The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Filmmaker Terry Gilliam once remarked in an interview that "when times are bad, I can't believe you can live without fantasy or imagination." This statement seems particularly valid in contemporary society when you realize all of the horrible things that are occurring. One only has to look in the newspapers or watch the news on television to see how rapidly society seems to be collapsing. Gilliam's statement becomes all the more true when you look at the success of a film like Forrest Gump (1994), which is beloved by many who see it as a hopeful reminder of better times. The problem with that film is that it is too literal in its fantastic elements, leaving little to the imagination. This is the strength of Gilliam's films – from his work with Monty Python to his own films – which transport the viewer to another world altogether. But this does not mean his films leave behind all traces of reality, but rather, like any good fairy tale, they play with and manipulate reality. To this end, watching a film like Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989) is akin to reading one of those great fairy tales from your childhood. His film is the cinematic equivalent of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series or J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy in its ability to tell a good story, present colorful and unusual characters, and take us to places we can only dream about. And like these books, the film is set on an epic scale, spanning all realms, from the legendary city of Constantinople, to the Moon, to the insides of a giant sea monster.

Our story begins in the 18th Century, during The Age of Reason where a small, beleaguered town, ruled by an evil, bureaucratic Governor (Jonathan Pryce), is under constant attack from an equally cruel Sultan and his large army of Turks. Caught in the middle is an inept theatrical company trying in vain to entertain the battle-weary soldiers and shell-shocked villagers of the town with the fantastic tales of Baron Munchausen. During a performance, an old soldier appears, claiming to be the real Baron Munchausen and aims to not only set the record straight about his outrageous exploits, but save the town from the Turks. This sets in motion an epic adventure which has the Baron (John Neville) traveling the world and beyond for his former comrades, an eccentric group that includes Berthold (Eric Idle), a man who can run so fast that he must attach a ball and chain to both legs, Adolphus (Charles McKeown), a sharpshooter capable of hitting "a bullseye half way around the world," Albrecht (Winston Dennis), the strongest man in the world, and Gustavus (Jack Purvis), a small man who not only has unearthly hearing abilities, but can "blow over a whole forest with just one breath." However, the Baron faces many obstacles from the outset of his adventure. He is old and feeble with the specter of death literally and figuratively pursuing him in all sorts of guises, but most notably as a horrific, winged, skeletal demon. Only his love of adventure and the help of his youthful companion, a little girl named Sally Salt (Sarah Polley), keeps Death at bay and his quest on track.

The idea for Baron Munchausen had been running around inside Gilliam's head for some time. He had always liked the 1962 Czechoslovakian film version and the various stories about the famed teller of tall tales. But it wasn't until he had finished his previous film, Brazil (1984), did Baron Munchausen become a viable project. Gilliam had fought Universal studio to release his version of Brazil and not the one they wanted – a more upbeat "Hollywood" ending. Gilliam, exhausted and jaded, was anxious to put that horrible experience behind him. And so, he and producer Arnon Milchan approached 20th Century Fox, pitched the idea for the film, and got the go-ahead from the studio. But then disaster struck. After Brazil, Gilliam and Milchan parted company and Fox lost interest in the project because the people who had made the deal were no longer there. However, Gilliam had going on at that moment and continued to work on Baron Munchausen. The source of this momentum stemmed from Gilliam's desire to finish what he saw as his "fantasist" trilogy: Time Bandits (1981) featured a young boy as-fantast, while Brazil presented an adult as fantast theme, and Baron Munchausen would complete the series with an old man as fantast.

Gilliam finally acquired financial support from Columbia Pictures and began writing the script for the film with his good friend and screenwriter, Charles McKeown (they had worked to get together previous on Brazil). They used the book, Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvelous Travels and Campaigns in Russia as their starting point. Written by Rudolph Erich Raspe and published in 1785, it was based on the inflated exploits of a real German cavalry officer. Gilliam found that the book was merely a series of tales with no narrative connection and so he and McKeown created a story about a town under siege with a group of actors trapped in it, trying to perform The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, only to have the real Baron showing up. There had already been two dozen screen versions of the Baron's endeavors in Europe alone. In addition George Melies had done a silent short, and two films, a German one filmed in 1948 and the aforementioned Czech feature in 1962, were in circulation when Gilliam decided to create his own take on the man. In writing the script, he and McKeown would talk about the scenes in detail and then McKeown would go off and write. Then, they would meet again and talk about what he wrote and the process would repeat itself.

These were the least of his problems. Gilliam had difficulty casting someone in the title role, but one person's name kept popping up – John Neville. At the time, Neville, a veteran British stage actor whose heyday was during the 1960s but had faded from the limelight over the years. He had become the director of the Stratford, Ontario Shakespeare Festival doing 15 productions a season with no time for films. Gilliam approached Neville’s agent and was turned down. Luckily for Gilliam, a makeup lady working on the film knew Neville’s daughter personally, called him up, and arranged a meeting. It turned out that the veteran stage actor was a big Monty Python fan and he agreed to do the film.

