...handoff on the left side.
...first down, hunter's out at the 20-yard line and a big...
sondi wright: he'd known for a long time
that he was no longer a really good writer.
he had spurts.
douglas brinkley: he lost that gonzo edge.
tom wolfe: I wonder what's happening to old hunter.
he's kind of losing it.
charles perry: creatively, he had written all his great stuff.
he hadn't been really productive for five or six years.
I think he just had run out of juice.
brinkley: in hunter's last years-
in order to really get the juices stirred up in him-
in what we call quintessential hunter-
it took something like-
it had to almost a feel like a kick in the groin.
johnny depp: "it was just after dawn in woody creek, colorado,
when the first plane hit the world trade center
in new york city on tuesday morning.
and as usual I was writing about sports,
but not for long.
football suddenly seemed irrelevant
compared to the scenes of destruction and utter devastation
coming out of new york on tv."
"the towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble,
along with all hopes for peace in our time-
in the united states or any other country."
"make no mistake about it: we are at war now."
* "there must be some way out of here" *
* said the joker to the thief... *
depp: "it will be a religious war - a sort of christian jihad
fueled by religious hatred
and led by merciless fanatics on both sides-
guerrilla warfare on a global scale
with no front lines and no identifiable enemy."
* all along the watchtower *
* princes kept the view
* while all the women came and went... *
depp: "we're gonna punish somebody for this attack,
but just who or what will be blown to smithereens is hard to say-
maybe afghanistan, maybe pakistan or iraq."
* two riders were approaching *
* the wind began to howl. *
"this is going to be a very expensive war,
and victory is not guaranteed for anyone-
and certainly not for anyone as baffled as george w bush.
he will declare a national security emergency
and clamp down hard on everybody, no matter where they live or why.
winston churchill once said,
'the first casualty of war is always the truth.'
the lid is on. loose lips sink ships.
don't say anything that might give aid to the enemy."
tv anchor: a giant of the written word has died.
hunter s thompson was a lot of things-
a journalist, an author, a patriot,
a professional troublemaker,
a complex walking monument to misbehavior
who apparently took his own life with a gun last night.
depp: "it was always at night, like a werewolf,
that I would take the thing out
for an honest run down the coast.
I would start in golden gate park,
thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head."
"the momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink
that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon.
but in a matter of minutes, i'd be out at the beach
with the sound of the engine in my ears,
the surf booming up on the sea wall
and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to santa cruz.
there was no helmet on those nights,
no speed limit and no cooling it down around the curves.
then into second gear, forgetting the cars
and letting the beast wind out- 35, 45.
then into third, not worried about green or red signals
but only some other werewolf loony.
now there is no sound except wind.
the needle leans down on 100,
and wind-burned eyeballs strain to see down the centerline-
no room at all for mistakes.
that's when the strange music starts."
* in the night
* though we're apart... *
depp: "the edge - there is no honest way to explain it
because the only people who really know where it is
are the ones who have gone over.
the others- the living-
are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it,
and then pulled back, or slowed down.
but the edge... is still out there."
man: what is your name, please?
my name is hunter thompson.
sonny barger: I met hunter in the '60s
a short time before he wrote the book on us.
and he went on to become
probably one of the greatest writers
that america will ever have.
doesn't mean he isn't a jerk in my eyes,
but he's a very good writer.
wolfe: hunter reminds me so much of mark twain.
he was a reporter- twain started out as a reporter-
with a wild imagination
and he's not trying to fool you.
you know immediately that he is filtering reality
through what hunter called gonzo.
man: will the real hunter thompson please stand up?
wright: will the real hunter thompson stand up?
that was before I understood what all that was going to mean.
oops, are we marking?
oh, no! god! help us, jesus!
I know it. it's in my interest-
maybe in the interest of greatest good-
for me to smoke a joint and calm down.
jimmy carter: he was not afraid to rock the boat,
to challenge the establishment
and express himself in unique and radical, sometimes shocking, ways.
pat buchanan: he described me as a half-crazed davy crockett
running around the parapets of nixon's alamo.
we were all amused by him.
he was an interesting guy to be around.
he asked you unexpected questions.
most people were surprised that I walk on two legs.
