In the wake of the success of his 1967 book “Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs,” where Thompson embedded himself in said gang, he inked a deal with Random House for a series of follow-up books. The American dream had become a nightmare. ‘Horatio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas’ Thompson.” (Magnolia Pictures The Associated Press) Thompson is shown in a promotional photo from the film, “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. In this undated image provided by Magnolia Pictures, Hunter S.

“Buy the ticket, take the ride,” Thompson advises in the book, “and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well … maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion.” It’s a wild trip, man, stock up on the antacids. Thompson put Las Vegas on the map of domestic and international tourism!”Īnd he did so in a manner that endures to this day - for better and, as is often the case in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” for far, far worse. Thompson: Fear and Loathing and the Birth of Gonzo.” “Politicians know that bad publicity is better than no publicity. “Thompson depicted Las Vegas as the pit of hell, a gambler’s Disneyland, a place of extreme, hallucinatory fantasy without limits - so it became a legendary symbol (displacing Chicago, Miami and New York City),” explains Kevin T. Thompson touched that nerve - tap-danced on it, really - while turning Las Vegas into both a symbol and a caricature of said dream. “You must realize that we’ve found the main nerve.” “We came out here to find the American dream …” Thompson wrote, frying on mescaline and scaring the staff at Circus Circus. In 200 acid-enhanced pages, an era, a generation and a city were encapsulated, satirized and embalmed in a timeless sign of the times, Vegas the lurid landscape upon which it all takes place. The trapeze artists also remain - an aerialist in a bedazzled blue get-up tucks her heels behind her ears on a Thursday evening, pretzeling her body above the poker tables below.įifty years ago, this place, these scenes, were immortalized by an ether-addled journalist and his sidekick, a Samoan lawyer who wasn’t really Samoan, in a pair of Rolling Stone magazine articles that became a fever dream of a book: “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”

The merry-go-round, though, is still here - even if it goes round no more, idling on the casino floor of Circus Circus, filled with Jumping Jalapeno penny slot machines in place of painted horses. The blood they spilled on the carpet of the Desert Inn is long gone - along with the hotel itself.

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