Fear and loathing driving down Provincial Road

The closing of Cineplex’s Silver City in South Windsor has brought back some memories. In the late Nineties and early Aughts I made it a habit, almost every weekend, to watch a movie at the multiplex, the drive back downtown near where I lived afterwards through little trafficked Provincial Rd. and McDougall St., a late-night Windsor ritual. One time I went to see a film with a friend of mine, John. John had always struck me as a reasonable guy, a bright well-paid mid-level exec at a Detroit utility company. He had a wide interest in arts and culture. But this night something had simply sprung the wrong way in John’s mind, a bizarre outburst I’d never previously witnessed. We had come out of Silver City after having watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Terry Gilliam’s 1998 take on the famed Hunter S. Thompson novel, starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro. The novel had long been a cult classic, and I was interested to see if the film could replicate the zaniness of the 1971 book’s over the top story. For those not in the know, the book is about a booze and drug-infused weekend in the world’s gambling capital by someone resembling Thompson - a famed “gonzo” journalist who wrote for Rolling Stone magazine - and his sidekick Raoul Duke. The novel was so emblematic of its time of the late-Sixties counterculture, packed with humor and craziness with a disreputable cast of characters who get caught up in our heroes’ mindless outrageousness. No, you didn’t have to be a druggie to enjoy it but the story was so representative of its times a huge number of people embraced it, a totemic symbol of hippiedom and lining bookshelves everywhere. So, after seeing the film that night and getting into my car, we started driving into central Windsor, the plan, as always, to grab a couple of beers at some downtown bar before John headed home stateside. But John this night was unusually quiet. I asked if something was wrong. I was sorry I did. My question unleashed a torrent of rage as John went on a non-stop rant about how vile and immoral the movie was. I tried to get in a sentence: “John, it’s only a movie.” I also said it’s a depiction of a certain era in modern American life, like it or leave it. “You don’t have to agree with it.” But John was having none of it, repeating ad infinitum how disgusting and offensive the flick was. His rant was like a funnel of water that couldn’t be turned off. I even wondered if John was part of the Moral Majority, his criticisms so bitter that he was personally afflicted. Finally, trying to change the subject, I said, “Where shall we go for a beer?” “Beer!?” he replied. “I’m not going for a beer, I’m going home!” We said goodnight – he might have grumbled it if he said anything. That wasn’t the end of our friendship; that would come a year later over an even bigger out-of-nowhere John seeming psychic meltdown.