‘Dr. Gonzo’ focus of new documentary

Oscar Zeta Acosta, a volatile Mexicanamerican writer who was the real-life inspiration for Hunter S. Thompson’s Dr. Gonzo in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” is the focus of a new VOCES/PBS documentary.

“The Rise and Fall of the Brown Buffalo” traces the life of the preacher-turned-lawyer-turned-writer who became a central figure in the Chicano Movement before disappearing without a trace in Mexico in 1974.

Using actors to recreate Acosta’s own words and interviews from friends, the PBS documentary follows the evolution of a Baptist preacher in Panama while in the U.S. Air Force to “Robin Hood” lawyer who defended poor black tenants in Oakland, California, and radical Mexican-american activists in Los Angeles.

Along the way, the El Paso, Texas-born Acosta ventured to Aspen, Colorado, where he befriended Thompson and other white countercultural figures of the late 1960s.

The hell-raising pair eventually travelled to Las Vegas on a drug-fueled trip that Thompson recreated in his 1972 novel, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”

The journalist would portray Acosta as a 300-pound Samoan who couldn’t get enough food, drugs and danger - a portrayal that angered Acosta because it ignored his Mexican-american identity.

Following a legal fight, Acosta gave the OK to publish Thompson’s book in exchange for publishing two of his own memoirs, “The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo” and “The Revolt of the Cockroach People.” Both became classics in Chicano literature.

Then, he disappeared.

Director Phillip Rodriguez said Acosta’s colorful life made him a great subject. Unlike better-known Chicano activists like Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, Rodriguez said everyone knew that Acosta was not a saint because of his public battles with addiction and mental illness.