'Gonzo' documentary debut

" ... So larger-than-life that he eventually felt overshadowed by his own mythos, legendary journo Hunter S. Thompson gets definitive docu treatment in "Gonzo." Alex Gibney's film draws on a rich array of archival interviews, homemovies, signs-of-the-times clips and celebrity reminiscences to chart the dizzying arc of a man who both chronicled and personified edgier aspects of the American 1960s and '70s. Subject's lingering appeal to both old fans and new should make this a viable specialty release in all formats, starting with Magnolia's theatrical release.

Fast-paced, colorful assembly starts with commentators remarking on Thompson's legacy (even foe Sonny Barger of Hell's Angels grudgingly calls him "a jerk, but a very good writer") and lamenting the long creative decline after his peak years. Pic then backtracks to touch on his Kentucky upbringing before an appearance in full biker drag on gameshow "To Tell the Truth" heralded his first professional triumph: "Hell's Angels," an exercise in participatory journalism that resulted from his hanging out with the famed outlaws for a year -- though ultimately, they were not pleased with his portrait.

The book's success made him a minor celebrity, but the ambitious author hungered for greater fame. Aligning himself with Rolling Stone magazine, he chronicled his own Freak Power Party run for sheriff in Aspen, Colo. (he lost, to residents' enormous relief), then did a piece about the "decadent and depraved" Kentucky Derby that's pinpointed here as the birth of "gonzo" journalism -- the chemically fueled, sometimes fictionalized, highly first-person style that made Thompson a counterculture hero. His classic "Fear and Loathing" tomes confounded all traditional rules of reporting, yet remain admired for grasping the gist of American politics and life better than many sober, evenhanded treatments. ... "

 

~ From Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson ~

 

" ... Thompson was a split personality. A man capable of enormous kindness and affection, he also was given to rage and chemical- and alcohol-fueled depravity. He was acutely aware of these two sides but apparently not in complete control of either. It says something about the man's good side, though, that so many important people have come forward to pay heartfelt tribute to him in this film.

Gibney must be a great interviewer, because the comments here not only from Thompson's two wives and close friends but such figures as President Carter, George McGovern, Pat Buchanan, Jimmy Buffett, Gary Hart and Thompson's longtime illustrator, Ralph Steadman, paint a picture that feels accurate and catches the moods of the country during Thompson's heyday as an author-cum-rock star.

How fascinating to learn that Thompson taught himself how to write the literature of the outsider by typing over and over again F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby." How odd to see him in vintage black-and-white on the quiz show "To Tell the Truth" after penning his first best-seller on the Hell's Angels. What a nervous guy he was then and how he changed.

Indeed, Thompson fit right into the freak show of the '60s in the Bay Area -- the acid-dropping, hippie-dippy, antiwar, clothes-optional guerrilla theater that caused him to turn on but not to drop out. Rather, he engaged the power structure in America in a way no one else ever has. Without the usual journalistic concerns over burning sources and currying favor, he reported everything, whether on or off the record, but also made stuff up. And the phony facts somehow got as close to the truth as the real ones. One interviewer remarks that his coverage of the McGovern campaign was the most accurate and least factual of any journalist's. ... "

From "Gonzo" brings mythic life into sharp focus