Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) A Retrospective

Bill Murray plays Hunter S Thompson. What more do you need to know?

“Where the Buffalo Roam” (1980) Directed by Art Linson. Picture courtesy of and with thanks to www.film-authority.com

Opening Scene

Amid rugged and snow capped mountains and sound tracked by the hauntingly beautiful “Home on the Range” (Where the Buffalo Roam) by Neil Young, our players in this “movie based on the twisted legend of Dr Hunter S Thompson” are splashed on the screen via Hunter’s resident artist for many decades, Ralph Steadman. As Neil’s wonderful song comes to a conclusion, so we dissolve from a peaceful buffalo slowly walking through the snow to Hunter’s self-titled “fortified compound” in the Aspen hills and inside we find “Hunter S Thompson” (Bill Murray) wearing a green Las Vegas emblazoned bank teller’s cap, orange jacket and white shorts, furiously tapping on his typewriter with his left hand, a lighted Dunhill cigarette at the end of his trusty cigarette holder clamped between his teeth and all the while his right hand fills a glass with Wild Turkey whiskey and ice. Now distracted by an incessant beeping from a nearby Xerox copier machine he self-titled his “Mojo Wire”, he downs the glass of whiskey before screaming “STOP IT!” furiously at the machine he so heavily relies on to transmit his written copy to his various editors and friends before calmly chastising himself and “Get a Grip, Doc!” as it’s still over two hours to his latest deadline.

Rising from his chair, he screams “SHUT UP!” to his machine lifeline to the outside world before banging it with his fist and waking his Doberman companion of many years, “Rocco”. Now walking across the room and past a roaring fire he takes a marijuana cigarette from the mouth of an upright, life size doll of Richard Nixon and lighting it. “No need to panic huh?” he says to the crude Nixon caricature “I’ll just lash together a few raw facts and this nightmare will be over” before shouting “NIXON” and his faithful friend runs towards the doll before clamping his jaws viciously over the doll’s genitals! After calming and praising Rocco he inserts a single piece of paper into the copier machine but almost immediately it begins beeping once more and pulling a gun from his shorts, he fires two shots which both miss the machine before a further two blow the machine from the table into a destroyed mess on the floor. A fifth shot flies haphazardly through his open legs before he deposits the empty shells onto the floor, reloads his gun, turns on the radio, clamps his cigarette holder between his teeth, and resumes writing.

First things last, Where the Buffalo Roams isn’t great, but as a myopic fan of all things Hunter S Thompson and Bill Murray, I laughed like a drain and smiled all the way through but that’s perhaps a heavily biased reaction from a fan of two great men and two great artists. Bill has made me laugh and smile for more decades than I care to remember and after flirting with the madness of the gonzo journalist and member of his own extraordinary story Hunter S Thompson in the mid 1990’s, I became a fully fledged member of his surreal way of life a couple of years before his sad departure to another universe in 2005. Only last summer I re-read his entire catalogue of published works, many of his books for a third or even fourth time, as well as numerous books from friends, editors and publishers on the impact this renegade life form had on their lives, for good or oftentimes, ill. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is as essential a read as the surreal Terry Gilliam directed, Johnny Depp starring film that followed it and whilst The Rum Diary doesn’t hit those twin peaks, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 and The Great Shark Hunt (books) and Alex Gibney’s 2008 documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr Hunter S Thompson certainly do, and in spades. In short, I love and appreciate the surreal wisdom and sideways glance on life that Hunter provided in much the same way as Spanish artist Salvador Dali and American comedian Bill Hicks before him, and I miss these three human revolutionaries dearly.

