HST: I haven’t thought about it. But it would naturally have to involve a drastic change of some kind… Maybe just an atavistic endeavor, but there’s no point in getting into politics at all unless you plan to lash things around. When the film approached release, Gilliam learned that the Writers Guild of America (WGA) would not allow Cox and Davies to be removed from the credits even though none of their material was used in the production of the film. According to WGA rules, Gilliam and Grisoni had to prove that they wrote 60% of their script. The director said, "But there have been at least five previous attempts at adapting the book, and they all come from the book. They all use the same scenes." [20] Gilliam remarked in an interview, "The end result was we didn't exist. As a director, I was automatically deemed a 'production executive' by the guild and, by definition, discriminated against. But for Tony to go without any credit would be really unfair." [21] David Kanter, agent for Cox and Davies, argued, "About 60 percent of the decisions they made on what stays in from the book are in the film – as well as their attitude of wide-eyed anarchy." [21] According to the audio commentary by Gilliam on the Criterion Collection DVD, during the period where it appeared that only Cox and Davies would be credited for the screenplay, the film was to begin with a short scene in which it is explained that no matter what is said in the credits, no writers were involved in the making of the film. When this changed in early May 1998 after the WGA revised its decision and gave credit to Gilliam and Grisoni first and Cox and Davies second, the short was not needed. [17] Angered over having to share credit, Gilliam publicly burned his WGA card at a 22 May book signing on Broadway. [22] [17] Filming [ edit ] The story follows its protagonist, Raoul Duke, and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, as they descend on Las Vegas to chase the American Dream through a drug-induced haze, all the while ruminating on the failure of the 1960's counter cultural movement. HST: That was the next question I was going to ask. Have you thought about what might have happened if you’d kept up that approach?

Andrew Johnston, writing in Time Out New York, observed: " Fear is really a Rorschach test of a movie – some people will see a godawful mess, rendered inaccessible by the stumbling handheld camera and Depp's nearly incomprehensible narration. Others will see a freewheeling comedy, a thinking person's Cheech and Chong film. It all depends on your mood, expectations and state of mind (for the record, I was stone sober and basically enjoyed myself)." [48] Status [ edit ] The Kent State University protests against the Vietnam War, in which four students were killed when the National Guard opened fire, occurred a year before Thompson published Fear and Loathing. May 4 Collection/Kent State University Libraries/Special Collections and Archives/Handout via REUTERS The 1960s I read Fear and Loathing some fifteen years ago when I was a teenager and remember devouring it in one go, laughing the whole time - it instantly became one of my favourite books. Years later, I’m glad to say it still holds up. I wouldn’t say it’s as intoxicating still, but it remains a terrific book and really funny to boot. The final result was embarrassing, but what the hell? I blew that one, along with a lot of other people who should have known better, and since I haven’t changed anything else in the mass of first-draft screeds that I wrote during the campaign, I can’t find any excuse for changing my final prediction. Any re-writing now would cheat the basic concept of the book, which – in addition to the publisher’s desperate idea that it might sell enough copies to cover the fantastic expense bills I ran up in the course of those 12 frantic months – was to lash the whole thing together and essentially record the reality of an incredibly volatile presidential campaign while it was happening.Thompson might proudly have self-identified as a misfit, but he was also a journalist, so this seems a strangely self-castigating statement, until you consider what it was that he did for journalism, which was to redefine it. This is his contribution to the American canon. Contemporary resonance a b "Terry Gilliam Interview - Fear & Loathing". September 21, 2008 . Retrieved February 19, 2017– via YouTube. Hunter, Stephen (May 22, 1998). "Thompson's Worst Trip". The Washington Post . Retrieved May 18, 2023. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

This is the nut of the Pendulum Theory. It is also a recurring theme in McGovern’s personal analysis of why the voters rejected him so massively last November. The loss itself didn’t really surprise him. Not even the Eagleton debacle, he insisted, could explain away the fact that the American people had come within an eyelash of administering the worst defeat in the history of presidential politics to a gentle, soft-spoken and essentially conservative Methodist minister’s son from the plains of South Dakota. Moreover, "Fear and Loathing", as a phrase, has been used by many writers, the first (possibly) being Friedrich Nietzsche in The Antichrist. In a Rolling Stone magazine interview, Thompson said: "It came out of my own sense of fear, and [is] a perfect description of that situation to me, however, I have been accused of stealing it from Nietzsche or Kafka or something. It seemed like a natural thing." [12] HST: He promised it for about ten days and finally he said that the psychiatrists wouldn’t release them, the Mayo Clinic wouldn’t release them, the Barnes Hospital wouldn’t release them.

Journalism

HST: Here’s a question you probably won’t like, but it’s something that’s kind of haunted me ever since it happened: What in the hell possessed you to offer the vice presidency to Humphrey in public? Did you think he would take it or if he did take it it would really help?

The decision was made to not use the Cox/Davies script, which gave Gilliam only ten days to write another. [16] Gilliam has stated in an interview "When we were writing the script, we really tried not to invent anything. We sort of cannibalized the book." [9] The director enlisted the help of Tony Grisoni and they wrote the script at Gilliam's home in May 1997. Grisoni remembers, "I'd sit at the keyboard, and we'd talk and talk and I'd keep typing." [16] One of the most important scenes from the book that Gilliam wanted to put in the film was the confrontation between Duke and Dr. Gonzo and the waitress of the North Star Coffee Lounge. The director said, "This is two guys who have gone beyond the pale, this is unforgivable – that scene, it's ugly. My approach, rather than to throw it out, was to make that scene the low point." [17] Other references to the contemporary condition of America include discussions of Nixon’s perfidy about the Vietnam War. Of Thompson, the anti-war Democrat Senator George McGovern once said: It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant... Once Lucy is gone, the men take adrenochrome, a drug notorious for its intense high. The next morning, they attend the conference, keynoted by Dr. E.R. Bloomquist. Duke spends most of the conference privately noting inaccuracies in information the supposed "experts" are parlaying. Eventually, Duke and his attorney become frustrated and leave, stopping briefly at the bar, where they lie to a Georgia police officer about ‘dope fiends’ committing violent crimes in Los Angeles.I hit the brakes and aimed the Great Red Shark toward the shoulder of the highway. No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.” HST: It was essentially an anti-Nixon vote. I don’t think McGovern would have been a bad President. He’s a better senator. But I don’t think that the kind of standard-brand Democrat that he came to be – or that he actually was all along, and finally came out and admitted he was toward the end, more by his actions than by what he said – I’m not sure that kind of person is ever going to win a presidential campaign again. What was once the natural kind of constituency for that kind of person – the Stevenson constituency, the traditional liberal – has lost faith, I think, in everything that Liberalism was supposed to stand for. Liberalism itself has failed, and for a pretty good reason. It has been too often compromised by the people who represented it. And the fact is people like Nixon – candidates like Nixon – have a running start which gives them a tremendous advantage. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". Criterion Collection. Archived from the original on October 23, 2007 . Retrieved January 24, 2008. Ed: Do you think Eagleton was the chief reason for them changing their minds? Those Wallace people? The book also makes fun of society and formal education. For example, Dr. Gonzo would say, “As your attorney, I would advise…..” Or, Raoul would talk about being a doctor of journalism. They didn’t take themselves too seriously.