Breakfast With Hunter
Screened
CineVegas Film Festival, Las Vegas
Eighteen years in the making, Wayne Ewing's "Breakfast With Hunter" is an intimate verite portrait that honors its subject with fierce affection and respect.
Eschewing a talking-heads bio approach, the film assumes knowledge of Hunter S. Thompson's work but nevertheless serves as an incisive intro for the uninitiated. Among a cavalcade of luminaries, Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro and John Cusack make notable, decidedly non-glam appearances, clearly thrilled to be hanging out with the inventor and eminence grise of gonzo journalism.
As a friend, neighbor and colleague of Thompson, Ewing, whose television helming and DP credits include "Bill Moyers' Journal", "Frontline" and "Homicide", was afforded remarkable access.
The film- and DV-shot documentary had its world premiere June 21 as the closing-night selection of the CineVegas festival (with Thompson in attendance). It deserves further fest exposure and is a natural for docu-themed cable slots. The right distributor could parlay the writer's iconoclastic appeal into limited theatrical play for art house and college crowds.
Ewing centers on 1996-97, when Thompson was busy on three fronts: battling what he considered a political arrest in Aspen, Colo., on bogus DUI charges; making appearances at 25th anniversary celebrations of his 1971 book "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"; and, in the film's most compelling sequence, confronting creative obstacles to big-screen plans for that book, in the form of a profoundly misguided director and screenwriter.
During the round of 25th-anniversary tributes, those offering praise cover the political spectrum from P.J. O'Rourke to George McGovern, and Thompson's son, Juan, delivers a moving appreciation of his integrity and his place in American letters.
Reading Thompson's work to audiences, an amused Cusack, the gum-chewing, deadpan Depp and an exultant Roxanne Pulitzer present ample evidence of the author's moral clarity and the caustic humor and diamond-sharp prose with which he's raged against hypocrisy for more than three decades.
Here the soundtrack to those decades is replete with songs by Warren Zevon and the clink of ice in a tall glass of Chivas. The film's title refers to the prodigious all-nighters the director and other valiant stony warriors shared with Thompson, especially at Owl Farm, his "heavily fortified," peacock-friendly ranch near Aspen. There's a revealing glimpse of the friendship between Thompson and longtime collaborator Ralph Steadman when the artist visits the compound with an offering of rare Scotches and a startling revisionist assessment of his role in the author's work.
But the incident Ewing rightly puts center stage is the astounding meeting between Thompson and the team initially assigned to the film adaptation of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" -- scripter Tod Davies and helmer Alex Cox, whose outlaw sympathies ("Sid and Nancy", "Straight to Hell") might have made him seem the right choice for the project. (They both received screenwriting credit, along with others, on the Terry Gilliam-directed 1998 film.) The would-be collaboration implodes when the duo earnestly present a ham-fisted visual concept for a key section of the book, a passage that Thompson accurately calls "one of the best things I've ever written."
Second only to Cox and Davies' mind-boggling literalness is the obduracy with which they cling to their dumb idea in the face of Thompson's reasonable objections and rising anger. Their self-destruction is fascinating to behold; later, watching tape of the incident in Thompson's Chateau Marmont suite, Del Toro can only marvel at their unwillingness to bend, or at least shut up.
The scene that unfolds recalls another memorable cinema verite moment: Donovan's humiliation at Dylan's hands in "Don't Look Back". But this exchange draws its power not from any casually sadistic streak on Thompson's part but from his clearheaded defense of his work against clueless marauders. "Breakfast With Hunter" is a convincing exploration of why that work matters.
BREAKFAST WITH HUNTER
Wayne Ewing Films Inc and Gonzo International
Credits:
Director/writer/producer/director of photograpy/editor: Wayne Ewing
Executive producer: Andrew Ewing With: Hunter S. Thompson, Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro, John Cusack, Ralph Steadman, Juan Thompson, Jann Wenner, George Plimpton, Alex Cox, Tod Davies, Laila Nabulsi, Warren Zevon, Roxanne Pulitzer, George McGovern, Frank Mankiewicz, Douglas Brinkley, PJ O'Rourke, Lyle Lovett, Matt Dillon
Running time -- 92 minutes
No MPAA rating...
