Gonzo Girl [2025 Tribeca Festival Review]

by Mike McGranaghan

He’s an author, known for inventing “gonzo journalism.” He usually wears oversized sunglasses and a bucket hat. A cigarette perpetually hangs out of his mouth. He does copious amounts of drugs. One of his books was about infiltrating a notorious biker gang, and he got famous writing anti-Nixon pieces for Rolling Stone. Who am I talking about?

You doubtlessly answered, “Hunter S. Thompson.” Well, sort of. The main character of Patricia Arquette’s directorial debut Gonzo Girl is named Walker Reade, but it’s clearly HST. The film, which had its U.S. debut at the 2025 Tribeca Festival, is based on the novel by Cheryl Della Pietra, who was once the assistant to – you guessed it – Hunter S. Thompson.

Alley Russo (Camila Morrone) is an aspiring writer who calls out Reade (Willem Dafoe) at one of his book readings. This leads his right-hand woman Claudia (Arquette) to hire her as an assistant. Reade insists that Alley live the lifestyle, so she begins snorting coke and tripping on acid. Then she realizes that her idol is past his prime, unable to complete the new book he’s supposed to be working on. Without his knowledge, she fills in the gaps, acting as a ghost writer. Her closeness to Reade becomes threatening to his hook-up partner Devaney (Elizabeth Lail) and attracts the interest of admiring Johnny Depp-like actor Larry (Ray Nicholson).

Gonzo Girl is not the first attempt to bring the unique weirdness of Hunter S. Thompson to the screen. What foiled Art Linson’s 1980 Where the Buffalo Roam and, to a lesser extent, Terry Gilliam’s 1998 Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas is that they attempted to portray Thompson-the-Myth. This film focuses on Thompson-the-Man – a wise choice that allows it to deal with more identifiable human emotion than those other pictures. Walker Reade is a talented writer who caved after buying into his own myth. His ideas have dried up, leaving him in a drug-induced haze, trying to peddle his well-established image for the umpteenth time.

The character is fascinatingly flawed. Also fascinating is the way people fall under his spell. Despite having his best professional days behind him, users like Larry and Davina remain in his orbit because of his legendary status. They don’t care about him, they care about being near him. Ironically, Alley is one of the few to truly care, but even she risks losing herself under the weight of being his assistant.

Willem Dafoe is excellent as Reade, capturing the man’s entertainingly larger-than-life personality while still giving him a pathetic quality. Camila Morrone’s performance takes some getting adjusted to. Early scenes find her somewhat bland, although that’s because Alley is still in innocent mode. By the end, she’s a firecracker, filled with rage and regret. It’s an impressive turn that sneaks up on you.

The film could have expanded the Alley/Davina dynamic more to maximize its payoff. Same goes for the dynamic between Walker and Claudia. Gonzo Girl still works as an incisive portrait of moths to a flame, as well as what happens to those moths when the flame starts to die out.

---