Sideways

Alexander Payne is part of an exciting wave of filmmakers who grew up during the 1970’s and were subsequently influenced by the films from that era. His contemporaries include the likes of Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, and David O. Russell to name but a few. And like his fellow filmmakers, Payne eschews the Hollywood trend of placing an emphasis on special effects and trendy actors in favor of character-driven, comedy-drama hybrids populated with character actors like Laura Dern, Matthew Broderick and Kathy Bates.


Payne’s About Schmidt (2002) continued his fascination with American cinema in the ‘70s by featuring one its biggest (and most prolific) stars, Jack Nicholson. His next film, Sideways (2004), continued the road movie motif from Schmidt and combined it with the buddy film. Jack Cole (Thomas Haden Church) is a failed actor about to be married. He decides to go on one last week of uninhibited fun with his best friend, Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti), a grade school teacher and struggling author. They go on a wine-tasting tour through California’s Central Coast and squeeze in a bit of golfing as well.

Miles is an avid (nay-elitist) wine aficionado while Jack is completely ignorant of wine beyond what tastes good to him and what doesn’t. Miles is trying to get his book published with little success and he’s grown cynical and defeated as a result. Initially, he comes off as an unlikable loser not above stealing money from his mother. Jack counters Miles’ repressed nature by coming off as something of an instinctive kind of person who indulges in his raging id. He was on a hit television show... 11 years ago and is now relegated to doing voiceovers for commercials. Along the way, Jack and Miles meet Maya (Virginia Madsen), a beautiful waitress who Miles knows from way back when, and Stephanie (Sandra Oh), who works at a winery and catches Jack’s eye.

Jack and Miles are complete messes as human beings. They lack direction and are hypocrites. Miles says he’s an author but his book is going nowhere, while Jack is getting married but hits on anything in a dress. They are hardly a sympathetic pair. And yet Payne is able to get a lot of comedic mileage from them. Miles is a wine snob who rambles on about the taste, color, and so on, only to have Jack sum up his opinion simply, “I like it,” which comically deflates Miles’ pontificating. They have an intriguing dynamic. While they lie to others – Miles to Jack’s friends about the status of his novel and Jack being nice to Miles’ mother when he clearly wants to get back on the road – they are no pretenses between each other. These guys are getting to the stage in their lives where they’re looking back as opposed to looking ahead. Jack sees marriage as an institution that will stifle his freedom while Miles has a very negative outlook on life, finding any excuse not to ask Maya out despite obviously liking her because he assumes that it will go nowhere.

An interesting thing happens during the course of the film. At first, Miles starts off as an unsympathetic character while we warm up to Jack’s funny repartee as the charming rogue. Halfway through the film they flip roles and it’s Jack who is exposed as a pathetic womanizer and Miles becomes more sympathetic thanks to Maya’s influence. She humanizes him and is easily his intellectual equal. She knows her wine and this clearly impresses Miles. She’s smart and beautiful so why is she even wasting her time with a sad sack like Miles? She gets to know him beyond his looks and liquefies the pretension of his character. Maya pierces his wine-speak armor that he throws up all the time with her easy-going nature and Miles realizes that he doesn’t need to constantly impress her. There is a nice scene where they get to know each other and it is great to see two skilled actors getting a chance to act and really delve into their characters. In this scene, we finally see someone thaw out Miles and get him to open up, stop worrying and thinking so negatively. They use their mutual love for wine as a way to share their passions and aspirations with each other. It’s a beautifully realized scene because you are seeing two people starting to fall in love with each other. Like a fine wine, Maya allows Miles to breathe and he gets better as time goes on. She’s a romantic who is able to cut through his cynicism and soften his hard edges.

Fresh off the success of American Splendor (2003), Paul Giamatti is one of those actors who make it look effortless as he inhabits the characters he plays so completely. Miles is a neurotic mess; a depressed cynic who is definitely a half glass empty kind of guy. Giamatti is able to tap into his character’s deep reservoir of pain and anger. In a couple of shots early in the film, Payne hints at Miles’ past when he looks at old photographs in his mom’s room. They evoke happier times with his father (now out of the picture) and wife (now divorced). Giamatti’s sad expression in this moment conveys more than any words could. During the course of the film, we find out more about why Miles is so miserable and a lot of it has to do with self-loathing, which explains why he tries to sabotage things with Maya. In some ways, Miles is a variation of Giamatti’s take on the equally acerbic Harvey Pekar in Splendor.

Ever since the short-lived television sitcom Ned and Stacy, Thomas Haden Church has been an untapped resource and with Sideways he was given the role of his career. As Miles’ crass, philandering best friend, he plays Jack as a middle-aged frat boy who still calls women, “chicks.” Haden Church has never been afraid to play abrasive, bordering on unlikeable, characters and he expertly does the same here as a guy who presents a jovial façade but underneath lurks a lot of pain and an insensitive mean streak. Haden Church’s dead-panned delivery of smart-ass lines works well against Giamatti’s uptight straight man. Together, they make an excellent team. After years of playing supporting character roles, it’s great to see Haden Church and Giamatti starring in a film. They play so well off each other that you’d swear they’d acted together before. Haden Church and Giamatti are very believable as long-time friends from the way they interact with each other.

For years, Virginia Madsen has been biding her time in direct-to-video hell and so it is great to see her in a high profile role like this one. From The Hot Spot (1990) to Candyman (1992), she’s always been an interesting actress to watch and with Sideways, Madsen is given strong material to sink her teeth into and she delivers a nuanced performance. Sandra Oh has been quietly building a nice body of work over the years and was unfairly overlooked in the numerous awards that have been lavished on this film. Granted, of the four main cast members, she has the least amount of screen time but she makes every moment she has count.