CineVegas Film Festival, Las Vegas
Eighteen years in the making, Wayne Ewing's "Breakfast With Hunter" is an intimate verite portrait that honors its subject with fierce affection and respect.
Eschewing a talking-heads bio approach, the film assumes knowledge of Hunter S. Thompson's work but nevertheless serves as an incisive intro for the uninitiated. Among a cavalcade of luminaries, Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro and John Cusack make notable, decidedly non-glam appearances, clearly thrilled to be hanging out with the inventor and eminence grise of gonzo journalism.
As a friend, neighbor and colleague of Thompson, Ewing, whose television helming and DP credits include "Bill Moyers' Journal", "Frontline" and "Homicide", was afforded remarkable access.
The film- and DV-shot documentary had its world premiere June 21 as the closing-night selection of the CineVegas festival (with Thompson in attendance). It deserves further fest exposure and is a natural for docu-themed cable slots. The right distributor could parlay the writer's iconoclastic appeal into limited theatrical play for art house and college crowds.
Ewing centers on 1996-97, when Thompson was busy on three fronts: battling what he considered a political arrest in Aspen, Colo., on bogus DUI charges; making appearances at 25th anniversary celebrations of his 1971 book "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"; and, in the film's most compelling sequence, confronting creative obstacles to big-screen plans for that book, in the form of a profoundly misguided director and screenwriter.
During the round of 25th-anniversary tributes, those offering praise cover the political spectrum from P.J. O'Rourke to George McGovern, and Thompson's son, Juan, delivers a moving appreciation of his integrity and his place in American letters.
Reading Thompson's work to audiences, an amused Cusack, the gum-chewing, deadpan Depp and an exultant Roxanne Pulitzer present ample evidence of the author's moral clarity and the caustic humor and diamond-sharp prose with which he's raged against hypocrisy for more than three decades.
Here the soundtrack to those decades is replete with songs by Warren Zevon and the clink of ice in a tall glass of Chivas. The film's title refers to the prodigious all-nighters the director and other valiant stony warriors shared with Thompson, especially at Owl Farm, his "heavily fortified," peacock-friendly ranch near Aspen. There's a revealing glimpse of the friendship between Thompson and longtime collaborator Ralph Steadman when the artist visits the compound with an offering of rare Scotches and a startling revisionist assessment of his role in the author's work.
But the incident Ewing rightly puts center stage is the astounding meeting between Thompson and the team initially assigned to the film adaptation of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" -- scripter Tod Davies and helmer Alex Cox, whose outlaw sympathies ("Sid and Nancy", "Straight to Hell") might have made him seem the right choice for the project. (They both received screenwriting credit, along with others, on the Terry Gilliam-directed 1998 film.) The would-be collaboration implodes when the duo earnestly present a ham-fisted visual concept for a key section of the book, a passage that Thompson accurately calls "one of the best things I've ever written."
Second only to Cox and Davies' mind-boggling literalness is the obduracy with which they cling to their dumb idea in the face of Thompson's reasonable objections and rising anger. Their self-destruction is fascinating to behold; later, watching tape of the incident in Thompson's Chateau Marmont suite, Del Toro can only marvel at their unwillingness to bend, or at least shut up.
The scene that unfolds recalls another memorable cinema verite moment: Donovan's humiliation at Dylan's hands in "Don't Look Back". But this exchange draws its power not from any casually sadistic streak on Thompson's part but from his clearheaded defense of his work against clueless marauders. "Breakfast With Hunter" is a convincing exploration of why that work matters.
BREAKFAST WITH HUNTER
Wayne Ewing Films Inc and Gonzo International
Credits:
Director/writer/producer/director of photograpy/editor: Wayne Ewing
Executive producer: Andrew Ewing With: Hunter S. Thompson, Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro, John Cusack, Ralph Steadman, Juan Thompson, Jann Wenner, George Plimpton, Alex Cox, Tod Davies, Laila Nabulsi, Warren Zevon, Roxanne Pulitzer, George McGovern, Frank Mankiewicz, Douglas Brinkley, PJ O'Rourke, Lyle Lovett, Matt Dillon
Running time -- 92 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 7/9/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Breakfast With Hunter
Screened
CineVegas Film Festival, Las Vegas
Eighteen years in the making, Wayne Ewing's "Breakfast With Hunter" is an intimate verite portrait that honors its subject with fierce affection and respect.
