Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: Director's Notes

FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS- DIRECTOR’S NOTES


He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

-The title quote is, in essence, the movie completely encapsulated in one sentence. Las Vegas is portrayed in the story as essentially a microcosm of the ugly America. Harsh, overpowering, and full of shallow, manipulative people, the city should represent in the film a dark reality. Gonzo and Duke deal with this reality by avoiding it as much as possible, anesthetizing themselves with any substance they can.

THEMES:

-Incoherence. The essential plot to the story is that Gonzo and Duke are covering the motorcycle race. However, this only serves as a backdrop for the overarching chaos that is the movie. This movie, in essence, portrays nothing more or less than a drug-addled journey through Las Vegas. Exposition is minimal, and for the most part the characters overcome nothing and learn nothing. Some mistakes should be welcomed; by no means is this script a rigidly complex jigsaw puzzle.

This feeling of incoherence should also transfer over to the dialogue; lines should be delivered in a way which helps communicate a state of inebriation. In other words, loud, obnoxious, and frequently with an edge to them that suggests that the character’s train of thought is constantly derailing.


-Urgency. Throughout the movie, there should be a harsh sense of panic and anxiety. Duke and Gonzo are never comfortably cruising anywhere; every one of their objectives is met in a rush. Much like a student who procrastinates, they inevitably underestimate how long they need to complete any given task, let alone when that task is accompanied by hard drugs.

-Zeitgeist. In essence, the movie portrays a counter-culture in its death throes, slowly but surely fading out of relevancy. Duke and Gonzo are symbolically the last vestiges of the drug-addled hippie movement, simultaneously garnering the honor of being the last of a species while displaying the worst attributes of that species which led to its extinction. To be more specific, their constant drug use may make their trip more interesting, but ultimately they have accomplished very little. Imagery and set design in the movie should reflect the ambience of an era fading away; elements of the 60’s should be present, but never prominent.






Note about Gonzo- Gonzo is at all times unhinged. At any given moment he should have the look of someone who is just about to snap—because he usually is. “Gonzo journalism” is by nature relentlessly spontaneous, unpredictable, and scattershot. Transfer this to the character.

Overall, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a psychedelic nightmare. It is a reflection of the paranoia and ultimate futility of relying on chemicals as a mechanism to cope with an often unfavorable world. However, the movie itself, much like an actual high, only becomes unpleasant after the fact. The audience should be taken on a ride, and left at the end to consider the implications of what they just saw.