Producer Michael London was a former Los Angeles Times journalist and studio executive who had become frustrated by the studio development process of shepherding a film from script to screen. He bought the rights to the unpublished semi-autobiographical novel Sideways by Rex Pickett with his own money and gave it to Alexander Payne to read in 1999 while the filmmaker was promoting Election. Payne found himself drawn to “the humanity of the characters” and how it tapped into his desire to make films about “people with flaws,” and “unfulfilled desires.” He was not a wine expert but always liked it and thought that the subculture would be fun to explore and act as a backdrop to the relationship between Jack and Miles. However, he was committed to making About Schmidt next and so he and London kept optioning the book over the years. Then, he and his long-time writing partner, Jim Taylor, wrote the screenplay for free. Payne and London drew up a budget and financed pre-production themselves thereby allowing themselves the kind of creative control they wanted. They only began approaching movie studios once they had the script, budget and a preferred cast in place. Four studios were interested with Fox Searchlight winning out.

Based on the reputation of his previous films, several big name actors campaigned for roles in Payne’s film. Both Brad Pitt and George Clooney were eager to play the role of Jack and met with the filmmaker but it ultimately came down to Thomas Haden Church and Matt Dillon. Edward Norton expressed an interest in playing Miles and Payne seriously considered him for the role. With the exception of Sandra Oh, his wife at the time, all the actors auditioned for Payne and London. Haden Church had auditioned for both Election and About Schmidt (narrowly losing out to Dermot Mulroney on the latter) and even though Payne did not cast him in those films, he had been impressed with the actor. When it came to Sideways, Payne felt that Haden Church “kind of is that character,” and cast him as Jack. At the time, he had moved away from acting and when he read the script in May 2003, thought to himself, “I have no shot at this whatsoever, but I have to answer the call of duty. If I get a chance, then I gotta take it.” When Paul Giamatti auditioned for the film, he had not read the whole script, just an excerpt – the scene where Miles talks about his love of Pinot Noir wine to Maya. The actor found Miles’ obsession with the wine to be “an interesting theme for this guy” who was constantly “striving for transcendence through the wine and the wine milieu, and it just keeps collapsing in on the guy because he’s such a wreck.” After casting Giamatti and Haden Church, Payne insisted that they spend some time together before filming, hanging out and practicing their dialogue so that characters’ friendship would be believable.

The setting of the story was very important to Payne as he brought a documentary sensibility to capturing the people that inhabit the area. Before shooting, he spent four months living in the wine country of California, taking notes so that it would be accurately depicted in his film. The actors spent two weeks of rehearsals with Payne, “shooting the shit and indulging in good food and wine,” according to Giamatti. With a budget in the range of $16-17 million, Sideways was shot over 54 days in the Santa Barbara area. For the look of the film, he drew inspiration from the photographic style of Hal Ashby’s The Landlord (1970), screening it for his director of photography, Phedon Papamichael (Moonlight Mile), in order to study the softness of colors and the lack of sharp, vivid lighting that he wanted in his own film.

I think it’s safe to say that Sideways received almost universally positive reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, “The characters are played not by the first actors you would think of casting, but by actors who will prevent you from ever being able to imagine anyone else in their roles.” Time magazine’s Richard Corliss felt that it was “by far the year's best American movie.” In his review for the New York Observer, Andrew Sarris wrote, “Mr. Giamatti gives off soulful sparks with Ms. Madsen, a 41-year-old sultry-noir-dame veteran with generally unappreciated acting gifts. Maya, like Miles, is still recovering from a previous failed marriage, which helps make Sideways even more of a movie for grown-ups.” USA Today gave the film four out of four stars and Mike Clark wrote, “This is a building-block movie: Its stand-out excellence becomes apparent only gradually.” In her review for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote, “But it takes more than courage to push actors to their limits of their talents, which Mr. Payne does here. You need to understand that the truth of both a human being and a screen performance doesn't exist only in grace and beauty, but in small fissures and cracks.” The Washington Post’s Desson Thomson wrote, “Church, best known for his character Lowell Mather in the television show Wings, is a revelation. He turns a cad into an unforgettable and, dare I say, lovable rogue.” Finally, in his review for the Village Voice, J. Hoberman wrote, “Maya and Stephanie are vivid, fetching abstractions; Jack and Miles are male archetypes, as well as the two most fully realized comic creations in recent American movies.”

Payne’s film harkens to Bob Rafelson’s classic character-driven films from the ‘70s, like Five Easy Pieces (1970) and The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), featuring prickly protagonists. Payne rejects traditional mainstream tastes in favor of presenting unsympathetic characters and a conclusion that refuses to wrap things up neatly. He even employs multiple split-screen montages and snap zooms, which were very much en vogue during the ‘70s. Miles is the voice of reason while Jack is the voice of fun in Sideways. However, Miles understands who he is and is honest with himself and his lot in life unlike Jack who continues to live a lie, or rather play a role. Jack lives in a bubble and they always break. Miles doesn’t have to worry about that because he bursts his bubble on a daily basis. These men are idiots and it is the women who are smart and truthful. The men lie, cheat and are forced to face the repercussions of their actions. This provides them with a chance at redemption as embodied in Miles who learns to loosen up and finally let someone new into his heart.

