of really crazy thing. But this is crazy, but in a way that like I remember one time trying to watch Base Off High, and I was with my friend and we were at somebody else's house, and we kept looking at each other and we were like, it's only been one since we looked at the clock last time, you know. But and I got off track. But we're talking about drugs, We're talking about fucking crazy movies.

So anyway, I think it would be an interesting movie to watch high, and I think it would bring a whole new perspective. I did watch it high, I mean high, high on grass, and I mean what I'm talking about just weed. I'm yeah, I'm old and safe, well and will and we live within driving distance of legal states, you know, but practically fucking sandwiched by them. At this point, I felt like I got I felt like I was focusing more on hunters or you know. Raoul Duke's commentary throughout the movie more than anything else, and I feel like I understood.

I mean again, I really like the waves speech in the movie and in the book, and that's I mean again, like like we've talked about already, like that is him really taking that generation to task on what did we actually achieve and did we achieve anything that matters? And is it going to have any lasting power or is it going to just ebb and flow like everything. I feel like we know the answer. Unfortunately, got to feel always at the feeling that that's kind of how a Hunter looked at his career. He looked at not just his career, but sort of his lifetime.

I mean maybe i'm reading in, but all of the like the interviews I've seen with him and the things about his life and him out shooting and stuff, you know, it always seemed like, you know, he knew that his better days were in the well he ends up committing suicide. We didn't even talk about that, but yeah, which is terrible, But I mean, he seemed he I always guessed anyway I'm reading in and maybe it says a writer or whatever, but I'm always seeing him as somebody that's looking back. And it's in this movie he's doing that in this book. He's doing that. He's looking back, and I always wondering, you know, does that change?

Does he is that how he sees his whole career? Did I really accomplish anything? Did we really do anything? Did any of this mean a fucking thing? And he did to a lot of people, But to him, did it mean anything?

And did it mean even the people that meant it too? Did it mean what he fucking wanted it to mean? Well, and here we are making up new ship, so you know, maybe he'd be people out of that well, And that's the That's the thing I always wonder is you know what, like you asked, like what would Hunter S. Thompson think of Las Vegas now? Like what would he think of what has happened now?

Because similarly to other people who I think speak to again, it used to be the fun distrust to the government and the fun distrust of the higher power, Like that used to be a fun thing we can all agree with, and now it's been perverted by psychotic yo yo's to the point of just intolerance. Like these kinds of people like George Carlin, like Hunters Thompson, like Bill Hicks, They all spoke about the same thing, which is not wanting to rest on one's laurels just because we made change, because it's not it may never actually be able to stick around. And like you said, I mean, that feels like that's part and parcel with what's going on here. Also, I always think about this Thompson, just what you just said, but you know, and not to get political, not to you know, but but Thompson and Kurt Vonnegut both spent their last days, you know, really railing on the George Bush residency, you know, and and the right wing things that bothered them.

And I have thought, like either one of them, you know, what both of them died in the pre Trump days, and whether a person likes or dislikes that, you could say, it's a more a much more extreme version of the things that these guys hated about the Bush administration. And so I've always kind of wondered, because both of them were interesting critics of that kind of politics. Well, and to go even further back, I mean Hunter S. Thompson's like nemesis in his mind was Nixon. Oh yeah, I mean he thought he thought Nixon was like, you know, I mean, the personification of the worst of American politics.

And I don't see anybody defending Nixon now. So like, you know, like like Thompson was, if if you use even someone less contemporary than Bush and someone like Nixon, yeah, I mean Hunter S. Thompson now would be fuming it, just just beside himself because the things we're seeing now are that level of corruption that Nixon never even reached. In a lot of way, Thompson seemed so like enlivened and enraged and you know, lively in his battles or his fight against Nixon. And by the time we get to Bush, he already just seems beat down.

