Howdy boys,

I sent you guys this review several days ago and you never ran it, so I added this new paragraph to get your attention. Rocky Rocky Rocky, dragons, silver surfers, x-men, etc. As well as boobs and ass, boner boner boner, everybody has a boner, bodily fluids all over the place, geekgasm, etc.

Now to FREE LISL: FEAR AND LOATHING IN DENVER. I know, what kind of a name is Lisl, but I didn’t name her. This is the new documentary by Wayne Ewing, who did the great Hunter S. Thompson documentary BREAKFAST WITH HUNTER. It is his third Thompson-related movie, although with the good doctor’s passing each one gets more removed from the man himself. This one is not really about Thompson, but it’s about a cause he aligned himself with in his last years. Lisl Auman is a woman who, at the age of 21, was sentenced to life in prison for a murder everyone agreed she did not commit. She was actually handcuffed in the back of a police car while a dude she just met the day before, who had been helping her move, killed a police officer and then himself. Because she was an accomplice to his crime she was considered guilty of the murder.

That crime, according to the movie, was moving her belongings out of the apartment where she lived with an abusive boyfriend. A friend who was helping her move out decided to enlist two skinheads. These assholes stole some of the ex-boyfriend’s stereo equipment and basically took Lisl as a hostage in a stolen car – I’m sure about the time they were hauling down mountain roads and firing out the window at cops she knew these were not the best movers to be dealing with.

We hear the story from the point of view of Lisl and her parents. We see a rally on the capitol steps, where Thompson enlisted Warren Zevon to sing a song. We watch Lisl and her parents watch a video of the rally. The story of the case comes out suspensefully (sometimes frustratingly) in little bits. The movie shows how the media got the story wrong from day 1, portraying Lisl as the murderer’s girlfriend and repeating questionable allegations as if they were fact. (more…)

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(The Gonzo Monument… A Documentary)

After the great Hunter S. Thompson died last year, we all heard about how Johnny Depp had put up the money to make good on Thompson’s wish to have his ashes fired out of a cannon from a giant statue of the two-thumbed gonzo fist. You may have seen him discussing this in an old BBC documentary, it showed him making the plans and sketching it up with Ralph Steadman. And last year it actually happened at a memorial service at his Woody Creek ranch.

The whole thing was pretty mysterious. There were some distant, blurry photos, but no press were allowed during the party. Some fans criticized it because it was attended by many celebrities, and because a whole bunch of police and security people kept the fans away. At least one thing I read complained because John Kerry was apparently there. They said Hunter would’ve hated it.
And maybe so, but who the fuck knows. This thing was put on by his family and friends, for his family and friends, so who the fuck are we to think we should be able to crash or tell them how it should be done? Hunter himself was a celebrity, he hung out with celebrities and politicians, he had two Hollywood movies about him. The last thing he wrote was an espn.com column about calling Bill Murray in the middle of the night. He had predicted in Rolling Stone that John Kerry (who he was acquainted with him since the Vietnam protest days) would become president. And he was happy about it. Ah shit, there’s two deaths for us to be bummed about.

Anyway, in all the hubbub I remember reading that Wayne Ewing, the director of the great Thompson documentary BREAKFAST WITH HUNTER, had been allowed to tape the making of the Gonzo Memorial, and his film about it had shown at the Whatsisdick International Film Festival in Somewhereville, North Wherever. But I didn’t know until just now that he had put it out on DVD already and sells it on the Breakfast With Hunter web sight. (more…)

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I’m sure alot of you out there have that Criterion edition of FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS. Yeah, me too. So you may remember a special feature on there showing Hunter S. Thompson filming his cameo for the movie, and that footage was actually an excerpt from this movie, BREAKFAST WITH HUNTER. The same movie I am now reviewing as we speak.

Well that was a pretty good special feature, but as a movie it’s even better. What this is is a “cinema verite” or “direct cinema” or “not narrated” type documentary about the famous maniac/journalist. The directionist followed Dr. Thompson for several years, often acting as his road manager so as to get a chance to film him. Of course this is shot in recent years so there is a heavy emphasis on the making of the FEAR AND LOATHING movie. He celebrates anniversaries, receives honors (including a party from his old friends at Rolling Stone) and reunites with Ralph Steadman, who has come to support him and do some real high quality court room drawings as he fights a phoney charge of drunk driving.

Now you’re probaly thinking the same thing I was thinking: sounds pretty cool. Pretty cool. Like, some home video that you could watch once if you like Hunter S. Thompson. And then somebody would say, “How was it?” and you’d say, “Mm, pretty cool.”

But I think this one’s actually alot better than that, for two reasons. First, the guy happened to catch some real good stuff on film. Or, tape. Or whatever. Second, he edited it together real well, skipping around through time but connecting all the scenes logically together to tell the story. (more…)

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