Negative Space: satirical
- Being There
- Peter Sellers’ last and in my opinion best work, based on the story by Jerzy Kosinski (and with a screenplay written by him). This is a quietly funny, provocative, and touching film about “down to earth” philosophies.
- Better Than Sex
- “Confessions of a Political Junkie”. The world ain’t what it used to be, and before this thing is over, you’ll wish you weren’t either.
- The Complete Lewis Carroll
- Lewis Carroll’s work, like that of J. M. Barrie, is often disneyfied for children, but when read raw is complex and fascinating.
- Dark Star
- John Carpenter’s first movie release. Originally made as a student production, someone in Hollywood liked it and helped him release it. There are some very good ideas hidden among the beachball alien and “Phoenix Asteroids”.
- The Desert Peach
- Daniel Pinkwater described them as “Hogan’s Heroes with Homos” in the introduction to the first collection. This is, well, that’s probably the best description you’re going to get.
- Doonesbury
- Ever since I first read “The Doonesbury Chronicles”, I’ve rated comic strips by how well they compare to Doonesbury.
- Fahrenheit 451
- A very good adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s science fiction novel of the same name. “Firemen” have evolved from people who put out fires to people who create them—in order to burn books. Fireman Montag begins to question this existence after a run-in with a young girl on a train.
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
- Perhaps the purest of Thompson’s searches for the American Dream because it is untainted by politics; or perhaps the most pointless for the same reason, as politics have tainted the American Dream since the Adams anti-sedition acts almost as soon as the country was born.
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
- Perhaps the purest of Thompson’s searches for the American Dream because it is untainted by politics; or perhaps the most pointless for the same reason, as politics have tainted the American Dream since the Adams anti-sedition acts almost as soon as the country was born.
- Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972
- This is a powerful look at the 1972 presidential campaigns, well worth reading, and recommended for anyone interested in a turning point in the Democratic Party.
- The Futurological Congress
- Stanislaw Lem is a brilliant author, and “The Futurological Congress” is perhaps his most prophetic work.
- Generation of Swine
- The “Tales of Shame and Degradation” are mostly the Bush-Dukakis presidential race (from the primaries to the bitter end) of 1988, not a good platform for gonzo journalism.
- The Great Shark Hunt
- From football to Haight-Ashbury, the Ali-Spinks match and the Freak Power uprising in Aspen, Thompson is one of the few people who truly understood what the hell was going on in the sixties and seventies while they were happening.
- Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
- While a decent enough movie, this adaptation of Douglas Adams’ brilliant satire drops the satire and ultimately doesn’t do anything different than most other movies today.
- Memoirs Found in a Bathtub
- Hidden beneath the Rocky Mountains, a long-lost civilization worthy of anything from Edgar Rice Burroughs toils in its paranoid mission to fight the communist anti-building.
- Mike Royko: A Life in Print
- Mike Royko, according to author and fellow newsman F. Richard Ciccone, was the heir to the Mencken responsibility of satirizing the powerful and protecting the weak. I believe he came close, but Ciccone’s book doesn’t show it.
- Mike Royko’s Opinions
- Mike Royko would have been almost gonzo if he’d been more Libertarian. Certainly, he was growing that way before he died, especially with his views on drugs and modifying his stand against gun control.
- The Siege of Harlem
- This is a strange artifact of the sixties. Written in 1964, published in 1965, it tells the story of when Harlem seceded from the Union and built its own government. The cover blurb says “Beneath the hilarity is a clear warning: ‘Laugh at your peril. It could happen.’”
- Songs of the Doomed
- “Songs of the Doomed” covers the decline and fall of the Reagan Empire: the eighties. From the strange power politics meeting in Elko, Illinois thru the Pulitzer trial and the Berlin wall.
- South Park Volume 1 through 6
- I was first introduced to South Park through the movie (which also kicks ass). The television shows are amazing. Variety, of all things, calls it “gloriously subversive art”. Yeah, whatever. It’s great shit that you must eat. I recommend buying the collected three-DVD sets. Make sure you check the pricing, however: at Amazon, the sets are more expensive than buying the individual disks! The first set, at least, contains nothing but the individual disks: there is no bonus to buying the set. (In fact, now that the second 3-pack is out, the pricing is all fucked up for South Park, so pay attention.)
- South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut
- Watch Parker & Stone take on the MPAA and lose the battle but win the war. More political incorrectness than you can beat down with a whip in this movie. Watching “Bigger, Longer and Uncut” finally got me to get out and see the television show it was based on, and I wasn’t disappointed.
- Team America, Fuck Yeah!
- Stone and Parker strike another satirical gold mine.
- Thank You For Smoking
- Satire is hard. Good satire is rarely balanced, and even the best satire is sometimes no stranger than the next day’s news.
- Wag the Dog
- The president is accused of molesting a child. The president’s guilt or innocence doesn’t matter. What matters is the election in eleven days.
