The reason why Alex Cox was fired from ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’
Anyone who has read Hunter S. Thompson’s unique prose knows that it’s almost impossible to translate to any other medium. However, Terry Gilliam defied all expectations through his incredible 1998 adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which beautifully captured the indescribable essence of Thompson’s sensibilities. Even though the film is now seen as an iconic gem from the ’90s, Alex Cox almost derailed the entire project.
Starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro, Gilliam’s version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a delightfully hallucinatory adventure into the bowels of gonzo journalism, but the production has an extensive history. Before Gilliam joined the project, acclaimed filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone attempted to make it happen to no avail. Eventually, the studio was pressurised into hiring Alex Cox to get the film underway as soon as possible.
Producer Stephen Nemeth claimed that Cox could wrap everything up within four months, but Cox’s recruitment slowed things down instead of speeding them up. The filmmaker allegedly did not get along with the cast and crew, even foregoing major parts of the book in order to accommodate his vision of the adaptation. Reportedly, he suggested the inclusion of animated scenes on multiple occasions, which resulted in the termination of his contract.
While recalling the initial state of the production at Cannes, Gilliam said: “It’s a rather long and tedious nightmare. This particular incarnation of this film was started with Alex Cox directing and writing the screenplay. Johnny and Benny came on board, and Alex fell overboard somehow. This was before my time. I don’t know the ugly details. But Laila sent me a script that Alex had written when he was directing it and got me interested in the project. I had to read the book again to realise how much of the book was not in that script.”
He added: “I went out to LA, met Johnny, Benicio, Laila and Hunter and decided, yes, let’s do this project. I came back to London and got a good friend of mine, Tony Grisoni, to sit down and write this thing. So we basically started from scratch, dived into the book, underlined all the good bits, ignored all the bad bits, tried to assemble this thing. We did it in record time like we’ve done the entire film. The whole thing was to be done as fast and furiously and energetically and crazed as one could, and we managed to write it in 8 days. And then we read it. It was a piece of crap. So we rewrote in two days and were quite pleased with what we had done.”
