Andrew Worsdale Movie of the week
I remember taking my first cap of LSD (it was only a quarter) in 1982 when I saw Steven Lisberger’s Tron, which had Jeff Bridges as a computer programmer caught up in a game. The drugs and, for that time, dazzling special effects seemed to cancel everything out. I was too sparked to get the picture.
So what makes for a good “drug” movie? Generally, I would say (even though I’ve given up narcotics) it’s better to watch a picture-postcard melodrama like Doctor Zhivago under the influence of a hallucinogenic. You can get all moody and lovey-dovey about Julie Christie and Omar Shariff falling in and out of love in a Hollywood backlot pretending to be Russia. Mind you, after 193 minutes of over-the-top histrionics the drug will probably have worn off.
George Dunning’s 1968 Beatlemania inspired The Yellow Submarine, which gave me my first celluloid “trip” with the fantasia and swirling colour-washed couples engulfing each other in the Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds sequence.
Roger Corman’s The Trip was described by critic Don Mc Pherson as “a definitive commercial for acid”. Scripted by Jack Nicholson, it had Peter Fonda as a trendy commercials director, and his sidekick, “Mr Out of-it-of-all-time” Dennis Hopper, shouting “wow”.
Hopper himself was responsible for Easy Rider, which had two dope-smoking friends striking up a cocaine deal with Phil Spector.
Probably the best contemporary “drug” movie is Trainspotting, which mixed pitch-black comedy with the highs and lows of being down and out on heroin in Edinburgh.
Hunter S Thompson is one of the most drug- crazed, alcoholic journalist/writers of all time. In a 1994 Playboy interview a journalist asked him, “Already this morning you’ve had two Bloody Marys, three beers and about four spoons of some white powder, and you’ve only been up for an hour. You don’t deny that you’re heavily into drugs, do you?”
Thompson replied, “Do drugs look like they’ve fucked me up? I’m sitting here on a beautiful beach in Mexico; I’ve written three books; I’ve got a fine 100-acre fortress in Colorado. On that evidence, I’d have to advise the use of drugs. But of course I wouldn’t – or at least not all drugs for all people. There are some people who should never be allowed to take acid, for instance … people with all kinds of bad psychic baggage.”
Thompson’s “good” psychic baggage has been made into a film before. Art Linson’s 1980 Where the Buffalo Roam had Bill Murray as Thompson and Peter Boyle as his overweight attorney. All the abuse and attacks on the system were in place, but the movie flopped. A movie about drugs only appeals to drug addicts.
The same applies to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Terry Gilliam’s version of Thompson’s most celebrated novel. It’s a stream-of-consciousness affair with Thompson travelling down to Las Vegas to cover the $50 000 Mint 400 Desert Race. Thompson, under the name of Raoul Duke, and his “Samoan lawyer”, Dr Gonzo (Beniccio Del Torro), head out in pursuit of a newspaper article, but their real intentions seem to be to take as much cocaine, alcohol, uppers, downers, mescaline and acid as possible -in the process trashing hotel rooms, puking and being chucked out of a Debbie Reynolds show.
Many have attempted to re-tell the 25-year- old book in a movie. Martin Scorsese tried to get it off the ground with Jack Nicholson as the lead. John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd tried to get it made. Then Larry McMurtry attempted to adapt it for director Hal Ashby, who died of a drug overdose.
Finally Alex Cox was brought in to direct after the success of Sid and Nancy, his memoir of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. But there were “creative differences” between Cox and Johnny Depp, who had already been cast in the lead. Cox remarked, “It can’t be a mainstream movie because it’s so counter- culture and demented, and when the studios tried it, it didn’t work. And yet it still has huge commercial potential, to people of my generation and to kids on college campuses, where the book is still so popular.”
It turns out that Gilliam, the only American member of Monty Python, is a gifted and visionary director – Brazil was a dazzling display of cinematic virtuosity, while Time Bandits was a highly inventive fantasy. And don’t forget that Gilliam is responsible for all the bizarre and ingenious Monty Python animated moments.
The problem with Fear and Loathing is that the plot is too thin to carry a film. But Gilliam manages to make it mind-boggling. Hallucinatory bats, a creeping carpet, imaginary lizards, red lighting, distorted shots and weird camera angles, all in a movie that begins with the song My Favourite Things from The Sound of Music. Remember the lyrics: “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens”?
Depp turns in a marvellous performance as Thompson’s alter ego, showing once again that he’s an adventurous actor. He’s matched by Del Toro as the sidekick living under loads of bodily fat and chemically induced dehydration.
But the star of the film has to be cinematographer Nicola Peroni. This is his first major camera credit, after serving as second-unit photographer on Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor, The Sheltering Sky and Little Buddha, among others.
Gilliam wanted to make the film “ugly”. In fact, it’s beautiful to look at. But there is no coherent narrative or real identification with the characters. And if you watch it on drugs everything will probably cancel everything else out.
All the same, it’s a brave venture, and sure to become a cult film. At least it doesn’t have gangsta-rap crack motherfucker gun-slinging baddies.