In defense of Hunter S Thompson

  I read the numbers on the film adaptation of Hunter S Thompson's "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas" and I wondered how it could've been so universally ignored upon its release in the year 1995.  After all, Johnny Depp was playing Thompson and Terry Gilliam was co writing and directing.  I figured that the critics, savage as they were, were once again failing to understand the fantasia like world of one Terry Gilliam.  And now, as I watch the film adaptation of the book I so loved, I understand why the film version failed and I understand why all of the people who enjoyed the book version of Fear and Loathing were up in arms about Terry Gilliam's attempt at recreating a literary Picasso.  For starters, the film is wrong on so many levels that I don't even know where to begin.  Johnny Depp, gifted as he is, seems to be playing up the very caricature of Hunter S Thompson that Thompson tried to desperately to disconnect himself from.  It's almost heartbreaking to see a great literary presence like Hunter S Thompson reduced to nothing more than debauchery and buffoonery on screen.  Was Depp actually listening to Thompson during all their years of friendship when he said, on countless occasions, that Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas was a playfully exaggerated take on what everyone expected him to be?  I read a few blurbs on writer director Terry Gilliam's frantic scramble to get Fear and Loathing the film financed and then scripted.  Apparently, Gilliam and one of his main co writers, Tony Gilroy, banged out an adaptation of Hunter S Thompson's beloved novel in less than a week.  Watching the film, it seems like Gilliam and his writers, in their haste, failed to take heed of one critical element that makes the book so understated and so brilliant; it's the fact that Thompson's alter ego is forever wearing a poker face.  No matter the level of chaos he creates, Thompson's alter ego remains oblivious to it all with nothing more than a shrug.  To shine a light on the debauchery of Hunter S Thompson's alter ego is to reduce the book to nothing more than an overbearing parody.  Watching Gilliam's film adaptation of Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, I couldn't help but wonder if Gilliam was laughing with Thompson or laughing at him. The most disappointing thing is that Hollywood made another Hunter S Thompson novel, The Rum Diary, into a film and committed the same mistake that Gilliam did in terms of needlessly turning up the volume on the material.  Again, Johnny Depp was playing the caricature of Thompson and not the man himself  I think I'm even more up in arms about The Rum Diary because that novel is NOT Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas.  It makes you wonder if anyone in Hollywood has actually read or even truly grasps what Thompson's work was all about.  In death, he has been franchised and or pigeon holed by Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas; the very novel that brought him to our attention in the first place.