Returning to Art Linson’s debut film, it would seem to be rooted towards the end of the 1970’s (see opening and closing scenes) but which almost immediately returns to California in 1968 and although many of the names and places have changed (here Hunter’s famed attorney and self-titled “Brown Buffalo” Oscar Z Acosta is renamed “Carl Lazlo” and portrayed in a brilliant performance by Peter Boyle) Lazlo’s court case surrounding the possession of marijuana and the 4th amendment of the American Constitution becomes a hilarious springboard through to the heart of the film and Los Angeles in 1972 and his supposed coverage of the Super Bowl. A trashed hotel room and thousands of dollars in expenses later, he gifts his tickets away in exchange for a bottle of wine and a hat for he and his attorney have far more important matters to attend to, the search for the (self-titled once more) “American Dream” and a drug fuelled road trip whereby they pick up a hitchhiker made famous (and portrayed far better both in the book and film) within Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. From here the film really gathers pace and momentum as Hunter joins the press corps and the party antics aboard the “Zoo” plane following the Presidential campaign so brilliantly captured in his highly recommended book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72. With drugs aplenty and a tale of anarchy to be told, Hunter, forever carrying a drink, a large bag of drugs, an ice bucket and a cigarette holder forever clamped between his teeth, narrates his thoughts into a dictaphone before, with the drugs taking hold, piloting the plane and singing The Beatles hit “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”. All of which bad craziness leads us to Neil Young’s sound track for a film that is perhaps best left to fans of Bill Murray and Hunter S Thompson or to you dear reader should you wish to watch the madness unfold and to tell your lying eyes that all of this, and much, much more, actually happened.

Kind of.

Closing Scene

Tapping furiously at his typewriter we find the “Good Doctor” Thompson dressed exactly as we last saw him in the opening scene but with the addition of a Hawaiian garland around his neck. Quickly and with two thumps of his trusty typewriter, Hunter exclaims “Hot Damn! So much for the facts!” and with his article finished, he begins to read this aloud to Rocco, relaxing in front of the fire. “Well I guess if I have to swear, Lazlo wasn’t insane. He just had very strange rhythms. But he stomped on the terra. Lord Buckley said that. It’s hard to say” he continued “that he got what he deserved, because he never really got anything”. Lighting a cigarette, the nearby telephone begins to ring as at first Hunter ignores it and continues again “At least, not in this story”, before ripping his typed page from the typewriter and “Right now, this is the only story we have”. Gripping the telephone tightly and taking a gun from his shorts he presses the muzzle forcibly on the telephone which thankfully stops ringing as Rocco barks from the other side of the room. “Oh come on Rocco, we’re celebrating!” says Hunter, pouring himself a glass of Wild Turkey and filling his faithful friend’s bowl with a large tipple too. “Don’t get all weird on me now” he pleads, and after the pair have finished their drinks, Hunter, now sitting on a suitcase, continues reading aloud. “It’s sad, but what’s really sad is it never got weird enough for me”. Rising from the suitcase and now sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the fire with Hunter and Rocco now awkwardly either side of the doll of Richard Nixon sitting between them, he continues “I moved to the country when the boat got too crowded. Then I learned that President Nixon had been eaten by white cannibals on an island near Tijuana for no good reason at all. Golly, you hear a lot of savage and unnatural things about people these days”. Now cuddling the Richard Nixon doll and looking it dead in the eyes, he goes in for the final, literary kill “Lazlo and Nixon are both gone now, but I don’t think I’m going to believe this until I can gnaw on both of their skulls with my very own teeth. Fuck these people, huh? If they’re out there, I’m going to find them and I’m going to gnaw on their skulls, because it still hasn’t gotten weird enough for me”.

Bless you Bill Murray.
Bless you Doc.

Hunter S Thompson (18th July 1937–20th February 2005)

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Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.

Whilst you’re here I may as well brag about the release of my two recently self-published books. Both are free to read if you subscribe to Amazon Kindle “Unlimited” or reasonably priced in both paperback and hardback. Go on, treat yourself or a loved one and help out an Indie Author! Buy the books if you’re financially able to. They also look far, far better in print!

We HAVE to keep the spirit of reading books alive and well.

Thanks.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DR8BMJ8J (Author’s Collection)

"still life, with gooseberry" - link to Amazon

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DSJFR75M (Author’s Collection)

"Rasputin and Raspberry Jam" - link to Amazon

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