GONZO: Fawning & Loafing On The Bio-Doc Trail

GONZO: THE LIFE AND WORK OF DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON (Dir. Alex Gibney, 2008)

Every book on my shelf has a different definition of the word “Gonzo”; it’s a style of journalism, it’s an ethic - when I was a kid it was a Muppet. The basic meaning, as best I can gather, is when a commentator, reporter et al. is so intensely immersed in their story that they become part of it. The alternate meanings can be summed as an ‘in your face’ fact and fiction blurred aesthetic where anything goes. Despite Spanish or Italian roots (again depends on what book you read) the term became part of the popular lexicon in the introduction of an article by Hunter S. Thompson in 1970. Thompson who by then already had a reputation as an gun-toting druggie “Freak Power” anarchist is the subject of this over reverant documentary by Oscar winning dierctor Alex Gibney (TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE).

Thompson spent much of the last 40 years in front of a camera when he wasn’t shooting up (in every possible way) so there is much fascinating footage to wade through with news reports about his Hell's Angels meddling, talk show appearances, and amatuer film of his campaign for Mayor of Aspen, Colorado making for a juicy narrative. Johnny Depp, who played the man in Terry Gilliam’s 1998 adaptation of FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS (which this film uses too many clips from), frames a number of segments with readings from Thompson’s work but since that device drops and he isn’t heard from throughout lengthy chunks of the film he can’t really be considered a narrator though he’s credited as such.

Then there’s the music - with some of the most obvious 60’s songs employed to make easy points this has to go down as one of the least imaginative soundtracks for a period doc ever. I mean, how many times am I gonna have to see “All Along The Watchtower” * cut to war footage? Stones, Joplin, CCR, Lou Reed's “Walk On The Wild Side”; come on! Gibney makes a movie that feels like it was made by somebody whose never seen any 60’s or 70’s docs before. It’s also so not neccessary to go through the deaths and overused footage of MLK, RFK, and General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon to get to the heart of Hunter S. Thompson but there it is and go through it again I guess we’re doomed to do forever.

* To the films credit the version of “Watchtower” used is from Bob Dylan and The Band's live performance on “Before The Flood” (1974) not the incredibly done to death (movie-wise that is) Hendrix version.

Concentrating mostly on Thompson’s early career and glossing over the rest since the 70’s to his death in 2005, GONZO does have its merits. There are interviews with the charming yet still smarmy asshole Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner, former Nixon-aid turned Republican Presidential candidate now full-time Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan (who surprisingly has reams of insight), 1972 Democratic Presidential nominee George McGovern, and especially Thompson’s ex-wife Sandy Conklin Thompson (whose name is now Sondi Wright). There are many great anecdotes with Ralph Steadman's iconic splattered cartoons injecting the proceedings with some much needed rough edges. For the uninitiated this portrait may be an eye opening overview; to those well versed in the counterculture and the beginnings of the “new media” this may come off as an incomplete too respectful playing of Thompson’s greatest hits with very little new insight gleemed. In the end it’s just more than a bit disapointing that a film about the Gonzo mind-set and output of one of the most notorious and unruly writers of the last half century could be such a standard straight forward bio-doc; in other words so non-Gonzo.

More later...

10 Movie Moments That Broke The 4th Wall

"What a pisser!"
- Ted Striker (Robert Hays) turning to the camera after being told off by girlfriend Elaine (Julie Hagerty) in AIRPLANE! (Dirs. Jim Abraham, David & Jerry Zucker 1980)


Here I go again with another meta-movie list! The phrase “breaking the fourth wall” has been around for over a century. Though as a concept it's been around since before Shakespeare the phrase itself originates from the theater of Bertolt Brecht. It simply meant that a character makes an aside to the audience. Through the invisible wall those watching are addressed, acknowledged and made to feel a little more “in on the joke” so to speak. It’s a device used a lot more in television than on film. In the 80’s it even became fairly fashionable on such shows like Moonlighting and It’s Garry Shandling’s Show – a show that had as its entire premise comedian Shandling talking directly to the studio audience and the viewers at home. The Marx Brothers may have pioneered the concept in cinema with Groucho’s many knowing winks but Bob Hope really nailed it in the seminal road movies he made with Bing Crosby which is where we’ll begin :