Roadkill

Growing up in Canada I never fully appreciated Canadian cinema. Oh sure, I liked the films of David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan and Strange Brew (1983). They were able to break out of the ghetto that is Canadian cinema and actually make an impact in the United States and the rest of the world. It took being in another country to finally appreciate what I took for granted so many years ago. Whenever I got homesick I put on a film like Roadkill (1989), which is fiercely proud of its Canadian culture, and it reminded me of home. Roadkill is the first part of a loosely connected rock ‘n’ roll/road movie trilogy by Canadian filmmaker Bruce McDonald. The film was something of a breath of fresh air when it debuted because Canadian film had, up until then, been traditionally known as notoriously boring or, worse, derivative of American cinema. McDonald managed to fuse the low budget aesthetics of the emerging U.S. indie film movement with a distinctively Canadian take on the road movie genre.

Ramona (Valerie Buhagiar) is a naïve assistant who works for a slimy rock promoter named Roy Seth (Gerry Quigley). He orders her to travel through Northern Ontario and find delinquent rock ‘n’ roll band The Children of Paradise and their enigmatic lead singer, Mathew (Shaun Bowring). The band has gone AWOL and missed their last four gigs. Seth tells Ramona to terminate their contract once she finds them. If this premise sounds familiar, it should, because it more than resembles the structure of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) albeit as a comedy. Ramona, like Captain Willard, is a lone protagonist assigned a job she doesn’t want but can’t refuse. She has to navigate dangerous terrain and encounter all sorts of odd characters. Along the way she even writes her thoughts down in a diary that is conveyed to the audience in the form of a voiceover just like Willard does in Coppola’s movie.

Roadkill has the grainy, black and white film stock look of a low-budget independent films, like Stranger than Paradise (1983) and She’s Gotta Have It (1986), to name just a couple of examples. The road movie format is a familiar genre and one that lends itself to the no-frills attitude of independent film because everything can be shot on location with very little money having to be spent on constructing sets. This format also gives McDonald and screenwriter Don McKellar an excuse to introduce all sorts of colorful characters. For example, Ramona meets a documentary crew led by none other than Roadkill’s actual director (he would do this again in Hard Core Logo) who is supposed to be making a music video on the band but ends up coming across more like a riff on Dennis Hopper’s crazed photographer in Apocalypse Now.

This type of film also allows McDonald to show off the Canadian landscape and play up the stereotype of a harsh, desolate environment that is comprised mostly of wilderness. Like he would later do in Hard Core Logo (1996), the director establishes a sense of place and seems to be gently making fun of it while simultaneously romanticizing the trademarks of the Canadian climate. This romanticism also translates to his view of the characters, in particular Ramona played with loads of charm by Valerie Buhagiar (whom McDonald was courting at the time of filming). For all of the gonzo humor of the film, McDonald cares about the character of Ramona, and this comes through in a wonderful scene where she hangs out with a young man (Mark Tarantino) and his friends in an abandoned drive-in. They dance to the sad, soulful music of the Cowboy Junkies with only the headlights of their cars as the source of illumination. The scene is a touching respite from the random weirdness of the movie.

McKellar’s screenplay also contains some very funny dialogue that occasionally plays on the stereotypical image of Canada forever living in the shadow of the United States. McKellar plays Russel the Serial Killer (although, he hasn’t killed anyone yet) and delivers a monologue partway through the film that acts as a funny riff on the cultural war between Canada and the U.S. “I’m a serial killer … It’s more of an American thing, traditionally, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s like everything else, there’s this colonial attitude about it. That if you want to make it you’ve got to go down to California or something. But I’m going to change all that.” Russel figures that the only options he has to get out a small-town are either becoming a serial killer or a hockey player (but he’s got “weak ankles”). It’s an inspired character with little details — like his business cards and a beeper where he can be reached — that makes him so memorable.

In late 1988, McDonald was a film editor working on films for Atom Egoyan (Family Viewing and Speaking Parts) and Ron Mann (Comic Book Confidential) and trying to come up with an idea for his first film. He was a big music fan and decided to make a documentary about an underground Toronto-based rock band called A Neon Rome. According to McDonald, the lead singer had, “this kind of Iggy Pop thing going, the Iggy moves and [Jim] Morrison kind of tone, I guess, in terms of their songs.” McDonald raised the money for the documentary and then, approximately six weeks before he was supposed to go on the road with the band, the lead singer shaved his head and took a vow of silence. He would sing on stage but would not do interviews. The band broke up and McDonald called screenwriter Don McKellar and told him he had money to make a film. They thought up a story about a woman looking for a band.

McDonald proudly populates Roadkill with all kinds of Canadian music. Children of Paradise, the fictitious band in the film, were played by local band Teknakullar Raincoats while neo-folk band the Leslie Spit Treeo and New Wave electronic musician Nash the Slash have cameos as themselves. The latter musician also composed the film’s score and said at the time: “I’m not interested in competing with the whole video and single business, so in scoring this, I got to do some of my most satisfying instrumental work.” According to Peter McFadzean, the film’s music coordinator, the idea was to use the music to enhance the film, and “use the film to enhance the music.”

At that year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Roadkill won the Toronto-City Award for Excellence in Canadian Production and $25,000. McDonald delivered the now legendary acceptance speech: “I hope with the $25,000 I can buy a cure for my hangover. Twenty-five thousand bucks is going to buy me a big chunk of hash. So tell those guys waiting in the back alley with the pipes that everything’s going to be OK.” The Canadian press generally warmly received the film. The Globe and Mail’s Jay Scott wrote, “Roadkill is a woman’s Easy Rider, also a doper’s remake of Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing, also a nod to Goin’ Down the Road.” Conversely, in his review for the Toronto Star, Peter Goddard wrote, “It’s a hustler’s move, a movie that has you thinking, ‘Hey, what a big dumb hunk of nothing this is,’ only to suddenly snap you awake with something so neat and clever you start to realize you’re being had.”

