Where the Buffalo Roam is a 1980 American semi-biographical comedy film which loosely depicts author Hunter S. Thompson's rise to fame in the 1970s and his relationship with Chicano attorney and activist Oscar "Zeta" Acosta.

Thompson's eulogy for Acosta ("The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat", published in the December 1977 issue of Rolling Stone) served as the nominal basis of the film, although screenwriter John Kaye drew from several other works, including Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 and various pieces included in The Great Shark Hunt and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

The film opens in the Rocky Mountains on the Colorado ranch of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, a journalist furiously trying to finish a story about his former attorney and friend, Carl Lazlo, Esq.

In 1968, Lazlo is fighting to stop a group of San Francisco youngsters from receiving harsh prison sentences for possession of marijuana.

[2] Lazlo appears at Thompson's hotel and convinces him to abandon the Super Bowl story and join his band of freedom fighters, which involves smuggling weapons to an unnamed Latin American country.

At the next campaign stop, in the airport bathroom, Thompson is able to use his disguise to engage The Candidate in a conversation about the "Screwheads" and the "Doomed".

[4] Thompson was eventually brought aboard the film's production as "executive consultant", but claimed he had no substantial role other than to have "wandered around and fired machine guns on the set".

[3] Kaye has claimed that Thompson and Murray changed parts of the script during filming and, at that point, he chose to no longer be involved in the production.

[6] Steadman observed Linson on the set and said that it was "pretty obvious that he was in no frame of mind to catch the abandoned pure essence of gonzo madness, which can only happen in uncontrolled conditions".

[5] The film shows Thompson in Los Angeles covering 1972's Super Bowl VI between the Miami Dolphins and the Dallas Cowboys.

Film critic Roger Ebert gave Where the Buffalo Roam two stars out of four and said that "The movie fails to deal convincingly with either Thompson's addictions or with his friendship with Lazlo".

[9] Gene Siskel awarded two-and-a-half stars out of four and declared that "Murray is fine at playing an angry clown, but 'Where the Buffalo Roam' should have given us much more than that.

"[11] Jack Kroll wrote, in his review for Newsweek magazine, "Screenwriter John Kaye has reduced Thompson's career to a rubble of disjointed episodes, and the relentless mayhem becomes tiresome chaos rather than liberating comic anarchy.

"[12] In his review for The Globe and Mail, Paul McGrath wrote, "Murray is, nonetheless, the salvation of this patched-together film", and felt that "the rest is mostly filler.

The consensus summarizes: "Bill Murray delivers a noteworthy portrayal of Hunter S. Thompson, but Where the Buffalo Roam strains to get through its rambling narrative.

Variations on "Home on the Range" are played by Young on electric guitar as "Ode to Wild Bill" and by an orchestra with arrangements by David Blumberg on "Buffalo Stomp".

Music in the film included rock and R&B songs by Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, The Temptations, the Four Tops and Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Additionally, characters played by Bill Murray and René Auberjonois sing lyrics from "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".