He seems he's still saying the same things in his writings and you know, when he makes appearances, but he seems tired of it all. He seems beat down. And maybe this is where I, you know, come into the thing of he's thinking, all of the things that we've done, did it matter? Because here we are beat battling a lot of the same shit, And now by this point it's becoming more accepted, it's becoming more you know, And I don't know, but I know that he did not like any of those people. Well, you know, that's interesting that you bring that up, because yeah, I mean, I guess if you're him and you're sitting and you're asking yourself in seventy one, if anything we did matter, and then we'll flash forward to two thousand and five posts so many things pre so many things as well, Like, Yeah, I guess if you're someone like Thompson, who, like you mentioned, I mean, spends a lot of his time making observations about things that have happened, not things that are going to happen, I would probably feel a lot of ways the same way, beaten down a little bit, like they maybe they lost, you know, maybe the things they were fighting for were gone, and I think he may have been onto something.

I mean, it's it's it's hard to say it out loud because you don't want to feel that way. But in a lot of ways, you see what Hunter Wes Thompson is talking about in this book reflected in life today and the way things are handled today and the way, I mean, the way the conversation about drug culture in this country is among police hasn't really changed since seventy one. Since Michael Jeter stands up there smoking his cigarette being a god. It's such an adorable little love Michael Jeter, such an adorable little man, row just in general, right, give us such an adorable little man. Just want to give him a little hug.

It's just such a cute little guy. But he's so good. And again, it's that it's that bullshit hypocrisy of them sitting there yucking it up, and it's it's still going on today, and it's like, yeah, maybe maybe we did lose, and like that's it's a hard pill to swallow. But if you're sitting there in seventy one wondering about it, like yeah, when two thousand and five rolls around, fuck me yeah. And the things that he's making fun of are so accurate.

You've got these people making these decisions, making these uh judgments about things that they don't know about, they don't care to know about. They've already made their decisions, you know, and you know the whole like the thing where he says where they're saying that you know, you'll always know a druggie because they're constantly masturbating whenever they can't find a rape victim. Like riots are so ridiculous, you know. And and so we've got these these places now where like these states that are holding on here at the very end, like we talked about like Kansas here it's holding on with you know, for dear life to not want to you know, legalize taught even for medicinal purposes. It's like, really, an, I feel like it's still the same guys that were in that room sitting here going no, we can't have that, right.

I mean, I live in Nebraska, dude, Like it got it almost got onto the ballot, and then our local sheriff here because in Lincoln that's the state capital and the second biggest city, sheriff sued. The sheriff sued the fucking state or somebody to take it off the ballot because it didn't do something per the oddly specific bullshit rules. So it got taken off the ballot. But they asked about gambling, and gambling was legalized, so fuck fuck us. So now we have a racetrack outside of town that you can go gamble at it.

And I'm sorry how and I'm sorry, how is that worse than we fucking insane? It's fucking insanity and alcohol same way. But you know it's something else we didn't mention that ties right in with that was that in nineteen seventy country S. Thompson ran for sheriff in Aspen, Colorado. So now imagine he's the sheriff and this comes out.

Do you think he's going to vote? Right? Yeah? Right, yeah, exactly exactly. And that's and that's the thing I mean, Hunter S.

Thompson, I felt like outside of the writing, he tried to be a force for good as much as he could. But I mean this, he had his demons, and there were many, right, a lot. And again I don't know if I don't know what eventually caused him to do what he did, but I mean some of it had to have been the demons, and some of it had to have been seeing the world because again, two thousand and five, I don't remember two thousand and five a whole lot. I was fifteen, so I remember thinking it was pretty shitty. But then we go forward and then you know, another eleven years and I think, wow, the world is really shitty, and then we move ahead, you know, and it's just you know what I'm saying, Hunters Thompson would have I don't know, a hundred sucking would have exploded if he'd lived through the Trump administration.

Or COVID or God, my God, or the backlash to the Obama administration and just just everything. Yeah, it's maybe Hunter S. Thompson is lucky he checked out when he did. Maybe he is, Well, I don't know, we're the worst off for not having him to comment him. Agreed, totally agreed, because he was such a unique singular voice, and he is.

I mean, he's missed. And you know the thing is, and I've never said this out loud, but I'll say it here. There were two people that sent me to journalism the school, and you'll like this. One of them was Hunter S. Thompson because of this movie.

And the other one was Irwin M. Fletcher. Nice. Yeah, And they couldn't be any different, but in a lot of ways they're very much similar. I had a dog named Irwin Maurice Fletcher, and with it we called Fletch.

But this was just based on the movie, not the book series. I didn't know the book series then. And I was a journalism major, and I went into journalism because of all the President's men, you know, the Woodward Bernstein movie in two other thought I was going to go out and I was going to do these things, and I didn't. But here we are. We're doing what we do well.

