Columnist Scott Dickensheets: 'Fear' triggers Loathing for disappointed fan

GOD DIDN'T want me to see "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." As I rushed -- late even by my standards -- toward Thursday night's screening, He cursed me with plagues of slow drivers, traffic jams and red lights.

And yet, as I frequently do, I managed to thwart His sensible plan for me, arriving at the theater in time to take my seat between a man I'll refer to only as the shadowy Mr. X (not to hide his identity, but because he likes to be called "the shadowy Mr. X") and The Guy to My Left.

Then the house lights dimmed and so, shortly, did my hopes for Terry Gilliam's film. It had several visually intriguing sequences, some hearty laughs, and the vomiting scenes were laudably realistic, but, in retrospect, God was probably right. "That sucked," said the shadowy Mr. X when the house lights went up. "I've concluded that the book is unfilmable," said The Guy to My Left. "I liked it," said the artist who completed our quartet, but he's an artist and you know how they are.

I was particularly disappointed. Like a lot of reporters, I was misled into this line of work by Hunter S. Thompson, whose work made journalism seem more fun than it really is. I was a high school junior aiming for a career as an obscure cartoonist when my brain was hijacked by "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"; it convinced me you could write your cartoons as well as draw them, and maybe even live them as well.

I wasn't the only one under the Thompson spell. I recall one kid coming to class in full gonzo getup: Hawaiian shirt, Thompson hat and shades, a satchel full of grapefruit. What, no 300-pound Samoan attorney?

The book has inspired that sort of cultish devotion since it appeared in Rolling Stone in 1971, and the misguided nature of that adoration, I think, says something about why it made such a mediocre film.

It's easy to be romanced by the figure cut by Thompson's "Fear and Loathing" alter-ego, Duke. He's very obviously His Own Man, flamboyant, determined to do things his way, always happy to freak out the squares. He's a clown with edge, which is what everyone loves about him.

But, finally, there has to be a person under your persona, and in "Fear and Loathing," that comes from the sentences themselves. The authority of Thompson's writing belies the woozy, frat-boy excess he's describing. Alas, literary tone doesn't translate easily to celluloid. While the movie lifts dialogue and narration straight from the book, there's nothing about the film's itchy, twitchy portrayal of Duke that gives him any credibility as an observer. He's just another spastic weirdo, the edgy clown of Thompson legend, all style and no substance.

"Fear and Loathing" only works as literature, in that dreamy, nonspecific middle ground where a reader's imagination engages the printed word. Dialogue that flows on the page stumbles onscreen. The Guy to My Left was right -- "Fear and Loathing" is unfilmable. (Roger Ebert's equally unimpressed review is on page 10D.)

That's partly because it's so obviously an artifact of its time. Dope culture has acquired the quaint, anachronistic air of say, hanging with Papa in Paris -- it's another generation's thing. That was probably the last time anyone but impressionable high school students believed it was possible or even desirable to live your own cartoon. It's a point made by the book's strengths and the movie's failures: The '60s are over, man.

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