SUSO

Face to face with Alex Gibney, director of a new documentary about the whirlwind existence of Hunter S. Thompson.

W / Matt Bochenski

Alex Gibney is the award-winning documentary maker best known for his blistering Iraq War j’accuse, Taxi To The Darkside (previously shown at Film Knights), and the caustic anti-capitalist documentary, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. His new film, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, is released in the UK on December 19th, but we’re showing it exclusively this Monday, 27th November (for more info click here). In preparation, and in conjunction with Little White Lies, we caught up with Gibney to guides us through the frenetic, splenetic and most of all narcotic dreamland that is the life and world of pioneering journalist Hunter S Thompson.

What drew you to the life story of Hunter Thompson?

It was just, at a time when particularly the America media was being snookered by the rules that the people in power were using against them, I thought that it would be interesting to take a look at a guy who didn’t play by the rules. That was the thing that got me into it, but once I’d got into it I was thinking that this is a guy whose writing really stands the test of time – he was a kind of poet of the American character, maybe even a kind of character who shared the contradictions of that character. He was both an idealistic, caring, loving man and also a brutal motherfucker. And that’s a lot like America.

How do you go about addressing those contradictions? What’s the guiding vision for you?

The goal in an emotional way is that you’re into the movie to try to embrace the contradictions, you know? And not be afraid of them, not try to find a way to soften them. You have a guy that’s both a charmer and seducer, and a guy who’s vicious. And we talk about that right at the beginning – what you see is a guy screaming at his wife in a moment of obvious… He’s plastered.

John McCain style.

That’s right. McCain… You look at that campaign, and there’s a lot I could say about both candidates in terms of their problems. But in terms of their archetypes, Obama was the guy who’s leading us towards a bright future in a sense of idealism and possibility, not unlike McGovern. And McCain, like Nixon, was trying to capture the deep-seated resentments of people who are angry and don’t know why. He’s trying to capture their fear and their anger – or as Hunter said, their ‘fear and their loathing’, and he wants to ride that to the White House much like Nixon did.

[Alex Gibney]

You presumably remember Nixon?

Yeah, I do. But I’m curious… I was hoping to know from you… This is a movie that I showed to my son and daughter, and Nixon is a character like Grendel, or he’s like McCain. He’s a character that’s not unique, he’s a kind of character type that keeps coming up over and over again. He stands for something enduring – the dark side of the American character. I hope that came through in the film.

McCain stands for this kind of atavistic intolerance and resentment, but he was trying to represent this while stealing the Obama message of change. That’s what’s so grotesque about him – he could do that and some people would take him seriously. Then it becomes an excuse for ignorance and bitterness.

I agree with you. It’s, like, what did George Orwell call The Ministry of Torture? He calls it the Ministry of Love. And so McCain and Palin – and he chooses this woman who’s a complete, you know, fruit cake – he’s positing himself as the outsider who’s going to clean up Washington; he’s the ultimate insider. The financial markets are cratering and this is a guy who’s almost indicted for trying to protect his political funders in a savings and loan crisis. This is the guy who’s had his fingers in the till.

Palin defies description. She barely seems real. Do you think we need another Thompson-esque figure to reflect the times?

I totally think that’s right – I think that’s the reason for doing the movie to be honest. These are times when, in this country anyway, the most credible news source is a comedian – [Stephen] Colbert – who’s actually acting as somebody else. So not only do you have a guy who’s actually cracking jokes, he’s pretending to be somebody who he isn’t. That’s how topsy-turvy things are because that’s the only credible voice in a world where the lie becomes so litanised. The degree of cynicism with Sarah Palin, I mean… I must say, there were brief moments before I could catch my breath when I saw her at the convention, and they’d stage-managed that moment where you had this woman standing up, very attractive, very young, and so forceful but also so proud of being who she was – the anti-intellectual and all that – and sort of saying, ‘Are you angry? Yeah, I’m angry too so come with me. I have no idea what I’m doing, but trust me, we both feel the same way.’ We’re in some deep shit now. But over time I think people are beginning to understand that what they want is a president and not somebody whose favourite magazine is People. So we’ll see, but I do think it has a great deal of relevance for precisely that reason. The whole idea of Hunter was… It’s not like you can be like Hunter exactly, but it’s like, what is the gonzo equivalent today?

Don’t people need to figure out a new kind of attack to speak truth to power?

So you use someone observing in the world against it, in a way that’s imaginative, fun and funny. That’s the other thing that I think is so great – mentioning Steven Colbert; these are guys who are funny, that’s why they connect. They’re funny in a way that shows you a flicker of great anger, and that’s the thing with Hunter – his humour came from his anger.

