Word: gonzo
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Cairo or covering an international marathon race in Peking, Kesey practices what has come to be known as gonzo journalism. The reporter, often intoxicated, fails to get the story but delivers instead a stylishly bizarre account that mocks conventional journalism. Kesey may have quit the literary major leagues but can still be an exciting writer, whether describing a rampaging billy goat or a fatal car wreck in Egypt: "It's two flimsy Fiat taxis just like ours, amalgamated head on, like two foil gum wrappers wadded together. No cops; no ambulances; no crowd of rubberneckers; just the first of those...
...Kovacs and Monty Python, William S. Burroughs and Johnny B. Goode. Under the shrewd editorial tutelage of Producer Lorne Michaels, this over-the-top farce, gussied up a bit for home consumption, became the house style at Saturday Night Live. With a bow to Hunter Thompson, Aykroyd called it "Gonzo television...
Alas, the '80s have become bedtime for Gonzo, so the occasion seems prime for a chronicle of the show. Saturday Night, subtitled "a backstage history," does remarkably thorough research on incredibly haphazard troupes. Authors Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad sometimes let enthusiasm get in the way of level judgment--Baudelaire and Blake are cited among S.N.L's spiritual fathers--but their book works up a vivid frontline fever as it relates the conceptual brawls, bad trips on the twin drugs of cocaine and sudden fame, psychological entanglements, romantic skirmishes and perpetual pitched battles with the censors involved in getting...
...name. Hearst gazes down on his grandson William Randolph Hearst III, publisher of the San Francisco Examiner, and quizzes him on his recent staff additions. "Who is this Hunter S. Thompson?" asks Grandfather Hearst in a tone half haughty, half perplexed. Will Hearst, who helped hire the duke of "gonzo" journalism as a columnist, replies, "He's irreverent, a little risky, but, uh, fun to read, you know . . . Come on, Grandpa, lighten up." Grandpa somberly responds, "Are you sure you know what you're doing, Will?" Grandson gazes sweetly at the portrait and says, "I don't know...
...protean John Malkovich is Al Rockoff, a gonzo Associated Press photographer. The craziest of all the leftover journalists, he is also the most aware of the real situation. In the tensest scene of the movie, Rockoff and a British friend try to doctor a British passport to allow Pran to escape. Their last minute failure is ironic enough to wrench a theater-ful of popcorn-filled guts...