Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride: Hunter S. Thompson on Film

Boy, I sure wish I had someone around who had told me not to waste money on this one! Oy!

BUY THE TICKET, TAKE THE RIDE is an almost shameful re-hashing of four or five films already made about the epic bard Hunter S. Thompson.

If you're a true HST fan, you have already seen (and probably own) the main ingredients for this "original" documentary: WHERE THE BUFFALO ROAM (sub-par at best itself, less Bill Murray's fantastic portrayal of our hero), FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, BREAKFAST WITH HUNTER, and--perhaps the greatest film about HST ever made--FEAR & LOATHING IN GONZOVISION, an absolutely spectacular short documentary made by the BBC in the late 1970's (you will find this on your Criterion edition of F&L... seriously worth the purchase for the documentary alone).

Literally half the movie's footage comes from the F&L IN GONZOVISION doc (an episode of OMNIBUS, actually), and about another third or more comes straight from those other three sources. Frankly, if you have all these films, you could probably have made this shoddy doc yourself.

Yes, there are certainly some interesting suppositions made by a lot of BIG TIME (!!!!!!!!) celebrities, but they all say very little that hasn't been said before, and it really begins to get repetitious. This is especially true when they begin to go on and on and on and on (and on) about the terrific performances of Bill Murray and Col. Depp. Yes, they both did a grand job of portraying the Good Doctor, but--goodness!--need we see Ed Bradley, Leonard Maltin, and William F. Buckley go on ad nauseum about it for so long in a documentary about the guy they were trying to emulate on film? The part about Depp in particular goes on far too long; you have about fifteen people talking about how amazing Depp was in FEAR & LOATHING. Yeah, he sure was, but do we need to hear about it for twenty minutes? Depp, Depp, Depp. What about Hunter?

And this is the true fault of the film.

You should really read that strange, almost incongruous subheadline of the the film (buy the ticket, take the ride: HUNTER S. THOMPSON ON FILM) and take it more literally, for that's really what the movie turns into: an analysis of the films in which he's appeared or been portrayed. Heck, the whole film starts out with Gary Busey talking to the director about how to shoot his scene. Once again, a good idea and starts off funny, but then gets old REAL fast, and we start wondering right away: what the hell does this have to do with Hunter S. Thompson. (And sorry, "Gonzo" journalism it ain't.)

I was stunned to also hear and see them laud the terrible, disastrous decision of casting Peter Boyle in the part of Oscar (or "Carl") in BUFFALO. Boyle's a great actor, sure... but we all know he was one of the main downfalls of that film (not to mention the cinematography and "music" that was chosen; Neil Young's score was good, but those music choices: oy! Right out of an 80's after-school-special!).

Overall, BUY THE TICKET, TAKE THE RIDE is more of a paean to all the people who ever made the films about Hunter than it is about Hunter himself. And this wouldn't have been so bad, less the fact that most of the movie comes from stuff we've all already seen.

For craftsmanship, this one also loses out. It looks awful, is edited poorly, and has no real pace or rhythm whatsoever. Although, I do have to admit that THIS time, I liked the music...

No wonder this never came out to the theaters and had to be made as a Starz! Original Picture. (Are you KIDDING?!)

I f you've never seen or read anything about Hunter before, you might dig on this thing. As for the rest of us, we'll be praying that they don't fcuk up RUM DIARY.

Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride (2006)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Tom Thurman directs this documentary of Hunter S. Thompson who everyone will have a different opinion on. I watched this hoping to learn a little about the man and I did learn something but it was very little. It seems the director was more interested in hearing various stories about the man instead of trying to find out why he was the way he was. Ed Bradley, Gary Busey, John Cusack, Benicio Del Toro, Johnny Depp, Leonard Maltin, Bill Murray, Harry Dean Stanton and Sean Penn are all interviewed and Nick Nolte narrates.

