Tagarchief: Drug Movies

Dazed and Confused

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Director: Richard Linklater
Written by: Richard Linklater
Cast: Jason London, Wiley Wiggins, Matthew McConaughey, Rory Cochrane

Year / Country: 1993, USA
Running Time: 103 mins.

Richard Linklater’s masterpiece about the last day of an Austin high school in 1976. ‘A time they would never forget’, the tagline states, ‘if only they could remember.’ Indeed, these are the days of aimlessly hanging around, getting wasted, performing vandalism, having sexual experiences, falling in love, and being genuinely confused about what to do next in life. The pointlessness is the point.

The whole movie plays like a seamless stream of magical summer moments experienced by kids who have just graduated and a group of freshmen, who also intermingle as the former perform hazing rituals on the latter, but also take some of them out to party and smoke weed. There is no plot or central conflict, it is just a collection of interconnected happenings and it all feels super real and not scripted at all. That is mainly because Linklater allowed the actors to bring their own experiences to their roles.

The casting is impeccable. With their authentic performances, these young actors really bring this era to life. They are also helped by the excellent production design and soundtrack, featuring songs by a.o. Bob Dylan, Alice Cooper, Kiss, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. Licensing these songs raised the budget considerably, but it definitely adds to the authenticity. Many of the young adults are played by actors who would later become stars, most notably Ben Affleck, Milla Jovovich and Matthew McConaughey (for McConaughey it was his breakout role).

Linklater and his crew have created the perfect time capsule. It is like the American Gravity for the next generation. Any time you feel like experiencing this era, but also relive your own confusing high school days, put on Dazed and Confused, and it takes you right there.

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Biography: Richard Linklater (1960, Houston) is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. He was among the first and most successful talents to emerge during the American independent film renaissance of the 1990s. Suburban culture and the passage of time are big themes in many of his movies, some of which are set during one 24-hours period, including his successful ‘Before’-trilogy with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. He is married to Christina Harrison and they have three children, including Lorelei who played a large part in Linklater’s much praised movie Boyhood.

Filmography (a selection): It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (1988, short), Slacker (1990), Dazed and Confused (1993), Before Sunrise (1995), The Newton Boys (1998), Waking Life (2001), Tape (2001), School of Rock (2003), Before Sunset (2004), Fast Food Nation (2006), A Scanner Darkly (2006), Me and Orson Welles (2008), Before Midnight (2013), Boyhood (2014), Everybody Wants Some (2016), Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood (2022)

Fear and Loathing Drug List

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

In the ultimate dope novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Gonzo journalist Raoul Duke travels to Las Vegas with his crazed Samoan attorney Dr. Gonzo to search for the American dream. With them, they carry every type of drug known to civilized man since 1544 A.D.

The List
– 2 bags of grass
– 75 pellets of mescaline
– 5 sheets of high-powered blotter acid
– 1 salt shaker full of cocaine
– 1 galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers
– 1 quart of tequila
– 1 quart of rum
– 1 case of beer
– 1 pint of raw ether
– 24 amyls

“Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”

Illustrations by Troy Little in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – The Comic

Read also: Hunter Goes to Hollywood: Hunter S. Thompson Triple Bill

Enter the Void

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld



Director: Gaspar Noé
Written by: Gaspar Noé, Lucile Hadzihalilovic
Cast: Nathaniel Brown, Paz de la Huerta, Cyril Roy, Olly Alexander

Year / Country: 2009, France / Germany / Italy / Canada / Japan
Running Time: 161 mins.

Death is the greatest drug!

Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void is hypnotic from the trippy credits onwards. The entire film is shot from the perspective of the heavy drug user and dealer Oscar who dies fifteen minutes into the movie. He gets shot during a police raid in a Tokyo bar called ‘the Void’ when he locked himself in the toilet trying to flush his stash of gear.

Oscar, who was just reading ‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead’ which he borrowed from his friend Alex, sees his own dead body on the restroom floor and it feels like a genuine death experience. The rest of the film follows Oscar’s consciousness point-of-view that keeps hovering above people he used to be close to, seeing psychedelic images, or just strangers and old friends having sex. He also re-experiences scenes from his own life from an outside perspective. Oscar is no longer burdened by the restraints of a physical body or the flow of time. Philosophically, the laws of cause and effect are one of the main themes of the film.

His main memory is the car crash that killed his parents and left him and his sister traumatized orphans. They ended up in Tokyo where she became a stripper and he became a dealer and user. Oscar observes the aftermath of his death which includes police interrogations, dramatic arguments between his old friends, and lives going seriously off the rails. Watching the human tragedy play out from an eagle eye perspective is playful and refreshing. (Spoiler: It ends with Oscar’s soul reincarnating as a baby).

Noé’s dream project is a successful experimental film with a number of powerful scenes and some stunning visuals. The film’s main problem is that it is more than two and a half hours long! For an experimental movie that is a major sin. But Noé is all about trying new things. Unfortunately, the film became a major flop (not even a million gross worldwide versus a sixteen million dollar budget according to IMDb). Still these beautiful crane shots of neon-lit Tokyo were worth every buck. With some proper editing, this could have been a masterpiece.