Roadkill is an excellent example of Canadian cinema. While it adopts a distinctly American genre like the road movie, it remains uniquely Canadian in content (except for a cameo by Joey Ramone) and attitude. Bruce McDonald remains one of the unsung heroes of the Canadian film scene, often overshadowed by its better-known figures, David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan and Denys Arcand. McDonald has remained fiercely independent over the years, supplementing his film career with a prolific one in Canadian television. Roadkill is an excellent example of his early work and an engaging, entertaining film in its own right.

Two-Lane Blacktop

In anticipation of its release later that year, Esquire magazine ran a substantial piece on Two-Lane Blacktop, boldly proclaiming it to be the best film of 1971. Despite such high praise from a prestigious periodical, the studio refused to promote the film and it was barely released theatrically. Perhaps the studio felt that the minimalist plot and characterization, coupled with the existential vibe, wouldn’t appeal to a mainstream audience. However, over the years Two-Lane Blacktop has developed a small, but loyal following among car enthusiasts who fetishized the 1955 Chevy and 1970 Pontiac GTO featured so prominently that they deserve top billing alongside the lead actors. The film also found an audience with people who dug other nihilistic road movies like Easy Rider (1969) and Vanishing Point (1971).

Two-Lane Blacktop’s plot (if you can call it that) follows two young men who race other cars in their customized ’55 Chevy. We never find out their names and the credits list them simply as the Driver (James Taylor) and the Mechanic (Dennis Wilson). Early on, they pick up the Girl (Laurie Bird) in Santa Fe, New Mexico and cross paths with a rival driver (Warren Oates) in a ’70 Pontiac GTO. The Driver and the Mechanic say little to one another and when they do it’s only about cars – their own and others. The Girl, in comparison, is infinitely chattier. Eventually, they meet GTO at a gas station and challenge each other to a cross-country race to Washington, D.C. for “pink slips,” the title to the loser’s car. GTO is gregarious to a fault, scaring off a hitchhiker by repeating the same stories twice and telling his life story, which changes with every new person he picks up.

All these guys are is reflected in their cars and the open road that stretches out in front of them. Even though they’re racing against each other, they help each other out, sharing food and offering mechanical advice. They may be polar opposites personality-wise, but they share a love of going fast in their cars – it’s the fuel that keeps them going. The Driver, the Mechanic and the Girl are enigmatic blank slates and this allows us to imprint on them our ideas and theories as to their backstories and motivation for what they do. If they give Two-Lane Blacktop its existential vibe then it is GTO who gives the film its humanity with Warren Oates’ genial performance. He welcomes hitchhikers and delights in telling the same stories, inflating his own ego.

Director Monte Hellman’s camerawork is very minimalist, almost documentary-like in how matter-of-factly it depicts the race, the places and the people that they encounter along the way. For example, the near-dialogue-less prologue depicts illegal street racing that is eventually broken up by the police. Later on in the film, the Driver and the Mechanic come across a car accident and the Mechanic’s first instinct is to check their car before he sees if the others are okay. With all of the car-speak and loving shots of fast, muscle cars, Two-Lane Blacktop is a car lover’s dream. It has also become a nostalgia piece as they just don’t make cars like the ones in this film anymore. This film also immerses us in the car-racing culture of its day like no other film then or since.

The two cars travel across the country through desolate landscapes. They travel on backroads and through small towns, existing on the margins of society. Director Monte Hellman and screenwriter Rudolph Wurlitzer have an innate understanding of the expansive nature of the United States while traveling through it by car. I would love to see these guys team up again for an adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. I think that they could do the book justice because they also understand the loneliness and camaraderie that is associated with cross-country travel.

Two-Lane Blacktop originated with producer Michael S. Laughlin. He had a two-picture deal with Cinema Center Films and convinced them to pay Will Corry $100,000 for his screenplay about two men, one black and one white, who drive across the country followed by a young girl. The script was inspired by his own cross-country journey in 1968. Returning from Italy after a film project had fallen through; Hellman was introduced to Laughlin and presented with two films, one of which was Two-Lane Blacktop. Laughlin asked Hellman to direct and he agreed on the condition that he could hire another writer to give the script a polish.

Hellman found Corry’s story “interesting but not fully realized.” A mutual friend recommended underground writer Rudolph Wurlitzer. Hellman read and enjoyed his novel Nog, “a strange ‘60s road novel,” according to its author, and was impressed enough to hire Wurlitzer. The writer began reading Corry’s script but gave up on page five. Hellman and Wurlitzer agreed to keep the basic idea of the cross-country race as well as the Driver, the Mechanic and the Girl characters. To prepare for Two-Lane Blacktop, Wurlitzer stayed in a Los Angeles motel and read car magazines. He also hung out in the San Fernando Valley with several obsessive mechanics and “stoner car freaks.” He didn’t know much about cars but did “know something about being lost on the road.” Wurlitzer wrote a new screenplay in four weeks and invented the GTO character as well as all of the others.