One of the few times I've ever teared up after hearing of a well-known public figure passing in my lifetime, aside from Kubrick, was Hunter S. Thompson; equally I had a real gasp when I saw how he died. After seeing the documentary, I can see the point of view of his own reasons for it (he always said that he wouldn't know what to do if he couldn't commit suicide anytime he wanted, however much that's true I don't know), but it's still saddening. So seeing a documentary on the man and his legacy, as a fan, was a must for me. But also as a fan, having read a good handful of his books and seeing the films, there wasn't too much presented that really shown any new light about the man (I could already tell from his writing that there was the other side to his 'Gonzo' persona, of being a Southern-style gentleman and very brilliant thinker). It's a wonderful, if all-too-short, compilation of interviews and clips of interviews with the man himself, along with scenes from Where the Buffalo Roam and Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. Among the few things that did interest me was hearing about his early life, how he started drinking when he was 10/11 years old, got into major juvenile crimes as a teen, and started to write by basically copying word for word the books of Fitzgerald and Hemingway. I also thought it was interesting to see from the testimonies of actors and friends talk about how he sometimes had to balance out his own self-created anarchic public persona without it seeming too overboard, a caricature.

Here was a man who basically needed chaos and disorder in his life, who pushed excesses of not just drugs and alcohol and crazy s*** with guns, but also food and manic antics in hotels and on the road (always on the move, his widowed wife says). So seeing some of that talked about is interesting and sometimes even funny; I loved seeing the leftovers of phone calls he had with people, and the voice messages left for compadres like Ralph Steadman, and seeing how Thompson dictated in his will to go out, via cannon-shooting-ashes, is really touching in how it links to his persona. But throughout the grungy Nick Nolte narration of the simplistic, adoration type lines, and the typical notes on all of the actors and famous authors and childhood friends and ex-lawyers, it all kind of pecks at me at not being the kind of real tribute a guy like this should get. One of the moments where the doc does have a spark of 'what the hell' is when we first see Gary Busey, who almost directs the director of the film to how he should enter into being questioned about his one part in Fear & Loathing. Still, there's too much for fans I would want to say to look for to not say to see it, and for those who don't know much about the man's work (though maybe know his persona, as 'gonzo journalism' and the name Thompson are close to household words if you're into literature or the subversive) it's really worth stopping your remote on it if it pops up on TV. Where else will one find footage of Harry Dean Stanton, in emotional tribute, performing 'Danny Boy'?

I just viewed this film OnDemand. A weird and perilous 73 minute jaunt through several highlights of HST's life. While not as detailed as other treatments of the subject matter, this film makes up for its lack of depth by a sweeping breadth of scope, and is more pleasing to the middle-of-the-road HST enthusiast, with less drug use, less profanity, less crotchety-ness, more Hollywood types commenting, more clips from Where the Buffalo Roam and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and overall, a more human treatment of the man behind the myth that HST has become.

In this treatment, we see more of the Owl Creek Ranch, more of HST's first and second wives commenting, and more of Hunter at home than in previous films. Hunter appears to be more relaxed at home than anywhere else he has been interviewed. I particularly liked the airing of a couple of messages that HST left on answering machines... these give the viewer a feel for the real person and not so much the persona.

The film also gives reasonable closure for HST's exit from humanity... taking the Hemingway option in view of his increasing physical disability and age-related deterioration. HST was always in charge of his own freedom, and this chosen end was one more celebration of his freedom to do exactly what he wanted, when he wanted it. Thanks for a good film. I'll watch it again when I need my next Gonzo-fix.

How you can make something this sad, this boring, this tedious and meaningless out of the life of one of the greatest writers and journalists of the 20th century is just beyond me.

It's just a string of interviews with past friends that come across as whiny "now he is dad" kind of eulogy stuff.

The facts are kind of interesting, but if I want to read facts, I can look them up on wikipedia.

This is not entertaining.

This is not interesting.

This is not Gonzo.

THIS IS NOT WHAT HUNTER WOULD HAVE WANTED!