Unfortunately, Gilliam's headaches did not end there. The studio forced him to begin production before he was ready and as the filming progressed, the usual budget problems began to rear their ugly heads. Principal photography began on September 14, 1987 at Rome’s legendary Cinecitta Studios (where Fellini had shot his films). After seven weeks of filming, the production was shut down for two weeks with rumors that Gilliam would be replaced by Richard Fleischer or Gary Nelson (The Black Hole). The studio threatened to replace Gilliam if he didn't get back on track. He had to convince the film’s completion bond insurer, Film Finances that he was in control of the project’s increasing budget. This forced Gilliam to cut out portions of the script but he could not decide what to keep and what to remove. Two days before the deadline, Film Finances threatened to sue Gilliam for fraud and this upset McKeown so much that he and the director went through the script in less than an hour and came up with revisions that appeased the financiers. Ironically, despite all of the script revisions they made, and the presence of Film Finances, the budget increased, the filming didn’t move any faster, and the sets weren’t built any quicker. According to Thomas Schuhly, one of the film’s many producers, there was no danger that Gilliam would have been fired: “You must accept the rules of the game, and that’s to make money, not to lose it. We had a better chance of making money with Terry than anyone else.”

Gilliam wanted to make the film in Rome because it gave him the opportunity to work with legendary Fellini collaborators, production designer Dante Ferretti and director of photography Giuseppe Rotunno. However, working in Italy presented its own unique set of problems. "This film was terrifying difficult, even before those other pressures from the studio began. The fact that the film was falling apart at the seams was bad enough – the organization was terrible,” Gilliam said. In retrospect, he regretted filming there because they were ill-equipped to do special effects films and his crew were speaking four different languages: English, Italian, German and Spanish. This resulted in miscommunication among crew members. Gilliam said, “The moment you say something it’s instantly mistranslated.” Gilliam became bogged down by the slow pace of Italian filmmaking and their unusual working methods. Gilliam and Ferretti redesigned the film several times with certain locations in mind only to find out after several weeks that no one sought permission to use them. They had to start all over again.

Due to delays and studio demands, the King of the Moon character was recast with Robin Williams replacing Sean Connery. The budget constraints forced Gilliam and McKeown to reduce the Moon sequence from a world of 2,000 people with detachable heads to only two people. When this happened, Connery lost interest and left the project. Eric Idle was good friends with Williams, who just happened to be in Rome at the time promoting Good Morning Vietnam (1987). Gilliam had actually offered him the role of Vulcan but he wasn’t available until they had to recast the King of the Moon and he agreed to help out. The role of Vulcan had originally been written for Bob Hoskins but he was busy making Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) and Gilliam cast Oliver Reed instead.

Talk about being born under a bad sign. For months, the production trained horses for Baron Munchausen and then, just before going to Spain to film, there was an outbreak of horse fever and they could not bring them. In addition, the two dogs playing the Baron’s pooch came down with a liver complaint at the same time. A few days later, then Columbia studio head David Puttnam was fired. By the time the production got to Spain, the costumes hadn’t arrived because there wasn’t enough room on the plane to take them! Somehow Gilliam prevailed and finished the film with the help of good friends like Eric Idle providing support and a sense of humor. Gilliam remembered, "At one point, we were out in Spain, and things were at their very, very worst. I was ready to quit. I knew there was no way we would get through the film. Eric really came in there, saying, 'You've got to, if for no other reason, you must make this film to spite John Cleese!' That got me going!"

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was generally well-received by mainstream critics at the time. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “The special effects are astonishing, but so is the humor with which they are employed … These adventures, and others, are told with a cheerfulness and a light touch that never betray the time and money it took to create them.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “With their remarkable contributions, Baron Munchausen is full of moments that dazzle, just for the fun of seeing the impossible come to life on the screen.” Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, “A few episodes test the viewer's patience, and there is considerably more wit in the film's sumptuous design than in its dialogue. But anyone with an educated eye and a child's love of hyperbole can take delight in Gilliam's images and incidents.” The Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “Thanks to such contradictions, the movie’s overall movement often seems closer to that of a boiling cauldron than to any logical progression. But this wild spectacle has an energy, a wealth of invention, and an intensity that for my money still puts most of the streamlined romps of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to shame … A fantasy in which literally anything can happen at any moment runs the serious risk of flying apart without a center; and there is hardly a moment in this movie’s 126 minutes when Gilliam isn’t taking that risk — both eyes open and full speed ahead.” In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe felt that Gilliam had “created another brilliantly inventive epic of fantasy and satire.”

With a budget estimated to be in the $40-45 million range (which sounds pretty small now but back then that was a big deal), Baron Munchausen harkens back to Gilliam's love of old epic "special effects movies" like The Sea Hawk (1940) and Thief of Baghdad (1940), which the filmmaker enjoyed as a child. As a result, Baron Munchausen is a stunning visual masterpiece on a grand scale that depicts all sorts of flights of fancy: characters ride cannonballs through the air, get swallowed whole by monstrous whales, and fly to the moon in a hot air balloon. Everything is set on an absurd mythical level that at times becomes wonderfully surreal. This is particularly evident in a remarkable sequence where the Baron and Sally travel to the moon. At first, it seems that the Baron's ship is adrift along a calm stretch of the ocean, but this gradually changes to the surface of the moon, a barren landscape where the constellations come alive, becoming what they are. One of the joys of Baron Munchausen is that every scene is filled with this kind of atmospheric, incredible attention to detail that sets it apart from any other feature you're likely to see.