Eschewing a talking-heads bio approach, the film assumes knowledge of Hunter S. Thompson's work but nevertheless serves as an incisive intro for the uninitiated. Among a cavalcade of luminaries, Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro and John Cusack make notable, decidedly non-glam appearances, clearly thrilled to be hanging out with the inventor and eminence grise of gonzo journalism.
As a friend, neighbor and colleague of Thompson, Ewing, whose television helming and DP credits include "Bill Moyers' Journal", "Frontline" and "Homicide", was afforded remarkable access.
The film- and DV-shot documentary had its world premiere June 21 as the closing-night selection of the CineVegas festival (with Thompson in attendance). It deserves further fest exposure and is a natural for docu-themed cable slots. The right distributor could parlay the writer's iconoclastic appeal into limited theatrical play for art house and college crowds.
Ewing centers on 1996-97, when Thompson was busy on three fronts: battling what he considered a political arrest in Aspen, Colo., on bogus DUI charges; making appearances at 25th anniversary celebrations of his 1971 book "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"; and, in the film's most compelling sequence, confronting creative obstacles to big-screen plans for that book, in the form of a profoundly misguided director and screenwriter.
During the round of 25th-anniversary tributes, those offering praise cover the political spectrum from P.J. O'Rourke to George McGovern, and Thompson's son, Juan, delivers a moving appreciation of his integrity and his place in American letters.
Reading Thompson's work to audiences, an amused Cusack, the gum-chewing, deadpan Depp and an exultant Roxanne Pulitzer present ample evidence of the author's moral clarity and the caustic humor and diamond-sharp prose with which he's raged against hypocrisy for more than three decades.
Here the soundtrack to those decades is replete with songs by Warren Zevon and the clink of ice in a tall glass of Chivas. The film's title refers to the prodigious all-nighters the director and other valiant stony warriors shared with Thompson, especially at Owl Farm, his "heavily fortified," peacock-friendly ranch near Aspen. There's a revealing glimpse of the friendship between Thompson and longtime collaborator Ralph Steadman when the artist visits the compound with an offering of rare Scotches and a startling revisionist assessment of his role in the author's work.
But the incident Ewing rightly puts center stage is the astounding meeting between Thompson and the team initially assigned to the film adaptation of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" -- scripter Tod Davies and helmer Alex Cox, whose outlaw sympathies ("Sid and Nancy", "Straight to Hell") might have made him seem the right choice for the project. (They both received screenwriting credit, along with others, on the Terry Gilliam-directed 1998 film.) The would-be collaboration implodes when the duo earnestly present a ham-fisted visual concept for a key section of the book, a passage that Thompson accurately calls "one of the best things I've ever written."
Second only to Cox and Davies' mind-boggling literalness is the obduracy with which they cling to their dumb idea in the face of Thompson's reasonable objections and rising anger. Their self-destruction is fascinating to behold; later, watching tape of the incident in Thompson's Chateau Marmont suite, Del Toro can only marvel at their unwillingness to bend, or at least shut up.
The scene that unfolds recalls another memorable cinema verite moment: Donovan's humiliation at Dylan's hands in "Don't Look Back". But this exchange draws its power not from any casually sadistic streak on Thompson's part but from his clearheaded defense of his work against clueless marauders. "Breakfast With Hunter" is a convincing exploration of why that work matters.
BREAKFAST WITH HUNTER
Wayne Ewing Films Inc and Gonzo International
Credits:
Director/writer/producer/director of photograpy/editor: Wayne Ewing
Executive producer: Andrew Ewing With: Hunter S. Thompson, Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro, John Cusack, Ralph Steadman, Juan Thompson, Jann Wenner, George Plimpton, Alex Cox, Tod Davies, Laila Nabulsi, Warren Zevon, Roxanne Pulitzer, George McGovern, Frank Mankiewicz, Douglas Brinkley, PJ O'Rourke, Lyle Lovett, Matt Dillon
Running time -- 92 minutes
No MPAA rating...
