"Gonzo Genius"
Hunter S. Thompson is a native of
Louisville, Kentucky. He became a sportswriter in Florida, and indeed, his
passion and clever allegories on sports have colored his writings ever since.
He studied journalism at Columbia
University in New York, and his work has appeared in a number of publications
such as Esquire, The Nation, The New York
Times Magazine, The Reporter, Scanlon’s, Rolling Stone, and the National
Observer. In the mid-sixties, after two years in Rio as the South American
correspondent for the National Observer,
Thompson became deeply involved with the Drug and Violence subculture around
San Francisco Bay. It was during this era that he wrote his first book, the
infamous classic, Hells Angels: A Strange
and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs.
His next book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, broke
all the rules ever made about writing: a savage, corrosive, brilliantly funny
vision of what some of us were doing in the sixties. It was a smash hit across
the country, and in one fell swoop, established a whole new wave in modern
American literature.
Thompson surpassed himself with
his third book, Fear and Loathing on the
Campaign Trail which documented a year with the George McGovern circus
running against Richard Nixon in 1972. “Gaze in awe... Hunter Thompson does in
his own mad way betray a profound democratic concern for the polity, and in its
own mad way, it’s damned refreshing,” said The
New York Times.
Last year Summit Books published The Great Shark Hunt, Gonzo Papers Vol. 1.
A best seller, the book documents the author’s astonishing literary journey
from the rather ordinary writing of his early days, to the drug-amplified
ravings that brought him fame. It is a journey that took him out, beyond—and
back.
Thompson was canonized this year
by Hollywood, with the release of a movie about his escapades.
Here, in this story—one could
hardly call it an interview, B. J. Spalding, an enterprising, 24-year old
reporter for the Glenwood Springs Weekly
Newspaper, finally penetrates the defenses around Hunter Thompson’s Rocky
Mountain hideaway.
"An Interview of Sorts with Hunter S. Thompson"
by B. J. Spalding
“We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.“All this had been rounded up the night before, in a frenzy of high speed driving all over Los Angeles County—from Topanga to Watts...”—from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
It was nothing like I’d
imagined...or been threatened with.
Nothing like the last six visits
when all five of my senses had been excited to the edge of sweat. The time the
long-haired bodyguard type had told me that Hunter “liked his privacy” and also
‘‘liked guns.” Or the second time the bodyguard type had stopped me and raising
his mirrored shades had said, “Listen”—eyes steadying—“I told Hunter you were
by and he was pissed. You’re on your own now, buddy”—lowering his shades and
turning his back.
Last Thursday, after being stood
up by an admitted DEA informant, I was left sitting with a Budweiser and
without an interview in an Aspen barroom. Anger settled to boredom, and driving
back to Glenwood, I thought. Hell, I’ll stop in Woody Creek one more time. See
if Hunter can be found.
Hunter Thompson, 40, is the father
of so-called gonzo journalism and the author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a book which opens, “We were
somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take
hold...” Among other works he’s written are Fear
and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Hell’s
Angels, and the current best seller The
Great Shark Hunt. He is portrayed as Raoul Duke in the Doonesbury comic
strip and is infamous for his hedonistic penchants and self-proclaimed abuse of
alcohol and drugs. A movie about his escapades, Where the Buffalo Roam, was released by MGM.
He is also a resident of the
Roaring Fork Valley.
Walking up his driveway, my
thoughts stale, listening to my boots sink in red mud, I stopped at the front
porch. A man dressed in shorts and sneakers sat beside a typewriter in
afternoon sunshine eating eggs and beans and reading a Newsweek magazine. A gold chain supporting a clenched black fist
circled his neck. A big egg in a bird’s nest crowned his head.
I asked if he was Hunter
Thompson.
He stood and walked to me. “No”—pointing
to an adjacent log house—“he’s over there.”
I explained I reported for a
local paper and was hoping for an interview.
“Got a copy of your paper?”
I said I’d forgotten to bring one
along.
“How do I know you’re not with
the FBI?”
I laughed, said I could show him
a press card.
He shook his head and half
smiled. “I never had one.”
Then remembering I’d stopped at
the newsstand in Carbondale, I said I did have a paper, that I’d get it.
“Take your time. I’m eating breakfast.”
I walked down the driveway, then
back up.
“What’s your name?”
I told him.
He extended a hand. “Hunter
Thompson.”
He told me to have a seat. A
woman walked from the log house. Dark, wispy hair hiding brown eyes gave her
the shy appearance of a school girl.
“This is Laila,” he said. “She’s
my housekeeper.”
He passed me the script of an
unreleased movie, said he’d finish eating and reading and then we’d talk. Laila
walked inside and, returning, handed me a bottle of Heineken. Peacocks strutted
along the porch railing, sunlight flashing rainbows across tail feathers.
Distant mountains shone white against a cloudless sky.
