Random Behind-The-Scenes Stories From 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' (14 items)

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  (#1) Johnny Depp And Hunter S. Thompson Bonded By Taking Shots At A Propane Tank

  Johnny Depp first read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as a teenage high school dropout and amateur band member. He recalled, "It was the most outrageous thing I'd ever read. F*ck, those guys were heroes, man. I mean, they had to be, out there, living that."

  Depp got the chance to meet Hunter S. Thompson years later in 1995 while visiting Thompson's favorite local bar. Thompson walked in using two electrified cattle prods to maneuver through the crowd. Though he had only seen one of Depp's films, the two got along well and Thompson invited Depp to his house to continue the party. Around 2 am, Thompson taped a small package of nitroglycerin to a canister of propane and used it for target practice. Depp wasn't afraid, though, saying, "I trusted him... He's survived all these years."

  The two men established a friendship, and the author asked the actor to play him in an early version of Fear and Loathing. Depp agreed, but worried creating an accurate portrayal of his friend might damage their relationship. Thompson brushed this off, noting he maintained a friendship with Bill Murray after Where the Buffalo Roam.
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  (#2) The Filmmakers Used Different Techniques For Different Substances

  According to director Terry Gilliam, the film recreates the effects of taking various psychoactive substances, "with all the uppers and downers in it. Both the most manic wonderful stuff and the really depressing stuff." To achieve this visual experience, the filmmakers used jump cuts, recorded scenes at odd angles, shot in slow-motion, and employed a wide-angle lens to make scenes uncomfortably disorientating.

  To get the viewer into the characters' heads, director of photography Nicola Pecorini used a different film technique for each substance depicted in the film. Mescaline can create an altered sense of time and make colors seem more intense, so Pecorini shot those scenes with soft lighting and a similar color palette, causing colors to blend into one another. Acid scenes make use of the wide-angle lens, distorting the surroundings and creating a sense of expansion. Sections involving adrenochrome use closeups to imitate claustrophobia and disordered thoughts.
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  (#3) Johnny Depp Lived In Hunter S. Thompson's Basement

  Prior to filming, Johnny Depp lived with Hunter S. Thompson to study him closely. The author put him to work editing letters, and Depp stayed in a basement room he referred to as "the dungeon." The actor explained:

  It's a little room with makeshift bookshelves and a lot of spiders, and a small, little sofa thing that folds out into a bed, and this enormous keg of gunpowder, which they let me know about when I'd probably been there, smoking in bed, about five days.

  The two men went to sleep around 10 am and woke for breakfast around 7 pm, spending their time watching television, visiting bars, or sitting around the house talking. Eventually, Thompson gave Depp access to boxes of his files. They held notes, drafts, and notebooks of his work.

  Reading through the Vegas book box, Depp learned Thompson toned down his story for print. "It was probably more outrageous, and more insane, than he can write. I think the book is a calmer version of what actually happened," said Depp.

  Eventually, the two became like brothers, looking out for one another. Thompson made sure Depp ate and never took more hallucinogens than he could handle.
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  (#4) Hunter S. Thompson's Real Car And Clothes Appear In The Film

  In order to completely absorb Hunter S. Thompson's aura, Johnny Depp dug through the author's closets and found his clothes from 1971. Some of the wardrobe items ended up in the movie, though as Thompson's assistant Deborah Fuller noted, "The clothes hadn't been washed in 30 years."

  Thompson also allowed Depp to drive his red Chevy convertible, the Great Red Shark, from Colorado back to Los Angeles to use in the film. Depp left at 3 am and drove with no shelter from the cold because the convertible's top wouldn't close. Luckily, Thompson packed his pal a cooler full of supplies and loaned him a few flashlights. Depp entertained himself with a portable cassette player and music mentioned in Thompson's book.
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  (#5) Hunter S. Thompson Shaved Johnny Depp's Head

  In order to fully transform into Hunter S. Thompson, Johnny Depp shaved the top of his head. He did it just before traveling to Colorado to visit the real Thompson one last time before filming started. However, the writer didn't love the cut, and asked Depp to keep his hat on in public.

  Eventually, Thompson decided to tweak the style himself, and with permission, he cropped Depp's hair to perfection. "He was very gentle. No cuts. No weirdness. He wore a mining light, so he could see. He's prepared for f*cking everything," Depp remembered.
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  (#6) Benicio del Toro's Performance Cost Him Future Job Opportunities

  In order to better resemble the fictional Dr. Gonzo, Benicio del Toro ate 16 donuts a day over an eight-week period to gain a lot of weight rapidly. "I didn't get a trainer. I did it macho style, stupid-style. I gained the weight really quick and it took a while to get it off," the actor recalled.

  After production on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas finished, del Toro struggled to find more work. He explained:

  In between work, I had meetings and people saw me and said, "Oh my God, this guy went off the rails"...

  People in Hollywood can be as gullible as anywhere. Just because they’re in the world of make-believe doesn’t mean they don’t believe it. After I tried to get a couple of jobs, the feedback I got was that people didn’t want to see me because, "We know he’s got a drinking problem..." And the only reason for that was because they had seen Fear and Loathing. Maybe it was a compliment.

  The actor managed to lose the weight, but didn't appear in a movie for another two years.
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  (#7) Hunter S. Thompson Fired A Director For Not Liking Football And Being Vegetarian

  Director Alex Cox attempted to make Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in 1996 and cast Johnny Depp as Raoul Duke. However, when Cox visited Hunter S. Thompson in Colorado during the script-writing process, he made a bad impression. Thompson discovered he didn't like Cox at all, recalling:

  I cooked my special sausage, and the ballgame was on. And... first, he hated football - he refused to watch football. And then I cooked really good sausage, which I prize, and he disdained that: vegetarian. Here in my house comes this adder, this asp. And he just persisted to insult and soil the best parts of the book. 