As in all of Gilliam's films the large ensemble cast fills out their respective roles admirably. John Neville brings all of his knowledge and years of experience as an actor to the role of the Baron and makes what could have been a wacky caricature, a flesh and blood character. He has to perform the daunting task of portraying the Baron in three different stages of his life: young, middle-aged, and as an old man. Sarah Polley is the perfect foil for Neville's Baron. When he becomes tired and fed up with the quest to save the town from the Turks, she is there to inject some youth and vitality into the struggle, renewing everyone's energy without smugly mugging to the camera as so many child stars are seem prone to do nowadays. The rest of the supporting cast is also superb with Eric Idle and Uma Thurman (as Venus the Goddess of Love) creating memorable scenes with their characters. To top it all off there is even an uncredited cameo by a delightfully unhinged Robin Williams as the King of the Moon who bounces from lunacy to lucidity with the frequency of a schizophrenic on speed and who is also not averse to lobbing giant asparagus spears at our heroes. He would subsequently star in Gilliam's next effort, The Fisher King and expand on the trilogy with a fourth option: crazed man as fantast.

If there is a central theme to The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, it is the notion that fantasy and fun complement science and reason. When the Baron first appears, he is an old man that feels pushed to the margins of a world he can no longer relate to. "The world is evidently tired of me," he says, "because it's all logic and reason now. Science. Progress. Laws of Hydraulics. Laws of Social Dynamics. Laws of this, that, and the other. No place for three-legged Cyclops in the South Seas. No place for cucumber trees and oceans of wine. No place for me." The film not only becomes a battle against the Sultan and his army, but against the stifling sterility of science and reason as represented by the corrupt Governor of the town (an wonderfully campy performance by Jonathan Pryce, who goes all out with his role) who sees a world "fit for science and reason," and not for the "folly of fantasists who do not live in the real world." And yet, Gilliam's film shows that you cannot have one without the other. As he once said in an interview, "Fantasy and reality, or truth and reality – whatever form it takes – that which the world perceives as truth, and that which really is truth. I like the idea that a good lie is probably better than what appears to be the truth – and maybe even more truthful!" Baron Munchausen constantly plays with these notions of fantasy and reality, constantly manipulating them throughout the film to keep us guessing. Eventually, it no longer matters as both blend together to form a new reality where one is not sacrificed for the other, but rather both co-exist peacefully.

 

Twelve Monkeys

"It's one thing to get lost in your own madness, but to become lost in somebody else's madness is weirder." – Terry Gilliam

How do you know when someone is crazy? This is a question that filmmaker Terry Gilliam tries to answer in many of his films, for he is obsessed by the notion of insanity – what makes someone insane and how do others view this person. Is someone really crazy or do they simply have a different view of the world than the rest of society? In the past, Gilliam's films have presented characters that tend to blur the boundary between sanity and madness, but perhaps his most complex treatment of this subject is Twelve Monkeys (1995). It is with this project that the filmmaker combines his long standing obsession of breathtaking visuals with his knack for working closely with actors. This combination has resulted in more mature films for Gilliam who is normally associated with stylish overkill: films that tend to let the visuals overwhelm the story and characters. And make no mistake, Twelve Monkeys contains some of the most stunning images you are ever going to see but never at the expense of the story or its characters and herein lies one of the reasons why Gilliam remains one of the most interesting people working in film today.

Twelve Monkeys is a film that constantly plays with, distorts, and more often than not, manipulates time. The film begins in the year 2035. A deadly virus has wiped out almost all of humanity, leaving the survivors to take refuge deep underground. Only the occasional foray up to the surface in protective gear by a select group of "volunteers" offers any clues as to what went wrong. James Cole (Bruce Willis) is one such volunteer who is particularly good at retrieving information. As a result, he soon finds himself being sent back in time to find out how the virus originated and who was responsible. Unfortunately, he goes back too far, arriving in 1990 and is promptly thrown into a rather nightmarish mental hospital in Baltimore where he meets Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), a fellow inmate with a loopy sense of reality that feeds all sorts of paranoid delusions of grandeur. Cole also encounters Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe) a beautiful doctor who feels sympathy for him and his plight.

As Cole travels back and forth in time he begins to realize that one of the most important clues to the source of the deadly virus may lie in the rather enigmatic underground organization known only as The Army of the 12 Monkeys. Soon, Railly and Goines begin to play integral roles in Cole's search as he consistently crosses paths with them. But is this all taking place in Cole's mind? Is he really humanity's only hope at averting a catastrophic disaster or is he just insane? From the first shot to the film's conclusion we are never quite sure of Cole's sanity or lack thereof. It is just one of many questions that the audience must think about not only during the film but long after it ends.

The seeds of Twelve Monkeys lie in an obscure French New Wave film called La Jetee (1962) made by Chris Marker. The film was composed entirely of black and white photographs and set in Paris after World War III. It was an apocalyptic vision in reaction to the threat of nuclear annihilation that became prominent in the 1950s and 1960s. Writers David and Janet Peoples were approached by producer Robert Kosberg to do an adaptation of La Jetee. The screenwriting couple wasn't that keen on the idea, however. "We couldn't see the point. It's a masterpiece and we didn't see that there was anyway to translate that masterpiece," David remarked in an interview. And he was no slouch to the art of screenwriting, having rewritten the screenplay for Blade Runner (1982) and penned the brilliant Clint Eastwood film, Unforgiven (1992).

Kosberg got the Peoples to watch La Jetee again and the couple began to see possibilities for a different, more detailed take on the material. "How would we react to people who showed up and said 'Oh I've just popped up from the future' and in turn how would that person deal with our reaction." With this in mind, David and Janet set out to write a challenging piece of fiction that not only manipulated our conventional views of time but that also dealt with the notion of madness. Janet explained in an interview, "We were very interested in asking questions like 'Is this man mad? And how about the prophets of the past, were they mad? Were they true prophets? Were they coming from another time? What are all the different possibilities?'" The film's script argues that certain people who are classified insane by society at large may not really be crazy at all but are in actuality presenting ideas that are way ahead of our time. And perhaps the blame for this misunderstanding should be leveled at the psychiatric profession which, as one character in the film observes, has become the new religion of a society that has deserted traditional faith for modern technology.

After showing the finished screenplay to Marker and getting his blessings, the Peoples were faced with the daunting task of finding someone who would not only click with the material but also have the visual flair that the story needed. The couple figured that the only director to handle such tricky subject matter was somebody like Ridley Scott or Terry Gilliam. The theme of madness that plays such a prominent role in the script fit right in with Gilliam's preoccupations and so he seemed the natural choice to direct. As luck would have it the filmmaker was between projects and looking for work after several years of seeing potential projects fall through for various reasons.

Gilliam was also eager to take a lot of Hollywood money (a $30 million budget) and create a strange art film that would fly in the face of the traditional mainstream movie. "The idea that someone's writing a script like this in Hollywood and getting the studio to pay for it was pretty extraordinary. So I thought let's continue to see how much money we can get the studio to spend." Gilliam's battles with Hollywood studios are the stuff of legend – most notably his struggle with Universal over the release of Brazil (1984). They wanted to revoke the director's final cut privileges to insert a happier ending instead of Gilliam's decidedly downbeat ending. Gilliam's vision prevailed in the end, but the ordeal left him understandably wary of further studio involvement. He had reconciled somewhat with Hollywood by making The Fisher King (1991) which turned out to be a surprise commercial and critical success.

Architecture plays an important role in Terry Gilliam's films and Twelve Monkeys is no different. "I've always used architecture as if it was a character." To this end, Gilliam found all sorts of intriguing architecture to populate his film. This included the transformation of an 1820's prison into a 1990's mental hospital where the film's protagonist, James Cole first meets the Jeffrey Goines. The director found that the structure was designed like a wheel with spokes and hub. And so Gilliam used one section where three spoke-like parts headed off into nowhere. "It seemed to me [that] this trifurcated room was right for multiple personalities." This feeling of madness is further amplified by the extensive use of skewed, off-kilter camera angles that are often shot at low angles to constantly distort and disorient the scene. "We started doing it and it got more and more fun to see how far we could push it because I wanted to create an atmosphere that you don't know whether this guy is crazy or whether he actually does come back from the future." The unusual camera angles not only mimic Cole's confused state but also reflect Jeffrey's manic, hyperactive worldview. By presenting the mindsets of these two characters in such a fashion, Gilliam is inviting us to see the world through their eyes and in the process offer a new, unique take on the world that we might not have been aware of before.

Gilliam was not just content to challenge mainstream audiences with unusual visuals and subject matter, but he also wanted to mess with people's perception of certain movie stars by casting box office names like Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis against type. "One of the reasons [for doing Twelve Monkeys] was taking Bruce and putting him into situations and asking of him things I don't think he's ever done before or that people haven't seen him do ... and with Brad Pitt it's the same thing. Brad is pretty laconic in some ways. Suddenly he's a blabbermouth, jabbering away at high speed. I love doing that, playing with the public's perception of that star; otherwise, it wouldn't be fun." As a result we get a very different Bruce Willis here than we have come to expect. Gone are the wisecracks and smart-aleck attitude and instead we see Willis impart a real wounded sensibility to the character of James Cole. The reluctant time traveler always seems to be flinching at every little thing, often appearing disoriented or distracted as he struggles to understand what is going on around him. Willis displays great skill in this role – perhaps the best of his career – as he creates a truly tragic figure that may or may not be losing his mind.

Brad Pitt's character, Jeffrey Goines, resides at the exact opposite end of the spectrum. Where Cole is a sad, brooding figure, Goines is a frenetic psychotic oscillating wildly between paranoid ravings and calm interludes where his madness is kept in check but still resides behind wild eyes. It's a daring performance for Pitt who lets it all hang out as he gladly chews up the scenery with his loony radical environmentalist cum revolutionary that all but steals every scene he's in. It's a performance that Pitt worked long and hard to achieve and it paid off in a Golden Globe Award that year for Best Supporting Actor and an Academy Award nomination in the same category.

Twelve Monkeys was well-received by critics at the time. Roger Ebert wrote, “the more you know about movies (especially the technical side), the more you're likely to admire it. But a comedy it's not. And as an entertainment, it appeals more to the mind than to the senses.” The Washington Post’s Desson Howe wrote, “In a movie in which time travel is used to rectify the past, it's too bad scriptwriters David and Janet Peoples didn't go through the time/space tunnel to work on that first draft again. But Willis and Pitts's performances, Gilliam's atmospherics and an exhilarating momentum easily outweigh such trifling flaws.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin praised Bruce Willis’ performance: “Mr. Willis holds the film together with his poignant, battered physicality, the suffering of a man fighting desperately for sanity and survival.” However, Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, “Intent on both dazzling and punishing the viewer, Gilliam gets lost in creepy spectacle and plenty of old film clips (notably Vertigo).”