Do you think he could be as effective today? Because those in power seem to have become smarter and also more ruthless about sidestepping that. Is it possible now to do what he did?

I think it is. I think it’s harder, but it’s never been easy frankly. But people do listen and I think that tides do turn. But it does take people to understand how ruthless… One of the reasons I remember as I was taking this on – you’re quite right, they are more ruthless and also more outrageous in terms of how they lie and cheat and steal. I mean, politics is rough and tumble but, no, I can remember right around the time that Hunter died it had been revealed that the White House had hired, or at least given a press credential, to a some-time male prostitute whose only job was to stand there in the press conference and whenever the president or the press secretary got in trouble he would raise his hand and criticise other members of the press and say that the president was doing a great job. So now they’re hiring their actors to pretend to be reporters, you know? In a world like that you have to find a mode of discourse that addresses that absurdity without reporting in some kind of flat way that’s ‘He said; she said’ – that’s not going to get the job done.

[Hunter S. Thompson]

Given that your documentaries have taken on what you might say are the twin evils of America society - the economic and the military system - have you ever rubbed up against the difficulties or the dangers of speaking truth to power?

I haven’t yet. I mean, I expect to be audited soon. But I haven’t yet. Maybe I’ve been lucky – maybe if I continue to be more visible there’ll be a blowback, but so far I haven’t felt it really. I remember Michael Moore told me that after he made his comments after winning the Academy Award, people put up a huge pile of shit on his lawn. He had death threats, people were actually trying to go round and cut him up, but I do think that part of it too is finding a tone where there are people who come to the films and maybe they don’t agree but they understand that you’re reckoning with all sorts of different ideas and points of view - you’re raising contradictions, let’s put it that way - and I think maybe that’s bought me some protection.

It’s interesting you mention tone – I’m not a huge fan of Michael Moore, but I remember seeing No End In Sight, and that hands down is an unforgettable documentary. Do you think if you want to be part of the debate you need to be take a more subtle, sophisticated tone?

Well, you know, everybody’s got their style and Michael has his style, which has proved to be pretty popular and pretty economically successful. He’s more like Will Rogers – a folksy public figure and satirist. I think part of the trick is – and I think Clinton was brilliant at doing this – embracing your enemies, or at least going out of your way to include them in what you’re doing, which is very different than so-called ‘balance’, or phoney balance. It’s like in Taxi to the Darkside: our very first interview was with John Hughes, this guy from the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush administration, who’s the apologist for Bush. And if you go and seek these people out, you do have an effect. It feels real – you’re not trying to pretend or ignore, and you don’t put people on the stage with a kind of funny pointed hat and draw a moustache on them like they’re a real villain. You reckon with them, even if… Well, by the time you’ve finished that film I would argue that if you don’t feel a palpable sense of rage there’s something wrong with you. But up to that point where you get to the end, the tone is rather muted and these people hang themselves.

Like you said about Sarah Palin – at the end of Taxi to the Darkside, you feel the rage but it’s not the unfocussed rage of Palin.

With Palin, it’s blind rage, it’s inchoate rage – unfortunately since Reagan, that’s what the Republicans have been so good at doing in the United States, is marshalling inchoate or blind rage. I have a brother who is a big Sarah Palin fan; he’s a Rush Limbaugh fan, you know, and it’s because he feels dispossessed – he doesn’t have a good job, he’s angry and he feels like all these liberals in Washington are all elites and they’re just laughing at him. But if he were to stand back and analyse the Republican policies that are keeping him in poverty it might be different, but that’s the problem.

Politics is not just policy platforms, it’s fear and it’s stirring emotions.

But the emotion that the Republicans were stirring was this kind of blind rage.

There’s a brilliant Jon Stewart YouTube clip where he goes on Crossfire and kicks Tucker Carlson’s ass.

Oh yeah, that’s masterful, fantastic. And he just says, ‘Gentlemen, would you please stop?’

It was a real call to arms.

A total call to arms because he told them both – Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala – ‘You guys are play acting some Punch and Judy show, which you may think is amusing, but is thoroughly discrediting the public debate. What are you doing? Just stop.’ That was a wonderful, wonderful moment. It’s a time where the media gets unmasked, and instead of just going along on the talk show live, he says ‘Everything you’re doing here is a fake!’

Do you see your role as a documentary maker being to effect change?

You hope you’re not doing this for no reason. At the same time, I don’t believe in films that are vending machines, where you put in your quarter and you get the social policy outcome that the film is recommending. Films shouldn’t work that way, they become both agent provacateurs, but also like a slow burning fuse in the psyche of somebody that over time really points to something. I think that Taxi to the Darkside isn’t about social policy, it’s about the corruption of the American character and something more long lasting.

See Gonzo exclusively in London, for free, on Monday 31st November.

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