1. ROAD TO MOROCCO (Dir. David Butler, 1942) Bob Hope is the reigning king of breaking the 4th wall for this classic alone. His character Oliver ‘Turkey’ Jackson has an immortal momment when he loses his detached wiseacre demeanor when he desperately declares “I can't go on! No food, no water. It's all my fault. We're done for! It's got me. I can't stand it! No food, nothing! No food, no water! No food!” As the voice of reason his friend Jeff (Bing Crosby) says “What's the matter with you, anyway?…We'll be picked up in a few minutes.” Hope in all his irrefutable glory responds “you had to open your big mouth and ruin the only good scene I got in the picture. I might have won the Academy Award!” That’s par for the course in a movie that actually has a camel comment - "This is the screwiest picture I was ever in."

2. ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE (Dir. Peter R. Hunt, 1969) This is seriously significant because breaking the 4th wall was used to break in the new Bond. George Lazenby had one of the hardest jobs in cinema history – to be the first to fill the shoes of Sean Connery in the iconic role of 007. To make matters even more intimidating this was a Bond adventure with substance – one that he gets married in for Christ’s sake! His intro had to matter – it had to have him make a mark and it had to acknowledge the audience’s incoming notion that this guy wasn’t the guy they were used to.

So in what every Bond picture has – a cold opening we see Bond tooling around Portugal in his classic Aston Martin having an instant of near road-rage (we don't see his face in close-up), parking to watch the driver (Diana Rigg) that cut him off attempting suicide by walking into the ocean. He watches through a gun sight mind you. He frantically pulls his car down and runs out to the beach to save her. He drags her out of the water and we get to see his face as he does the customary intro “Bond, James Bond” but immediately adversaries are on his back. A moon-lit beach fight ensues and of course Bond defeats his attackers but Rigg departs eschewing all pleasantries. After picking up her discarded shoes Lazenby remarks “this never happened to the other fellow”. Priceless for many reasons but chiefly because it acknowledged that there was a much loved “other fellow” and while Lazenby didn’t look directly into the camera ‘til after he said the line – the self consciousness was reigned in. Didn’t save him from being a Bond one-termer but still.

3. ANIMAL HOUSE (Dir. John Landis, 1978) According to IMDb this is a Landis trademark : “He often has his characters look into camera lens to make eye contact with the audience or 'break frame'". It’s true – it is all over his film work but most definitively when the late great John Belushi climbs up a ladder to view naked sorority girls and when getting what he thinks is a “money shot” turns to do his eye brow signature right at us. As a close tie - the scene in TRADING PLACES when the Duke brothers (Don Ameche and Ralph Bellemy) condescendingly try to school Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) about commodities. Murphy looks directly at us at a key moment in a “how stupid do they think I am?” look. Another trademark breaking the 4th came a few years later in SPIES LIKE US – this time Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase were trying to do their version of a Hope/Crosby road movie. During a stressful scene when our beloved SNL bumblers were pretending to be medical staff in Soviet Central Asia - the king of 4th wall demolition - Bob Hope himself appears as if in perpetual golfer mode - "Ah! Mind if I play through? (acknowledges Ackroyd and Chase) Doctor.. Doctor.. I'm glad I'm not sick."

* While this is indeed a Landis trademark on the TRADING PLACES commentary Eddie Murphy says it came from being so used to mugging at the camera on Saturday Night Live.

4. FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF (Dir. John Hughes, 1986) There are many instances of Hughes’s characters talking directly to the camera but Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) is purely definitive as a narrator, commentator, and chastizer – like Animal in THE MUPPET MOVIE he even tells the audience to go home at the end. His great moment in breaking the 4th walldom is when he informs us on the best methods of faking sick to get out of going to school (as if you didn't know the premise). I believe this is one of the reasons that this is former Vice President Dan Quayle’s favorite movie. After his parents exit Ferris looks us in the eye and says “Incredible! One of the worst performances of my career and they never doubted it for a second.”

Special mention goes to PRETTY IN PINK (1986) At the prom conclusion Ducky (Jon Cryer) looks directly in the camera and knowingly nods after being given a come-on look by a girl on the dance floor.

5. JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK (Dir. Kevin Smith, 2001) – As a self pro-claimed Hughes disciple Smith has to work the ‘to camera asides’ but in this movie he may have overdone it a tad. For example – playing themselves Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have a fight on the set of the fictitious GOOD WILL HUNTING 2 : HUNTING SEASON (Yes I know, another film within a film) in which Affleck tries to school Damon :

“You're like a child. What've I been telling you? You gotta do the safe picture. Then you can do the art picture. But then sometimes you gotta do the payback picture because your friend says you owe him.”

They both turn and look at the camera for an obvious dig at Smith.

The overdoing it comes from this bit in the same film also involving Affleck who this time plays his CHASING AMY character Holden who warns - “I mean, I don't think I'm alone in the world in imagining this flick may be the worst idea since Greedo shooting first. You know it, but... a Jay and Silent Bob movie? Feature length? Who'd pay to see that?” Holden, Jay (Jason Mewes), and Silent Bob (Smith) all look right at us – and to really set things off - Silent Bob gives a smiling double thumbs-up.

6. TOP SECRET (Dir. Jerry Zucker, 1982) – There are many audience acknowledging nods throughout the Zucker Brothers canon like the one quoted at the top of this blogpost but this Zucker scene really drives the point home : Val Kilmer’s Elvis derived 50’s heart throb singer Nick Rivers pours his heart out : “Listen to me Hillary. I'm not the first guy who fell in love with a woman that he met at a restaurant who turned out to be the daughter of a kidnapped scientist only to lose her to her childhood lover who she last saw on a deserted island who then turned out fifteen years later to be the leader of the French underground." Hillary (Lucy Gutteridge) responds “I know. It all sounds like some bad movie.” They both recoil then look our way as if to say ‘did you get that?’ And speaking of 'getting that' :

7. SPACEBALLS (Dir. Mel Brooks, 1987) After being given the plot synopsis Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) looks at the camera and says "Everybody got that?" but most notably is the scene in which he and his minions actually put in a videocasette of SPACEBALLS to see what happens next and see themselves looking at themselves onscreen. Dark Helmet says : “what the hell am I looking at? When does this happen in the movie?” Colonel Sandurz (George Wyner) responds : “now. You're looking at now sir. Everything that happens now, is happening now.” Too bad this didn’t help this decade too late STAR WARS satire to be more “in the moment”.

8. JFK (Dir. Oliver Stone, 1991)
I know, I know – every list I make has this film on it. Not only because it’s one of my all time favorite films but it does hold the monopoly on movie extras – deleted scenes, cameos, edits, and cinema contrivances galore confirm that it’s forever bloggable. That aside I really couldn’t leave out the moment that Garrison (Costner) wraps up his lengthy court summation by saying : “We, the people, the jury system sitting in judgement on Clay Shaw represent the hope of humanity against government power. In discharging your duty to bring a first conviction in this house of cards against Clay Shaw ‘ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country’. Do not forget your dying king. Show this world that this is still a government ‘of the people, for the people and by the people’ Nothing as long as you live will ever be more important – it’s up to you.” As the camera goes upward but still holds Costner’s direct camera gaze we get a feeling that this breaking the 4th wall stuff isn’t just comedy kids stuff. Which brings us to :

9. WAYNE’S WORLD (Dir. Penelope Spheeris, 1992) Like Eddie Murphy Mike Myers has a SNL mugging at the camera background and the characters here come from a cable access show in which they talk directly to the camera so of course they would continue to bash holes in the ever so fraglie fourth wall. Funnily enough they use it to satirize product placement at the same time. Wayne tells sleazy TV exec Rob Lowe that he"will not bow to any sponsor" as he poses with a bag of Doritos, a piece of pizza from Pizza Hut, takes some Nuprin, and tops it all off with a swig of Pepsi. He grins at us and even says the slogan "it's the choice of a new generation."

