Terry Gilliam says shooting Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing cameo was 'horrible'
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When it came to famed gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson and his cameo appearance in 1998’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, it appears there was less fear and more loathing.
On PeopleTV’s Couch Surfing, director Terry Gilliam recalls that day on the set of his film, based on Thompson’s psychedelic literary odyssey. Shooting that scene, where Johnny Depp’s Hunter turns around during an acid-trip concert to see the real Thompson, was a “horrible” experience.
“Hunter has to be the center of attention,” Gilliam divulged. “Harry Dean Stanton was there that day, and Hunter was throwing bread rolls around the set all the time.”
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas brought to life Thompson’s book of the same name about his “true” story road trip to Vegas with his psychotic lawyer and their mind-altering escapades that ensued.
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“Finally we had to get him for his scene,” Gilliam recalls. “I put the best-looking of all the female extras on his table and whoosh! There he was.”
Gilliam, finally celebrating the release of his long-long-long-developed The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, reflected on a number of his films on Couch Surfing, including 12 Monkeys, Monty Python, and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Fear and Loathing, he laughs, was “a romantic comedy.”
“It’s a bromance and yet this is what you’re showing?!” he says of the lizard hallucinations.
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