![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Jun. 25th, 2008 02:37 pm
gonzo - the documentary
One of the best things about Los Angeles is the Arclight. It's movie-going for adults. There's assigned seating, so if you show up five minutes before the show starts, you're not scrambling to find a seat for you or dealing with people who throw jackets on a whole row saving them for people who never come. There are no advertisements. There are, at most, three or four movie trailers, and every time before a movie starts, one of the ushers asks people in a nice voice to turn off their cell phones. They also have popcorn with real butter. Since we've started going here, we haven't watched movies anywhere else but on our TV.
Anyway, they also offer over 21 screenings where you can order alcohol to go with your movie, and being a member has a few perks, including seeing some special screenings, such as Gonzo, a documentary about the life and works of Hunter S. Thompson. (There was a short Q&A with the producer afterwards.) His life is mostly told through the people who knew him reading his works. It works, because his writing is very, very good.
One of the most interesting things I learned in this movie was that Thompson taught himself to write by copying out The Great Gatsby over and over again. Now that's dedication to craft.
The documentary mostly focuses on Thompson's early career, where he did his strongest writing and went through the craziness of the sixties and seventies. It's fun to see footage of Thompson interspersed with Depp's interpretation of him in the movie Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, and fascinating to see how very little was exaggerated about Thompson's persona, and how he eventually became a prisoner of that persona and his fame. Listening to him complain about the American elections is like deja vu - the exact same sentences could be used to describe the system today, and it's depressing to realize how relevant his writing still is.
At the same time, he was also an insufferable, infantile, humorless bastard who let his ego and his selfishness get the best of him. It seems that he hit his peak with his work in the seventies, and never recovered that same level of greatness - the drugs and booze and failed marriage may have all had something to do with it. Or maybe it was just him.
The documentary is great at capturing his personality, helped along by plenty of original footage of him on the campaign trail, talking to the press in wigs, and making funny statements to TV show hosts. He was all about the "freaks", and that's definitely something we could use more of.
One of the things I hated about watching this movie was watching him type. I wanted his typewriter, but I wanted to yell at him to learn to type. He would slowly dab at the typewriter with one finger, and it drove me mad! I wonder how the hell he managed to bang out sixty page tomes for his assignments at that slow speed.
Anyway, this documentary's enjoying limited release in 25 theaters across the country July 4th weekend. I recommend it if you're a fan of Hunter S. Thompson, or if you really like hearing good writing being read aloud by Johnny Depp.
Anyway, they also offer over 21 screenings where you can order alcohol to go with your movie, and being a member has a few perks, including seeing some special screenings, such as Gonzo, a documentary about the life and works of Hunter S. Thompson. (There was a short Q&A with the producer afterwards.) His life is mostly told through the people who knew him reading his works. It works, because his writing is very, very good.
One of the most interesting things I learned in this movie was that Thompson taught himself to write by copying out The Great Gatsby over and over again. Now that's dedication to craft.
The documentary mostly focuses on Thompson's early career, where he did his strongest writing and went through the craziness of the sixties and seventies. It's fun to see footage of Thompson interspersed with Depp's interpretation of him in the movie Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, and fascinating to see how very little was exaggerated about Thompson's persona, and how he eventually became a prisoner of that persona and his fame. Listening to him complain about the American elections is like deja vu - the exact same sentences could be used to describe the system today, and it's depressing to realize how relevant his writing still is.
At the same time, he was also an insufferable, infantile, humorless bastard who let his ego and his selfishness get the best of him. It seems that he hit his peak with his work in the seventies, and never recovered that same level of greatness - the drugs and booze and failed marriage may have all had something to do with it. Or maybe it was just him.
The documentary is great at capturing his personality, helped along by plenty of original footage of him on the campaign trail, talking to the press in wigs, and making funny statements to TV show hosts. He was all about the "freaks", and that's definitely something we could use more of.
One of the things I hated about watching this movie was watching him type. I wanted his typewriter, but I wanted to yell at him to learn to type. He would slowly dab at the typewriter with one finger, and it drove me mad! I wonder how the hell he managed to bang out sixty page tomes for his assignments at that slow speed.
Anyway, this documentary's enjoying limited release in 25 theaters across the country July 4th weekend. I recommend it if you're a fan of Hunter S. Thompson, or if you really like hearing good writing being read aloud by Johnny Depp.
Tags: