Fear and Loathing On the Road to Hollywood is a documentary featuring writer Hunter S. Thompson and artist Ralph Steadman on a road trip to Tinsel Town. Also known as Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision, the Documentary Heaven site has the skinny…

A fascinating, 30 year old BBC documentary on the Good Doctor and Ralph Steadman, five years after Nixon’s resignation, and on a road trip to Hollywood (to work on what would become Where the Buffalo Roam).

Includes an interesting scene of John Dean chatting with Hunter about his Watergate testimony (at about 32 minutes), the birth of the “Re-Elect Nixon Campaign” (with a Bill Murray cameo), and a remarkably eerie scene with Hunter and Ralph planning Hunter’s final monument and his ashes being shot into the air, long before the actual fact.

Here is Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision. YouTube has removed the sound on most versions of this due to copyright infringement, but this playlist has audio up through the last 6 minutes — the best version available…

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Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video is a film from 1979 written, directed and hosted by Michael O’Donoghue. O’Donoghue was a writer and a featured player during Saturday Night Live’s first seasons and this flick features appearances by many of the original Not Ready for Primetime Players including Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Gilda Radner.

The film is a satire that is loosely hung on the original Mondo Cane travelogue film that sought to shock viewers by displaying bizarre human customs from around the world. After a lengthy warning, an oddball title sequence and an extended intro that features a mini-documentary about a cat swimming class Amsterdam, Mr. Mike’s zany ride really starts rolling. The film’s Wiki page points out some of the oddest bits:

The film is largely plotless; a series of vignettes linked together by interstitial pieces featuring Mr. Mike discussing how upsetting and odd the sequences were. He introduces some of the pieces via voice-over, and some open with no introduction.
Sequences include:

Aykroyd displaying his webbed toes which he prodded with a screwdriver to prove they were not make-up.
A church that worships Jack Lord as the one true god (also featuring Dan Aykroyd.)
A French restaurant that prides itself on how poorly it treats American patrons.
“Dream Sequence”, a series of surreal film pieces bracketed by large light-up signs reading “Dream Sequence” and “End Dream Sequence” that tracked towards and away from the camera. One of these was merely performance footage of Klaus Nomi, while another featured home movie footage shot by Emily Prager intercut with stop-motion animation.

If you are an SNL nut, you’ll love this. If you’re not into the show, watch Mr. Mike’s flick for the Sid Vicious cameo and for Laserbra 2000.

Mr. Mike’s was made in 1979, beating out the Blues Brothers by a year and qualifying it as the first SNL film spin-off. The flick is really silly – of course – but it demonstrates how much of the original SNL’s surrealistic edge was owed to O’Donoghue.

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Joe