Breakfast with Hunter (2003) User Reviews

Its hard to get enough

[lonemonk · 9/10 · 21 January 2005]

I'm a total junky for the guys writing, but I also really enjoy watching his antics and if possible see a bit of his real personality. There aren't too many legends around these days, and most have gone completely soft. Hunter to me is not as much of a put-on as some seem to suspect. He is obvious very intelligent and he takes writing seriously, exactly as it should be. People make a terrible mistake in assuming that he is some sort of comedy act, or even a outright liar. In all of his writing he dares people to have some imagination, and to not look at the world through a normal set of sense organs. His version of the truth works better for me than CNN ever will, and I have great pity for anyone who believes otherwise.

He has written of a distrust of movie-people, in particular the Hollywood bunch so it is pleasant to get a good couple of hours of him on film. I tend to agree that Hunter deserves a well executed movie, but there are some pretty obvious reasons why that may not be practical. No one wants a camera in their face all the time, HST least of all. It isn't accidental that an Aspen resident ended up compiling/recording this movie, because I get the impression that the only thing which would make him comfortable enough with the idea is chillin' with the locals.

The 1980 BBC documentary was alright. It covered a slightly different era, and some of their research was a little weak. Until breakfast came out however, it was certainly about as candid as I was able to find in one place.

It really was a collage of footage with very little keeping it focused. It didn't appear to be as a result of a deliberate editing technique but more just having to work within the available footage and whatever Hunter was going to allow to be used. There is little bad to say about it from a freaks point of view.

I have enormous respect for him.

I'm still waiting for some more books, do you hear that Hunter!? Forget ESPN.com, write another novel. I hear Afganhi hash is pretty cheap these days.

one of the great obscure finds of the past few years for me

[Quinoa1984 · 9/10 · 28 December 2006]

It wasn't until I randomly looked on the message board for this fly-on-the-wall documentary, Breakfast with Hunter, that I found out it was available on an internet video site. For the first time ever I watched something longer than a short (it's 90 minutes in running time), and I couldn't get enough. Hunter S. Thompson is one of those rare cases in literature and journalism where fact meets fiction and does a very weird dosey-do into the deranged and brilliant. As a political-type person says on a panel when Hunter visits the old democratic hopefuls from 68 and 72 at a reunion function regarding the book Fear & Loathing On the Campaign Trail, it was "the most accurate AND the least factual." But then again, when you have someone like the good Doctor leading himself through the story- more than the story leading him (though sometimes that too is the case)- who needs solid, objective facts? Thompson's approach is to say 'f*** it', and take out a few guns with some whiskey and have some fun, while never completely losing his head (seemingly anyway).

Wayne Ewing's documentary only offers so much of a glimpse of Thompson, at a crucial point during the 96-97 period where Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas- perhaps the pinnacle of his career, if at least his most well-regarded and notorious masterwork- was having it's 25th anniversary, and amid the celebrations and reverence there was still work to be done, and some trouble on the horizon. Ewing sets up a quasi structure then around two things: the pre-production on the film adaptation of Fear & Loathing, and the DUI charge he got brought against him by a not totally honest police officer (albeit Thompson WAS heavily drunk during the drive, but as he writes about it and is read on stage by John Cusack on the doc, the details behind it are gruesomely funny). Sometimes we get some random adulatory type scenes, of Hunter almost in the midst of all of the praise and celebration in either small rooms filled with joy and alcohol (at least one of those anyway) or on a book tour.

But the best moments are seeing him at his most candid, and as his nature, sort of sweetly insane. One of those, which I got a big laugh out of, is when he visits an old friend at Rolling Stone magazine, and while intending just to bring flowers, he doesn't hesitate to bring along the fire extinguisher to bring that to him FIRST and then say "but I brought flowers." Or seeing him, as a distinct favor to Johnny Depp, teaching his bird how to talk (truly uproarious, however in poor quality Ewing shot it). Or seeing him with at the time his quasi-protégé Depp, who basically because a version of Hunter, as was his niche to play Raoul Duke in the film, and even went so far as to talk like him, smoke the same cigarettes, and shoot off the same amazing guns. This doesn't totally we mean we don't see Hunter being soft in appearance to the viewer. In fact, one can see the flip-side to the good Doctor's coin, where one side reads bizarre affection and camaraderie with his guests and fellow colleagues and old friends and the like, and the other shows if he doesn't dig you, he can come close to biting. The latter is shown when Alex Cox- the original writer/director of the Fear & Loathing movie before (rightfully) leaving the project- doesn't get that doing a cartoonish version of the book, complete with Raoul Duke actually riding 'the wave' as written in that great piece about San Francisco is totally wrong.

What ends up coming out through seeing that, juxtaposed with hearing various pieces of Hunter's writings and hearing and seeing various stories of his form of Gonzo journalism (not to mention his near-win at becoming Sheriff in 1970 in Aspen, shaved head included, as part of the 'Freak Power' ticket), is that Thompson was all about going for craziness and over-the-top ways, but only if it worked for his work. The only one that one can see that can control the world that Thompson has created, both on the page and with the atmosphere of Owl Farm in Aspen, is (or rather was) Thompson himself. Nobody, not the law, or horrid politicians, or misguided filmmakers, can really put a hold on Thompson and his own form of subjective reporting. It's sadder still to see this all after his death, and see how in an ironically quiet way he was really a true force to be reckoned with in American culture, not just with literature. And this documentary, at it's best moments, captures the poetic lunacy of this man, while never getting in the way.

A rare, necessary look at the life of Dr. Gonzo.

[Tronick1 · 9/10 · 29 June 2003]

Hunter S. Thompson is a cultural icon, this isn't news. What is, is a real inside view into his life in this film. The documentary is a collage of Hunter and some of his antics as filmed by friend and neighbor Wayne Ewing over the past twenty years. A rare look into life at his "fortified compound" and the tribulations of making "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" into a movie are just some of what makes this film an absolute must for any fan of The Good Doctor. This is real life Gonzo, from The Legend himself, the writer who changed American Journalism and the way we read it.

Insight into the real Gonzo?

[certph · 18 October 2004]

Wayne Ewing's cinema verité portrait of the Doctor of Gonzo Journalism is a keyhole to the everyday life of Hunter S. Thompson. Through years of edited film without any narration or interview from Ewing, this everyday life given to the viewer comes as a bit of a surprise. It is uncommon yet somehow natural. The Thompson I might have predicted is shown throwing a Chivas Regal bottle, spraying people with a fire extinguisher, manhandling blow-up sex dolls, shooting high-powered revolvers, etc. What I didn't expect is the warm interaction between Thompson and his friends. He embraces what might be considered the basket of a flip-flopped American Dream – Hollywood – in his friendships with John Cusack, Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro and Terry Gilliam (not, however, Alex Cox). This juxtaposition reveals a prevalent theme in Breakfast, and perhaps in Hunter himself.

Thompson suggested in the film a rationale for his rambunctious lifestyle when he said he was 'making literature out of what would otherwise be considered craziness.' This is the crux of the film, and the motivation for Hunter. Though he may be essentially crazy, some of the craziness he exudes is forced. For Thompson, it works. With drugs, alcohol, violence, etc. he causes excitement from what would otherwise just be boring. He creates a palette for which to convey his message. He did this in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas through his (Raoul Duke) and his attorney's excessive abuse of drugs to help show the degradation of the American Dream.

But can this explain the wild-side Thompson portrayed in Ewing's film? Is their some focused ambition behind spraying Jan Wenner with a fire extinguisher? – or soaking Depp, Del Toro and himself in alcohol by sending an opened bottle of scotch freely whirling into the air? Maybe, maybe not. He takes control of any situation with such a crazy gesture, but if it's for some greater good, I don't know. Perhaps Thompson is so high on his own adrenaline that his antics are now focused on sole personal amusement. I like to think this is the case when he laughs off throwing a blow-up sex doll in front of a moving car, or when he mischievously notices an unaccompanied fire extinguisher in a hallway.

