Fear & Loathing In Aspen (2021)

FEAR AND LOATHING IN ASPEN (2021)

Dir: Bobby Kennedy III

Finally, someone removed the caricature from Hunter S. Thompson. Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas (1998) provides the perfect adaptation of Thompson’s book. The psychedelic imagery and the bats*t insane scenarios Thompson got himself into were a thing of beauty. But, like Ralph Steadman’s illustrations, they were a caricature of the real Hunter S. Thompson. We bought the ticket and took the ride. It was fun. It remains as one of my favorite films. This made me skeptical when we started watching Bobby Kennedy’s new portrait of Thompson. How could it live up to Johnny Depp or even Bill Murray in Where The Buffalo Roam (1980)? By not trying to.

Fear and Loathing in Aspen tells the true story of Thompson’s bid for Sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado in 1970. Thompson wrote the article “The Battle Of Aspen” in Rolling Stone which detailed the 1969 mayoral election in Aspen. The candidate was Joe Edwards, a freak resident of Aspen. Thompson was his campaign manager and helped to rally the freaks, hippies, and nomads to come out and vote. When Edwards narrowly lost, Thompson threw in for the sheriff’s race, and ran on a “Freak Power” campaign.

Seemingly inspired by the 2020 presidential election, the story of Thompson running for sheriff became the subject of a documentary film, Freak Power: The Ballot or the Bomb (2020) and Kennedy’s narrative film Fear and Loathing in Aspen. In Kennedy’s film, former Rolling Stone writer, Jay Bulger portrays the immensely intelligent and crazed Thompson. The insanity of the campaign is detailed and may gloss over a few facts, but contains the integrity of the event. My favorite fact from Thompson’s election was when he shaved his head to call the incumbent, ex-marine, republican sheriff, his “Long-haired opponent.”

Jay Bulger and Kennedy do a great job and giving Thompson back his humanity. We see him with his son, we see him struggling to write, we see him excited to get a job with Rolling Stone, we see him care about his town, and we see him through the drugs for who he was. I’ll always love Thompson’s exaggerated prose and his ability to cut through all meaning with a scalpel, but with all the insanity there was still someone who felt deeply about his surroundings. While there was a part of me that wanted Bulger to say, “We were somewhere around Barstow when the drugs began to take hold,” it was uplifting to see the gentler side of Thomson. Fear and Loathing in Aspen’s low budget is the element that allows the story to shine.