I think people think I知... very much-
maybe a violent version of that comic strip.
this is the last drawing I did of him so far.
"my god! I musta missed- it's hell down here!"
ralph steadman: he's pushing the boundaries as much as he could.
life to him was the challenge.
he was gonna be dead at 30, anyway,
so now he was living on borrowed time.
"dear hunter, it is over a year
since you set the scene for your strangely - planned suicide.
the messages that I have received from you
up to the bush/kerry election of 2004
were infected by a dismal undertone.
'if bush wins,' you said, 'the planet is doomed.'
when you pulled the trigger on your magnum.44,
my first reaction was to say, 'about bloody time.
he's been threatening to do that for years.'
you were never reasonable, and you knew,
in spite of your wayward spirit,
you were not invincible.
those who grew to be a threat to your america
continue to burgeon.
for you, it was victory or game over.
I just wanted you to hang around and nail the beauty
of that image of absolute evil.
but you leave us with a blueprint, old sport.
take it up with the gods.
send word. ralph."
wright: I think he was important
in a literary way
and also in a political way.
and I think that his story is tragic.
he was loving.
he was generous.
on the other end of the spectrum,
the boy in the man
was absolutely vicious.
god damn, you dumbass! reach under there
- and get some goddamned medicine! - man: over here?
to the right.
anita thompson: hunter had two extremes in him
that he lived with constantly-
the generous, beautiful hunter
and the scary, mean, cruel hunter.
and he was aware of both.
I don't know if he was in control of both all the time,
but he was certainly aware of both.
and they became present in his life
when he was very young- both sides.
brinkley: you've gotta go back to louisville, kentucky,
to understand him. his father died when he was young.
so you had a mother raising three boys
on a librarian salary.
he lived- it wasn't even middle class,
it was a lower- middle-class existence.
his friends were the rich kids of louisville,
the ones that had all the privilege.
so he was on the other side of the railroad tracks.
yet, hunter was very smart, naturally intelligent,
and he always felt a bit like the outsider.
he was a real hellion on vandalism.
the seminal experience was when he and a group of buddies
were partying and smoking cigarettes
and drinking beer. they were all arrested.
the rich kids who knew the judges got out.
hunter never got to walk for graduation.
he was in jail.
depp: "I could see the moon hung high in the sky
with a mocking grin on his face.
I seized the bars, and shrieked and wailed
like a soul who's lost in hell."
wright: essentially, inside...
hunter was an agonized human being.
but he also felt
like he had the potential
of being a really great writer.
brinkley: "the great gatsby" is how hunter learned to write.
he would type "the great gatsby" over and over again
just to learn the music of fitzgerald.
"the great gatsby" was filled with anger
that the whole deal in american life was rigged.
hunter identified with fitzgerald i'd say more than any other writer.
the difference is fitzgerald would look in on the candy store window,
look in on the storefronts of the rich.
hunter wanted to smash the windows.
wright: hunter was extremely seductive.
I was very attracted to hunter.
his energy was just phenomenal.
he wrote every day.
he was getting paid $100 for an article or something,
but we were very poor.
when I was pregnant with my son,
hunter shot elk and I ate elk liver,
milk and salad, period. that's all I ate.
brinkley: here was a guy struggling.
he had his wife sondi with him.
he was living on a freelancer,
check to check, barely able to pay rent.
so when he got the assignment
from carey mcwilliams of "the nation"
to write about this phenomenon- hell's angels-
it was a big deal.
man: "i, hunter thompson, am a writer.
recently, I spent over a year living
in close contact with a notorious
california motorcycle gang which is the basis
of my new book, 'hell's angels.'"
signed "hunter thompson."
uh, number two, approximately how many members do the hell's angels have?
it varies. anywhere from-
i'd say 100 to 200.
brinkley: hunter infiltrated the story.
he considered himself a photojournalist.
in his early applications for jobs,
he was always looking to be a photographer.
depp: "the sight of a photographer invariably whips the angels
into a kissing frenzy. this is a guaranteed square-jolter,
and the angels are gleefully aware of the reaction it gets.
'they can't stand it,' says terry.