CineVegas Film Festival, Las Vegas
Eighteen years in the making, Wayne Ewing's "Breakfast With Hunter" is an intimate verite portrait that honors its subject with fierce affection and respect.
Eschewing a talking-heads bio approach, the film assumes knowledge of Hunter S. Thompson's work but nevertheless serves as an incisive intro for the uninitiated. Among a cavalcade of luminaries, Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro and John Cusack make notable, decidedly non-glam appearances, clearly thrilled to be hanging out with the inventor and eminence grise of gonzo journalism.
As a friend, neighbor and colleague of Thompson, Ewing, whose television helming and DP credits include "Bill Moyers' Journal", "Frontline" and "Homicide", was afforded remarkable access.
The film- and DV-shot documentary had its world premiere June 21 as the closing-night selection of the CineVegas festival (with Thompson in attendance). It deserves further fest exposure and is a natural for docu-themed cable slots. The right distributor could parlay the writer's iconoclastic appeal into limited theatrical play for art house and college crowds.
Ewing centers on 1996-97, when Thompson was busy on three fronts: battling what he considered a political arrest in Aspen, Colo., on bogus DUI charges; making appearances at 25th anniversary celebrations of his 1971 book "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"; and, in the film's most compelling sequence, confronting creative obstacles to big-screen plans for that book, in the form of a profoundly misguided director and screenwriter.
During the round of 25th-anniversary tributes, those offering praise cover the political spectrum from P.J. O'Rourke to George McGovern, and Thompson's son, Juan, delivers a moving appreciation of his integrity and his place in American letters.
Reading Thompson's work to audiences, an amused Cusack, the gum-chewing, deadpan Depp and an exultant Roxanne Pulitzer present ample evidence of the author's moral clarity and the caustic humor and diamond-sharp prose with which he's raged against hypocrisy for more than three decades.
Here the soundtrack to those decades is replete with songs by Warren Zevon and the clink of ice in a tall glass of Chivas. The film's title refers to the prodigious all-nighters the director and other valiant stony warriors shared with Thompson, especially at Owl Farm, his "heavily fortified," peacock-friendly ranch near Aspen. There's a revealing glimpse of the friendship between Thompson and longtime collaborator Ralph Steadman when the artist visits the compound with an offering of rare Scotches and a startling revisionist assessment of his role in the author's work.
But the incident Ewing rightly puts center stage is the astounding meeting between Thompson and the team initially assigned to the film adaptation of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" -- scripter Tod Davies and helmer Alex Cox, whose outlaw sympathies ("Sid and Nancy", "Straight to Hell") might have made him seem the right choice for the project. (They both received screenwriting credit, along with others, on the Terry Gilliam-directed 1998 film.) The would-be collaboration implodes when the duo earnestly present a ham-fisted visual concept for a key section of the book, a passage that Thompson accurately calls "one of the best things I've ever written."
Second only to Cox and Davies' mind-boggling literalness is the obduracy with which they cling to their dumb idea in the face of Thompson's reasonable objections and rising anger. Their self-destruction is fascinating to behold; later, watching tape of the incident in Thompson's Chateau Marmont suite, Del Toro can only marvel at their unwillingness to bend, or at least shut up.
The scene that unfolds recalls another memorable cinema verite moment: Donovan's humiliation at Dylan's hands in "Don't Look Back". But this exchange draws its power not from any casually sadistic streak on Thompson's part but from his clearheaded defense of his work against clueless marauders. "Breakfast With Hunter" is a convincing exploration of why that work matters.
BREAKFAST WITH HUNTER
Wayne Ewing Films Inc and Gonzo International
Credits:
Director/writer/producer/director of photograpy/editor: Wayne Ewing
Executive producer: Andrew Ewing With: Hunter S. Thompson, Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro, John Cusack, Ralph Steadman, Juan Thompson, Jann Wenner, George Plimpton, Alex Cox, Tod Davies, Laila Nabulsi, Warren Zevon, Roxanne Pulitzer, George McGovern, Frank Mankiewicz, Douglas Brinkley, PJ O'Rourke, Lyle Lovett, Matt Dillon
Running time -- 92 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 7/7/2003
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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