It is easy to see what attracted Terry Gilliam to a project like Twelve Monkeys. In keeping with his past films, this one also played "with the same old things – time, reality, madness – so I was intrigued." Even though it was one of the few projects he did not originate himself, Gilliam quickly made the film his own. In fact, it is Twelve Monkeys' unique look that prevents any easy categorization. As Gilliam observed in an interview, "I'm determined to make it indefinable." It is this avoidance of any clear cut genre that makes the film a riddle waiting to be solved. The film is also structured somewhat like an onion. On the surface, the audience knows very little at the beginning, but gradually as it progresses and the layers are removed, more and more of the mystery is revealed. However, this is not readily apparent after an initial viewing. Only after subsequent screenings does the full impact and brilliance of what Gilliam and his cast and crew have created sink in. It is this great amount of care and detail that has clearly gone into this film that makes Twelve Monkeys worth watching.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

After more than twenty years of failed attempts and missed opportunities, Terry Gilliam did what many thought impossible — he transformed Hunter S. Thompson's classic novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, into the cinematic equivalent of a sledgehammer whacked across your frontal lobes. Thompson's book had finally been fully realized and brought to the big screen in all of its demented glory. It’s hard to believe that it has been 10 years since the film crashed and burned in theaters but it has gone on to develop a devoted cult film following that quote from its numerous memorable scenes.

Gilliam's film faithfully adapts journalist Raoul Duke (Johnny Depp) and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo's (Benicio Del Toro) trip to Las Vegas to cover the 1971 Mint 400 motorcycle race for Sports Illustrated magazine. However, the competition is merely an excuse for the duo to abuse their expense account and indulge in a galaxy of drugs. What was initially a simple journey to cover a motorcycle race mutates into a bizarre search for the American Dream.

THE BOOK

"As true gonzo journalism, this doesn't work at all, and even if it did, I couldn't possibly admit it. Only a goddamn lunatic would write a thing like this and claim it was true." – Hunter S. Thompson

Originally, Thompson was assigned to write captions for a photo-essay on the Mint 400 off-road motorcycle race in Las Vegas for Sports Illustrated magazine. Along for the ride was his attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta whom he had met through a mutual friend. Thompson remembers, "I dragged Oscar away while he was working on the 'Biltmore Seven' trial because we couldn't talk in that war zone. So I said, 'Let's get the hell out of town!'" At some point, the editor for Rolling Stone magazine heard that Thompson was in Vegas and asked him to also cover the National District Attorneys Association's Third Annual Conference on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs which was being held at Caesar's Palace.

When Sports Illustrated rejected his work Thompson took the Rolling Stone gig. It was at this point that he began to put his weird journey on paper. Truth was truly stranger than fiction as Thompson remembers one incident with his wild attorney: "He would do things like drop me off at the airport in my rental car, and then two months later I'd get a bill for three weeks that he used the car. He'd forget to take it back." Acosta had inspired Thompson to take his writing to a new level: "gonzo journalism," where the journalist participates in the story he is writing about. Taking refuge in a Ramada Inn in Arcadia, California, Thompson wrote relentlessly, frequenting a 24-hour coffee shop and breaking only for the odd swim in the pool. By the time he had returned home to Aspen, Colorado, the writer had a first draft done. In his basement, Thompson blasted the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" while he "anguished over five or six drafts until I got it right."

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was first published in Rolling Stone magazine in 1971. Thompson invented the Raoul Duke moniker because he was worried that his debauched misadventures depicted in the book might ruin his chances of acquiring press credentials from the White House so that he could cover the 1972 Presidential campaign — hence the Duke byline. Thompson got his credentials and allowed the book publishers to use his real name when the story was released in book form in 1972.

Thompson's book tapped into the cultural zeitgeist at just the right moment by connecting with a disillusioned generation who watched the hopeful 1960s transform into the dark and turbulent 1970s. Terry Gilliam sees Fear and Loathing as "a book about loss: the Sixties didn't pay off the way Hunter obviously had hoped they would."

WHERE THE BUFFALO ROAM

Many filmmakers over the years had tried to make films out of Hunter S. Thompson's books but the first completed effort did not surface until 1980 with Where The Buffalo Roam. The writer's agent called him one day and told him that movie producer Thom Mount wanted to buy the rights to "The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat," a eulogy for Oscar Acosta, for $100,000. Thompson's expectations weren't that high. "So to me it was just another option job. Then all of a sudden there was some moment of terrible horror when I realized they were going to make the movie."

Paramount released the film, Art Linson directed it, Neil Young did the music, and John Kaye wrote the screenplay. Kaye talked to Thompson before writing the script but the final product was not what the writer had envisioned. "Yeah, he seemed to understand a lot more than what came through in the script. I was very disappointed in the script. It sucks—a bad, dumb, low-level, low-rent script."

Art Linson's film liberally mixed Thompson's real life with his books and starred Bill Murray and Peter Boyle as Thompson and Oscar Acosta, respectively. Thompson even served as a consultant on the film but this did little to translate the author's warped vision to the big screen. While watching Buffalo Roam, it becomes readily evident that, despite Murray's inspired performance, director Linson had no idea what Thompson's books were trying to say. The film seems more like a collection of rather tame highlights from the man's work.

Buffalo Roam was panned by critics and a commercial disaster at the box office. The studio quickly pulled it from distribution and Thompson hated the movie, infamously threatening to cause Murray bodily harm if the two ever crossed paths again. After the movie's dismal reception, no other adaptations were completed. Many attempts to get a Fear and Loathing Las Vegas film going were launched by the likes of Martin Scorsese and Jack Nicholson but nothing ever materialized. It took actor Johnny Depp and his friendship with Hunter S. Thompson to get any kind of serious attempt at an adaptation even possible.

