In 1978, Hol­ly­wood was look­ing to make a film about Hunter S. Thomp­son. No, it was not an adap­ta­tion of Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas–that would come lat­er. Instead, this was the now-almost-for­got­ten Bill Mur­ray vehi­cle Where the Buf­fa­lo Roam, which was based on Thompson’s obit­u­ary for his friend and “attor­ney” from Fear & Loathing, Oscar “Zeta” Acos­ta.

Know­ing that both Thomp­son and illus­tra­tor Ralph Stead­man would be involved and reunit­ing and dri­ving from Aspen, through Las Vegas, and into Hol­ly­wood, the BBC dis­patched a film crew for the arts pro­gram Omnibus. Direc­tor Nigel Finch returned with a ram­shackle road trip of a film, one that always seems in dan­ger of falling apart due to Thompson’s para­noid and antag­o­nis­tic state.

For a lot of British view­ers, this would have been their primer on the Amer­i­can writer, and quick­ly brings them up to date on Thompson’s rise to infamy, the cre­ation of Gonzo jour­nal­ism, and his alter-ego Raoul Duke.

Per­haps Finch thought that get­ting Thomp­son and Stead­man togeth­er in a car would con­jure up the Fear & Loathing vibe on screen, but the two make an awk­ward cou­ple. At one point the reserved Stead­man com­pares him­self to Thompson’s pet bird Edward. Thomp­son antag­o­nizes this bird into some sort of trau­ma, then holds it close and talks to it. “I feel absolute­ly tak­en apart,” being friends with the writer, Stead­man says. “…he’s hold­ing me like that bird and I’m try­ing to bite my way out.”

In Vegas, the crew and Stead­man try to rouse Thomp­son, then find him, con­fused, and with his face cov­ered in white make-up. In Hol­ly­wood, Thomp­son hates the atten­tion from the cam­era crew so much–not to men­tion the tourists who assume he is a celebri­ty of some kind–that they find him hid­ing behind a parked car.

This era was indeed the end of that phase of Thompson’s career. At one point he asks Finch if he’s there to film Thomp­son or to film Raoul Duke. Finch doesn’t know. Thomp­son doesn’t know either, but he does real­ize that “The myth has tak­en over…I feel like an appendage.” He can no longer cov­er events like he did with the Hell’s Angels, or the Ken­tucky Der­by, because of his fame. He can’t cov­er the sto­ry, because he’s become part of the sto­ry, and to a real jour­nal­ist that’s death.

So per­haps that’s the appeal of Hol­ly­wood? We see Thomp­son and Stead­man meet with a screen­writer (prob­a­bly John Kaye, who wrote Where the Buf­fa­lo Roam) to dis­cuss the script.

Thomp­son had agreed to option the script because, like Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, he nev­er believed it would get made. So when it went into pro­duc­tion he had pret­ty much giv­en away cre­ative con­trol. The script, he said, “It sucks – a bad, dumb, low-lev­el, low-rent script.”

How­ev­er, Bill Mur­ray and Thomp­son hung out in Aspen togeth­er dur­ing the shoot and engaged in a sort of mind-meld, Mur­ray becom­ing a ver­sion of Duke. When Mur­ray returned to Sat­ur­day Night Live that sea­son, he came back as a cig­a­rette-hold­er-smok­ing faux-Thomp­son. Years lat­er, John­ny Depp would also find him­self being trans­formed dur­ing Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. (I noticed right after watch­ing this Omnibus spe­cial that I answered my phone in a sort of Thomp­son drawl until my friend called me out. The pow­er of the Gonzo is such.)

But the man who had an equal pow­er over Thomp­son was Richard Nixon. Since see­ing the wily politi­cian reap­pear on the nation­al stage dur­ing the Bar­ry Gold­wa­ter cam­paign in 1964, Thomp­son cor­rect­ly rec­og­nized an ene­my of every­thing he held dear, a dark side of Amer­i­ca ris­ing from the corpse of John F. Kennedy. And Nixon caused the fear and the loathing in Amer­i­ca to bear fruit. As Thomp­son says in the doc­u­men­tary:

Richard Nixon for me stands for every­thing that I would not want to have hap­pen to myself, or be, or be around. He is every­thing that I have con­tempt for and dis­like and I think should be stomped out: Greed, treach­ery, stu­pid­i­ty, cupid­i­ty, pos­i­tive pow­er of lying, total con­tempt for any sort of human, con­struc­tive, polit­i­cal instinct. Every­thing that’s wrong with Amer­i­ca, every­thing that this coun­try has demon­strat­ed as a nation­al trait, that the world finds repug­nant: the bul­ly instinct, the pow­er grab, the dumb­ness, the insen­si­tiv­i­ty. Nixon rep­re­sents every­thing that’s wrong with this coun­try, down the line.