  The author made sure Cox stopped working on the film and accepted Terry Gilliam as director instead.
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  (#8) Johnny Depp Won A Russian Acting Award For His Performance

  Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas flopped at the box office, and critics didn't like it. USA Today said it was "simply unwatchable," and Roger Ebert called it "a horrible mess of a movie." A reviewer at The Washington Post wrote, "Watching it is like being forced to listen to bad heavy metal music turned up to 11 while fat guys in Bermuda shorts compete in a puking contest in the john."

  Director Terry Gilliam knew people had varied responses to his films and wasn't surprised by the reactions, quipping, "The good thing about it was we got a decent number of walkouts - I was worried that we might not, but we did."

  Despite this less-than-stellar response, the film did garner some good press in Russia. The Russian Guild of Film Critics voted Johnny Depp Best Foreign Actor in 1998 for his performance. 
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  (#9) It Was Incredibly Difficult To Film Hunter S. Thompson's Cameo

  Hunter S. Thompson stayed at his home in Colorado during the 11 weeks of filming, though he ventured to Los Angeles to film a cameo. He appears in a club flashback and shares a glance with Johnny Depp.

  According to a Rolling Stone reporter following him that day, Thompson kicked chairs around in Depp's trailer, wailed like a child when he couldn't find his cigarettes, and drew a mustache on his face using permanent marker when he got bored. "It took the woman 20 minutes to get it off," Thompson said.

  When he was finally called to the set, the author threw grapes at director Terry Gilliam until the crew filmed three takes.
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  (#10) Hunter S. Thompson Called Tobey Maguire A 'Freak'

  Mostly uninvolved with the film version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson didn't see the final product until production wrapped. On the DVD commentary for the movie, the author made it clear he didn't enjoy Tobey Maguire's portrayal of the young hitchhiker.

  Thompson said, "That kid is a stupid... a wax doll of some kind." A second voice explained Maguire was a popular actor who played Spider-Man, but Thompson let out an exasperated sigh and responded, "I don't see why I guess... Look at that freak."
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  (#11) Many Las Vegas Casinos Refused To Work With The Filmmakers

  Due to the unflattering image the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas paints of the infamous city, many casinos and hotels refused to work with the film's producers. That forced director Terry Gilliam to get creative. Once Circus Circus turned Gilliam down, he invented a faux establishment named Bazooka Circus to avoid any legal issues.

  The filmmaker used a 20-foot clown head with an open mouth as the casino's entrance and re-created the actual venue's carousel bar - though in the film, it rotates in the opposite direction.

  A few smaller casinos, like the Binions, the Riviera, and the Palace Hotel, agreed to allow filming, but remained open to the public. The crew could use two lanes of the Palace Hotel's six and had to work around visitors' cars and actual gamblers. Filming occurred between 2 am to 6 am, and the set lights couldn't be bright enough to blind patrons. Gilliam remembered:

  We could control six tables that were close to camera. So we had our extras there and the rest of the scene was the casino running as normal... The strange thing was we couldn't use phony money at the tables; we had to gamble with real money, and the dealers are their dealers! So we had a chance of either losing the budget or doubling the budget.

  Re-creating the Las Vegas of the 1970s also proved to difficult, requiring computer generated imagery as well as footage from the '70s television show Vega$ projected behind the actors.
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  (#12) The Lizard Scene Only Features Eight Animatronics

  Both camera work and special effects add to the bizarre visuals in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. For the memorable scene in which Raoul Duke starts tripping and suddenly finds himself in a bar surrounded by giant lizards, the filmmakers used animatronics instead of computer-generated graphics.

  They ordered 25 lizards, but only received eight. To make the bar seem packed with lizard-people, the crew got creative, dressing the lizards in costumes and changing their clothes between shots so they all looked different. The crew also shot parts of the scene in different areas around the bar to make it look like the lizards were in different spaces. 
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  (#13) Oliver Stone And Martin Scorsese Failed To Turn The Book Into A Film

  Rolling Stone published the first part of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on November 11, 1971 - one year before Thompson turned the piece into a book. Interest from Hollywood soon followed. Jack Nicholson looked into starring, and both Oliver Stone and Martin Scorsese attempted (and failed) to produce the film. One producer allegedly considered John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd for the main roles.

  Director Clive Arrowsmith shared some potential film ideas with Thompson, including how to re-create the moment when reporters become reptiles. Arrowsmith suggested, "It'll be easy - we'll just get live alligators, we'll give them some quaaludes, and we'll nail their f*cking paws to the bar."

  In the interim, Where the Buffalo Roam - an adaptation of several Thompson stories - came out. However, the movie was a critical and box office failure, "because [the subject matter] became uncool," as Thompson put it. For a while, it seemed like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas might never be made.
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  (#14) Terry Gilliam Wrote The Script In A Few Days

  Producers first approached Terry Gilliam to direct Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas around 1989, but his involvement with The Fisher King made him too busy. He also didn't find the script, penned by Alex Cox and Tod Davies, appealing. When offered another chance to direct years later, Gilliam decided to rewrite the script himself.

  Working with Tony Grisoni, Gilliam took eight days to write the script but then scrapped it. The pair then took another two days to rewrite it again. The script remained a work in progress throughout parts of the production.

  Because two different writing teams worked on the script, the Writers Guild originally said the screenplay credit should go to Cox and Davies. To fight this, Gilliam had to prove the draft he wrote with Grisoni contained more of the final film's content than the original script. The Writers Guild reversed their decision, allowing all four contributors to receive credit.

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