Thompson reached across the table
for the butt of a cigarette and, firing it, pushed aside his plate. He poured
Wild Turkey into a glass of ice water and, capping the glass with the palm of
his hand, turned it over, mixing it. “What do you want to talk about?”
I said we could talk about his
running for Pitkin County Sheriff, his presence in “Doonesbury,” gonzo
journalism, recent DEA activity in the valley... what was on his mind. Whatever
he wanted.
He exhaled smoke. “Let’s make it
fun.” He said he was preparing for the end of the world. “By what the evidence
suggests only fools wouldn’t prepare. It’s time for the Apocalypse.” He
coughed. Voice rasping—“Thank God. I’ve been waiting for a long time. It’s long
overdue for me.” The coughing continued, his face flushing. Extinguishing the
cigarette, he said, “Damn good, but makes me lose my voice... guess that’s the
price... always a price.”
He said his voice needed a rest
and picked up the Newsweek. I
returned to the movie script. Minutes passed. Refilling his glass—“If a break
doesn’t do it. I gargle with Wild Turkey. If that fails, the interview has to
end... Ask me a question.”
I asked about gonzo journalism.
He explained that it was
journalism because it accurately recorded events and that it was fiction
because the events were altered by the writer, that the writer entered at the
moment of the event rather than the moment of writing.
A Mountain Bell truck drove past
Sitting on the railing, Laila yelled, “Hey telephone man.” Hunter stood, screaming.
“Yo-yo, hey yo-yo.” The truck pulled into the adjacent driveway. Walking inside,
Hunter returned with a megaphone. Voice amplified—“Yo-yo, over here.” The
driver rolled down his window, shouted, “You Thompson?” Hunter nodded. “You’re
not up this driveway?” Over the megaphone—“Why the fuck would I be there when I’m
talking to you from here.’’
The truck pulled into Thompson’s,
two more Mountain Bell trucks following. Hunter turned to Laila. “We got three
geeks here. If one of them’s with me, don’t let the others wander around
unwatched. Stay with ‘em.” Turning to me—“One of them’s got to be with the FBI.
They’re very tricky. I’ll be very paranoid here. They’ve got to be watched all
the time. God knows what they’re up to.” He tossed the whiskey and ice from his
glass. “I need a beer.”
The telephone men congregated.
Thompson led them inside. I thumbed through the movie script to a part where a
man, who earlier had attempted suicide by chaining himself to his car’s
steering wheel and driving off a bridge only to find the bay at low tide, meets
a woman with bandaged wrists in the emergency room of a hospital.
Hunter returned to the porch. “Did
I smoke that joint I rolled after breakfast?” Rummaging the tabletop—“The
peacocks probably got it”—searching the porch floor—”Ahh, here it is... wonderful,
wonderful.”
He sat down and continued talking
about gonzo journalism. “It’s something I did pretty well, that I got away with
for a long time. It’s a terrible stress, not routine coverage. Every story is
an Apocalypse.” He spoke of the first piece he wrote in the gonzo style, a
coverage of the 1970 Kentucky Derby for Scanlon’s
Monthly. “Until then I’d been doing straight stuff.” He swilled from a Heineken.
“I created a whole new style. And I only had $1000 to my name. Most people wait
until they’re established to attempt something like that.
“I couldn’t type the thing out
the traditional way. I was too berserk. I was sitting in a bathtub on a Sunday
morning in New York City. Scanlon’s
was waiting to go to press. They were holding the first 10 pages for me. I was
on the verge of collapse—physical, mental, and emotional. My wallet had been
stolen; I had no money, no ID... low and behold, gonzo journalism.
“I sent the first page to San
Francisco across the wire. It takes four minutes to send. I thought it’d take a
minute for them to read it, then after five minutes the phone would ring and
the dam would break open, utter insanity... But they loved it. The bastards
didn’t know what they’d done. They’d created a monster.”
Smoke drifted from his nostrils. “It
was one of the times when I saw daylight, when I saw the big brass ring... It
never occurred to me I could get away with that shit.”
Speaking of the fictional aspect
of gonzo journalism, he said he begins each story by writing the ending. “Then
I know where I’m going, what I mean to say. If the beginning and middle are
dull, I make them interesting.”
The telephone man returned to the
porch. As they left, neighbors arrived. After greetings, Thompson offered his friends
“a beer, some scotch, a joint?” They refused. Raising the cigarette to his
lips—“All right if I do? I feel I must.” To the telephone men—“As a law abiding
citizen I cannot offer you drugs. You have to ask for them.” Laila handed them
Heinekens.
More friends arrived, eagerly
accepting Thompson’s hospitality. Conversation drifted to the valley’s recent
DEA activity. Hunter pointed to a telephone pole supporting a small transformer
across the road. “When I came back I heard the story. I thought, mother &#†¼½½,
that’s been there two years. I called Kienast (Pitkin County’s Sheriff). He
said go right ahead.” Hunter adjusted his mirror glasses. It’s got a nasty .44
magnum hole in it. Forget that camera.”