Another downside is that Enter the Void is mostly a visual experience. The electronic pop helps to create the unique atmosphere, but there are no thoughts by Oscar after he is killed or other sensations. Therefore, I hope that monsieur Noé will one day create a virtual reality project of his vision. About his elaborate view on death two notions stick. One, dying ain’t so bad. And two, voiced by Oscar in a discussion with Alex about the ‘The Book of the Dead’ on their way to the club is; are we really gonna be stuck forever on this shit hole of a planet?

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Biography: Gaspar Noé (1963, Buenos Aires) is an Argentine-born French film director. Noé spent his childhood in Buenos Aires and New York before moving to France with his parents at the age of 12. He studied philosophy and film studies at the École Louis-Lumière in Paris. After this he initially started working as First Assistant Director before becoming a director himself. In 1992 he made his breakthrough as a director with his short film Carne. Noé mainly focuses on short films. Stanley Kubrick’s films in particular serve as inspiration for him. Well known feature length films he directed are the controversial Irreversible and Enter the Void. Noé is married to filmmaker Lucile Hadzihalilovic. She is credited as co-writer for his movie Enter the Void from 2009.

Filmography (a selection): Carne (1991, short) / I Stand Alone (1998) / Sodomites (1998, short), Irréversible (2002), Intoxication (2002, short), Eva (2005, short), Destricted (2006, segment: We Fuck Alone), SIDA (2006, short), Enter the Void (2009), 42 One Dream Rush (2010, short), Love (2015), Climax (2018), Lvx Æterna (2019), Vortex (2021)

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Director: Terry Gilliam
Written by: Hunter S. Thompson (book), Terry Gilliam (screenplay), Tony Grisoni (screenplay), Tod Davies (screenplay), Alex Cox (screenplay)
Cast: Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro, lot’s of cameo’s including; Tobey Maguire, Gary Busey, Ellen Barkin, Christina Ricci, Cameron Diaz, Flea and Harry Dean Stanton

Year / Country: 1998, USA
Running Time: 118 mins.

It is the foul year of our lord 1971 and Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson (Raoul Duke in the story) and his Samoan attorney Dr. Gonzo decide to undertake the ultimate trip of the seventies. The official assignment is to cover the Mint 400 desert race in Las Vegas, but they have something bigger in mind. They want to find the American dream. Armed to the teeth with highly dangerous narcotics, they head out to Las Vegas in their fire red convertible… Some trip it’s gonna be…

While searching for the American dream, Thompson and Dr. Gonzo only find fear and loathing. Intolerable vibrations in a town not at all suitable for the use of psychedelic drugs. The atmosphere is extremely menacing, but as they behave as animals, nobody even notices them. Vegas turns out to be a savage town. And while soldiers are dying in Vietnam, used car dealers from Dallas throw their money in the slot machines, Debbie Reynolds sings in the Desert Inn and the national police force meets at a congress about marijuana. Thompson and Dr. Gonzo are there.

Thompson’s novel ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’, which was first published in two parts in Rolling Stone Magazine, became a cultural phenomenon (and my personal favorite book of all time). The movie adaptation by Terry Gilliam is a literal one. Thompson wrote his famous novel Gonzo style, which means the events are told through the eyes and vision of the author who fully participates in the story himself. Since Thompson was heavily under the influence during the writing process, he claims he can’t fully remember which parts truly happened and which ones did not (fully). Therefore this literal adaptation is a highly enjoyable blast, though not always realistic.

There is one downside to director Gilliam’s literal approach. In the novel, all the psychedelic escapades form an integral part of what is obviously a literary masterpiece. In the translation to film however, these escapades sometimes appear to be useless fuckarounds, especially during the final part of the film. However, that is a minor criticism for this is obviously a highly enjoyable movie. Depp and Del Toro are both terrific in their method acting approaches to their roles. Thompson’s poetic writing, beautifully narrated by Depp in voice-over, runs through the movie that captures the era and hallucinogenic nightmare perfectly. Combined with a beautiful seventies soundtrack and Grade A settings, the great time capsule that is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is complete. Also, it is one of the funniest movies of all time. So buy the ticket and take the ride.

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Biography: Terry Gilliam (1940, Minneapolis) started his career as the only American member of the British comedy group Monty Python. As animator, he was responsible for the bizarre cartoons used in the sketches. In 1975 he directed his first movie for Monty Python, namely Monty Python and the Holy Grail. After his period with Monty Python, he moved on as independent director and had remarkable success with his bizarre masterpiece Brazil in 1985. After that success, things went downhill for Gilliam; The Adventures of Baron Munchausen became an expensive flop and the disastrous production of the never completed Don Quichotte became legendary. Despite these problems, Gilliam returned and directed a number of valuable contributions to cinema, including sci-fi masterpiece Twelve Monkeys and cult classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Filmography: Storytime (1968, short) / The Miracle of Flight (1974, short) / Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) / Jabberwocky (1977) / Time Bandits (1981) / The Crimson Permanent Assurance (1983, short) / The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) / The Fisher King (1991) / Twelve Monkeys (1995) / Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) / The Brothers Grimm (2005) / Tideland (2005) / The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) / The Legend of Hallowdega (2010, short) / The Wholly Family (2011, short) / The Zero Theorem (2013) / The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018)