In February 1970, Hellman did some location scouting and was a few weeks from principal photography when Cinema Center suddenly canceled the project. Hellman shopped the script around to several Hollywood studios that liked it but wanted a say in the casting. However, a young executive at Universal Pictures by the name of Ned Tanen gave Hellman $850,000 to make the film his way, including final cut. At the time, Tanen was quite the maverick, overseeing some pretty adventurous fare with films like Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie (1971) and Peter Fonda’s The Hired Hand (1971). According to Hellman, at the time Universal was trying to “figure out what it was that made independent films, particularly Easy Rider, successful.”

Hellman saw James Taylor’s picture on a billboard on the Sunset Strip and contacted him, inviting the musician to do a screen test which was impressed the filmmakers. Four days before principal photography was to begin, the role of the Mechanic had not been cast. Hellman was desperate and screen-tested people he met in garages. A friend of Fred Roos, the film’s casting director, suggested Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson. Hellman chose the musician because he felt that Wilson “had lived that role, that he really grew up with cars.”

Principal photography began on August 13, 1970 in Los Angeles and lasted for six weeks with a crew of 30-35, three matching Chevys, and two matching GTOs traveling through the southwest towards Memphis, Tennessee. Hellman took an unconventional approach with his three non-actors by not letting them read the script. Instead, he gave the pages of dialogue on the day of shooting. They felt uncomfortable with this approach but it achieved the desired affect that Hellman was after. In particular, James Taylor, used to having control when it came to his music, was upset at this approach. Hellman finally relented and allowed Taylor to read the script in its entirety but he never got around to it. Hellman also insisted on actually going across country because he felt that the only way to convince the audience that the characters raced across the United States was to actually do it. He said, “I knew it would affect the actors – and it did, obviously. It affected everybody.”

Hellman shot almost the entire script as written and edited the film himself. He said, “I can’t look over someone’s shoulder. I need my hand on the brake.” The first cut of the film was three-and-a-half hours long. He had final cut but was contractually obligated to deliver a film that was no longer than two hours. The final version ran 105 minutes.

In their April 1971 cover story, Esquire magazine proclaimed Two-Lane Blacktop “Film of the Year” and published Wurlitzer’s script in its entirety. Hellman thought that this would be good publicity but in retrospect would not have done it because “I think it raised people’s expectations. They couldn’t accept the movie for what it was.” There was a lot of advanced buzz about the film but Lou Wasserman, then head of Universal, saw and hated it. He refused to promote the film. It opened in New York City on the fourth of July without one single advertisement in the newspapers.

Two-Lane Blacktop received mixed to positive reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and found the characters to be “too impersonal, though, and that's bothersome. After half an hour or so, the fact that we're told so little about their inner workings becomes a distraction. There doesn't seem to be a good reason for making them so awesomely one-dimensional,” but did enjoy “the sense of life that occasionally sneaked through, particularly in the character of G.T.O. He is the only character who is fully occupied with being himself (rather than the instrument of a metaphor), and so we get the sense we've met somebody.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby felt that it was a “far from perfect film (those metaphors keep blocking the road), but it has been directed, acted, photographed and scored (underscored, happily) with the restraint and control of an aware, mature filmmaker.” Time magazine’s Jay Cocks wrote, “Few film makers have dealt so well or so subtly with the American landscape. Not a single frame in the film is wasted. Even the small touches—the languid tension while refueling at a back-country gas station or the piercing sound of an ignition buzzer—have their own intricate worth.” The Village Voice’s J. Hoberman wrote, “Two-Lane Blacktop is a movie of achingly eloquent landscapes and absurdly inert characters.” Finally, in his review for the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, “The movie starts off as a narrative but gradually grows into something much more abstract—it's unsettling but also beautiful.”

Laurie Bird, James Taylor and Dennis Wilson are attractive actors and Two-Lane Blacktop captures them at a time when they had their whole lives ahead of them. Sadly, both Bird and Wilson would die way too early in their respective lives – Bird at 25 and Wilson at 39. Taylor was so unhappy with the experience of making the film that he never acted in another one again. The characters in Two-Lane Blacktop never really connect with each other in a meaningful way. The Driver and the Mechanic only talk about their car, GTO talks about his car and lies about his past, and the Girl is just along for the ride until something better comes along. They live on the fringes of society, living a vagabond existence, striving to live constantly in motion. Being on the road is what defines these characters. It isn’t where they’ve been which is important, but where they’re going as the film’s final image demonstrates.

Ed Howard posted an excellent take on the film over at his Only the Cinema blog. This Distracted Globe also takes a solid look at it. Finally, over at The Huffington Post, Kim Morgan wrote a fantastic tribute to the film.

Fandango

Fandango (1985) is a celebration of being young. It’s a coming-of-age film that takes place during that nebulous time between graduating from college and when you are about enter the workforce and finally became an adult, supposedly leaving childish things behind. The film is much more than freewheeling road movie; it is also has its poignant moments as various characters face an uncertain future. Fandango marked the directorial debut of Texas filmmaker Kevin Reynolds and was also the first time he collaborated with actor Kevin Costner, a relationship that would continue with two other films.

We meet the main characters, known collectively as the Groovers, in an Animal House-ish fraternity house in Austin Texas, 1971. Gardner Barnes (Kevin Costner) and his buddies are graduating. One of their own, Kenneth Waggener (Sam Robards) is supposed to get married but he just found out that he’s been drafted into the army and will eventually be sent to Vietnam. In an attempt to prolong the inevitable, Gardner decides that the Groovers are going to go on one last road trip. Along for the ride is Phil Hicks (Judd Nelson), a square, perpetual stick-in-the-mud whose car they use, Dorman (Chuck Bush), large fellow who studied to become a minister, Lester Griffin (Brian Cesak), who ends up sleeping through the entire journey, and, of course, Waggener.

