A great example of the Gonzo style Journalism story that has first-person and subjectivity that characterized it, is The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved by Hunter S. Thompson, which is a seminal sports article on the 1970 Kentucky Derby in Kentucky This two main characteristics of style were beginnings of the Gonzo style. In the article Steadman remembered his first impression of Thompson that day:
"I had turned around and two fierce eyes, firmly socketed inside a bullet-shaped head, were staring at a strange growth I was nurturing on the end of my chin.'Holy shit!' he [Thompson] exclaimed. 'They said I was looking for a matted-haired geek with string warts and I guess I've found him.' [...] This man had an impressive head chiselled from one piece of bone, and the top part was covered down to his eyes by a floppy-brimmed sun hat. His top half was draped in a loose-fitting hunting jacket of multi-coloured patchwork. He wore seersucker blue pants, and the whole torso was pivoted on a pair of huge white plimsolls with a fine red trim around the bulkheads. Damn near 6-foot-6 of solid bone and meat holding a beaten-up leather bag across his knee and a loaded cigarette holder between the arthritic fingers of his other hand." (ref.2)
There are four tools for story telling in Gonzo style Journalism (The New Journalism) and I am presenting them in my short documentary movie on Day in life of Conservative MP Richard Benyon during his campaign before the election 2010. Fly on the Wall Gonzo Journalism style:
1. Scene by scene Construction (with jump cuts or punctuation)
Must have a set up scene –establishing shot of a place and static shots, setting of the shots but must be kept mysterious, intense, there should be detailed description of the place of detailed shots establishing the place.
2. Phonetic dialogue / actual speech (‘wild track)
If it is a written piece it has to include contractions, just like in script writing or Steinbeck’s Grapes of desire type of writing). Painting with words- painting with detail as color is the exact way that people speak.
3. Third person restricted point of view (no ‘I’ see, used ‘it is’)
Use the style like it was in Wings of Desire- floating camera, a third, unknown narrator speaking.
4. Concentration on symbolic “status life”People try to differentiate themselves and although everyone is the same in modern life, (even though economy targets ‘YOU’) we are all, in fact, the same. However every profession creates certain rituals of social life, a status which makes groups of different from each other people. It is important to recognise the hierarchy of importance among the characters that we include in the movie or text.
The University of Winchester Journalism Course
History and Context of Journalism, part IV
Referance:
1. Tom Wolfe, The New Journalism
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Journalism
