A montage of news clips of Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War protests while The Lennon Sisters cover of "My Favorite Things" plays over them, before cutting to Raoul Duke (Jhonny Depp) and Dr. Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro) speeding across the Nevada desert. Duke, under the influence of mescaline, complains of a swarm of giant bats, before going through the pair's inventory of psychoactive drugs. This included 2 bags of weed, 75 pellets of Mescaline, five sheets of high-powered Blotter acid, a saltshaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers and Laughers. A quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and 2 dozen Amyls. Duke was particularly concerned about the ether, as he believed that there was nothing more depraved than a man in the throes of an ether binge. A report comes on the radio about drugs killing American soldiers. Illegal drugs had killed 160 GIs that year, and 40 of them in Vietnam. Shortly afterward, the duo stops to pick up a young hitchhiker (Toby Maguire), although Duke panics and says that they cannot stop in the middle of bat country. Duke begins to get paranoid that the hitchhiker will think they are part of the Manson family, so he decides to explain the situation. Duke has been assigned by an unnamed magazine to travel to Las Vegas and cover the Mint 400 motorcycle race. Mint 400 is the richest off-road race for motorcycles and dune buggies in the history of organized sport. All they had to do is drive to Vegas, check into their suite, and meet their Portuguese photographer named Lacerda. When they were packing for the trip, Gonzo suggests they arm themselves to the teeth. They decide to cover the event through pure Gonzo Journalism. They drive around for a while and argue about the differences between white and Samoan culture. They buy some drugs and shirts, then they haggle over the phone with a salesman for a tape recorder. On their way to the shop, they're delayed on route when a Stingray in front of them kills a pedestrian. Later, they rent a convertible and scare the salesman by driving it backwards at high speeds and stealing his pen. Then they eat some mescaline and go swimming. "Our trip was different, it was to be a classic affirmation of everything right and true in the national character. A gross physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country, but only for those with True Grit." Duke claims that Gonzo is his attorney. The hitchhiker watches each of them take "medicinal" Amyl Nitrite and become completely twisted. Gonzo pretends to be completely confused as to why they are in the desert, then they scare the hitchhiker with crazy stories about their plans to murder the drug dealer "Savage Henry" who ripped them off. The young man soon becomes terrified of the antics of the duo and flees on foot. Trying to reach Vegas before the hitchhiker can go to the police, Gonzo gives Duke a tab of "Sunshine Acid", then informs him that there is little chance of making it before the drug kicks in. Duke wants to reach Vegas before the deadline for the press check-in expires, as else they will have to pay for their suite. By the time they reach the strip, Duke is in full throes of his drug induced hallucinations, and barely makes it through the check-in. The carpet in the lobby appears to be made of living vines that are growing up the walls at an alarming rate. Duke sees a desk clerk turn into a poisonous moray eel before his eyes. Duke is left alone for a minute, the atmosphere of the bar becoming more and more ominous. The floor appears to turn to sticky mud under Duke's shoe. A bowl of snacks in front of him turns into a bowl of worms; a lizard like tongue suddenly shoots into the bowl. Duke turns around and everyone in the lounge turns into giant lizards, all humping, slashing and devouring each other. In the hotel room they order an insane amount of food, including a ton of grapefruit, shrimp cocktails and club sandwiches. Duke still tripping on acid starts watching some war footage and sees a "big machine in the sky, some kind of electric snake, coming straight at us". Lacerda comes to meet them in their suite. Duke on acid to see Lacerda as a jungle commando for an instant with a crazy look in his eyes and bombs going off around him. Gonzo sends him away as Duke is still hallucinating heavily. Gonzo becomes fed up with the war footage and rips the TV cord out of the wall. The next day, Duke arrives at the race and heads out with his photographer Lacerda (Craig Bierko). The race has a winner's prize of $50,000. The race kicks up a lot of dust and Lacerda bundles Duke in a jeep and drives across the course to take pictures, trying different combination of lenses and films to get a shot in the dust. Some guy shakes a dusty rag into Duke's beer. When the race starts, the bikers kick up a lot of dust and make the race impossible to cover. Duke and Lacerda run into some people with machine guns. Duke convinces them that they are "friendlies" and they drive off. Duke's beer turns into mud from all the dust in the air. During the coverage, Duke becomes irrational and believes that they are in the middle of a battlefield, so he fires Lacerda, and returns to the hotel. Duke and Gonzo wind up at a Debbie Reynolds concert. Once they get inside the man tells them there are no seats left. Gonzo threatens the usher with legal action. The man agrees to let them into the concert, but only if they will stand quietly at the back and not smoke. Two seconds after Duke and Gonzo enter the concert, the ushers drag them back out the door, both of them laughing hysterically, and kick them out, knocking over the velvet ropes in the process. After consuming more Mescaline, as well as huffing Diethyl Ether, Duke and Gonzo arrive at the Bazooko Circus casino. Diethyl Ether or Devil Ether. It makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel. Total loss of all basic motor skills. Blurred vision, no balance, numb tongue, the mind recoils in horror, unable to communicate with the spinal column. Which is interesting because you can actually watch yourself behaving in this terrible way. They leave shortly afterwards the chaotic atmosphere frightening Gonzo who was just starting to get high on mescaline and