Gonzo: The Life and Work of

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

Robert Steadman, Hunter S. Thompson's longtime friend and illustrator, suggests in an early interview in Gonzo that he and Thompson collaborated so successfully because Steadman was someone who saw in pictures what the writer put into words. Gonzo suggests that this quality is lacking in director Alex Gibney, who offers a pleasing but utterly conventional documentary, compiling a portrait of Thompson's character and achievements. The film's overriding themes aim to illustrate the provocative wildness of Thompson's spirit, but the unoriginality of the narrative structure and style fall short of the kind of film in which one could imagine Thompson would have wanted to take part.

The film's opening sequences are the only ones in which Gibney strays from Thompson's writing, audio recordings, or video footage, to attempt to capture some of Thompson's soul. The opening segment declares, in voiceover statements from a chorus of speakers, that Thompson was no longer a good writer, and also defines Thompson's writing aesthetic as "filtering reality through gonzo," simultaneously reinforcing the title's false cue to viewers that the aesthetic will function as this documentary's guiding principle--arguably one a more adventurous filmmaker might have chosen. After a few promising sequences, the film's casting reveals that Thompsonesque risk-taking will be shortlived--the speaker of narrated segments from Thompson's written work is Johnny Depp, who played Thompson in the braver Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

However misleading the film's opening construction may be, it announces its true purpose after the punctuation in its title: the writer's life and work. The film suggests that these two elements were not wholly distinct for Thompson. Toward this objective the film succeeds, balancing the overriding narration between the expert on Thompson's personal life (Sandra Conklin, his first wife of 19 years) and his profesionnal life (Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone). In the narrative structure's heavily imbalanced presentation of the two main Fear and Loathing projects--in Las Vegas and On the Campaign Trail, 1972 and Thompson's only child, Juan--the film clearly establishes that Thompson ultimately defined himself by his role as a writer rather than as a father.

Stylistically, the documentary is a slide show of personal photographs narrated in voiceover and features the cliched hands on a typewriter device yielding the writer's work read in voiceover. In his defense, Gibney was able to secure an impressive array of interviewees apart from Jann Wenner--among them Jimmy Carter, Tom Wolfe, George McGovern, and Pat Buchanan. Buchanan and McGovern, in particular, speak with genuine candor, sharing perspectives that some viewers may not have heard before.

Although the filmmaking in this documentary is bland, nonetheless, Gibney succeeds in one pivotal arena: he agitates viewers to action, an audience role that Thompson invariably craved. Beyond a conventional nostalgia for Thompson, the film evokes the terrible shame that the writer died before there was any hope that American politics would improve, thus encouraging the audience to participate in that change. But Gibney's effort is not a remarkable one--for which some could forgive him due to the film's release dates, presuming the filmmakers were unaware there would be an election in November 2008 that would conclude George W. Bush's administration (WALL-E was perfectly aware). Having worked so hard to see Bobby Kennedy and George McGovern elected, the film begs the mention of the terrible tragedy that Thompson--who the film began by declaring could no longer write--died before he could see the historic candidates, the youth movement, and the "yes we can" of the most gonzo election of all.

                                                      Genevieve Angelson