Maybe the ques­tion is not, what would Thomp­son think of Trump, who doesn’t even feign Nixon’s hum­ble rou­tine. The ques­tion is, where is our Hunter S. Thomp­son?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Read 11 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by The Hell’s Angels: Where’s Our Two Kegs of Beer? (1967)

How Hunter S. Thomp­son Gave Birth to Gonzo Jour­nal­ism: Short Film Revis­its Thompson’s Sem­i­nal 1970 Piece on the Ken­tucky Der­by

Hunter S. Thompson’s Deca­dent Dai­ly Break­fast: The “Psy­chic Anchor” of His Fre­net­ic Cre­ative Life

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Film edit­ing goes back to the late 1890s. The decades upon decades of tech­no­log­i­cal improve­ment and artis­tic refine­ment of the craft since then have tempt­ed cer­tain film­mak­ers to see if they can do with­out it entire­ly, or at least to look as if they can. Alfred Hitch­cock gave it a try in 1948 with Rope, a film typ­i­cal of his work in that it fit into the genre of the psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller, but quite atyp­i­cal in that its main action played out as a sin­gle long shot. But as we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, Rope actu­al­ly con­tained ten art­ful­ly hid­den cuts. Last year saw the release of Sam Mendes’ 1917, which did more or less the same thing, but at a much greater length — and across the bat­tle­fields and through the trench­es of World War I.

As por­trayed in the Insid­er video above, the shoot­ing of 1917 must rank among the most for­mi­da­ble logis­ti­cal achieve­ments in film his­to­ry. It also had the good for­tune to be over­seen by Roger Deakins, one of the most for­mi­da­ble cin­e­matog­ra­phers in film his­to­ry. But even before cap­tur­ing the first frame, Mendes, Deakins, and their many col­lab­o­ra­tors had to plan every detail of the har­row­ing jour­ney tak­en by the pic­ture’s pro­tag­o­nists, two British sol­diers sent across the West­ern Front to deliv­er a mes­sage to anoth­er bat­tal­ion.

This entailed first build­ing and light­ing mod­els of every sin­gle set, and when con­struct­ing the real thing mak­ing sure to include paths (and strate­gi­cal­ly remov­able obsta­cles) for the con­stant­ly for­ward-mov­ing cam­era and its crew as well as for the char­ac­ters.

The war movie is among the old­est of film gen­res, but a “one-shot” war movie like 1917 entered the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty thanks to recent tech­no­log­i­cal advances. These include cam­eras light enough to be detached from one crane, run across a field, and attached to anoth­er all while shoot­ing; drones to cap­ture mov­ing aer­i­al shots impos­si­ble by more tra­di­tion­al cin­e­mato­graph­ic means; and advanced dig­i­tal effects to smooth — and indeed con­ceal — the tran­si­tions between one shot and the next. The Insid­er video shows an actor tak­ing a run­ning leap off a bridge and onto a mat below, fol­lowed by the seam­less-look­ing final sequence in which he plunges into a riv­er instead, and the cam­era unhesi­tat­ing­ly fol­lows him right into the water. This sort of visu­al wiz­ardry reminds even the most jad­ed view­er that movie mag­ic is alive and well, but also makes one won­der: what could Hitch­cock have done with it?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Sounds of World War I: A Gas Attack Record­ed on the Front Line, and the Moment the Armistice End­ed the War

Peter Jackson’s New Film on World War I Fea­tures Incred­i­ble Dig­i­tal­ly-Restored Footage From the Front Lines: Get a Glimpse

Watch World War I Unfold in a 6 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1914 to 1918

The Great War: Video Series Will Doc­u­ment How WWI Unfold­ed, Week-by-Week, for the Next 4 Years

The First Col­or Pho­tos From World War I: The Ger­man Front

The 10 Hid­den Cuts in Rope (1948), Alfred Hitchcock’s Famous “One-Shot” Fea­ture Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

You could say that Jared and Jerusha Hess got lucky. When first the hus­band-and-wife team got the chance to make a fea­ture, it turned out to be Napoleon Dyna­mite, the movie that launched a mil­lion “VOTE FOR PEDRO” shirts. But that visu­al­ly, nar­ra­tive­ly, and cul­tur­al­ly askew tale did­n’t emerge ful­ly formed into the the­aters. Nor did its title char­ac­ter, an extrav­a­gant­ly nerdy and sav­age­ly defen­sive high-school stu­dent in small-town Ida­ho. Napoleon Dyna­mite has a pre­de­ces­sor in Pelu­ca, the short film Jared Hess made for an assign­ment at Brigham Young Uni­ver­si­ty’s film school. Napoleon Dyna­mite him­self has a pre­de­ces­sor in Seth, whose curly hair, enor­mous spec­ta­cles, severe awk­ward­ness, and pen­chant for thrift­ing and faux curs­ing will look famil­iar indeed.