10. THE MUPPET MOVIE (Dir. James Frawley, 1979) Kermit and the other Muppets (my word program insists this should be capitalized) regularly consult the screenplay on their journey to stardom so it's unsurprising but still hilarious when Floyd Pepper (Jerry Nelson) says "well, if this were the movies..." and Dr. Teeth (Jim Henson) adds "which it is", Floyd continues "...we'd think of a clever plot device" then Scooter (Richard Hunt) energetically finishes "like disguising their car so they won't be recognized!" Yep, when in doubt just think of how it would be done in the movies. It'll save you every time.

Okay! That's enough meta-movie mania for right now - gotta go star in my own movie. Good luck with yours.

More later...

Film Within A Film Follow-up Fun!

"Life is like a movie. Write your own ending."
- Kermit The Frog in THE MUPPET MOVIE (Dir. James Frawley, 1979)

Looks like I made some serious ommisions according to the many many readers who wrote in about my 10 Definitive Films Within Films (07/01-07/08) post last time out so here's some of the best suggestions, picks, and oversights :

Tony Ginorio suggests :

"Something’s Cookin’", the cartoon that opens WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT (Dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1988). An excellent pastiche of a 1940s Tex Avery short, with Roger and Baby Herman unleashing mayhem as only animated characters can. Halfway through, however, the director yells “Cut!”, and what at first seems like a mere cartoon suddenly becomes a live set, with a flesh-and-blood director chewing out his ink-and-paint actors, completely up-ending our preconceived notions of what is “real” and what is movie magic. Not only does this clever device introduce the film’s main concept – that animated characters are real – it also foreshadows the way characters and events in the main story are not what they seem: how a simple infidelity case turns out to be a cover-up for something far more sinister, and how a certain femme fatale turns out to be “just drawn that way.”

Mike Weber writes :

Billy Bright (Dick Van Dyke) watching his old movies on late-night teevee in THE COMIC (Dir. Carl Reiner, 1969) - which I swear was a major part of the inspiration for Firesign Theatre's "Don't Crush That Dwarf" album, which came out the next year and ends with an identical setup.

"See You Next Wednesday" - in any number of John Landis films (and the"Thriller" video) - but best in AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981). *

Peter Bogdanovich's TARGETS (1968), which uses outtakes from THE TERROR (1963) as the latest film from star Byron Orlok (Boris Karloff), at whose drive-in premiere the ultimate confrontation takes place.

The whole setup for KISS KISS BANG BANG uses an actual film from1987 (DEAD AIM) that featured one of the cast (Corbin Bernsen). Footage from DEAD AIM was used as a film called "Johnny Gossamer", in which the character played by Bernsen is used as part of the McGuffin.

* Though we never actually see any of it, the fictional film "See You Next Wednesday" (based on a quote from 2001 : A SPACE ODYSSEY) is like Mike remarks above a running gag through-out just about every John Landis movie (including KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE, THE BLUES BROTHERS, & COMING TO AMERICA) it even warrants this Wikipedia entry.


Mike also wrote back :

"I completely forgot the double feature from the marquee of the theatre in the beginning of GREMLINS (Dir. Joe Dante, 1984) - "Watch the Skies" and "A Boy's Life" - the working titles of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (Dir. Steven Spielberg, 1977) and E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (Spielberg, 1982).

