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Fear and Loathing is the latest in Terry Gilliam's cinematic revolution

By Skylaire Alfvegren

Dallas Observer: Published: May 21, 1998

It gets dark, but not violent. The book's violent passages--in the diner, with the maid--revealed the on-the-edge psychosis of the characters to the readers, but they're not transposed to the film. These episodes of waving knives, threats, and anxiety are twisted instead into humorous skits where a little stark violence would've been a good contrast to the general wackiness.

And the drugs. Oh, the drugs. Gilliam is no drug enthusiast; he claims never to have tried acid. Perhaps this is why the characters in the film seem to be having too much fun, even when loaded to the breaking point on chemicals. It's a farce; such exaggeration. In the book, a saltshaker half full of cocaine. In the movie--a wastebasket-full. Drugs enough to fell elephants in the book. Drugs enough to incapacitate the state of Idaho in the movie. Of course, overstatement is nothing new to Gilliam.

"I've never thought the book was about drugs," he insists. "It's a road movie. The drugs were a fuel, but that's not what it was about. It was a character piece, it's always been that. It's about people throwing themselves into the abyss to see what happens."

There are places in the film where Gilliam breaks away from the real story and surrenders dramatic power. If he's emphasized, for instance, that Duke was in Vegas on assignment, screwing up big-time--watching that thin thread connecting his incoherent self with legitimacy fray away--it would've given his excesses a larger, more desperate meaning. There's no sense that his Vegas degeneracy will affect his or his sidekick's futures. Instead they seem more like a couple run-o'-the-mill drug fiends, bingeing for the hell of it, instead of two lost, unhinged men trying to disassociate themselves from reality.

Still, Fear and Loathing is an incredible roller coaster, a visual feast, and enough to get you thinking about where this country started to go wrong in the '60s. It's apparent, too, that very few changes for the better have occurred since then. "The '80s sort of numbed everything down," Gilliam says. "Materialism has sort of blanketed everything. Everybody's got the goodies now--the CD players, the televisions--no one wants to make any noise. But the pendulum always does swing."

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