Where the Buffalo Roam

Fist of all, as far as the comparison to Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas (1998) goes, these films are completely different beasts. Fear & Loathing is a adaptation of a fictional work based on real events. Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro are playing Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo, not Hunter S. Thompson and Oscar Zeta Acosta. They are playing caricatures of real people, indirect representations funneled through HST's imagination and exaggeration. Where The Buffalo Roam is more based in reality. Bill Murray is directly playing Hunter S. Thompson as he writes his writings, Johnny Depp played a character from his writings, there is a massive difference. And as such, in my opinion, both films succeed brilliantly. Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas is a visually dazzling, imaginative, cinematic adaptation of HST's novel and Where The Buffalo Roam is a quirky, splendidly fun quasi-biographical journey and pure snapshot of life.

Bill Murray is fantastic in this film. His portrayal of HST is taken from life, more realistic, more from the man rather than from his text or the legend of HST. The whole film itself, mainly because of Murray's characterization and the realistic structured style of the abrupt interconnected randomness of everyday life, is infused with a undying sense of fun and love for words, imagination, writing, and the whole creative process, which seems to me to get more to the core of HST as a man than the various vignettes of Fear & Loathing.

Where The Buffalo Roam is wildly entertaining, frenziedly hilarious, and immeasurably fun. But when the general viewing audience, who presumably do not have a true passion for HST and his works, views both films and are given the choice between the legend and the man, they more often choose the legend, which is usually the trend in history.

Whereas Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas has a romance for the stories and the myth, Where The Buffalo has a romance for the man and the process, and both have it for his personal style, politics and priorities.

I finally watched this movie after watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas about 50 times and reading almost all of Hunter S. Thompson's books. I have to say that while I enjoyed the movie, most people won't. Unless you have a pretty thorough knowledge of HST's work, it won't make much sense, and its comedic value will not be enough to make it worthwhile. However, if you have read FNL on The Campaign Trail and Strange Rumblings in Azatlan, then the movie will probably be of interest to you. One area where this film is far superior to FNL in Las Vegas is in its depiction of Oscar Zeta Acosta, the attorney who is the basis for Carl Lazlo here and Dr. Gonzo in FNL. Acosta was actually a prominent civil rights attorney in the 60's and 70's, especially in the Chicano community in Southern California. He also was a notoriously hard partier by most accounts. This movie does a much better job of capturing his odd duality than FNL does, and Peter Boyle is quite sharp in the role - interesting to watch for those of you who only know him as the father on Raymond.

I am a fan of Dr. Thompson's work.. I also liked this movie, tho, Fear and Loathing was a much better film.. due to the director, and cast.. Bill Murray was a great choice for this film, tho it was almost too cookie cutter, no real feel of the drugs he was hammering at that time. In F&L you have the grittiness of the drug culture of the 70's, feels more authentic.. Anyhoo, if you are a fan of HST, this is worth the watch.. hey, paid 4$ for the vid, can not go wrong..

Most negative reviews seem to come from people who saw Depp before Murray. Pity. For serious HST readers or even those who only know The Great Shark Hunt, WTBR offered a comic relief side so sadly lacking in Depp's one-dimensional, cardboard, just quote your lines performance (and I'm a big Depp fan). As for "Murray being Murray" - such a comment can only come from people who saw this after the rest of Bill's work. It was one of the earliest and best - indeed laid the base for much of his 80s and 90s work. Boyle is frenetic, allowing Murray to play sidekick for a change. A great option. HST's written rants were always harsh but always fair, no doubt composed coming off a bender. Who then is to say WTBR's omission of much of these is wrong, rather than simply a portrayal of the benders. We all know what he wrote and how he wrote - I'm glad WTBR chose to portray who HST was and the chaotic situations he put himself in rather than become some art-house naval-gazing about the tortured creative process of a scathingly intelligent commentator. Mind you - I did see it as the second part of a double header with Eraserhead ! Sadly, no video copies of WTBR exist in Australia. Can anyone help me ?

Both of the HST films have problems. This film's problem is that it is too "screenwritten" (Lazlo replacing The Brown Buffalo, "Blast" Magazine replacing Rolling Stone, etc.) and lacks the weird surrealism that a drug-fueled observation of American culture at the end of the 1960s deserves, if not requires.

It does play a bit like Caddyshack, as someone else pointed out, and it's hard to get really invested in the characters. And if you love HST as much as I do, you really do want to get into the characters and in to the story, because it's as important as it is funny. Where the Buffalo Roam is, for the most part, silly. It comes off as more a bunch of sketches than anything else. I did like Bill Murray in the part. The problem is the script, more than anything else.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by contrast, does well with the surrealism and depravity but fails to make the full point I think Thompson was trying to get across - the decadence and over-the-top performances (especially of del Toro) are distracting, and really all of this is supposed to be about the death of the American dream, and the end of what was (to some) the best decade on record, or at least the one where people thought, for a time, they could make something of American life. Both movies hint at this but don't go into it enough, in my opinion.

Where the Buffalo Roam captures a little of the sadness and the creeping hopelessness of the early 70s (along with an indication of the hangover awaiting that generation in the 70s), but both movies fall far short of Thompson's books and writing in my opinion.

I was particularly saddened that both movies left out the "We're looking for the American dream" bit at the taco stand, because I think that was important, and the F&L Vegas story seems decontextualized without it (in terms of having a fairly serious (and sad) point under all of the humor and excess).

In any case, both movies are worth a watch but ultimately unsatisfying. Thompson is still best read. I think a good film about HST can be made, but the right person needs to be at the helm.

Richard Linklater or John Sayles, perhaps...someone who isn't going to miss the deeper substance underlying and buttressing the humor. That being said, there are far worse movies you could be watching than either.

And like Thompson, it still hasn't gotten weird enough for me.