The opening title card for Fandango defines the film’s title, one of which describes it as “a foolish act” – an apt description for most of the first half of the film. Reynolds captures the Groovers’ ecstatic, joyous journey in a montage of the guys drinking, laughing, driving fast along the highway, and generally goofing off – all to the strains of “Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting” by Elton John blasting away on the soundtrack. This eventually gives way to the sobering reality of Phil throwing up on the side of the road and an overheated Waggener dunking his head in a cooler of water. Phil is the group’s nagging moral conscience and reminds them that they have to report to boot camp in a few days. Gardner convinces him to extend their road trip a little longer so that they can go dig up Dom, a vintage bottle of champagne that they buried on the border of Texas and Mexico.

Fandango contains plenty of “foolish acts,” like when the boys are out of gas and they tie fence post cable to the bumper of the car. Then, Dorman lassos a passing train to hitch a ride. It doesn’t work, of course, and the front part of the car gets ripped off. This is only the first of several bits of damage that is inflicted on Phil’s car, much to his chagrin. They push the car to a gas station (the attendant is played by none other than Pepe Serna of Scarface and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai fame) and find themselves in the town where Giant (1956) was shot. Later that night, they actually camp out at the site where the famous house from the film stood but all that remains is a pathetic, skeletal frame.

While they wait for the car to get fixed, the Groovers hang out at a Sonic drive-in diner, mooching food off of unsuspecting people. This gets them noticed by a two teenage girls (one of whom is played by Elizabeth Daily from Valley Girl and Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure fame) whom they charm for some food and a good time, all to the strains of “Spooky” by The Classics IV, which evokes those fun Saturday nights where all you do is goof off with your friends. The girls invite the guys to shoot off fireworks in a graveyard and everyone has loads of fun aiming them at each other. But this harmless lark gives way to a sobering dose of reality as Gardner and Waggener stumble across the grave of a young man who died over in Vietnam. They look back at the fireworks-induced chaos and it now looks a lot like a warzone, a smoky landscape complete with the image of a mini-mushroom cloud. Is this to be an ominous foreshadowing of what these guys are in for if report to boot camp and are sent to Vietnam?

Not surprisingly, Kevin Costner plays Gardner as a cocky ladies man. As he tells Waggener at one point, “I’ve never been serious about a woman in my life,” but through several flashbacks we know this not to be true. One of them reveals Gardner frolicking with an ex-girlfriend (Suzy Amis) to the strains of that wonderful Carole King song, “It’s Too Late.” I can take or leave Costner as an actor (although, I thought he was great in Bull Durham and A Perfect World) but he’s really good in Fandango. He plays Gardner with a mischievous glint in his eye and has the natural charisma to be the leader of the Groovers. His character isn’t just about having fun as he occasionally flashes back to the girl he once loved but that he let get away, as a dream sequence literally visualizes. Among the group, Gardner has the strongest sense of tradition. He is the driving force behind their quest to dig up Dom. He’s a restless spirit and has a hunger for the open road a la Jack Kerouac. Costner nails this free-spirited vibe so well.

Phil is a complainer and a constant wet blanket who is missing the point of the trip. As Gardner says at one point, “There’s nothing wrong with going no where. It’s a right of youth.” Phil just hurls insults at Gardner until Waggener has finally had enough and explodes, telling Phil exactly what he thinks of him. I’ve never been a huge Judd Nelson fan but he is excellent as an initially unlikable character, a “weenie” as Gardner calls him. Partway through the film, Gardner proposes that Phil take a sky diving lesson in order to prove that he’s not a weenie. This sequence was the short film that was the basis for Fandango. After Phil survives his lesson he is much more tolerable and loosens up considerably. Sam Robards is also quite good Waggener and he, Nelson and Costner would all go on to bigger things, having worked steadily ever since this film.

The camaraderie among the Groovers is believable and fun to watch, especially the scene where they gleefully mess with Phil as he learns the basics of skydiving from Truman Sparks (Marvin J. McIntyre), a burn-out instructor-cum-hippie who looks like he’s done a little too much acid in the 1960s and never really recovered. The skydiving sequence in Fandango is shot-for-shot taken from Reynold's University of Southern California thesis film "Proof" from 1980. He originally did a stint at Baylor Law School but was unhappy with the prospect of becoming a lawyer and wanted to go back to film school. He practiced law in the daytime and went to film school at night. After a year of doing this he realized that he had to make a choice.

Reynolds applied to USC film school, got accepted and quit his job. His goal was to have a screenplay that he could sell and a film he could show. He ended up selling his first script and got an agent because of it. He finished “Proof” and shortly afterward, Steven Spielberg’s people contacted him. He met with the famous filmmaker who liked “Proof” and two days later got a call from his assistant. Reynolds was told that Spielberg was making arrangements for him to do a feature film version of “Proof.” Once Reynolds got the OK he had to write a script around the action sequence in his short film. Costner had originally auditioned for “Proof” but didn’t get the part. He came back when Reynolds was casting for Fandango and within the first lines during the reading; he knew that Costner “was the guy.”