Pelu­ca appears to have much the same to rela­tion­ship to Napoleon Dyna­mite as Wes Ander­son­’s Bot­tle Rock­et short has to the fea­ture ver­sion. Both were shot in black-and-white in locales their film­mak­ers clear­ly know well, both are mem­o­rably scored (Ander­son uses jazz, Hess uses Burt Bacharach), and both tell in a basic form sto­ries that would lat­er unfold to their full cin­e­mat­ic length.

Just as Bot­tle Rock­et, the short, stars Owen and Luke Wil­son, who would go on to reprise their roles and gain fame there­after, Jon Hed­er played Seth in Pelu­ca before play­ing Napoleon Dyna­mite. And just as there’s lit­tle obvi­ous dif­fer­ence between the two ver­sions of the char­ac­ter besides their names, the dis­tinc­tive­ness of Hess’ cin­e­mat­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty shows through in Pelu­ca just as it would, to a much wider audi­ence, in Napoleon Dyna­mite.

The Hess­es once drew fre­quent com­par­isons to Ander­son, though the past decade and a half has exposed their cin­e­mat­ic enter­pris­es as entire­ly dif­fer­ent. Their sec­ond fea­ture Nacho Libre, a Mex­i­can wrestling com­e­dy star­ring Jack Black, fit com­fort­ably enough into the Hol­ly­wood zone of ado­les­cent goofi­ness. But New York­er film crit­ic Richard Brody saw some­thing deep­er, call­ing it “the strangest Amer­i­can reli­gious film since The Last Temp­ta­tion of Christ,” one that “presents a case for noth­ing less than Catholic-Protes­tant rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.” The Hess­es’ third fea­ture Gen­tle­men Bron­cos, the sto­ry of a young aspir­ing sci­ence-fic­tion writer in north­ern Utah, went almost com­plete­ly ignored, but Brody deemed it an “even more ecsta­t­ic and per­son­al explo­ration — in loopy, gross-out com­ic form — of the essence of faith in cos­mic reli­gious vision itself, and the ease with which those visions can be per­vert­ed to world­ly ends.”

Brody con­tin­ues to speak for the cinephiles who’ve paid to the work of Jared and Jerusha Hess ever more atten­tion, not less, since Napoleon Dyna­mite. 2015’s Don Verdean, about a crooked Bib­li­cal archae­ol­o­gist, is “a pur­er, stranger, and more dan­ger­ous reli­gious vision than the three films that pre­ced­ed it.” 2016’s Mas­ter­minds, a Hes­s­ian treat­ment of a real-life North Car­oli­na heist gone wrong due to sheer incom­pe­tence, “has the reli­gious inten­si­ty and spir­i­tu­al res­o­nance that marks all of Hess’s oth­er films” and “extends his vision into dark­er cor­ners of exis­tence than he had for­mer­ly con­tem­plat­ed.” Con­sid­er­ing that pic­ture, Brody sees “a wide-eyed frontal­i­ty to Hess’s film­mak­ing, includ­ing face-to-face set pieces and action scenes done in wide and sta­t­ic tableaux that sug­gest a kin­ship with the tran­scen­den­tal cin­e­ma of Robert Bres­son and Carl Theodor Drey­er.” And from the right crit­i­cal per­spec­tive, we can see it in Pelu­ca as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wes Anderson’s First Short Film: The Black-and-White, Jazz-Scored Bot­tle Rock­et (1992)

The First Films of Great Direc­tors: Kubrick, Cop­po­la, Scors­ese, Taran­ti­no & Truf­faut

Doo­dle­bug, Christo­pher Nolan’s First Short: What Came Before The Dark Night, Memen­to & Incep­tion (1997)

Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Stu­dent Films: King and Octo­pus & Stalk of the Cel­ery Mon­ster

The Art of Sci-Fi Book Cov­ers: From the Fan­tas­ti­cal 1920s to the Psy­che­del­ic 1960s & Beyond

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.