Where the Buffalo Roam

Where the Buffalo Roam. 1980 Universal Pictures.
Starring: Bill Murray, Peter Boyle, Bruno Kirby, Rene Auberjonois
Music: Neil Young
Director: Art Linson
Available at Amazon.

Bill Murray plays (and some people have argued that he became) writer Hunter S. Thompson as he attempts to finish a piece about his former attorney and friend, "Carl Lazlo, Esq." (Boyle). Lazlo is based on activist Oscar Zeta Acosta, and the real life Thompson served as executive consultant for the movie, which he later said he hated, except for Murray's performance.

In the movie, Thompson runs across Lazlo on a few notable occasions. First, in 1968, Lazlo is fighting on behalf of a group of San Francisco youths who face harsh prison sentences for possession of marijuana. He convinces Thompson to write an article about it for Blast Magazine. The judge hands down harsh sentences for everyone, including a five-year-sentence for one kid who was caught with one pound of dope. Lazlo beats up the prosecuting attorney, and is jailed for contempt of court. The article is a sensation, but Thompson doesn't hear from Lazlo again until 1972.

Lazlo talks Hunter into skipping coverage of Super Bowl VI in Los Angeles, and going along with him and his band of freedom fighters, who plan to smuggle weapons into a Latin American country. They are found at a remote airstrip by a police helicopter, but Thompson refuses to accompany Lazlo and his troops when they escape. Later that year, Thompson covers the 1972 presidential election campaign, and assumes the identity of a journalist named Harris after drugging him. He engages the Candidate in a conversation at the next campaign stop about the "Screwheads" and the "Doomed", and Thompson is told that the "doomed" can get screwed.

After this, Lazlo makes an appearance, trying to convince Thompson to join a socialist paradise somewhere in the desert. Both men are thrown off a plane, and Lazlo loses his paperwork describing the community after a gust of wind. He isn't seen or heard from again. At the end of the film, when Thompson is finishing his story, he explains he didn't go along with Lazlo because it "never got weird enough for him".

I personally think that anything involving Bill Murray and/or Hunter S. Thompson is pretty much an automatic thumbs-up, so I'll say this one's recommended.