Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) and Heavenly Creatures (1994)

The third film in our Stranger Than Fiction cycle is Terry Gilliam's visual extravaganza, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998).

Special Guest: The crew from There Are Too Many Movies podcast - Chris Collins, Josh Rodriguez, and Alex Wilshin.

Hunter S. Thompson was the paradigm of Stranger Than Fiction journalism. He helped create the entire genre of creative nonfiction by telling the world what he saw we his own two eyes instead of assuming some fake omniscient third person perspective, also known as "reporting." Terry Gilliam saddled up with Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro to bravely attempt an adaptation of Thompson's classic work of gonzo. It fails spectacularly, but the film is absolutely a high mark in visual experimentation. Not for nothing, Gilliam captures altered perception in a way never done before or since. It's too bad the film mostly misses the moral and political polemics underneath the book's narcotic blatherings.

For our chaser film, we travel to the fourth dimensions with Peter Jackson's wonderfully macabre Heavenly Creatures (1994).