'it blows their minds every time-
especially the tongue bit.'"
wolfe: it is one of the bravura pieces of reporting of all time.
he actually, as they say, ran with the angels for-
he was embedded, you know?
he was embedded in the hell's angels battalion.
depp: "the menace is loose again.
the hell's angels, the 100-carat headline,
running fast and loud on the early-morning freeway
like genghis khan on an iron horse...
a monstrous steed with a fiery anus,
flat out through the eye of a beer can and up your daughter's leg
with no quarter asked and none given."
brinkley: it was the beginning of hunter
developing his style.
it is not gonzo, it's not surreal.
it is straight journalism, but it's participatory.
depp: "weird as it seems, as this gang of costumed hoodlums
converged on monterey that morning
they were on the verge of 'making it big,'
as the showbiz people say,
and they would owe most of their success to a curious rape mania
that rides on the shoulder of american journalism
like some jeering, masturbating raven.
nothing grabs an editor's eye like a good rape.
to them, the appearance of the hell's angels
must have seemed like a wonderful publicity stunt."
hell's angels accused of rape and perversion,
theft, narcotics and violence.
and the attorney general says,
"they will no longer be allowed to threaten the lives,
the peace and security of honest citizens.
hell's angels are the biggest
of the outlaw motorcycle clubs."
oh, shit! I just can't do it.
depp: "in a nation of frightened dullards
there's always a sorry shortage of outlaws,
and those few who make the grade are always welcome.
the hell's angels pose for television cameramen
and answered questions on radio call-in shows.
they were sought out by mystics and poets,
cheered on by student rebels
and invited to parties given by liberals and intellectuals."
number two, who is the author
that sort of leads the kind of lsd sect out there
in los- san francisco?
ken kesey.
number two, the merry pranksters gave a party
for the hell's angels- were you there?
- -that lasted two days? - yes.
we're going out on an outing - on a sunday outing.
oh, this is lovely. you know, our little family.
and so we ended up- hunter said,
"oh, you know, something's happening over-
let's go just kind of check it out."
the big banners out there saying
"the merry pranksters welcome the hell's angels."
I thought I was having a lot of fun.
juan was in the car asleep. everybody was on acid.
I wasn't.hunter wasn't. he hadn't taken acid yet.
and everybody is pretty happy and dancing
and then watching this five-hour film
or something kesey had put together.
and when we left...
hunter said, "did you know what was happening in there?"
and I said, "what do you mean?"
and he said, "well, there was a gangbang going on."
hunter: I知 watching it as I was about six feet away.
see from the door, the lights were on,
there was a kind of a filmy curtain over the door.
you could see shadows moving around on the side. if you knew what was happening-
you could interpret the movements of all these shadowy figures
behind this curtain - silhouettes is what they were.
you could see people getting down on her, other people holding her legs,
and really...
surrealistically horrifying.
brinkley: the tape recorder for hunter was essential.
he always brought a tape recorder-
like those famous- now- tapes of the hell's angels party.
brinkley: those tapes became a big part of the book "hell's angels,"
but he also loaned those tapes to tom wolfe.
wolfe used those tapes
and extracted things from them for "the electric kool-aid acid test."
wolfe: I had a hard time with the tape
about the rape scene at the hell's angels party.
it was dynamite, from a reporting point of view,
but the thing was, I knew who the key figures in that were.
one was the ex-wife...
of neal cassady.
and she quite willingly...
invited the-
the entire corps
of hell's angels to have a go at her.
wright: it wasn't the kesey people who were doing the gangbang.
they were about love and happiness...
and togetherness and community...
and love and light. they were, the angels weren't.
depp: "it was about this time
that my long-standing rapport with the angels began to deteriorate.
for nearly a year I had lived in a world that seemed, at first,
like something original.
it was obvious from the beginning
that the menace bore little resemblance to its publicized image.
later, as they attracted more and more attention,
the mystique was stretched so thin
that it finally became transparent.
the honeymoon came to a jangled end on october 16th,
when the hell's angels attacked a get out of vietnam demonstration
at the oakland-berkeley border."
man on tv: the bike rider is clifford workman,
treasurer of the hell's angels.
he's here to challenge his biographer,
a tense young literary journalist named hunter thompson.
what did you think of the book?
well, I値l tell you, al
and hunter, everybody in this room,
that that book is 60% cheap trash.
this is what happened: junkie george was beating his own lady.
al: junkie george?
clifford: junkie george's dog bit him, right?