• - -

One personal note: something I felt missing from Ewing's portrait was Thompson's intended funeral. A massively-constructed Gonzo fist rifling a bullet containing his remains to explode above the Owl Farm mountains and then cover them like a blanket of rouge on a wrinkled America in such a way that would dwarf the resurrection of Jesus Christ seems to me to say something personal about Hunter S. Thompson.

Fear and Loathing in Cyberspace

[seafoam_mouse · 10/10 · 29 July 2005]

I am posting the following as a challenge to the "most useful" comment, which states that this film should be reserved for Doc's "die-hard fans".

Firstly, I find the idea of excluding this rare bit of succulent meat in a world of dry bones and paper napkins is blasphemy in the truest sense against all Hunter S. Thompson stood for. True, a die-hard fan will rejoice in letting the juices run down their chin, but truer, damned be the man who proclaims to be holier than thou! If this film seems scattered, frantic, and mindlessly compiled, let it be because the man who it rejoices wanted it so. It is a perfect embodiment of what we can only imagine his hectic mind must have been like inside. Bits and Pieces of a so far gone world and life and place he could not find, and understood those with half a brain could not ourselves.

I don't believe that Thompson had any illusions of grandeur and perhaps thought a fool any man who had them in his favor. He knew what he meant to the people he meant it to, and wanted nothing more than to be respected and understood to be the great writer he was by any outsider. This man is a damn good writer. period. Do not be shamed away if you are unexposed. It's here for everyone.

This film embraces the character the man was. It allows others to embrace it, and maybe open the door to their awareness of a renegade, gonzo journalist. It takes you from his home life, to ridiculous nightlife, enraged attacks by the Doc on misunderstanding and oblivious Hollywood types, and hilarious pranks on those he knows the best.

The door opened here, is smoky, loud, brass and uncouth. It leads to a world we don't like to look at but exists. It's your world, seen through the eyes of an old burned out man, who saw and did and lived things you can only imagine.

Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride. You'll be glad you did.

A fine document

[shierfilm · 9/10 · 5 July 2005]

The beauty, grace and majesty of HST shines through in this 90 min. doc.

He was a giant among men, and the most striking thing about this intimate look at the Gonzo journalist was how conscious he was of everyone and everything around him.

You can't put much past this guy- he was ON. At all times.

The sequence where he's discussing the first script for Fear & Loathing the film with Alex Cox and his co-writer was the best example of how pure this guy was. He tells them with sharp, curt truth that he's not impressed with the ideas they have for a landmark passage in the book. They want to create an animated wave with Hunter (a cartoon?) riding it into the desert. He says that idea makes him angry and Mr. Cox acts like a buffoon in response. Firing him was a great footnote in the history of the film- who knows how it would have turned out with Cox at the helm.

As a longtime admirer of the Good Doctor's work, it was nice to finally see and hear him. HST has a mythic aura about him, an exotic mystery not unlike Stanley Kubrick. He's larger than life, yet if you pay close attention, you'll see that the man was more than just passionate. You'll see that he's deeply emotional, highly mischievous (but he's never malicious) and that he has high regards for his small company of friends and colleagues.

He is missed.

Big, Big Fun... if you really love Hunter

[Zach-Urbina · 8/10 · 13 July 2003]

The documentary is a thinly veiled attempt to "break into" the life of the famed Gonzo fiend and shed light on his inner madness. Many funny scenes throughout the film, especially when Hunter is berating glib English director Alex Cox. The film itself comes across slightly amateur-esque in its editing and presentation, but is certainly a must-see for Hunter fans.

A struggle to stay awake

[betti2565 · 4/10 · 31 December 2006]

Well, first off I have to say i greatly respect Hunter Thompson, at least before he started getting more mainstream and writing for Rolling Stone. I'll keep this short, this did for me to Hunter Thompson what The Osbournes did for Ozzy. This movie is first and foremost very boring, if you read Fear and Loathing or Hell's Angels, Hunter Thompson was real far out, into the pudding! But this shows him hanging out with John Cusack and Johnny Depp and going around doing his daily sh*t like walking around, talking to old people, Rolling Stone mega assholes talking about this sh*t like they know what its about, thats about it. I don't give a f*ck! I was hoping for an old man doing acid and going crazy! Being Hunter Thompson! Don't see this movie if you want to hold on to your respect for Hunter.

