About two years ago, Patricia Arquette retweeted one of my posts on the social network currently—and rather ridiculously—known as X. I had posted something about Hunter S. Thompson and she seemed to approve of it.

I was surprised until a Google search informed me she was working on a movie about Hunter… or rather about a fictional character who is quite obviously inspired by Hunter. It was called Gonzo Girl and at that time it was still in production (or post-production).

Although I admit I was sceptical about the film, I was nonetheless excited to see how she tackled it. Hunter has not always been done justice by Hollywood. Where the Buffalo Roam is watchable only because of Bill Murray’s performance and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a goofy and fun effort but it lacks the intelligence of the book. As for The Rum Diary was pretty poor and then Fear and Loathing in Aspen… well, let’s say no more about that turd of a film…

Hunter’s work has always appealed more to men than women and some of the reasons are obvious, but I know he has a good few female fans and I wondered what a female director would make of his character and work. Yes, Gonzo Girl was never an adaptation, but still it was clearly about Hunter. How would she tackle his positive and negative qualities? (He had a great many of both.)

Then of course we have Willem Defoe in the Hunter role! Alright! Bill Murray… Johnny Depp… Willem Dafoe! Sure, I could see that working. In fact, what Hunter Thompson fan wouldn’t want to see Dafoe’s take on the Good Doc? I could see him doing a hell of a job.

The concept was focusing on a young woman who goes to work as the assistant for a drugged-up Gonzo writer. This writer is not HST (presumably for legal reasons) but it sure does sound like him. In fact, the film is based on the book Gonzo Girl, written by Cheryl Della Pietra. It looks at her time working as one of Thompson’s female assistants in the 1990s.

The film was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023 and got fairly mixed reviews. It seems most people agreed that Dafoe offered a great performance as did the female lead, Jessica Caldwell. The reviews largely seem to agree that the film is sort of watchable but that the director had to deal with “a clunky script.”

Ok, well then it’s not a perfect film… But I still want to see it, and that’s a problem. It’s not on Netflix. It’s not on Amazon. It’s not on any streaming service at all. In fact, you can’t even get a torrent of it. It just seems to have disappeared entirely. That’s a bit odd for a film that debuted more than a year ago.

It sounds like—from what I see on the internet—the film did not impress anyone enough to find a distributor. In spite of a famous lead actor and a famous director (well, a famous actress who’s turned to directing) and a great concept for a film, no one felt it was financially viable. It was made, finished, premiered, and then just forgotten about.

Good god, man. Do they not know that we in the HST world have low standards?! We’d watch it regardless of how bad it is. We’d probably turn it into a cult classic! I hope that someone someday manages to release it. Isn’t there an equivalent of straight-to-video for the 21^st century? Can’t they dump it on the shittiest streaming platform just to recoup a little of their money? C’mon folks, we need to see Dafoe’s take on Hunter Thompson!