Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

There's a cornucopia of information contained in Gonzo. A floating sense of the casual anarchy that defined 60s, the 70s that saw the rise of a certain style of political reportage, the events that led up to Hunter Thompson's suicide are all the fodder for this documentary from Alex Gibney, previously known for hard hitting docus like Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Taxi to the Darkside. Gonzo's not quite a political riposte in the manner of his other films but there's a kind of social insight that could've only come from living through that turbulent time. In fact, after watching Gonzo you may suspect that Thompson contributed some of the turbulence.
The film follows Thompson at the Chicago riots at the 1968 Democratic convention but also notes that the same year Thompson rode for over an hour in the back seat of a car with Richard Nixon and all they talked about was football. Thompson's sharp enough to take a Mark Twain glee after a rumor he starts that 1972 presidential candidate Muskie was ingesting a strange jungle drug gets picked up by the media. Gibney has enough of his own journalistic cred to have everyone from Pat Buchanan and Jimmy Carter to Sonny Barger and Johnny Depp chime in on Thompson, not always for the good. There's also Depp reading some Thompson's prose and clips from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Where the Buffalo Roam. Thompson had feature films made about his lifestyle spanning over two generations - Buffalo Roam is def Baby Boomers while Fear and Loathing is def Gen X - and yet he's a kind of patron saint of drug abuse. He died so that we don't have to party into unconscious oblivion. Thompson had nearly as many guns as Charlton Heston, and they were loaded.
Many of the events in the film are based on historical records and will seem familiar to devotees of counter culture as the clips of music heard throughout. What I found most surprising were interviews with Dr. Duke's first wife, his widow, and his son that puts his suicide in a new light. This last part of the film veers into more personal matters like family as opposed to the wider canvas of society in change that frames the beginning and middle. Of the many visions he had, Thompson had foreseen his death right down to a monument he designed that now stands on his acreage in Colorado. Gonzo opens July 4 at the River Oaks Three.