Title: Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride: Hunter S. Thompson on Film
Genre: Documentary
Director: Tom Thurman
Release: (2006)
 
Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride- download now for $2.99
For the legions of admirers he left behind, the late summer months can be a melancholy time. As chatter about this year’s team begins to pick up around barbecues and bars again, as the faint buzz of college campuses stirring back to life slowly begins to rise, as media outlets swarm like locusts to the unimpressive facilities of otherwise unknown towns for up-to-the-minute reports from training camps nationwide, it can only mean one thing: football season is starting again. And with it, the bemoaning wails of a rudderless counter-culture movement once again.
If only he could have held on!
But, of course, he didn’t want to. And if there’s one thing you could unequivocally say about Hunter S. Thompson, it’s that he never – never – did anything he didn’t want to. So those of us of lesser will are left here in a lesser world without him still, three football seasons and counting after the iconic doctor of gonzo journalism sent himself off on his ultimate assignment, with another semi-annual reminder of the simultaneously irreverent, absurd, poignant, revealing, and altogether perfectly “gonzo” explanation he left behind for the world to chew on.
Fortunately, we can take some solace in not only the works he left behind, but also the growing library of film adaptations, documentaries and tributes that have continued to crop up in his wake – including the present one, another one this year, and still another in 2009. In fact, remembering the loosely titled “Doctor of Journalism” has become such a cottage industry that this film, Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride: Hunter S. Thompson on Film, is actually a movie about movies about Hunter S. Thompson. (Take that, Hitler!) Couched between candid archival footage, interviews with celebrity friends, old photographs and excerpts, director Tom Thurman’s 2006 documentary centers around the making and reception of the two most well-known films based on Thompson’s life, 1980’s Where the Buffalo Roam and 1998’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Unfortunately, aside from the interviews with Bill Murray and Johnny Depp about playing Thompson in those movies, respectively, these segments were the least interesting parts of an otherwise interesting film. I’m not sure why Thurman decided to make the movies about Thompson the centerpiece of his film, rather than just the actual life of Thompson himself. Or, when he did, why he decided to focus primarily on just these two releases. But by making his premise so explicit, he may have only served to highlight how thin a premise it was. The cast and crew associated with each film were almost apologetic in their interviews, acknowledging that no adaptation of Thompson could ever quite live up to the real thing, and yet Thurman apparently remained undeterred in his resolve to try to examine the man through the films.
Despite this frustrating decision, and a jumpy timeline that never quite achieves continuity, Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride: Hunter S. Thompson on Film is at least a “should see” for any true acolyte of the real Raoul Duke, and a “could see” for anyone just curious. The candid celebrity interviews and home movie footage that serve as filler and backstory around an explanation of the films is almost worth seeing it for alone. It’s revealing of the devotion Thompson inspired to see otherwise polished megastars like Murray and Depp get so caught up in remembering their late friend and mentor that they both momentarily forget who they’re supposed to be and begin to let their guard down – the sardonic clown Murray no longer trying to crack wise every moment, and the mysteriously pensive Depp becoming animated with nostalgia as the memories come flooding back. (I suppose you could say Benicio Del Toro lets his own guard down a little too, as I realized for the first time while watching this that I don’t think I had ever actually heard his real voice before.)
Football season kicks off September 4th and this year, just two months after that, the new season he was really hoping for (see the last few paragraphs here) will finally be here as well.
If only he could have held on!
Grading
Story: N/A
Acting: N/A
Visuals: N/A
Originality/Innovation: C
Enjoyability: B+
Overall: B-
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