If you experience a lack of inspiration, writer's block, anxiety about the boss, wars, lies, lost freedom, corruption, rejection, repression, fear and loathing...then write yourself a prescription and take it to the closest movie theatre showing "Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson," the new film directed by Oscar winner Alex Gibney. Here's the trailer.
Gibney puts accuracy above glory in his retelling of the life of the man once able to conjure up enough powerful wordplay to push millions to reconsider a sense of ourselves, our government, and our freedom.
Here's Thompson documenting the last great wave of freedom - from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream:
"Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .
History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time — and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights — or very early mornings — when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .
And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
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Taxi to the Dark Side on 2/25/2008 7:45:00 AM by Rob Barnett
Alex Gibney is an Oscar winner! The man is a friend, an inspiration, and a soulful warrior. His films are completely dedicated to telling the truth.
TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature.
Here's the LA Times:
'Taxi to the Dark Side': A look at torture
"Taxi to the Dark Side" provides the night's most overtly political commentary.
By Mark Olsen
February 25, 2008Winner for outstanding documentary feature, "Taxi to the Dark Side," a painfully clear-eyed look at the United States policy on torture in Afghanistan and Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, provided the night's most overtly political commentary -- Jon Stewart's monologue notwithstanding.Directed by Alex Gibney and produced by Gibney and Eva Orner, the film features photographs and video footage from Abu Ghraib prison, as well as interviews with military personnel.In accepting the award, Gibney said, "Here's to all doc filmmakers," and then went on to dedicate the award to Dilawar, the Afghan cab driver whose death provides the film with its throughline and title, and to his own late father, a former Navy interrogator, noting "his fury about what was being done to the rule of law."
"Taxi to the Dark Side" was one of three nominees that touched on the war in Iraq, but Gibney's feature was the one that beat out the sizable cult of celebrity around filmmaker Michael Moore, a nominee for his look at the American healthcare system, "Sicko."Gibney was also an executive producer of the nominated feature-length documentary "No End in Sight."
"Taxi to the Dark Side" was originally scheduled to be broadcast on television by the Discovery Channel, but was recently picked up by HBO when Discovery made it clear they would not show the film this year. Gibney very much wanted the film on television prior to the November elections.
Gibney concluded his acceptance speech by saying, "Let's hope we can turn this country around, move away from the dark side and back to the light."
ALEX GIBNEY:
http://www.jigsawprods.com/
Anne DeBevoise & husband Alex at the big show:
