Why yes. Hunter S. Thompson is my favorite writer, a huge influence on my writing, and even my philosophy in life, and even fashion (that is, wear the weirdest fucking thing you can find, and make sure it under no circumstances matches). Fear and Loathing is my favorite book, and my favorite film. I tumble over laughing with each read/viewing.

I think where people go wrong with Fear and Loathing is this; they assume it should follow some sort of linear path, which is absurd, if you know anything about Hunter or his writing. The book itself is very unorganized... In fact there is one chapter in which they "lost" the transcript, and so, they simply transcribed the original tape recordings (Hunter often spoke his narratives into a tape recorder, and would type them up later... Sometimes even record actual conversations with people, that would later go into his articles and books) so they just typed up a verbatim script-styled version of the tape recording. Fear and Loathing isn't meant to really have a beginning, middle, or end. It's supposed to have a cohesively in-cohesive narrative.

Another thing is, I remember Capo's initial complaint that it was self-indulgent, and the moment the film realizes this, it thinks it can get away with whatever it wants, and that's when it starts to go downhill. Well, fuck, Hunter was a self-indulgent man, and he knew this, and this showed up in his writing. The very idea of gonzo journalism is a bit self-indulgent, no? The film is the best possible adaptation of Hunter's writing that I can imagine.

But I think the biggest fault is that people just don't get it. They watch the film, miss the subtext, and just assume it's a film about excessive drug use. This is most certainly not the case. The film is more or less about the generation that was lost in the crossover from the sixties to the seventies. From what I understand, this was a momentous change. The sixties were a time of liberal political uprising, and the liberal community found itself very close-knit. It seemed people were taking drugs for the reason of self-exploration, the music was there live up to a cause, and protests were a regular habit. People set out to make a difference. The 70s, on the other hand, marked the death of the hippies. The treachory of Nixon (*cough*tool*cough*) and Vietnam had proven to depress and maybe even dismantle the cause. Beyond that, recreational drug use was no longer about the trip, but instead, about just getting as fucked up as possible. I think this theme can be best summed up by the "Wave Speech" which occurs just after the scene in the Matrix Club, in which Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers makes a short cameo, and begins to lick LSD off of Johnny Depp's arm.

Beyond that, there is the whole American Dream aspect. There is a great deleted scene that would have served as an alternate ending (but would have also broken the beautiful flow of the end of the film) in which Duke stumbles upon a bar in the middle of the desert, which is ran modestly by an old man and his daughter. After proceeding in being his regular self-loathing being, Duke says something to offend the old man, and makes an ass of himself. It is then that he removes the glasses he's been wearing the entire film, and Depp explained it best himself, the glasses had been blocking him off from the rest of the world, from people emotions, and so on. As he sits there, after having made a fool of himself, he realizes, they spent the whole film on the strip, trying to find the American dream, when all along, it was just sitting out here in the desert. It's a great sequence, and would have really added something to the film, but at the same time adding it to the film may have ruined the great flow they create at the end.

Keep this in mind, and try to give the film a third, unbiased chance. I hope you enjoy it.