Fandango culminates with a wedding in a small, sleepy border town which sees Gardner and Phil perpetuating a pretty clever scam by managing to enlist the entire town to help out for free. This leads into the ceremony itself which reveals who Waggener’s bride-to-be is – the girl that Gardner has been thinking about it in the film’s flashbacks. The wedding ceremony is scored to Pat Methany and Lyle Mays’ “It's For You,” creating a wistful mood that has a slight bittersweet tinge to it because of Gardner’s relationship to the bride. Then, the soundtrack swells with emotion when she and Costner dance the fandango, which takes us back to one of the definitions at the film’s opening title card. And who would’ve thought Costner could dance but he cuts an impressive rug that is shot in such a way that you know it’s really him doing it. This entire sequence is beautifully lit with strings of lights decorating the gazebo where Waggener and his bride are married. The final farewell of the Groovers is a melancholic one as Gardner takes off and Phil is left alone with Dorman telling him to “have a nice life.” The final shot is of Gardner watching from the outskirts of town as the lights go out and he raises a bottle for one last toast.

Fandango was barely released in theaters and didn’t receive much critical attention as a result. In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin praised Reynolds’ “way with the sight gags and off-the-wall humor that make this a notable debut. And he brings a good deal of feeling to the moments in which the film's twin specters – Vietnam and maturity – intrude upon the frantic festivities.” The Globe and Mail also praised the film’s direction: “Reynolds shows an uncanny confidence with the camera, a sureness which is backed up by a powerful visual sensitivity and an ear for language, especially the vernacular of Texas, where the film is set.”

Reynolds is a native Texan and Fandango is a love letter, of sorts, to the state. At one point, Phil criticizes Texas and Gardner replies almost reverentially, “It’s wild, Philip. Always has been. Always will be.” As if to reinforce this point, Waggener laments calling off his wedding after coming across a plaque recognizing the McLean Massacre, a place where two Indian fighters were ambushed and killed in 1837. The film has all the energy and vitality of a first-time director who’s willing to go for it and has a burning desire to tell a story. However, the film’s joyful celebration of youth is tempered by a melancholic tone that surfaces periodically as the Groovers realize that their carefree college days are over and the sobering reality of army boot camp and Vietnam hangs over their heads like a dark storm cloud. As Reynolds said in a recent interview, Fandango is “the end of era for these four, and some realized it more than others.” He would graduate to bigger, more ambitious studio films like Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) and Waterworld (1995), but none of his subsequent work has had the personal touch of Fandango. It’s as if Reynolds lost track of where he came from and had his personality, which is apparent in every frame of his debut feature, removed by the impersonal machinations of Hollywood.

NOTE: When Fandango was shown on network television, a few bits of extra footage was added back in. Here is one deleted scene, another one, and one last one. Finally, here is the theatrical trailer:

Hard Core Logo

“People don’t want your sounds, they just want to use you.” – Bucky Haight

This Is Spinal Tap (1984) is generally regarded as the quintessential rock 'n' roll mockumentary — a hilarious look at the inept trials and tribulations of a heavy metal band. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Hard Core Logo (1996), a no frills, balls-to-the-wall adaptation Vancouver writer Michael Turner’s book about a fictitious Canadian punk rock band. Where Tap is a funny satire, Logo has a much darker undercurrent that gives it an unpredictable edge.

Retired for some years, legendary Canadian punk rock band, Hard Core Logo reunites for a one-off benefit concert in honor their mentor, Bucky Haight (Julian Richings), who supposedly had both legs amputated after being shot by a crazy fan. The gig goes so well that the band's charismatic lead singer, Joe Dick (Hugh Dillon), convinces everyone to go on a mini-tour across Western Canada with a documentary crew tagging along for the ride. They all pile into a beat-up van and travel across 4,000 kilometers on a bar tour of Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, and Edmonton. It takes no time at all for all the old gripes and grudges to resurface, most significantly, the fact that lead guitarist, Billy Tallent (Callum Keith Rennie), is close to signing on with Jenifur, an MTV-friendly band that has made it to the cover of Spin magazine. This does not sit too well with Joe who comes from the old school of punk rock that refuses to sell-out to major labels or appear in glossy corporate magazines. As the tour progresses, the friction between the band members becomes more palpable until it reaches a critical mass.

Hard Core Logo is the third film in Bruce McDonald's informal rock 'n' roll road movie trilogy that started with Roadkill (1989) and Highway 61 (1991). The filmmaker grew up in the Vancouver punk rock scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s and so he was drawn to Turner’s book about aging musicians. In 1994, a friend gave McDonald a copy of the book which consisted of a collage of song lyrics, diary entries and contract riders. As McDonald commented in an interview, “what I thought was really interesting is where it is 15 years later, and what are these guys doing now.” The director wanted to be true to the “sense of being 35 and having to decide whether to keep going or quit and get a day job.”

McDonald had just come off the critically acclaimed Dance Me Outside (1995) and his friends warned him not to repeat himself with another road movie. However, McDonald did not see Logo as a repeat of previous films. “On the other films, they (the anti-heroes of Roadkill and Highway 61) go down the road and meet a nutty person and things happened. Here you’re with the same people throughout — and they are the nutty people!” Initially, McDonald and novice screenwriter Noel Baker were not sure how to adapt the book and finally settled on making a mockumentary.

What McDonald was not interested in making was a Canadian version of Spinal Tap. He even jokingly referred to his film as “Spinal Tap’s mean little brother.” Furthermore, he said, “We were not setting out to make a parody or satire. This is more of a true documentary voice — these are real people.” There is a certain raw vibe that permeates Logo and this is perfect for its rough around the edges subject matter.

