`FEAR AND LOATHING' IN HOLLYWOOD

Director Gilliam knew one thing for sure: He had to keep Hunter Thompson
off the set

It took an animator's eye to finally bring Hunter S. Thompson's hilarious
and hallucinatory road journal ``Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'' to the
screen.

Because director Terry Gilliam had started out as a cartoonist and drawn
the animated sequences in the British TV series ``Monty Python,'' he
understood that Ralph Steadman's over-the-top illustrations were as
important to the book as Thompson's acid prose and dialogue.

`` `Python' wouldn't have been the same without the animation,'' he says,
``and the book would not have been the same without these drawings. They
just go together perfectly.''

By avoiding imitation (and animation), Gilliam managed to meld the words
and visuals. The result should please both lovers of the 200 page drug
adventure and fans of Johnny Depp, who gives a spot-on portrayal of the
cynical Raoul Duke, doctor of journalism. There are enough people in both
categories to ring the numbers for Universal Studios, which is releasing
the picture nationwide Friday.

``Fear and Loathing'' started out as a Sports Illustrated assignment for
Thompson to drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and cover the Mint 400
motorcycle race. Thompson had a reputation to uphold, having published
``Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle
Gangs,'' so he expense-accounted a red convertible and every illicit drug
known to humankind, and a few that weren't, like extract of human adrenal
gland. He recruited his attorney, a deranged and lecherous hulk nicknamed
Dr. Gonzo, and they took off across the desert on ``a savage journey to the
heart of the American Dream.''

What followed were several days of sleepless depravity and insulting
behavior, only loosely connected to the motorcycle race. Thompson taped
every word and sent it in verbatim. Sports Illustrated declined to print
the story or cover the exorbitant hotel bill, which included a trashed
suite and room service that averaged $33 an hour for 48 straight hours.

But Rolling Stone picked up the story in a two-part series that heralded
the arrival of ``gonzo journalism,'' a participatory style one step beyond
Tom Wolfe's ``new journalism'' of ``The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.''

The ensuing book, published in 1971, supplanted Jack Kerouac's ``On the
Road'' as the underground bible for stoned college kids. The first 10
pages, detailing the drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in the grip of an
overwhelming drug stupor, have not been touched by any writer since,
including Thompson.

By the late 1970s the phrase ``fear and loathing'' had entered the lexicon
as a description of drug-induced exhaustion and paranoia. T-shirts appeared
in the orange and yellow of the paperback cover, featuring the two twisted
characters lurching across the desert in the sharklike red convertible.
Thompson's alter ego, Raoul Duke, became the prototype for Uncle Duke in
``Doonesbury.''

The first line of the book, ``We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge
of the desert when the drugs began to take hold,'' is also the start of the
film as narrated by Depp, perfectly mimicking Thompson's monotonous
delivery. From there on the film is absolutely faithful to the book, save
for a few ad-libs by Depp, and no director has power over those. ``It was
almost as if we were more concerned with it being an accurate translation
of the book than making the best possible film,'' Gilliam says. ``That's
what made the project interesting.''

It was Depp's picture when Gilliam came aboard a year ago to replace Alex
Cox (``Repo Man''). Depp had been recruited by Thompson to play the role.
They became a dangerous pair, palling around Thompson's home in Woody
Creek, Colo., and appearing together at Depp's Viper Room in Los Angeles.

Gilliam had pretty good ``Fear and Loathing'' credentials of his own. An
American living in London, he became pals with Steadman, who has ``nudged
me over the years to make a film of this,'' Gilliam says.

The director had been in the cast of the television series ``Monty Python's
Flying Circus'' and advanced to directing in the stoner-friendly Python
films. He had the proper surrealistic approach, as demonstrated in his
films ``Brazil'' (1985) and ``The Adventures of Baron Munchausen'' (1989).

In the late 1980s, he'd seen a script for ``Fear and Loathing'' and liked
the concept if not the script.

``I thought, `Wouldn't this be great to do as an introduction to the
1990s,' '' he says, ``a clarion call for a new age.''

But he got caught up directing ``The Fisher King'' (1991) and ``12
Monkeys'' (1997). A year ago he was working on a project called ``The
Defective Detective,'' but it ``went belly up'' at about the same time Cox
was relieved of directing ``Fear and Loathing.''

He didn't like the script any more than he'd liked earlier versions, so he
rewrote it. As part of his research, he started to watch a video of Bill
Murray's ``Fear and Loathing'' knockoff, ``Where the Buffalo Roam,'' and
lasted about 10 minutes, the same as anyone else.

After signing on, Gilliam met Thompson and quickly realized that he'd have
to keep him away from the set. Though pretty much burned out as a writer,
Thompson still works hard at maintaining his image as a bullying and
disruptive force.

Being Hunter Thompson is ``a hard job; it's 24 hours a day and you've got
to be strong as an ox to do it,'' says Gilliam, who at 58 is two years
younger than Thompson.

At one infamous lecture at the College of Marin in the early 1980s,
Thompson arrived late with a bottle of Wild Turkey, glowered at the crowd
and opened the lecture by saying, ``Any questions?'' The crowd was stunned.
This was an expensive ticket for the college set. Finally one man screwed
up his nerve and asked a detailed question. Thompson's answer was, ``What
business is that of yours?'' Things deteriorated from there, and Thompson
finally said it was too hot in the gym and walked out.

So he is not someone a director wants around the set, particularly when the
topic is Thompson himself.

Though he was involved with the production at a safe distance by fax and
phone, Thompson came to the set only once, for a cameo at a rock concert in
San Francisco. The voice-over is one of the best passages in the book, when
Thompson flashes back to the magic and freedom of the mid-'60s in San
Francisco, the center of the counterculture.

Steadman also stayed away from the set, and Gilliam knew better than to try
to copy his art with any form of animation.

``Here he is my friend, and his drawings are totally inspirational, and we
ignored them,'' Gilliam says. ``You can't transfer those drawings. They
exist in that form only.''

The lizards and monsters that the drugs delivered to Duke's mind were
effectively re-created with puppets and models.

``I just have a very strong visual sense. I see things in a distorted,
grotesque, hyper-real way. I know what the book's about, I know those
feelings,'' says Gilliam, who has read it a dozen times.

The camera was always shifting and tipping to give that queasy feeling of a
loss of equilibrium. But Gilliam says there was no drug use to enhance the
imaginations of either cast or crew.

He's seen the products of stoned filmmakers, and they are universally
unwatchable.

`FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS'

The movie opens Friday at Bay Area theaters.

)1998 San Francisco Chronicle

Checked-by: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)