HUNTER MEETS THE REPO MAN

"I've been dealing with these yo-yos buying options on things for years. Options have been essentially paying the rent." – Hunter S. Thompson

Rhino Films was the latest in a long line of people trying to bring Hunter S. Thompson's vision to the big screen. Head of Production (and one of the film's producers) Stephen Nemeth originally wanted Lee Tamahori (Once Were Warriors and Mulholland Falls) to direct. However, Tamahori wasn't going to be available until after the January 1997 start date. Rhino asked Thompson for an extension on the movie rights but the author and his lawyers said no. As Thompson later remarked in an interview, "they just kept asking for more [time]. I got kind of agitated about it, because I thought they were trying to put off doing it. So I began to charge them more...I wanted to see the movie done, once it got started." Rhino countered by green-lighting the film and hiring Alex Cox to direct. According to Nemeth, Cox could "do it for a price, could do it quickly, and could get this movie going in four months." Judging by his past efforts, films like Repo Man (1983) and Straight to Hell (1987), Cox was no stranger to the same kind of Gonzo sensibilities evident in Thompson's books.

Cox started writing the screenplay with Tod Davies, a UCLA Hunter S. Thompson scholar. Depp and Del Toro committed to the film at this point. However, during pre-production Cox and another of the film's producers, Laila Nabulsi (and an ex-flame of Thompson's) had "creative differences" and she forced Rhino to choose between her and the filmmaker. Despite having no background in movies, Nabulsi did have an arrangement with Thompson to produce the movie.

The fatal blow came when Cox encountered Thompson with his own ideas of adapting the Fear and Loathing into a film. Johnny Depp remembers that "Alex had some dream that he could make Thompson's work better. He was wrong. He had this idea about animation in the film.” Cox and Davies, met Thompson at his home and it was at this point that Cox expressed his desire to incorporate animation into the movie. Thompson took offense to his book being reduced to a cartoon and promptly kicked Cox and Davies out of his home. When all the dust settled, Rhino sided with Nabulsi, fired Cox, and paid him $60,000 in script fees.

ENTER TERRY GILLIAM

"I want it to be seen as one of the great movies of all time, and one of the most hated movies of all time." – Terry Gilliam

The studio approached Terry Gilliam's agent. There was an air of desperation because the option on the book was about to expire and Rhino had another project they wanted to start in 1998. Hunter S. Thompson granted the studio an extension for the rights but they didn't have a definite deal with Gilliam. Thompson would only grant another extension if Gilliam was given a concrete deal. However, Rhino did not want to commit to Gilliam in case he didn't work out (like Cox). They threatened to make the film with Cox and without Depp or Del Toro if the two actors didn't like the possibility of Gilliam being ousted. Nabulsi told them about Rhino's plans and Gilliam and Depp were furious. Universal stepped in to distribute the movie and Depp and Gilliam were paid half a million dollars each. Ironically, Gilliam ended up making Fear and Loathing without a firm deal in place.

Terry Gilliam seemed like the perfect choice to direct an adaptation of Fear and Loathing. The theme of insanity had always figured into his films but has since taken a more prominent role with his previous couple of projects. Fear and Loathing completes an informal trilogy based on madness that includes The Fisher King (1991) and Twelve Monkeys (1995).

When Gilliam had first read Fear and Loathing back in 1971, he "immediately identified with what Hunter was saying. I'd left the States to move here for the very same reasons that Fear and Loathing was written—that feeling the ideals of the '60s had died and that it was all fucked. I was so angry I was going to start throwing bombs. So when I read the book it was like, 'Jesus! He's got it! That's exactly how the fuck I feel!'" Gilliam enjoyed the book but didn't think about it for years afterwards.

Ralph Steadman, who illustrated the book, was a good friend of Gilliam and began to bug him over the years to do a film version of Fear and Loathing. In 1989, Gilliam remembers a "script turned up which briefly got me excited about the book again, but I was busy with another project and I ultimately decided that the script didn't capture the story properly."

Gilliam and his friend, Toni Grisoni, were originally working on a project about Theseus and the Minotaur. Grisoni read in a magazine that Alex Cox was set to direct Fear and Loathing. Grisoni called up Cox (they knew each other) and expressed an interest in adapting the book into a film. Cox said that he was doing it himself and that was that.

In April 1997, Cox was out and Gilliam got the call from Laila Nabulsi to direct. Gilliam said in an interview, "she sent me a script, and it reminded me of how funny and good the book was. I didn't really care for the script, but it inspired me to go back and read the book again.” Gilliam scrapped Cox and Davies' screenplay and asked Grisoni to help him write their own. Together they hammered out a screenplay in only ten days at Gilliam's home in London, England in May of 1997. As Grisoni remembers, "I'd sit at the keyboard, and we'd talk and talk and I'd keep typing.” Gilliam felt that the structure of the film should be organized much in the same way as the book:

We start out at full speed and it's WOOOO! The drug kicks in and you're on speed! Whoah! You get the buzz—it's crazy, it's outrageous, the carpet's moving and everybody's laughing and having a great time. But then, ever so slowly, the walls start closing in and it's like you're never going to get out of this fucking place. It's an ugly nightmare and there's no escape. And then they get out into the desert and it's light again. But it's a really rough ride for a lot of people to climb inside that head.

Gilliam also felt that the more surreal parts of the book could be transferred onto film if done right. For example, the imaginary bats that Duke sees on the highway at the beginning of the book was one such passage the director felt could be translated into visual terms.

Right at the start I thought, 'Well, we can't show them in the sky, we can only show them inside Duke's eyeball. So in the film we push in really tight on one of his eyes, where you can see these reflections of bats flapping around. We then cut to a wide shot that shows Duke waving his arms at nothing. I wanted to some how convey that this was an internal problem.

