A new film about Hunter S. Thompson’s 1970 campaign for sheriff in Aspen is being released in limited movie theaters in the U.S. on Friday. It is not yet playing Aspen, but is playing nearby at the Roaring Fork Valley’s Movieland in El Jebel.
“Fear and Loathing in Aspen,” written and directed by Bobby Kennedy III, stars Jay Bulger as Thompson in a dramatized account of the local hippie-led reform movement and revolutionary “Freak Power” campaign.
The film has followed a winding five-year-long road to this quiet release from Shout! Factory.
Its production was funded by $300,000 in rebates granted by Colorado’s Economic Development Commission in 2016. At the time it had a $1.85 million budget, according to a Denver Post report. But Kennedy later told the Aspen Daily News that the non-government money had been promised by Sony and that his team walked away from that deal due to creative differences, proceeding instead with a shoestring $250,000 budget.
Fear and Loathing in Aspen in some theaters Friday, but not in Aspen aspentimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from aspentimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Fat City Gallery this weekend will host Omar Alshogre to discuss his experiences of political imprisonment in Syria. (Courtesy photo)
The Fat City Gallery is hosting three days of events and an exhibition this weekend aimed at exposing ongoing human rights abuses in Syria and rallying an Aspen audience to the cause.
The gallery will host detention and torture survivor Omar Alshogre, who will give testimony of his experience Friday, followed by a exhibition of images by the anonymous photographer known as “Caesar” who has documented the Assad regime’s murder of detainees, and will close with a screening Sunday of the documentary “Red Lines.”
The itinerant Gonzo Gallery will change its name to “Fat City Gallery” upon its next move in May.
The popular gallery, which over the past decade has engaged a youthful audience and sparked creative dialogue rarely found in the Aspen art scene, has specialized in work related to the author and local icon Hunter S. Thompson, illustrator Ralph Steadman and printmaker/activist Tom Benton among others counterculture figures.
On May 15, the gallery will move to 529 E. Cooper Ave. and reopen as Fat City Gallery, marking a pivot away from Thompson while also paying homage to Thompson’s campaign promise to rename Aspen “Fat City” during his 1970 campaign for sheriff of Pitkin County.
The Art of Gonzo: Aspen gallery collects 16 rare works of art by Hunter S Thompson aspentimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from aspentimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.