Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on February 2011

GONZO: THE LIFE AND WORK OF DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON: ©2008 HDNET FILMS, LLC

If you don’t know who Hunter S. Thompson was, you need to see this artfully assembled bio-doc. If you do, you still need to see it. This gun-toting, drug-crazed inebriate was also a patriot and a dynamic political writer who made up his own set of rules, filtering reality through an innovative kind of participatory journalism he called “Gonzo.” Objectivity was out the window. So were actually covering the assigned story and even deadlines. Frank Mankiewicz declared Thompson’s Rolling Stone coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign “the least factual, but most accurate.” He was the inspiration for Doonesbury’s Uncle Duke (which he resented). Diverse talking heads include Jimmy Carter, Pat Buchanan, Jimmy Buffett, Tom Wolfe, George McGovern, Jann Wenner and, of course, Thompson’s brilliant illustrator and collaborator (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), Ralph Steadman. Johnny Depp narrates. Eventually, Thompson’s loss of anonymity made him a prisoner of his own legend, and his writings this century became disheartened screeds on America’s downfall. When W. was elected again, he did what many of us may have considered and self-destructed in 2005. Oh how we could use, and be amused by, Thompson’s insights on what’s going on in the world today.