Screening from Friday 19th until Tuesday 30th December 2008 @ Watershed, Bristol

Anybody expecting a ‘real life’ Fear and Loathing can think again. This unflinching look at the life and work of the literary pioneer Dr. Hunter Stockton Thompson is not for tourists or light entertainment. Directed and screen written by Alex Gibley, it is fittingly narrated by Johnny Depp, who played the character of ‘Duke’ (one of Thompson’s alter egos) in the film adaption of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Thompson describes a journey he rode on his motorbike as one ‘with no helmet, speed limit or cooling it down for the corners’ which you cannot help feel was an analogy for his life. Described as warm and loving by his first wife, she also paints a picture of a man who took himself and those around him to the edge. Ironically, Thompson himself stated that ‘only people who have gone over the edge know where it is’.

Thanks to his popularity and need to document and record all aspects of his work, the film has a great deal of footage and audio recordings showing Thompson in all his idiosyncratic glory. The description of his Rolling Stone article on the Hell’s Angels is a perfect example of his chaotic methodology. His later life and involvement in politics gave rise to depression and spiralling fame made his work more difficult. Interviews with his first wife cite drug binges and infidelity as the grounds for their divorce. Ultimately Thompson is depicted almost as a man with the cliché ‘dark gift’. Perhaps confronted with his own fallibilities and those of the world around him, he ends his life exactly as he said he always would.

This is a story of psychedelic, tragic and majestic symposium worth 2 hours of sitting quietly to anyone who has time to listen to one of the greatest voices of 20th century journalism.

www.watershed.co.uk

Sam Butler