When Gilliam first joined the production there wasn't even a set budget. "I went out there and said all right, to start with just double it, whatever the budget is, seven and a half? I want $15-million, whatever it is just double it. And at the same time we're running around doing location scouts, discovering we can't use this, which we thought we could use, and we're trying to invent everything at the same time. I've never done a film like that, but on the other hand that was part of the fun of this one."

From there, the pace never slackened as Gilliam and company shot Fear and Loathing on location in a fast 56 days on a lean budget (by Hollywood standards) of $18.5 million. "One of the reasons I made this film,” Gilliam remembers, “was to push myself and see if I could still work the way I used to: fast, furiously and cheaply."

THE LOOK

Visually, Fear and Loathing is a masterpiece with a whacked out kaleidoscope of colors and insanely inventive camera angles and perspectives that make you feel like you're actually on drugs. Each drug consumed by Duke and Dr. Gonzo had its corresponding cinematic look to simulate its effects on the characters' perception. As the film's cinematographer, Nicola Pecorini points out, the effect of ether was done with "loose depth of field; everything becomes non-defined,” while the effects of amyl nitrate were done so that the "perception of light gets very uneven, light levels increase and decrease during the shots."

The look of Fear and Loathing was not inspired by Ralph Steadman's famous artwork that accompanied Thompson's words. Robert Yarber, an artist who paints pictures of people inside hotel rooms using fluorescent colors, influenced the look of the movie. His paintings captured the hallucinatory feel that the filmmakers were looking for: "the paintings use all kinds of neon colors, and the light sources don't necessarily make sense," Pecorini said in an interview in American Cinematographer magazine. As Gilliam remembers, "people inside hotel rooms in really fluorescent colors. His work is very strange and extraordinary and the colors he uses are extremely vibrant. We used him as a guide while mixing our palette of deeply disturbing fluorescent colors." This is evident in the scenes set in hotel rooms that each has their own garish Las Vegas decor that Duke and Dr. Gonzo subsequently transform into a twisted disaster area.

DEPP BECOMES DUKE

Actor Johnny Depp first met Thompson in Aspen, Colorado just before New Year's Eve, 1995. Depp left that initial meeting wondering why Fear and Loathing had not been made into a film. The actor subsequently invited Thompson to do a one-night gig at Depp's nightclub, The Viper Room on September 29, 1996 with the intention of asking the writer about doing a film version of his book. The opportunity never materialized but the two began corresponding via faxes.

Early one day, Thompson called Depp on the phone and asked him if he would consider playing Raoul Duke if a film was ever made of Fear and Loathing. "Without hesitation, I said, 'You bet!'" Depp recalls. By the Spring of 1997, Depp had moved into the basement of Owl Farm, Thompson's home in Aspen in order to do proper research for the role.

Depp was given complete access to every memento the writer saved from his 1971 trip to Las Vegas. "We went through the manuscript and the notes. There's notes on napkins and everything. He saved it all." The actor read through the writer's notebooks (which included an unpublished chapter entitled, "The Coconut Scene," which Gilliam placed in the film) only to realize that "the freakiest thing was that it was all real, that the reality was as insane as the book."

Thompson was disappointed that the film's costume designer wanted Depp to wear "bizarre Hawaiian zoot suits, and shit like that." The writer let Depp rummage through his wardrobe at the time of the book: Hawaiian shirts, a patchwork jacket, a safari hat, and a silver medallion given to him by Acosta. Thompson graciously allowed Depp to wear it all in the film. Gilliam remembers that the actor would "come back from Hunter's house with shirts and bags that Hunter had taken on the trip. In fact, Johnny drove the original Red Shark—the 1971 Chevrolet convertible in the film—down to Vegas from Hunter's house in Colorado."

All of these items only enhance Depp's performance. In the film, he has literally transformed into Duke/Thompson, complete with the man's unusual bow-legged walk, sweeping arm movements, mumbling speech pattern, and the trademark Dunhill cigarettes in a holder between clenched teeth. It's an incredible performance that transcends simple mimicry.

Depp's research culminated after a week when Thompson shaved almost all of the actor's hair for the film and entrusted him with the very car he used in the trip. The actor soon became Thompson's roadie and in charge of security for The Proud Highway (a collection of Thompson's letters) book tour.

If anything, the concern was that Depp would get too into the role and never emerge intact afterwards. While making the film, the actor received a phone call from Bill Murray who had also spent a lot of time with Thompson while researching for his role in Where the Buffalo Roam. Murray had had a very hard time shaking Thompson's distinctive persona after filming ended. When the comedian returned to Saturday Night Live for the fifth season, "he had virtually become Hunter Thompson, complete with long black cigarette holder, dark glasses, and nasty habits." Murray warned Depp to "be careful or you'll find yourself ten years from now still doing him...Make sure you're next role is some drastically different guy." Depp seemed to heed Murray's advice and went off to do The Astronaut's Wife (1999), a lackluster rip-off of Rosemary's Baby (1968), where he played an astronaut who is possessed by an alien entity.

THE PROBLEMS

"I don't think it was a well-organized film. Its birth was not easy. Certain people didn't...I'm not going to name names but it was a strange film, like one leg was shorter than the other. There was all sorts of chaos." – Terry Gilliam

One of the biggest obstacles Gilliam faced while shooting Fear and Loathing was working in the casinos in Las Vegas. He was only give six tables to put extras around and "the only time they'd give us was between two and six in the morning. And they insisted that the extras did real gambling!" In order to alleviate this problem, Gilliam decided to shoot the exterior shots of the Bazooka Casino in front of the Stardust hotel/casino with the interiors built and filmed on a Warner-Hollywood soundstage. That way, the director could exert more control over his surroundings instead of relying on the casinos that weren't always that co-operative.

