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Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (15)

• Consumer Advice: Contains strong language, hard drug use, nudity and suicide theme.
• Run time: 2 hours

• Genre: Documentary
• Release date: 19th December 2008

• Starring: Johnny Depp, Hunter S. Thompson, Oscar Acosta
• Directed by: Alex Gibney

• Official Website: www.huntersthompsonmovie.com
• Distributor: Optimum Releasing

Plot Synopsis

"Gonzo" is the definitive film biography of a mythic American figure, a man that Tom Wolfe called our "greatest comic writer," whose suicide, by gunshot, led Rolling Stone Magazine, where Thompson began his career, to devote an entire issue (its best-selling ever) to the man that launched a thousand sips of bourbon, endless snorts of cocaine and a brash, irreverent, fearless style of journalism - named "gonzo" after an anarchic blues riff by James Booker.

Borrowing from Kris Kristofferson, Thompson was a "walking contradiction, partly truth, mostly fiction." A die-hard member of the NRA, he was also a coke-snorting, whiskey-swilling, acid-eating fiend. While his pen dripped with venom for crooked politicians, he surprised nervous visitors with the courtly manners and soft-spoken delivery of a Southern gentleman. Careening out of control in his personal life, Thompson also maintained a steel-eyed conviction about righting wrongs. Today, in a time, when "spin" has replaced the search for deeper meaning, Thompson remains an iconic crusader for truth, justice and a fiercely idealistic American way. Like Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (and the movie made from it) remains a wanderlust myth for generation after generation of American youth. And for America’s most esteemed journalists – from Tom Wolfe, and Walter Isaacson (former editor of Time) to the NY Times’ Frank Rich – he remains an iconic freelance, never afraid to gore every sacred cow in his path. He believed that writing could make a difference. It could change things.