I didn't go and do drugs in Las Vegas and trip trip balls, unfortunately, though I can't like that is the other thing. And I feel like I've said this twice now today, but I'll say it again. I would love to live in this movie. This is a movie I would like. I love.

I love the feeling that this movie gives me. Outside of the trippy shit. It's like the world and the time that it evokes is a very specific time and place. And it's not that a lot of movies don't do it, but not a lot of movies do it as well as this one. You know, I had a thought.

You know, we were talking about like the feelings in the movie the trippy shit, and we talked about how Oliver Stone was one of the people that you know, almost wrote the script or was you know, circled around it or something, and you know, I feel like some of the trippy scenes are very similar to some of the feel to some of the trippy scenes in Natural Born Killers. Oh no, of course, Natural Born Killers has like eighty different you know fields going on, and but you know, in some of those, you know, like the ones with the Indian chief and or the shaman or whatever. There's there's like all these scenes with these very trippy, weird things, and that always sort of reminded me of that in a way to bring it all the way back to Platoon.

Uh well, here we go, there we go. So uh yeah, you know, I I want to I want to leave this episode. I want to leave you kind of before I ask your final thoughts, you know of Hunter S. Thompson, of his body of work and people like him is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? Like is it the singular piece of like this kind of literature?

Is is this it? You know? For I would think it is, you know, I would think it is. It's definitely the singular work for his career, you know, and several of his books and I none of them ever resonated in the way that that did, you know for me. But I find him as a character, not in the movie but in real life to be at least, if not more interesting than his work.

You know. Um, I thought, I feel like he's the star. And just like if we talked about in this book in which the movie the narrative comes from, I feel like he's the star. I feel like he's interesting and the gonzo journalism, you know, I don't know, I can't think of anybody else that really reached that level in terms of quality, I mean and star power, but right, like like he was the king of that, you know, zo as we might. I saw an interview that he was doing with someone and they compared him to Norman Mailer, which interesting, which yeah, which I thought, and gay to Lese as well.

I don't know to Lise's work that much, but I could see it with Mailer, you know, the executioner's song and getting involved in their like getting involved in the subject of their work, becoming the story a big part of the story, right, And I think, though, I think to your point, and it's it's the thing that I think about when I think about this movie, and then I think about another Johnny Depp role later in his career. Johnny Depp becomes Hunter S Thompson so seamlessly on screen that I forget that Johnny Depp has hair, unlike when he played another balding man in Whitey Bulger, right right in Black Mass where he looked like an alien did right, He's so excited about that movie. I love mob movies and oh when we didn't mention Donnie Brasco, He's fucking great at Donnie Brasco.

Ever see it? Oh you hud watch that like it's It's got that same kind of good Bella's kind of like Goodbella's Light. But Black Mass I wanted to let me. I wanted to like it, but I just didn't. And it was one of the first things I saw.

I was really sick, and you know, I had a heart transplant and all this stuff, but there was a point where to come out of a comma. I couldn't walk. And I come home and I had a friend take me to the movies and we sat and we watched Black Mass, and I thought, this is not going to help my road to recovery like it was. I got a heart transplant for this, right, take it back. Fucking Johnny Depp here, I actually like him in that movie.

I think that movie is just okay. But dude, you gotta watch Donny Brasko. Yeah, I need to. I need to. Look.

I'm a huge fan of good Fellas, but I think as much as I love good Fellas, I think the best thing to come out of Good Fellas is that the sopranos exist because it's like Goodfellas the TV show. But anytime someone says Goodfellas light, it's like I have to see it, so I will. I will watch it. Yeah, and it's also Johnny Depp a really fucking good enough Yeah. Also not a hard sell so right at all?

Well, I mean he's not screaming all the time. I don't love that, or selling coffee drinks, right, I mean, if you were selling coffee drinks, I might be more interested. That's I do. I do agree with you though, in terms of Hunter s Thompson as both a character, Raoul Duke as a character and then his career as a whole, I think he maybe at times felt like he was dodging the spotlight. And I don't want to be the guy in the spotlight.

