BUCK

March 12, 2012 11:27 AM

It is not very often that we have the opportunity to create a graphic equivalent of a drug fueled rant bringing all of our collective skills to bear. And it is almost unfathomable that we could actually do something like this and benefit a good cause. The Buck team dug deep, channeling our inner gonzo, to direct and produce this homage promoting Good Books, the online bookseller that passes all its profits through to Oxfam.

Amazing animation from the production/design company Buck.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates (14 comments total)

I don't get it.

And there's something about this which seems very un-gonzo.
posted by RandlePatrickMcMurphy at 11:40 AM on March 12, 2012

I swear I just read this in the Vonnegut thread, but I can't find it, so to paraphrase:

"People trying to write like Vonnegut, like writing Gonzo, rarely end up doing it well, and mostly sound like an asshole instead."

Especially doing the HST as portrayed by Johnny Depp voice and everything.
posted by mrzarquon at 11:47 AM on March 12, 2012

Very cool animation, but if you can't nail Thompson's writing OR speaking tone, then it might be best to try something else.

Also, I maybe recall that he might've been involved with Oxfam at some point? Whether or not I'm making that up, it seems really strange to be appropriating his personality in what amounts to a post-mortem commercial.
posted by cmoj at 11:47 AM on March 12, 2012

I think this is a deeply awful thing. Very well executed, mind you, but pretending to be Hunter in order to sell something after his death is horrible. I mean, if it was a Hunter-esque voice that might be okay, but it's actually supposed to be him, in likeness, references to Aspen, etc. Gross.
posted by neuromodulator at 12:18 PM on March 12, 2012

It's too bad that this terrible idea is one of the best pieces of animation I think I've ever seen.
posted by SharkParty at 12:24 PM on March 12, 2012

While I do think it's pretty distasteful to use a dead man's voice to hawk something, this is pretty lovingly done. Steadman might have something to say about the use, tho. Didn't Tom Waits once sue successfully when advertisers used voice impersonators to do "Tom Waitsy" ads?

And mrzarquon, that's NOT a Johnny Depp imitation. That's actually just how Hunter Thompson sounded. Johnny Depp (and Bill Murray, for that matter) did an excellent job of capturing HST's staccato play-by-play delivery.
posted by es_de_bah at 12:42 PM on March 12, 2012

That was freaking awesome.
posted by clarknova at 1:24 PM on March 12, 2012 [1 favorite]

> And mrzarquon, that's NOT a Johnny Depp imitation.

Oh, I know, I've heard Depp's and HST's talks before, and Depp's is really good. But this sounded more like they used Depp as a reference and not HST's own recordings / interviews.
posted by mrzarquon at 1:25 PM on March 12, 2012

That is self-conscious but pretty neat looking anyway; thanks for posting it.
posted by LobsterMitten at 2:26 PM on March 12, 2012

Goddamn this is gorgeous animation.

I am not so hot on the borrowing of HST's image but holy fuck that is some pretty animation that made my inner animator VERY VERY HAPPY.
posted by egypturnash at 8:55 PM on March 12, 2012

This is how the movie version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas should have been done. Same as On The road, The Bell Jar, and anyone other expressive, angsty work of fiction that had way too much of an impact on teens, such as myself a very long time ago.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 9:46 PM on March 12, 2012

On any given day I would rather read HST.
posted by localhuman at 9:52 PM on March 12, 2012

This is how the movie version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas should have been done.

Did you see that scene in I think it was "Breakfast With Hunter" where Alex Cox suggests that the famous 'great wave' section of the book

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

be rendered in animation and Hunter basically went apeshit in true Hunter style and, well, that was the end of that creative partnership?

Not to say that he might not have felt differently on a different day with a different level of sobriety, but it seems like he might not necessarily have agreed.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:58 AM on March 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

While you guys are pissed that they did not literally recreate his voice, they did a great job literarily.
posted by clarknova at 3:30 PM on March 13, 2012