Fear to loathing and back again: The Terry Gilliam Story

Louis Chunovic

Friday, May 22, 1998 | 10:18 a.m.

Visionary director Terry Gilliam says he's never in his life taken any psychedelic drugs, but just being in Las Vegas, a city he plainly detests, is enough to give him hallucinations.

"It's both hallucinogenic and depressing, like many drugs," says the director of the long-awaited film version of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," Hunter S. Thompson's comic account of a 1971 drug-and-booze drenched trip in a candy- apple-red convertible to a surreal and crass Las Vegas -- characterized in the book as a "savage journey to the heart of the American dream." The movie opens today.

Accompanied by his Samoan attorney, who's a magnet for "bad craziness," Thompson, the original "gonzo" journalist, covers a motorcycle race outside of town and, stoned all the while, a district attorneys' drug conference at the Flamingo. In the movie, Thompson is played by Johnny Depp, eyes constantly darting behind tinted sunglasses and hairline shaved back to simulate Thompson's male-pattern baldness, and the attorney by a seriously bulked-up Benicio Del Toro.

"The best thing about Las Vegas is the desert around it, which is extraordinary," says Gilliam, a Minnesota transplant to England, who first made his mark as Monty Python's visual collage-cartoon stylist and later went on to direct such striking films as "Brazil," "The Fisher King" and "12 Monkeys."

Las Vegas architecture "appears to be something, but it doesn't make any sense," Gilliam muses. "We were at the Tropicana (during filming) and every day I'd look out and there was the entire island of Manhattan, condensed into one city block and girdled with a roller coaster. (Next to it) the Excalibur, which is a truly ugly thing with all these ice-cream cones painted funny colors stood on their heads. The intensity of it is extraordinary, and yet there's this overriding sadness of desperation."

In the movie, Circus Circus is transformed into the Bazooka Circus, which, Depp/Thompson quoting the book in voiceover, calls "what the whole hep world would be doing on Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war." Of another hotel-casino, Gilliam says, "You're sort of in the south of France, until you look up and it's all pipes and tubing and ducting. But if you keep your eyes down at the right level, you could think you're somewhere on the Cote d'Azure, except that they're playing country and western music."

Even Lake Havasu leaves "Loathing's" director disgusted. "Whoever bought that bridge thought that London Bridge was Tower Bridge (which, along with Big Ben, may be one of London's most familiar symbols), but they bought the London Bridge, and it's really a dull bridge," he says, reminded by that image of water that, "in Vegas, you're asked by the hotel to help conserve... by not having your towels washed every day. And outside they're just dumping millions of gallons of water down through waterfalls!

"Vegas just may be the perfect reflection of America at this stage in its history," he continues. "It's turning into Disneyland, and everybody's becoming these mindless infants who wander around and don't do anything."

Anyone who remembers the numerous grotesque characters that have populated the fringes of his films (think, for example, of Katherine Helmond's stretched face in "Brazil"), or who turned up in his Monty Python cutouts and cartoons (predecessors to today's cult hit "South Park"), won't be surprised by "Loathing's" vomiting scenes or by the casino habitues who morph into lizards, or even by Gilliam's description of typical Las Vegas tourists -- the people he calls the New Americans:

"Women that are sort of bloated, inverted pear shapes, and they walk like these (wind-up) dolls ... and guys that are geeks who have all taken bodybuilding, so they've got these little pinheads with glasses stuck on these huge shoulders, and they walk like there's something stuck up their ass. They're working to keep these glutes tight."

To incarnate these and other local-color characters for "Loathing," Gilliam called on a stellar group of actors for small, essentially cameo roles, including Ellen Barkin ("Sea of Love") as a burned-out and bitter North Vegas waitress, Cameron Diaz ("Mask") as a perky TV reporter, Gary Busey ("The Buddy Holly Story") as a lonely highway patrolman, Mark Harmon (TV's "Chicago Hope") as a magazine writer, Harry Dean Stanton ("Alien") as a judge and Flea and Lyle Lovett as musicians at the Matrix.

If you look quickly in the right foreground during that "mid-'60s hippie wave" speech at the Matrix, about midway through the picture, you can even catch a glimpse of the real Hunter Thompson eying his cinematic alter-ego.

Penn Jillette, who calls himself "stupidly, aggressively drug free," also takes a brief turn in "Loathing," billed as the "Carney Talker," a small part he took as a favor to Gilliam, a friend of long-standing, though they have completely opposing views of the city.

Gilliam's (and Thompson's) view of Las Vegas is "old-fashioned, a 25-year-old view," Jillette says, taking time out from shooting an episode of "Sin City Spectacular," Penn & Teller's upcoming one-hour weekly series for the FX cable channel. Penn explains how he, too, had once disdained Las Vegas, but, after seeing Dean Martin, whom he likened to the Ramones, and Tom Jones, whom he compared to Bob Dylan, he came to believe that Las Vegas was "wonderful."

To which Gilliam replies: "He's a stronger individual than I am, clearly. But he lives in a bunker out in the desert with no windows. What does that tell you?"

Despite the nonstop drug use -- everything from hashish and LSD to ether ("the perfect drug for Las Vegas," as it's called in the movie) and tincture of human adrenal glands -- "Loathing" is not a pro-drug film at all, Gilliam says, and, after viewing its many scenes of sour, pukey, sweaty and teeth-clenched drug taking, it's hard to disagree.

If all this is controversial, then Gilliam, always a charmingly plain-spoken and genially profane man, probably needs that controversy to raise his film's profile in its head-on battle for box office with "Godzilla," this summer's would-be monster of a special-effects movie.

"We got lizards in ours too," he cracks, "but ours (expletive). If this has to go in a family paper, say ours 'fornicate.' "

A good suggestion, no doubt made in the same spirit as this earlier, offhand remark: "Anyone stuck in Las Vegas needs all the help they can get."

So, thanks Terry, but at least it's not L.A.