Storyville (1997)

Season 13: Episode 20

The definitive film biography of a mythic American figure, a man that Tom Wolfe called 'our greatest comic writer', whose suicide led Rolling Stone magazine, where Thompson began his career, to devote an entire issue to the man that launched a brash, irreverent, fearless style of journalism - named 'gonzo' after an anarchic blues riff by James Booker. Gonzo is directed by Alex Gibney, the Academy Award-nominated director of Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room and the director of the Academy Award-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. While Gibney shaped the screen story, every narrated word in the film springs from the typewriters of Thompson himself, given life by Johnny Depp. The film is distinguished by its unprecedented cooperation of Thompson's friends, family and estate. The filmmakers had access to hundreds of photographs and over 200 hours of audiotapes, home movies and documentary footage.