"Buy the Ticket. Take the Ride." Breakfast with Hunter (7/10)

[RayCharlie · 11 March 2004]

Not as insightful as I thought it was going to be. It pretty much covered Hunter S. Thompson's life from 1996-1997. There were a few flashbacks but they weren't very long. I think his race for Sheriff of Aspen should have been covered more. I'm not saying I hated it, but at times it dragged while HST gave meaningless mumbles of insight. At times he p***ed me off (when he wouldn't sign autographs at the book signing and his argument with Alex Cox), but at other times made me laugh and cheer for the outlaw. He's probably my favorite American author but he is sure one hell of an asshole. I guess it's a Kentucky thing lol. I was let down by the fact that it didn't give the viewer what the lifestyle and point of HST is. For that, I suggest reading Kingdom of Fear, which I consider the best piece of reading material I've read in a while. And as mentioned above, his argument with Alex Cox and Tod Davies about putting cartoons in the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas movie was sometimes unbearable but other times just flat out funny. I like Alex Cox and all, but I sort of agree with Hunter. It was his material and he didn't want it interpreted as a cartoon! Maybe Terry Gilliam was for the better. All in all an average documentary, but did have a noteworthy soundtrack (all songs have been mentioned by Hunter sometime or another) that included "Spirit in the Sky", "American Pie", "The Weight", "Mr. Tambourine Man", and many other. But where was "Sympathy for the Devil?" Worth checking out if you're a fan of HST's work. I don't if it was worth the $29.95, but still a good addition to my HST collection.

I bought it and love the diversity

[iwtgm · 30 June 2004]

of the topics and the time span covered. It includes old bbc footage from the sheriff election from the early seventies to 1996. Hunter's mumbling is very clear for mumbles and it does not have that dark documentary look weh they shoot at night (most of the film) great DVD ad ons as well. Don johnson (another lucky neighbor of Owl Farm) reads along with pj o'roarke and some other sot and it is interesting to hear hunter's words with others voices. The insanity it tempered with a visible devotion to his work and it is too bad this was not filmed post 9-11 since i believe some of his best work has come about since. In the end it is the difinitve (to date) piece on the Good Doktor.

A bona fide treat....where's part 2?

[slint70 · 4 August 2005]

Spoilers======below==== Breakfast with Hunter takes us into the mind of the older HST, the more tamer if you can call it that, the less crazy and the more mature. Well sort of... There are no scenes in which he drops acid and paints his face white with makeup as there was in the first BBC documentary for instance. And there were no scenes of him chasing porn stars around his house. But the vitality, intelligence and spirit of the man is still in full force in this flick. We needed this movie. The man is interesting so in fact actors often stayed in character long after portraying him in film. This film is great, it shows HST in his surroundings with no preconceived notions or antics. He just is and you can get a feel for his natural self, something all good documentaries must strive for.

I agree with other reviewers that it is nice to hear others read his writing, but Jon Cusack was annoying. He seemed to have the rhythm all wrong and jumbled, playing it for dramatic effect perhaps after all he is an actor, but alas I digress, good insight into the pre-production stages of Fear and Loathing and the scene with Alex Cox was in good taste. Meaning that HST listened to every word these nincompoops muttered and considered them. "Maybe you can convince me," he said at one point. I thought he showed much resolve until the b-puckey was so sky high he had to bring out the bulldozer. Even Benecio says "Tell him to stay the F888 away from me," in reference to Alex Cox. They obviously had no idea about any of his writing and probably didn't even read the whole book....but anyways....so many snippets of good fun and intelligent conversation that the mind is scrambling to recall them all...Fiddlesticks I'll have to watch it again...

The thing that hit hard after i saw this was I was even more saddened he died. Devastated, but I am sure he had some health concerns and was in some pain as others eluded to. Just wish the guy was still around. He could take you to a mountain top by way of the sewer and it was great great ride...

You will be missed Doc....RIP