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

by Jessica Mosby
– USA –

Every Sunday afternoon my college journalism advisor, who everyone lovingly called “Coach,” would meet with the newspaper staff and critique the past week’s articles. As a portly middle-aged man who had won numerous awards for his work at a major newspaper, Coach would often encourage us to cover our stories with a “Gonzo” approach. The concept of participatory journalism seemed feasible, but drinking a bottle of bourbon while driving around Las Vegas in a Cadillac convertible with a trunk full of drugs didn’t really seem conducive to writing articles about our school’s basketball team.

For the late Hunter S. Thompson, ground-breaking journalism did include copious amounts of alcohol, drugs, and reckless behavior; his works, and personal tactics, have become the stuff of legends. Making an interesting film about Thompson doesn’t seem that difficult, especially considering how ripe his history is with unbelievable stories and ridiculous adventures – much of which has been documented in his most famous works.

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson – the new documentary biopic currently playing at theatres – is an inspiring look at Thompson’s life, but the chronological film begins to falter when depicting Thompson’s own professional and personal decline in the mid-1970s.

The film begins with the obligatory chronicling of Thompson’s rise to fame as a journalist. While he initially considered himself a photojournalist, in 1965 Thompson received a career-making assignment from The Nation magazine: he was to infiltrate and report on the notorious California-based motorcycle gang, the Hell’s Angels. The resulting article and book, Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, made Thompson famous.

One of the documentary’s strengths is actor Johnny Depp’s narration. While reading a passage from Hell’s Angels that describes Thompson’s late night ride from San Francisco to Monterey along the Pacific Coast Highway, Depp’s voice truly brings life to Thompson’s work. It doesn’t hurt that Depp, who also starred as Thompson in the feature film adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, looks quite sultry sitting alone in a deserted bar while reading aloud.

For viewers not familiar with Thompson or his work, the film brings to light the originality of Thompson’s method, which was later termed “Gonzo” journalism. In the 1960s journalists didn’t live among their subjects or write their articles in a subjective first-person narrative. Thompson and his unique approach to reporting helped create a new genre of participatory journalism, encouraging the writer to become so involved in the action as to become a central figure in the story.

San Francisco in the 1960s was the epitome of optimism for Thompson. He loved the entire scene: the drugs, the music, the people, and the political activism that focused on ending the Vietnam War and furthering the Civil Rights movement. For Thompson, that era personified the American Dream, and he saw a national change coming with President John F. Kennedy and later Robert Kennedy. Describing that decade in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Thompson wrote, “We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.”

But writer/director/producer Alex Gibney reduces a pivotal time in his subject’s life to clichéd shots of Haight Ashbury while the decade’s greatest hits play in the background. For Thompson, the values of the 1960s were not a cliché, and the film should have depicted this in a way more fitting to Thompson’s experiences.

Gibney is obviously in awe of Thompson; the film furthers his status as a mythic literary with telling details about his early life: Thompson purportedly learned to write by typing and retyping The Great Gatsby. Though an interesting bit of trivia, what is more rousing about Thompson’s career is that it was truly informed and shaped by the events he covered from 1968 to 1972: the 1968 Democratic Convention; his own run for Sheriff of Aspen, Colorado; the mayhem that is described in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; and his coverage of the 1972 presidential election for Rolling Stone magazine. The most engaging part of the documentary covers the height of Thompson’s career.

Thompson’s personal and professional demise is inextricably linked to what he saw as the “death of the American Dream” in the 1970s, namely the loss of the ideals and optimism that characterized the 1960s. The beatings of protestors outside the 1968 Democratic Party’s convention by the Chicago police profoundly affected Thompson; in his coverage of the event he wrote, “The American Dream was clubbing itself to death.” After Senator George McGovern lost the 1972 presidential election, Thompson finally lost faith in the American Dream he so deeply valued. His career never really recovered. After years of discussing suicide and expanding his gun collection, Thompson ended his own life in 2005 at his home in Woody Creek, Colorado.

Sadly, the behavior that made him a celebrity and fueled his career – too much drinking and drug use – ultimately contributed to his downfall. Unfortunately for Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, made his antics as famous as his work. Having always relied on his anonymity for investigative reporting, he became too well known to hide in a crowd and his work began to suffer. As writer Tom Wolfe says in the film, “Hunter must have felt trapped, trapped in Gonzo.”

After the 119 minute documentary ended I realized that, to the detriment of the film, Academy Award winner Gibney is Thompson’s number one fan, and as a result the film doesn’t take a critical enough look at its subject. While he was obviously a very talented person, there existed a dark and often destructive side to Thompson. The only person to say anything negative is Thompson’s first wife Sondi Wright, who left him after his substance abuse and infidelity became too much to ignore.

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is not a brilliant documentary, it’s more a fan letter; there are too many interviews with celebrities, editors, friends, and family members who all say the same thing – that Thompson was a funny and clever guy who lived on the edge. (I do, however, love the anecdote about his failed run for Sherriff of Aspen in 1970, when Thompson shaved his now-famous head just so he could say, “unlike my long-haired opponent” while campaigning.) The film could have benefited from a little further editing, namely the unnecessary scenes of Depp portraying Thompson in the feature film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Despite the film’s shortcomings, I was moved by Thompson and his work, especially when he was at the peak of his career. Aside from the crazy exploits that made him famous, Thompson was a very talented person who believed fully in the American Dream and who felt tremendously let down by the course of the country. Many people probably leave Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson wanting to emulate his famous debauchery, but I left the theatre feeling inspired by the American Dream that Thompson once believed in with boundless optimism.

About the Author
Jessica Mosby is a writer and critic living in San Francisco, California. In the rare moments when she’s not traveling across the United States for work, Jessica enjoys listening to public radio, buying organic food at local farmers markets, trolling junk stores, and collecting owl-themed tchotchke.