Gilliam couldn't even afford the music rights to the Rolling Stones song, "Sympathy For The Devil," which is featured so prominently in the book. The price tag for the song was $300,000 (one third of the soundtrack budget) so they decided to use "Jumpin' Jack Flash" instead.

Another problem was Thompson himself. Gilliam decided to have the writer make a small cameo in the film but feared having him on the set because of the potential chaos the man could create. "Hunter is an uncontrollable force—he is chaos, you can't predict what he'll do next. So me, Johnny and his girlfriend were like three sheepdogs, herding Hunter into position."

To make matters worse, Gilliam faced another battle after Fear and Loathing was made. The Writer's Guild of America wanted to give sole writing credit to Alex Cox and Tod Davies even though Gilliam and Toni Grisoni had written their own script. According to WGA rules, if you're a writer-director, you have to produce more than 50% of the script, while other writers involved only have to produce 30%. However, as Gilliam pointed out, "there have been at least five previous attempts at adapting the book, and they all come from the book. They all use the same scenes." The WGA determined that Gilliam and Grisoni had not written the film. To add insult to injury, Gilliam wasn't even allowed to know who the arbiters were that made the decision or see their reports.

Universal brought in their lawyers and Gilliam and Grisoni had to write a 25-page document to prove that they had written more than 60% of the film. By early May 1998, the WGA revised its decision and gave writing credit to Gilliam and Grisoni first and then Cox and Davies second. This hardly satisfied Gilliam who burned his WGA card in protest.

THE AFTERMATH

"I always get very tense in those (test screenings), because I'm ready to fight. I know the pressure from the studios is, 'somebody didn't like that, change it!'" – Terry Gilliam

Fear and Loathing debuted at the Cannes Film Festival and Gilliam said, "I'm curious about the reaction...If I'm going to be disappointed, it's because it doesn't make any waves, that people are not outraged."

To say that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas received a mixed reaction from audiences and critics alike is a gross understatement. In the New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote, "Even the most precise cinematic realizations of Mr. Thompson's images (and of Ralph Steadman's cartoon drawings for the book) don't begin to match the surreal ferocity of the author's language." Stephen Hunter, in his review for the Washington Post, wrote, "It tells no story at all. Little episodes of no particular import come and go...But the movie is too grotesque to be entered emotionally." Mike Clark, of USA Today, found the film, "simply unwatchable." Perhaps Gilliam and company made too faithful an adaptation that only really appeals to devotees of the book. Or, as Gilliam suggests, people were scared off because they had to think about what they were watching. "You've got to work out what it's told you, and that's not what America's about. They want their morality clear.”

Gilliam found that the American press refused to "even talk about Fear and Loathing. They won't say, 'Ban the film'—they're too liberal for that—so instead they seem to have adopted this attitude of, Oh, maybe if we don't talk about it, it'll go away. That's modern America all over.” And judging by Fear and Loathing's quick demise at the box office and subsequent disappearance from theaters, this strategy worked. While most critics praised Depp and Del Toro's performance, most found Gilliam's film to be a muddled mess with no coherent structure: just one long debauched road trip.

Regardless of what the critics thought, Gilliam hoped that one person would at least appreciate his efforts: Hunter S. Thompson. "Yeah, I liked it. It's not my show, but I appreciated it. Depp did a hell of a job. His narration is what really held the film together, I think. If you hadn't had that, it would have just been a series of wild scenes,” Thompson said in an interview.

Gilliam remembers Hunter's reaction to the film when he saw at the premiere: "He was making all this fucking noise! Apparently it all came flooding back to him, he was reliving the whole trip! He was yelling out and jumping on his seat like it was a rollercoaster, ducking and diving, shouting "SHIT! LOOK OUT! GODDAM BATS!”

I think that this is indeed some kind of genius film, but in a really demented way that I would have a hard time verbalizing to someone who didn't tap into what Gilliam is trying to do. I can see why Fear and Loathing received a critical shellacking from all the usual pundits (Ebert et al.). It's a very odd film — a 128-minute acid trip from beginning to end with no respite, no rest stops, and no objective distance from which to view the whole insane picture safely. You are plunged headlong into this weird, wild world along with the characters.

Fear and Loathing contains many funny moments, bits of dialogue, and visual zingers as Duke and Dr. Gonzo make their way through the surreal landscape that is Las Vegas. The humor in this film is simultaneously disturbing and hilarious — a pitch-black satire of American culture and excess. Around the 3/4-way mark, Fear and Loathing veers off into some really dark territory as the horror that accompanies chemical dependency rears its ugly head. I was worried that this element would be lost in the transfer from book to film and that it was going to be simply a "straight" comedy. Thankfully, the darker edge of the book has been retained and reinforced in spades.

The heart of darkness in Fear and Loathing is a scene that takes place in the North Star Coffee Lounge between Duke, Dr. Gonzo and a waitress whom the attorney threatens. As Gilliam observes, "this is two guys who have gone beyond the pale, this is unforgivable—that scene, it's ugly. My approach, rather than to throw it out, was to make that scene the low point." This is the kind of film that people will either really love or hate — there is no middle ground. Gilliam's film is going to be one of those movies that's destined to become an instant cult item. As Hunter S. Thompson puts it in the book, "there he goes, one of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind, never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, too rare to die." Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is pure Gonzo filmmaking for people who like weird, challenging films.