HunterS.Thompson Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Just because Tony Scott decided to put the brakes on his A L I E N prequel, doesn't mean that he won't have plenty of projects to keep him busy in the meantime. For starters; there's his Warriors update, a sequel to his 1983 vampire flick, The Hunger, and the action flick Unstoppable with Chris Pine starting this fall. But that's not all, because now the director has been talking about an adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's non-fiction classic, Hell's Angels. In an interview with Coming Soon, Scott confirmed that Traffic's Stephen Gaghan has already been hired to write the script, and while Scott claims to own the rights to Thompson's book, there is still confusion over what Gaghan will be using for the script. According to the "motorcycle club's" legal counsel, Scott's film will be based on the book, Hell's Angels: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club -- but my guess is that the script will be a blending of the two books.

The Wild One may have brought bikers into the popular consciousness, but by the time the 60's hit, clubs like The Hell's Angels were a status symbol for the counter-culture. Thompson's book was one of the first accurate looks inside the 'gang', but was a far cry from his usual 'gonzo' work. Which isn't necessarily the best fit for the kind of flashy action movie you expect from Scott, but luckily Gaghan has a knack for making sense of complicated subject matter. There is no word yet on whether Scott will just produce, or whether he will direct the film as well. But, the Scott brothers seem to have a thing for packing their schedules, and unfortunately, they tend to bite off a little more than they can chew.

After the jump; updates on Tony Scott's other projects...

The big-screen remake of Dark Shadows has been kicking around Hollywood for how long now? But, every time we get close, something new comes up (talk about bad timing). Late last year, producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Heyman told Collider that Tim Burton would be lining up Shadows with Johnny Depp to start shooting this summer. But, the usually reliable Nikki Finke is reporting that Burton has started thinking about pushing back the start date of the vampire soap to this fall. According to Finke's sources, the cause for delay was that Burton's Alice in Wonderland was taking much longer to finish than anticipated, and with a 2010 release date around the corner, something had to go.

According to Finke, Burton has yet to broach the subject with WB about the delay, but it's not like Depp is going to go anywhere else, and Finke's source told her, "It is our intention to still start the movie in the fall. We're trying to work it out, and Tim Burton is Johnny's first and only choice to direct." Burton had signed on in June to direct the tale of Barnabas Collins with his muse/BFF taking the lead role. Both men are huge fans of the 60's soap about the supernatural goings on at the Collins Manor, and Depp has held the rights to the property through his production company (Infintrum Nihil).

Depp is also starting production on the Hunter S. Thompson adaptation, The Rum Diary, at the end of March. Originally, Burton had been scheduled to start Shadows in June, and then the date had been pushed back to August. But with all the buzz surrounding Public Enemies, I have a feeling Depp's schedule will be filling up pretty rapidly, and a summer start date for Shadows is starting to look more unlikely by the minute.

Well, if you have to be embroiled in a destructive love triangle, being in one with Aaron Eckhart and Johnny Depp would definitely soften the blow ... sorry, I lost track of my thoughts there, I think I'll just take another moment to think it through -- there, all done. The Hollywood Reporter has announced that Eckhart is in negotiations to star alongside Depp and Amber Heard in the feature film version of Hunter S. Thompson's The Rum Diary. THR also reported that Richard Jenkins has officially signed to star as Depp's boss, Lotterman.

Depp plays the hard-drinking journalist named Paul Kemp (Depp), who moves from New York to work for the small newspaper, The Daily News, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The story is set in the late 1950s, and revolves around a twisted love story, plenty of violence and treachery, and because this is a Hunter S. Thompson story after all, "violent, alcoholic, lust". Well, when I think lust, Eckhart and Depp usually come to the top of the list, so I'm sold. Eckhart (if and when he signs) is expected to play Sanderson, "a wealthy landowner who believes everything has a price and introduces Kemp to a different standard of living" -- and who better than Eckhart to play the Golden Boy gone bad?

After watching the clip from Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson that Erik posted, I couldn't help but think of the fictionalized Hunter S. Thompson on the big screen. The first thing that comes to mind, of course, is Johnny Depp's unforgettable performance in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. With Depp teamed with Benicio del Toro, it was darkly comedic gonzo heaven, like the clip above. I could watch the two of them get high and hallucinate all day.

But, we've got to remember that it's not the only Gonzo/Duke pairing out there. Before Johnny and Benicio, there was Peter Boyle and Bill Murray in Where the Buffalo Roam. It's a touch goofier, but it's cool to see Murray mimic someone else (and do a decent job at it), and it's always great to see Peter Boyle on the big screen. You can check out a clip from that flick after the jump.

Meanwhile, trivia time.

The Last Rewind Answer: Joey took over for Marky Mark in NKOTB.

"Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter." -- Revelations 1:19

Hunter S. Thompson said he always quoted the Bible in his writings -- the lengthy, disciplined-yet-crazy, meticulous-yet-mercurial, false-yet-true not-quite-journalism he crafted for Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone and others -- not because of its prose or principles but because it was the only book guaranteed to be available in the hotel rooms where Thompson would drink, dope and dictate the stories that made him famous in the '60s and '70s. That sort of limited access to information seems unimaginable in this day and age, when you can plug a CAT-5 cable in at almost any hotel and access the Web. And Thompson made his name in a very different world than the one we live in; at the same time, it's not that different. The United States was mired in a long and seemingly unwinnable war; civil liberties were being curtailed in the name of preserving freedom; political primary campaigns were less about issues than personalities. Those things were going on in the '60s and '70s, and some could suggest they're going on now, and our past is woven into our present; when I was looking for something appropriate from Revelations to start this review, I could have looked on the Web ... but I still found a Bible in the bedside table at my hotel.

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is a new documentary about Thompson's life and legacy, written and directed by Alex Gibney. Gibney's previously looked at greed (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) and war's madness (Taxi to the Dark Side) in prior documentaries that combined journalistic integrity with artistic expression. Looking at the life and work of another journalist who gave what read like track reports for the four horsemen of the apocalypse must have seemed like a natural idea. And while Gonzo incorporates recreations and impressionistic re-stagings (the film opens with a bald, pallid obvious stand-in for Thompson stabbing single fingers at an electric typewriter, then recreates a famed photo of an armed Thompson drawing down on a keyboard in the snow), it also lets Thompson's own work and own voice speak for themselves.

Director Alex Gibney has tackled greed (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) and war (the Oscar-shortlisted Taxi to the Dark Side); with his new documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, he tackles a new set of sins and excesses -- from Thompson's then-radical new journalism blending of fact and fiction in the '60s, to Thompson's legendary appetite for self-destruction. Gibney's film includes interviews with a host of people who knew Thompson and his work -- from Hell's Angels leader Sonny Barger to ex-President Jimmy Carter; Thompson moved in eccentric circles, and Gibney's documentary captures Thompson's bizarre orbit though American letters and politics with extensive use of archival footage but also through recreations, animation and more. Asked if Thompson's legacy of mixing fact and fiction made it easy to make a less-than-conventional documentary, Gibney's answer is swift: "I think it made it mandatory; we had to go there. ..."


This interview, like all of Cinematical's podcast offerings, is now available through iTunes; if you'd like, you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:

Goodbye, Captain Jack! It's time for some more drug-addled Thompson. After being in the works for a while now, The Rum Diary is finally gearing up with all of the main players in place. It's music to my ears, as I've been itching for the actor to return to something a bit meatier and more adult-fun. Johnny Depp will once again take on the life of Hunter S. Thompson, who he first wonderfully tackled in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. While Terry Gilliam isn't helming this one, I'm pretty psyched about who is -- Withnail & I writer/director Bruce Robinson, who will also adapt the novel. That sounds like perfect directorial pickin's to me. The director has a quirky style, and he's no stranger to autobiographical fiction. Between the Withnail anniversary and Rum, it's looking like a banner year for Robinson. Depp will produce alongside Graham King.

Depp will, of course, star as the fictionalized Thompson -- Paul Kemp. It's the 1950's, and he moves from New York to a small and rundown paper in Puerto Rico, where he is "surrounded by a bunch of lost souls bent on self-destruction." The book was written when Thompson was 22, but was not published until years later, in 1998. The famous gonzo journalist had gone to the island with the hope of working for a daily called the San Juan Star. He didn't get the gig, but befriended many of the staff, which gave him the context for the story.

With Sweeney Todd wrapped, Depp just has to film Mira Nair's Shantaram (which is being produced by Depp's under-the-radar prodco, Infinitum Nihil) and then the feature will head into production. While it sounds like a killer project, it is a bit bittersweet -- there's still no word about Don Quixote. If Gilliam has gotten the script back, the project is now another film away.

Today is the day iconic gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson's ashes will be fired from a cannon as 250 friends and family members look on from his Owl Farm estate in Woody Creek, Colorado. The send off for the late Thompson was spearheaded by Johnny Depp, who portrayed Thompson in the movie adaptation of Thompson's book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and became a close friend. According to Depp, Thompson's wish was that his remains be fired from a cannon of his own design. Thompson was credited with developing a new form of journalism where the writer made himself the center of the story, an approach later used by other "alternative" journalists who didn't always understand that Thompson's choice had little to do with ego, but more to do with the fact that by fictionalizing things, you can often uncover a deeper, more profound truth.

In what I'm absolutely sure* is the first recorded instance of a movie star paying to dispose of the remains of a man he once played, Johnny Depp has agreed to sponsor the construction of a 150-foot tower on Hunter S. Thompson's land, from the top of which the dead writer's ashes will be shot out of a canon [thanks, B] cannon onto his ranch below. The tower will be built to resemble the "Gonzo Fist", Thompson's trademark icon. The event, to take place in August on the six month anniversary of Thompson's suicide, will be a private, celebratory affair. The ash canon will be fired at sunset.


*On Fridays, the word "absolutely" means "not at all".