The unrefined attitude is due in large part to the presence of Hugh Dillon as Joe Dick. McDonald had a tough time casting the role and had to persuade Dillon to do the film. “He was going ‘Wow, what if the movie is shit, then I’d lose all my fans from the band, I’d lose all my credibility!’” The director auditioned 200 actors for the role but “couldn’t find anyone who wasn’t posing or doing some fake-o rock-guy shtick.” He had used musicians in his before and Dillon had a small role in Dance Me Outside. However, McDonald wasn’t sure how Dillon would work with actors and so he consulted with Callum Keith Rennie. The actor and the musician got along famously. Not a professional actor but rather lead singer of the Canadian blues punk bank, the Headstones, Dillon's lack of formal training gives his performance a certain unpredictability that is perfect for his character. Dillon remembers, “as soon as he gave me freedom to make the screenplay more believable, I became interested. Bruce allowed me creative input and that’s what made it a special piece for me.” Dillon obviously drew a lot on his own real life experiences of being in a band and this makes everything he says and does that much more believable.

The interplay between the rest of the band is also very well done. Callum Keith Rennie plays the gifted, low key guitarist who has clearly surpassed his bandmates, Bernie Coulson is the crazy drummer who seems clueless but knows what to do when it counts, and finally John Pyper-Ferguson is the terminally burnt out bass player whose road diary provides the film's voice-over narration. The way these guys joke and argue with each other — like adults who refuse to grow-up — is so good that it feels like they have really been in a band together for many years. This was important for McDonald who wanted to realistically portray the dynamics of being in a band. “It’s a grueling career, struggling to keep a band together. A band’s a bit like a family — you can treat each other very badly and get away it. And because of those magical moments on stage, the band goes on and on.”

Armed with a $1.1 million budget, McDonald shot the bulk of the film in Vancouver over three weeks in November 1995 with additional footage shot in southern Alberta. As McDonald was about to start principal photography, the Ontario Film Development Corp. froze funding as part of the government’s restraint program. The producers quickly looked for new investors and, at one point, discussed rewriting the film to make it about a Toronto band heading east to the Maritimes. McDonald quickly nixed the idea. Fortunately, British Columbia Film agreed to provide financing on the condition that he hire a local producer and crew. The landscape of western Canada also played an important role and McDonald realized “what a nightmare it is for any Canadian band that tries to tour the West and tries to deal with the huge distances between places.” Post-production was finished the weekend before its first screening.

McDonald keeps the film together with his solid direction. He has an excellent sense of pacing — the film never gets boring — and he instinctively knows that the essence of any good rock 'n' roll movie is, as he puts it, "extremely loud music and cool shots." Cinematographer Danny Nowak uses the shaky, hand-held camerawork that documentaries are known for and he also shoots the band in cool slow motion shots that emphasizes their iconic status.

Hard Core Logo had its world premiere at the 49th Cannes Film Festival with three screenings. McDonald remembers, “Cannes was very humbling. You’re in the same arena as Bernardo Bertolucci and Czechoslovakian pornographers. It’s such a bizarre spectrum.” After screening at the Venice Film Festival, the film had its Canadian premiere on September 20, 1996 at Sudbury’s Cinefest and was then shown at the Vancouver International Film Festival on October 10 before being released across Canada eight days later. It was offered the opening spot in the Perspective Canada series at the Toronto International Festival with two screenings. The film’s distributors felt that the slot might “ghetto-ize” it and that McDonald had outgrown the Perspective Canada spot. They wanted only one screening in a 300-theater with a “special attraction” billing but the Festival organizers did not agree and the film was not shown there.

Hard Core Logo was well-received by Canadian film critics. In his review for the Montreal Gazette, John Griffin praised the film as a “masterful exercise in edgy virtuoso film craft, subversive propaganda and exhilarating entertainment.” The Toronto Sun’s Bruce Kirkland praised the cast: “They’re all so convincing it is impossible to believe they’re not all the real thing.” In his review for the Toronto Star, Bruce Kirkland wrote, “Screenwriter Noel S. Baker has provided some of the funniest and deftest writing Canadian moviemaking has heard in years. But it can’t hide the bitter-sweetness just below the surface.” The Globe and Mail’s Liam Lacey gave the film a mixed review: “Though the jumpy, parodic, disruptive style suits rock music, the same techniques prevent viewers from investing deeply in the characters and the story. The ride is fun, but it doesn’t quite reach a destination.”

At the Vancouver International Film Festival, Hard Core Logo received the $40,000 CITY-TV award for Best Canadian Film and Noel Baker won the Rogers prize for Best Canadian Screenplay. The film went on to be nominated for six Genie Awards (the Canadian version of the Academy Awards), including Best Picture and Director but only won for Best Original Song for “Who the Hell You Think You Are?” While something of a minor sensation in Canada, McDonald's films have been largely ignored in the United States, due mostly to lack of proper distribution. This changed somewhat with Logo when Quentin Tarantino saw it a film festival and liked it so much that he bought the U.S. distribution rights under his Rolling Thunder vanity label and even toyed with casting Dillon in Jackie Brown (1997).

Along with the aforementioned Spinal Tap and Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous (2000), Hard Core Logo is one of the best fictitious rock 'n' roll movies ever made. It has a genuine appreciation for music and an acute knowledge of the conventions and clichés of the genre. Like Spinal Tap, McDonald's film is not afraid to make fun of these conventions and like Almost Famous, there is an authenticity to how the band is portrayed and the music they make.

If you decide to get this film on DVD, avoid the crappy, bare bones edition on Amazon.com and instead get the Special Edition here or go to Amazon.ca. Trust me, it's worth it. The SE has a great audio commentary with McDonald, Dillon and Baker along with music vids.

Here is a trailer for the film:

Here is an interview with Hugh Dillon around the time the film came out:

An excerpt from a Making of doc. on the film:

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.