This quote pretty much sums up the film’s ethos: “Our energy would simply prevail. 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.”

Were we supposed to feel sorry for the characters as being relics/castaways from that time? Or to see them as somehow a version of the “American Dream” in a take what you want, where you want it, when you want it kind of way?

Definitely some memorable scenes if nothing else like the disembodied Nixon heads flying around and Depp waking up with a microphone taped to his face and wearing a lizard tail.

Also, I liked the blurring of fiction and journalism.

The most powerful statement in the film had to do with unintentional cruelty. Even though they didn’t hurt anyone physically, (as far as we know) there were still causalities of their recklessness (e.g., the waitress, the housekeeper, and Lucy).

I turned it off after the first fifteen minutes. I’ll watch it eventually, but I wasn’t prepared for it at the time…

Trippy, man! An interesting way to capture why drugs worked so well for the hippies in the 60s and just got worse and worse after the decade was done.

Captures the feel of the book pretty well. I’d watch it again 1 or 6 times.