was freaking out. Inside the circus, a team of acrobats is putting on an act where they do a mock birthing midair, using oversized scissors, clamps and a hammer, to a doll in a spacesuit with a big American flag on its chest. Below them, on a large net that separates the circus from the casino floor below, a trainer grapples with a snarling wolverine that has just bitten in half a white baton. Below the casino floor is sheer mayhem, a bizarre assortment of brightly-colored attractions, games, and people in weird costumes. They stop at a rotating bar where the waitress asks them to leave when Gonzo asks her if she was paid to have sex with a polar bear. They try to get off the bar, but Gonzo is too paranoid to step off the bar because it's rotating. Duke goes all the way around the bar, briefly losing Gonzo as Gonzo awkwardly holds onto the support bar and tries to drag his feet over the edge. Gonzo tells Duke that Duke should probably drive on the way back as he falls over. Back in the hotel room, the story flashes back to the elevator where Gonzo confronts Lacerda over the attentions of a pretty blonde reporter (Cameron Diaz). Lacerda laughs when Duke tells a TV crew they work for Vincent Black Shadow. Gonzo scares Lacerda by pulling a knife on him. Duke leaves and broods over the meaning of his trip to Las Vegas, and some early morning gamblers who are "still chasing the American dream". Duke tries his luck at a quick round of roulette. When Duke returns, he finds that Gonzo, after consuming a full sheet of LSD, has trashed the room, and is sitting fully clothed in the bathtub, attempting to pull the tape player in with him, as he wants to hear the song better. He pleads with Duke to throw the machine into the water when the song "White Rabbit" peaks. Duke agrees but instead throws a grapefruit at Gonzo's head before running outside and locking Gonzo in the bathroom. Gonzo chases him out of the bathroom and tries to attack him with a knife, but Duke holds him back with the can of mace. Duke threatens to call the police, because he doesn't want Gonzo wandering around on acid and wanting to slice him up. Duke chases Gonzo back into the bathroom by yelling at him through a megaphone. He locks the door, jams it with a chair and goes to the couch, lighting a pipe. Duke attempts to type his reminiscences on hippie culture, and flashes back to San Francisco. A roadie (Lyle Lovett) offered Duke some LSD in a club called the Matrix. Duke took the product into the washroom and only consumed half of it, spilling the rest of it on a red woolen shirt. A bass player from the band walks into the bathroom and starts licking Duke's sleeve after he is told that it has LSD spilled on it. Back in the hotel room, Duke goes to the window, thinking about the end of the 60's acid wave and the crash that followed. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time in the world. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. We had all the momentum. We were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark, that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back The next morning, Duke awakes to a massive room service bill, and no sign of Gonzo, who had returned to Los Angeles while Duke slept. Duke takes off with his suitcase of drugs and doesn't pay the hotel a dime. At the reception, Duke is handed a telegram from Gonzo, which had come from Los Angeles. As he nears Baker, California, a highway patrolman H. Sulliven (Gary Busey) pulls him over for speeding and advises him to sleep at a nearby rest stop. Realizing that he is being set up, Duke instead decides to return to Las Vegas, and reads a telegram from Gonzo, informing him that he has a suite in his name at the Flamingo Las Vegas so he can cover a District Attorney's convention on narcotics. Duke fires off some shots randomly from the .357 into the desert. He decides he has no choice but the go to the conference. He rents a new Cadillac, with his credit card still technically valid. Duke checks into his suite, only to be met by an LSD-tripping Gonzo, and a young girl by the name of Lucy (Christina Ricci) he has brought with him. Gonzo explains that Lucy is a Christian artist and apparently a big fan of Barbara Streisand. She came all the way out from Montana to show her paintings to Barbara herself during a concert. An entire half of the room is filled with paintings of various sizes, every one of them of Barbara Streisand. Gonzo had fed her LSD on the plane without her knowing. Sensing the trouble this could get them into (as Lucy was a minor and any sex with her was illegal), Duke convinces Gonzo to ditch Lucy in another hotel before her drug wears off. Finally, they decide to pay a cab driver to drive her to the Tropicana, and they also pay for a room there, telling her she's going to meet Barbara Streisand, hoping she wouldn't remember what happened. Gonzo accompanies Duke to the D.A.'s convention, and the pair discreetly snort cocaine as the guest speaker delivers a comically out-of-touch speech about "marijuana addicts" before showing a brief film. Unable to take it, Duke and Gonzo flee back to their room, only to discover that Lucy has called. Their hallucinations mostly over, Gonzo deals with Lucy over the phone (pretending that he is being savagely beaten by thugs), as Duke attempts to mellow out by trying some of Gonzo's stash of Adrenochrome. However, the effects of the drugs spiral out of control, and Duke is reduced to an incoherent mess before he blacks out. After an unspecified amount of time, Duke wakes up to a complete ruin of the once pristine suite. After discovering his tape recorder, he attempts to remember what had happened. As he listens, he has brief memories of the general mayhem that had taken place including a heated encounter with a waitress at a diner, convincing a distraught cleaning woman that they are police officers investigating a drug ring, and attempting to buy an orangutan. Duke drops Gonzo off at the airport, after missing the entrance, driving across the tarmac and pulling up right next to the plane, before returning to the hotel one last time to finish his article. Duke speeds back to Los Angeles as The Rolling Stones' "Jumping Jack Flash" plays.
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