circuit and covers the 1972 presidential election campaign. After being thrown off the journalist plane by The Candidate's press secretary, Thompson takes the crew plane and gives strait-laced journalist Harris from the Post a strong hallucinogenic drug and steals his clothes and press credentials. At the next campaign stop, in the airport bathroom, Thompson is able to use his disguise to engage The Candidate in a conversation about the "Screwheads" and the "Doomed". Thompson, still posing as Harris, returns to the journalist plane. Lazlo then appears, striding across the airport tarmac in a white suit. He boards the plane and tries to convince his old friend to join his socialist paradise somewhere in the desert. After causing a disturbance, Thompson and Lazlo are thrown off the plane, and Lazlo's papers that describe the community are blown across the airport runway. Lazlo, presumably, is not heard from again. The action then returns to Thompson's cabin, just as the writer puts the finishing touches on his story, explaining that he didn't go along with Lazlo—or Nixon—because "it still hasn't gotten weird enough for me." Cast Bill Murray as Hunter S. Thompson Peter Boyle as Carl Lazlo, Esq. Bruno Kirby as Marty Lewis René Auberjonois as Harris from The Washington Post R.G. Armstrong as Judge Simpson Mark Metcalf as Dooley Craig T. Nelson as Cop on Stand Brian Cummings as Richard Nixon Production In the late 1970s, film producer Thom Mount paid US$100,000 for the film rights to the obituary of Chicano activist Oscar Zeta Acosta, "The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat", written by Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson agreed to have it optioned without seeing a screenplay figuring that the film would never get made, as the vastly more popular Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas had been optioned several times and was never made. In 1978, Art Linson, who had previously produced four films, started planning to make the film, which would be his directorial debut. Thompson remembered, "Then all of a sudden there was some moment of terrible horror when I realized they were going to make the movie". Linson asked illustrator Ralph Steadman to create a poster for the film in the style of the illustrations he had done for Thompson's articles. He used a drawing titled Spirit of Gonzo as the basis. Thompson met with the film's screenwriter John Kaye and felt that Kaye understood more than what was