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Fear and Loathing in
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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream is a novel by Hunter S. Thompson, and a DVD/video by Gilliam

which describes the protagonist's (Raoul Duke, a fictionalised representation of Thompson) chasing of the American dream to Las Vegas through a drug-induced haze with his attorney (Dr. Gonzo, based on real-life Chicano lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta) in tow. It is based on his attempted "coverage" of the Mint 400 motocross race for Sports Illustrated magazine in 1971. What was intended as a 250-word caption snowballed into a novel-length feature for Rolling Stone magazine in November of that year. The novel was heralded as the "best book on the dope decade" by the New York Times Book Review and "A scorching epochal sensation!" by author Tom Wolfe. The movie version, released on May 22, 1998, only pulled in about $10.5 million dollars at the US box office (it was budgeted at approximately $18.5 million) but has since become a cult classic.

In his book The Great Shark Hunt, Thompson refers to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as "a failed experiment in gonzo journalism," a guerilla style of reporting that Thompson made famous throughout his career. Allegedly based on William Faulkner's "idea that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism—and the best journalists know this," it blends storytelling, fiction, and traditional journalism in an attempt to dig out truths beyond the truth of the subject of the article. As Thompson tries to discover what the sixties meant and what was in store for America in the future, the central message of the book is that 1971 was a turning point in hippie and drug culture in America, the year that the innocence and optimism of the late 1960s turned to cynicism and burn-out.

The film version was directed by Terry Gilliam and starred Johnny Depp as Raoul Duke and Benicio Del Toro as Dr. Gonzo. Both actors were cast by the film's original director, Alex Cox who wrote the original screenplay with his longtime collaborator, Tod Davies. When Terry Gilliam became attached to the project as director he rejected the Cox/Davies screenplay for various creative reasons, and Thompson himself disliked it and did not approve of Cox's approach to the movie. Gilliam then decided to attempt his own screenplay with collaborator Tony Grisoni. When the film approached release, Gilliam learned that the Writers Guild of America (WGA) would not allow Alex Cox's and Tod Davies names to be removed from the credits even though none of their material was used in the production of the film. Angered over having to share credit, Gilliam left the WGA and, on certain early premiere prints of the film, made a short introductory sequence in which an anonymous presenter assures the audience that no screenwriters, whatsoever, were involved in writing the film, despite what you may read in the credits.

The lead actors undertook extraordinary preparations for their respective roles. Del Toro gained more than forty pounds before filming began, and extensively researched Acosta's life. Depp lived with Thompson for months, doing research for the role as well as studying Thompson's habits and mannerisms. Depp even traded his car for Thompson's red Cadillac convertible, known to fans as the Great Red Shark, and drove it around California during his preparations for the role. Many articles of the costumes that Depp wears in the film are geunine pieces borrowed directly from Thompson, and Thompson himself shaved Depp's head to match his own natural male pattern baldness.

Quotations from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

We were on the edge of the desert, near Barstow, when the drugs began to take hold...
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of uppers, downers, laughers, screamers... Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.
What? No. We can't stop here. This is bat country.
Ah, devil ether. It makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel. Total loss of all basic motor function. Blurred vision, no balance, numb tongue. The mind recoils in horror, unable to communicate with the spinal column. Which is interesting because you can actually watch yourself behaving in this terrible way, but you can't control it.
Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? 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. 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. And that, I think, was the handle - -that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - -on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - -the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
Bazooko's Circus is what the world would be doing every Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This was the Sixth Reich.
Few people understand the psychology of dealing with a highway traffic cop. Your normal speeder will panic and immediately pull over to the side. This is wrong. It arouses contempt in the cop-heart. Make the bastard chase you. He will follow.
No more of that talk or I'll put the fucking leeches on you, understand?
How long could we maintain? I wondered. How long until one of us starts raving and jabbering at this boy? What will he think then? This same lonely desert was the last known home of the Manson family; will he make that grim connection when my attorney starts screaming about bats and huge manta rays coming down on the car? If so, well, we'll just have to cut his head off and bury him somewhere, 'cause it goes without saying that we can't turn him loose. He'd report us at once to some kind of outback Nazi law enforcement agency and they'll run us down like dogs. Jesus, did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me?
You better take care of me, Lord. If you don't you're gonna have me on your hands.
Panic. It crept up my spine like first rising vibes of an acid frenzy. There I was. Alone in Las Vegas, completely twisted on drugs, no cash, no story for the magazine, and on top of everything else, a gigantic god damned hotel bill to deal with. How would Horatio Alger handle this situation?
We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.
There was only one road back to L.A. US Interstate 15, just a flat-out high speed burn through Baker and Barstow and Berdoo. Then on to the Hollywood Freeway straight into frantic oblivion: safety, obscurity. Just another freak in the Freak Kingdom. We'd gone in search of the American Dream. It had been a lame fuck around, a waste of time. There was no point in looking back. Fuck no, not today thank you kindly. My heart was filled with joy. I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger: a man on the move, and just sick enough to be totally confident.

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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "fear and loathing".