Go Gonzo this July 4th

Yeah, I know about 'Hancock' but still...

By: David Frank
Published: Tuesday, June 10th 2008 at 3:46 PM

Some of you may spend the Fourth of July weekend with Big Willy and Hancock. Yet, if I lived in a major city I'd be cozying up to Thompson – Hunter S. Thompson, that is. A few of you may only know Hunter S. Thompson as the guy Johnny Depp cue-balled his glorious mane for in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Terry Gilliam's best film by my reckoning). If so, that's a shame. Thompson was more than a stumbling, mumbling pharmacy. The man wielded an acerbic, wholly unique voice like a hatchet and generated some of the finest, most memorable prose of the 20th century (plus he's my personal favorite writer so that's gotta count for something, right?). And like the best of writers, the proud drug fiend and lord of gonzo journalism lived a life constantly teetering on chaos and insanity – he'd have it no other way.

Now comes the documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson. I believe it premiered at Sundance this year and garnered high marks. While documentaries on the Good Doctor are aplenty (Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride and Wayne Ewing's series of Thompson estate sanctioned docs beginning with Breakfast With Hunter to name a few), Gonzo appears to twinkle with a tad more flair and production value than the previous documentaries. Here's the trailer.