I want the story to be in the spotlight of my involvement whatever. Because he's always very prickly in interviews, but I think he enjoyed it in a lot of way, in a lot of ways. But you're you're totally right. This is as much as I love uh Campaign seventy two, I think that's fun in a way that this is kind of fun. I think that this just feels like a seminal piece of fiction.

And then the movie. I know, Harry Gilliams said like, I wanted to either be the best movie or the most hated movie, and I don't think it's the best movie of all time, but it for me is a movie that I watch at least once a year, and I genuinely read Fear and Loathing once every couple of years as biasive. And I think again, as a writer, that's what I would shoot for, is that I don't care if somebody loves my work or they hate it, as long as they remember it right. And I think this is a movie where people tend to fall one way or the other. They're like, oh, that fucking movie, or they go, oh, yeah, fucking movie.

Yeah, and no, I'm totally with you. I think for me, movies that make you feel a certain way that should be the success. And this movie it clearly makes a lot of people feel a certain way because it's considered a cult classic, but I think it's whatever the fuck that means. I think I think it is so much more than that, and I really do genuinely believe, like Johnny Depp, when he's the in Memorium in the Oscars. It might be this or Jack Sparrow.

I would one we'll probably end up being Jack Sparrow, but like it could be this. That's how if you don't forget to put his fucking name on the list so they won't forget. I do forget some people. Then yeah, that's fair, they forgot. Anne has to be fair.

So but hey, she's in Donnie Brasco also damn Okay, geez no, I uh. I am so glad that you are also an author and could speak to some of the things about this, because that's again like and I'm weird. Yeah, well that's the thing, Like you can't watch this movie. There's there's some of this that if you watch this movie, you're just it's you're not gonna get it. Like I don't even think there's any some of the things in this movie.

There's nothing to get. It's just it's weird. And then there's some things that are that are weird and I like them, but I don't know why the funk I like them. I can't pinpoint it. I just there are some things that you just like or you don't like, and you feel or you don't feel right.

And I think there's a lot of shit like that in this movie because we talk about what's the point of this, what's the point of that? Some of it doesn't feel like there is any point. It's just there and if it resonates, it resonates. Yeah. Oh, I I totally agree.

I mean, hey, what what other movie has Lyle Love It selling acid? Right? Right? It's not every day that you have that. I just every time I watch this movie because Lyle Love It, and I have to go look at the credits, like, yes, that is in fact Lyle Love It?

And Mark and Mark Harmon? Why why is the one where I go he shows them twice? Yes he does. He's I don't know how you feel about Mark Harmon. I'm I kind of like him, but he's just so generic, Like I'm like, why do you pick him?

I mean, I don't know, he's cool, he's all right. I don't even like he's given like one line and then the second time he shows up, the camera like lingers on him, and I'm like, is it was there? Was there more to him? Was there? More?

Like? What did I again? I don't think some of it hit the editing floor I feel like some of it had to it because there's really no point to his scene, you know, or his two scenes, like none, Like they don't even really have a conversation. He's just saying shit, yeah and just hang right at least in one of them, yeah, and well the other one he's just already's talking, and then the other one he's just on the phone like in the background. It's so again like that that might be the strangest cameo in the entire movie for me.

Yeah, it's pretty fucking weird. And again, like he wasn't like an unknown at the time, but he wasn't. Mark Harmon evncis so right there you go, so so on that note, Andy, give me your final thoughts on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I think it's a fun, crazy movie. You know, show it to your girlfriend, see what she thinks.

Maybe she won't leave you. I forgot to tell you this. All of the X Wives they left because of this movie. No, not really, but that would be interesting, right, Like, but no, it's a cool movie. I like it.

I just like it. It captures a feeling and I don't know if it's just a high feeling, but it just it does its own thing, and it does it unapologetically. I completely agree. I mean, like, like we've mentioned already, it is a divisive movie, but its divisiveness is not a negative. It is very much a positive.

It is the movie. I mean, Terry Gilliam himself says it like it is the movie I wanted to make. I didn't have to make a lot of concessions to the studio. It is the movie I wanted to make. And if this is the movie he wanted to make, then I am totally on board.

It kind of shocks me it took this long for me to cover this movie given how much I like it. But I feel like the reason it took so long is similarly to a lot of other things I was worried about. It would just be a fucking LoveFest about the movie. And I mean, in a lot of ways it is. We didn't criticize it a whole lot.

