Movies - Where the Buffalo Roam

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	Movies - Where the Buffalo Roam

Where the Buffalo Roam is the title of a film from 1980. Bill Murray played the lead in the film, Hunter S. Thompson, and Peter Boyle played the role of Karl Lazlo, Esq., loosely based on Doctor Thompson's lawyer, Oscar Zeta Acosta.

Loosely based on the writings and semi-autobiographical information in Hunter S. Thompson's books, this comedic vehicle fared poorly at theatres (though it was not widely circulated). It has been broadcast on both cable movie networks and syndicated stations sporadically ever since its original release.

The story

It has three chapters, all circling around Thompson and Lazlo. They are told as a story that Thompson is apparently writing in his cabin.

The first chapter is set in 1968, where Lazlo is fighting to stop a group of youngsters from receiving several years in jail for possession of marijuana, while Thompson is writing an article about it for Blast Magazine, which is loosely based on Rolling Stone.

The next chapter is set in 1972, during the fictional Los Angeles Superbowl (the real one was in New Orleans in 1972) where Lazlo, after having gone missing after the 1968 chapter, meets up with Thompson to try to convince him to join his freedom fight, which includes smuggling weapons to an unnamed Latin American country. He follows the revolutionaries to the remote airstrip where the plane is to be loaded, but when a police helicopter finds them, Lazlo and his henchmen get on the plane to escape and Thompson refuses to follow.

The next chapter begins after a short aside at one of Thompson's college tours, also in 1972. This chapter is loosely based on the 1972 Presidential campaign. Richard Nixon, here called "The Candidate," is campaigning for reelection. Thompson, after being thrown off the journalist plane and forced to take the crew plane (known as the "Zoo"), drugs another journalist, who was forced to take the crew plane until the next stop. Thompson steals his clothes and ID badge, then verbally attacks The Candidate in the bathroom, with a speech about the "Screwheads" and the "Doomed". He then boards the journalist plane, where he sees Lazlo getting on the plane. Lazlo starts yelling and they are thrown off the plane. Lazlo then tries to convince Thompson to join his socialist paradise somewhere in the desert, and apparently does not succeed.

The movie then returns to the cabin, where Thompson is ending the story with a little quip about how "it never got weird enough for me."

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