Arts
Freak show
Peter Ackroyd
Where the Buffalo Roam
('18', Classic Chelsea and ICA cinema) The credits describe it as 'a movie based on the twisted legend of Dr Hunter S. hompson' — for those who cannot remember that far back, or were reading Other things at the time, Hunter Thompson !vas the leading exponent in America of the New Journalism'; it was not as new as all that, however, apparently being based on the age-old principle of saying the first Ting that comes into one's head. Having ulgested this piece of information and sDeculated on its value, the audience then egin to hear the strains of that old and yet Inglorious song, 'Home on the Range (.,_front which the film gets its title), as if nunter Thompson were the last pioneer, the final cowboy, the ultimate outlaw. And then we find him in — what else? a. log cabin, wearing a plastic visor and sit- tl, t18 at his typewriter beneath a stuffed bat. 111 this one room, which for want of a better word we must call a 'study', there are: stained-glass windows, a cast-iron stove !filch might have come straight outof donanza, a long-distance copying device, an, anglepoise lamp, a rug of great if in rin-
oeter
—Lnate age, an electric typewriter, 'lb Me stone walls which look as if they have een 'aged' a little, a stereo system of the ost expensive kind, a life-sized replica of resident Nixon (what a good joke), a tape recorder a telephone answering machine,
antique' fireplace, a television . 1
" dwelt upon these items in some detail 4°111Y to suggest that the author in question 'nes not really represent the writer as outlaw but rather the writer as consumer like every good American, needs as ut,..any gadgets as he can afford to buy (and otiunter Thompson, after his success as a rusading journalist, can afford a lot). It is n?st quite clear if the replicas and artefacts or the Old West are designed to conceal his attachment to modern technology, or if the gadgetry is meant to disguise the crassly nventional nature of his taste in interior turnishings: the latter option seems the m 0 ore likely, since it resembles Thompson's ,..wn Prose, itself an orthodox production of ,Idte American Romantic which has been fit- • Out out with a few contemporary 'features In _order to increase its potential market. b une example of this style is represented eY11 the phrase which Hunter Thompson _1131°Ys as he sucks on his cigarette holder annld takes another dose of bourbon in that 1. a▪ seuline way which American writers 1.ve: just slice together a few raw Lacts, , he explains as he proceeds to con- 'nine more electricity on his various devices than the average small 'town. And 'slicing together' is, more or less, what this film at- tempts to do; no doubt taking its cue from Thompson's published writings, it covers three separate events in the late Sixties and Seventies, all of which conspire to demonstrate how cooky and yet lovable, how insane and yet, yes, wise Hunter Thompson is. The first of these episodes concerns a trial for drug possession in San Francisco in 1968: 'It was a fast, strange time and we worked in fast, strange ways.' The sentence itself brings back terrible memories of the pantomimic quality of that period — hip- pies 'squatting' inside court houses, radical lawyers eating frankfurters in an ostenta- tious fashion or giving 'black power' salutes to each other; Hunter Thompson was among them, too, one of the many unin- spired people who rode on the crest of that wave which the Vietnam war produced. The narrative then moves forward to Los Angeles in 1972, where Thompson is covering the `Superbowl' — everyone is now 'into revolution and acid . . we'd signed on for the whole trip'; Thompson shouts down the telephone at his magazine editors and throws vast if unwieldy parties in his hotel room, a prime example of someone who lives off the affluence of his society while at the same time attacking it — the 'acid' or drugs in this case being just another product, another 'fast food' for the undiscerning consumer.
And, finally, the film describes Thomp- son's coverage of the presidential campaign in 1972; President Nixon is of course the obvious target on this occasion and, on the same principle as Milton's Satan, he gets the only good line: 'Screw the doomed!' he tells Thompson after that journalist has been more than usually boring about the desperate state of his friends and mentors. For some reason everyone in this film is not only supposed to dislike Nixon, but know why they are supposed to dislike him; it is
'Of course he's grown, he was born at the start of the miners' strike.'
my settled belief that people really only dislike those whom they most resemble, or whom they fear that they most resemble, and I have a suspicion that the 'radicals' see, or saw, in Nixon exactly those qualities of deviousness, ruthlessness, ambition and hypocrisy which they themselves possess.
And that is, more or less, that. Bill Mur- ray, as Hunter Thompson, tries his best to parody the appalling mannerisms of the man but even his farcical performance can- not render intriguing a journalist who is about as interesting as last year's pop star. One imagines that it was Thompson's awareness of his own lack of talent that drove him to drink and drugs, and led him to behave in such a generally unpleasant and self-conscious way; but perhaps not. Perhaps he just did it without thinking, and in the process became the hero of the inane. Taking its cue from its protagonist, however, Where the Buffalo Roam does not seem at all sure in which direction it ought to be travelling — whether it is meant to be a homage to a great man, a documen- tary of the period, or a 'screwball' comedy in the tradition of Caddy Shack and Car Wash. As an account of bad faith com- bined with indolence and vanity, it may be instructive; but as an actual film it has very little point.
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