A lot of people emailed me that DRIVE-IN (Dir. Rodney Amateau, 1976) should have been noted but Jon Futrell made the case best :

As a fan of drive-in movie theaters, I'd have to say my favorite movie within a movie is "Disaster '76" from the 1976 release DRIVE-IN. A production of the equally fictional Executive Pictures (complete with Mount Rushmore logo), "Disaster '76" plays on the screen at the Alamo Drive-in one Friday night. A jumbo jet is bombed on a New Year's Eve flight, knocking out the entire crew except for stewardess Margo. A ship's captain (in full uniform no less!) takes the control and tries to land. Instead, he crashes into a high-rise skyscraper creating "a tower of an inferno". Somebody actually said that in "D '76". While the folks at the drive-in have their own romantic and criminal issues at the theater, there's floods, sharks and an overturned cruise ship on the screen. It's almost a shame that Irwin Allen didn't make a similar "all disasters in one" type of film.

Film Babble sadly notes that DRIVE-IN is not available on DVD at the present time - sigh.

J Campie a film critic from Managua, Nicaragua (Confidential.com) agrees with many of those who wrote in when he writes :

Please include in your list "El Amante Menguante" (you can translate it as "The Shrinking Lover", although it loses the poetic bent of the original spanish title). This is a fake silent movie that Benigno watches in TALK TO HER (Dir. Pedro Almodovar, 2002) In it, a man shrinks so that he can actually enter his complete self inside the woman he loves. I know it sounds....strange and icky to say the least, but on the movie it looks lovely, and works wonderfully to highlight the central themes of the best Pedro Almodovar film ever made.

Jeff Beachnau states :

You forgot the two (well, 3) greatest movies shown in Christmas classics -

"The Night the Reindeer Died" starring Lee Majors shown at the beginning of SCROOGED (Dir. Richard Donner, 1988). *



And the greatest movie within a movie of all time (which I didn't even know until I grew up that they weren't real movies), "Angels with Filthy Souls" and "Angels with Filthier Souls" shown in HOME ALONE (Dir. Chris Columbus, 1990) and HOME ALONE 2 : LOST IN NEW YORK (Dir. Chris Columbus, 1992).

* It's a TV movie but I'll allow it.

Other films within films that multiple movie lovers wrote in :

"Devil's Squadron" in THE STUNTMAN (Dir. Richard Rush, 1980)

“Living In Oblivion” in LIVING IN OBLIVION (Dir. Tom DiCillo, 1995)

SILENT MOVIE (Dir. Mel Brooks, 1976) Was the first major silent feature film in forty years that Mel Funn (Brooks) and cohorts Dom Deluise and Marty Feldman were trying to make actually named SILENT MOVIE? It's been decades since I've seen it so - anybody know the answer? Anybody?


"O Brother, Where art thou" from SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS (Dir. Preston Surges, 1941) This of course is notable because it was a fake movie within a movie that became a real movie almost 60 years later thanks to the Coen Bros.

“COVEN” in AMERICAN MOVIE (Dir. Chris Smith, 1999) Another film within that is a film itself on its own - though COVEN is only 40 min. long.

"The Spy who Laughed at Danger" from HOOPER (Dir. Hal Needham, 1978)

“The Old Mill” from STATE AND MAIN (Dir. David Mamet, 2000)

This one I felt truly ashamed as a hardcore Python fan to have not noted -

"The Crimson Permanent Assurance" from MONTY PYTHON'S THE MEANING OF LIFE (Dir. Terry Jones, 1983) Notable for many reasons but to break it down to the principles - A: Terry Gilliam's tale of elderly anti-globalization office clerks commandeering their workplace structure and turning it into a pirate ship was originally supposed to be inside the movie but it became such an entity itself at over 15 minutes it cost much more than the rest of the production. B: - Matt Frewer (Max Headroom) makes his film debut in it. And C: - It comes back to disrupt the movie from within - an announcer even says "we interrupt this film to apologise for the unwarranted attack from the supporting feature..."

Okay! Next time out actual film reviews of movies in theaters and movies out recently on DVD -so please stay tuned.