But at the same time, I mean, it's a really good movie, and if you've never seen it, you should totally watch it. Because at this point, if you're still listening and you haven't, shame on you. Let me ask you this. If you're going to recommend this to somebody and you can only sum it up in like one or two sentences. What do you tell them?

I would say, it's it's it's a cross between a stoner comedy and as it's two buddies on a really bad trip through Las Vegas. And give them, just give them the basic outline of what it is, and don't tell them that there's any sort of like anything else else. Don't tell him if there's anything else to it, that he's going to do anything specific. Just say it's two guys in the seventies in Vegas on a bad on a bad trip. And just I mean, that's that's where it starts, and that's kind of where it ends.

And just I like to imagine Hunter S. Thompson not blowing his own brains out, but driving out into the desert and just into the desert of eternity. I that didn't end the movie. That would not have been a fun right, Well yeah right Jesus Christ. So um, yeah right, Jesus Christ.

So I mean that that's the that's the alternate ending. You think the ending was unusual, that would have been all right. I went back to Colorado and I blew my brains out. He just calls his own ending before it even happens. God in Heaven.

Oh yo. So on that note, let's play a preview for the first episode of Mike White May. You said, do you want it must do so art what polis So artist star Aliu, negation, idiot so much as you give up what as you like, But I'm not so much. Blahla smy bill say Polo Samoa Prostagli resolving naplesticks out them cost one out them radio again going oh boy, oh ah, So that's right. On the first episode of Mike White May, I'm going to be joined by the man himself and one of the other men themselves.

Jess fired to talk about Milosh Foreman's Black Peter. Yes, I know nothing about it, and one flew over the cooker's nest anomadeus. Mike didn't pick either of those, right of course, shocker. I know you know I have none of this is surprising to you. No, I've known him since the nineties, you know.

One of the I was gonna say, that kind of sounds like a porn title Black Peter. I worked in the video store. We had a porn set. Jedi had a lot of those I mean, yeah, that's yeah. I've never seen it.

Obviously, I haven't seen any milos form in movies. So I'm very much looking forward to having my h horizons broadened, as Quato might say, by some Mike White may So until then, Andy or Andrew? Where could people find your works on the internet? If they were going to find them? Amazon is always the go to a lot of my books are indy with little little publishers.

As I've just gone back to the bigger publishers, I'm remembering why I left the bigger publishers because the deadlines suck. But all of the books are due are available on Amazon. Last name is r au Sch some of them or Andrew some of there? Andy? Why because I'm crazy?

But they're all you all and that's all that matters. It's all that matters. And I picked up one of his books off of Audible. No we're not sponsored by audible, but you can find one of his books. It's called American Trash.

American Trash, that's the one that I picked up, right. It's not an autobiography The Boy that would be a Hillbilly elogy the original version, Yeah, but it is kind of a hillbilly thing. It takes place in Missouri, and uh, it's about a white trash mafia somewhere. I spent a lot of time I went to I went to the University of Missouri for for for college for a couple of years. Yikes, Columbia, Missouri.

I'm sure you've been there, right, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, is legal in Missouri, so I know, right. It sure is over the border. I know, motherfucker's When I go into the dispensary, I'll be like, I promise I'm not taking out of this over the border. It's going to eat all of these gummies in the parking lot, I promise, sir. That's two thousand milligrams.

I don't care good with it. I like, yeah, I just I need to be high when I drive. I can't do it otherwise. As for me, you can find me at weird Ingwaymedia dot com, where I do this show and I do so many other shows. And hey, that's where you can find Mike White's projection booth.

It's a cool show. You've been on that show before? Yeah, that's how we met. Was doing that little Indiana Jones side project that I don't know. Hopefully shows up in Mike's twelve hours Indiana Jones episode later in the year.

We spent some time on that one. Fuck yeah that that that in and of itself is like fucking three hours ran fuck. I mean, hey, this was fun. Man. I'm glad you have me on.

I'm no, I'm so glad to enjoying. Yeah, I definitely maybe well, I don't know. You know what, next time you come, you can pick whatever we talk about. How's that? Yeah?

And uh yeah, on that note, we'll catch you on the next episode. Sa