Keinast later denied he’d given
Hunter permission to shoot the transformer. “Someone’s been pulling your leg,”
he said.
Thompson told his friends about
the telephone men, how he’d waited three months and then three had appeared at
once. He glanced at the phone jack beside his chair. “I’m seized with a
terrible paranoia. I know the whole house is bugged. I assume the phone has
been bugged a long time. I have to assume that. Always... We’d better talk
gibberish.”
An emaciated friend wearing a
beard and dark glasses glanced at Hunter. “What are you doing the next three
days?”
“Nothing.”
“Why don’t we fuck ourselves up?”
Hunter raised his shades, eyes
leveling, stared. Then he laughed, mirrors covering his eyes.
He walked inside with a friend.
When he returned, white powder clung beneath his nose. He brushed it off,
sniffed and swallowed.
Stories passed. The sun eased
west. Hunter mentioned a half empty vodka bottle on the shelf beside the front
door. “Don’t touch it. It’s spiked with potent acid... the definite three day
giggles.”
The neighbors drifted inside,
Thompson to the kitchen to watch the 5:30 news, the rest gathering in the
living room. Laila inserted a cartridge in the console of the living room
television; the ending of the MGM movie Where
the Buffalo Roam played on the screen.
The movie is based on a story
Hunter wrote for Rolling Stone
magazine, “The Brown Buffalo.” It depicts a slapstick relationship between
Hunter and his friend Oscar Acosta, who was portrayed as the attorney in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and
stars Bill Murray as Hunter and Peter Boyle as Oscar.
Laughter filled the room. The
emaciated man mentioned the “frightening” resemblance between Hunter and
Murray. A woman agreed. Hunter drifted in, saying the resemblance didn’t
impress him. “It’s as different as John Belushi to me.” He sat in a chair, “The
movie’s almost too weird. I can’t identify.” Moments later—“Imagine in 10 years
when this comes on TV as a late show. That’s terrifying.”
The movie ended. An epilogue,
written by Hunter but edited from the released version because, Laila said, “It
wasn’t funny,” played with sound. Hunter pulled the cassette from the
television, inserted another. No sound. Bending forward—“You dirty lousy scum”—raising
a fist— “just like a dog.” He yanked the cassette.
Face tightening, Laila said, “Come
on. Hunter, don’t get excited. We’re supposed to go to town.”
“When I get excited, this
happens.” He shattered the cassette on the floor.
“We’ve seen it before. Hunter. We
all enjoyed it. Don’t do it again.”
Thompson fit a third cassette in
the television. Sound accompanied the epilogue. “Last time I freaked out I
destroyed all the tapes.” He sat in a chair.
On the screen Bill Murray sat
typing beneath a desk lamp in a darkened apartment. His thoughts voiced the
words his fingers printed. He told of Oscar and himself, of Oscar’s
disappearance and borderline sanity. He said, “But it still hasn’t gotten weird
enough for me,” and this he repeated twice later in his monologue.
The epilogue ended. Laila
explained that the movie was “far from the truth about Hunter. The epilogue
would have given it some intelligence. It showed Hunter’s a guy that writes and
thinks, not just a crazy person who hits people with grapefruits. The basic
script is terrible. It’s slapstick, Animal
House mentality, Hollywood’s version of someone’s life. It doesn’t separate
the myth from the reality.”
She leaned back in a cushioned
chair. “It’s different. An actor portrays a character and when he’s asked if he’s
really like that character he had an out... Hunter has done some crazy things
in his life and he’s surrounded himself with that kind of an atmosphere. There’s
an element of truth. But the image has grown larger than the person. He could
never live up to it, unless he acted totally crazy all the time.”
Thompson walked into the room and
after listening to Laila said, “I am now as the movie is. My life has been done
by Hollywood.
“It’ll be hard to walk down the
street or work as a journalist... When I get to a presidential press conference
and sign more autographs than he does... it’s time to quit.”
This is where the afternoon
ended; I shook Thompson’s hand and drove home to Glenwood. And this is probably
where the story should end, but I have a thought to share. Like him, I am a
part of this story.
I first heard of Thompson in high
school In college Fear and Loathing in
Las Vegas was a campus legend. And when I moved here, Hunter Thompson
stories were rampant... The time he was locked out of his car behind the
Redstone Castle and thinking he wasn’t being watched kicked the door and beat
the hood.
But the man greeted me with a
handshake and sent me away with the same, and the few minutes we talked he was
as rational as the norm and far more articulate. Most of what he said was in
sarcasm and humor. He seemed to be smiling inside, laughing at what many
believe serious. And I pat him on the back for that; it seems a logical
alternative.
Hunter’s a wild man, no doubt.
But for conversation, for friendship, for the passing of an afternoon, give me
the man who will holler “Yo-yo” through a megaphone, who in anger will shatter
a cassette on a hardwood floor.
Keep the man with crossed legs
and commonplace composure.
Give me the wild man.