- hunter: I didn't see- - to me, this is a personal affair.
if a guy wants to beat his wife and his dog bites him,
that's between the three of them.
but there was somebody about 30' to my left
beating his wife to a pulp on the rocks.
if he had been beating her that bad, somebody would have stopped him.
oh, no.don't- don't- you're kidding me
and you're gonna kid everybody else. nobody stopped him.
you know he beat his wife up. you just said it, right?
you walked right up to him and you said,
"only a punk beats his wife and dog."
- you finish it- - and he said, "hunter, you want some of this?"
and you said, "no." but you got it anyways.
and when he hit you, three or four others hit you too.
we let them beat him up for a minute,
then we broke it up and told him to get out of there.
he left and got in his car. well, uh-
he says that he went to the police station
all bloodied-up and they threw him out, which is malarkey.
I mean, but it's part of his style of writing.
depp: "my face looked like it had been jammed
into the spokes of a speeding harley,
and the only thing keeping me awake
was the spastic pain of a broken rib.
it had been a bad trip-
fast and wild in some moments, slow and dirty in others,
but on balance it looked like a bummer.
on my way back to san francisco,
I tried to compose a fitting epitaph.
I wanted something original,
but there was no escaping the echo of mistah kurtz's final words
from the 'heart of darkness':
'the horror! the horror!
exterminate all the brutes!'"
brinkley: although "hell's angels" rocketed him
to name recognition and success,
he didn't see it himself as being the successful book that he wanted.
it didn't sell enough for him,
even though it made the best-seller list.
he didn't make enough money off of it.he felt ripped off by the publisher.
he got frustrated with that.
he had thought that it would be the home run,
but what it did do, that book made him realize
that there was a market in the freak circus of the '60s.
brinkley: and it became this thing going on out in the bay area
and hunter was deeply part of it.
he used to drive his bsa lightning motorbike
and go to the matrix and befriended jefferson airplane.
he had a huge crush on grace slick.
* oh!
* is it any wonder why I feel like *
* my whole life is through? *
* yeah!
* when I stop feeling how strong my love is for you... *
jann wenner: the san francisco bay area was a hotbed
of live rock 'n' roll stuff,
drug culture, psychedelics, kesey,
politics, campus activism.
it was more on the edge culturally
than any other place in the country. there's more freedom there.
"rolling stone" began and merged all those elements.
and we just thought there was a time for a new kind of politics
and it would emerge out of the rock 'n' roll consciousness
and that rock 'n' roll ethos and that idea.
* today I feel like pleasing you *
* more than before...
wright: the energy was just phenomenal.
it was like losing your identity
and being just kind of sucked...
into whatever, you know?
whatever- whatever this was,
it was some kind of magical something or other.
*...all I want to do
* to be loving you
* it'll all be there when my dreams come true... *
tim crouse: hunter was a romantic. hunter's utopia,
which he had experienced before I met him,
was san francisco in the early '60s.
but there was always two great moral pressures-
the war and civil rights.
* today you'll make me say... *
buchanan: there's bitterness and nastiness to politics today,
but I don't sense the same anger and rage
that we had in the 1960s-
anti-war demonstrations, riots,
disorders of racial conflict, the generational conflict.
and hunter was right in the middle of that.
*...any more than all I am *
* would be a lie...
brinkley: the last period where there was an optimism
in hunter about america were the kennedys,
with john kennedy and bobby kennedy.
hunter liked that they had such hubris.
they could be good politicians but play hard at midnight.
that meant a lot. those were his guys.
I want the politics of hope,
because I think that we can do better in this country.
and I don't think that we can say
that we are joyous or that we are happy
if 590 americans are killed in vietnam last week
and if we have rioting in our nation's capital.
I think that we can do better.
*...all for you.
depp: "the day after robert kennedy died
I received a notice from the local railway express office
saying my walther p-38 automatic pistol had arrived.
we shot it one afternoon, agreeing that it had a very smooth action...
and then I sent it back.
returning the p-38 solved nothing.
it only postponed the necessity
of coming to grips with my gun problem."
* hey, joe...
* where you goin' with that gun in your hand? *
brinkley: hunter saw guns as one of the great things in life.
he loved shooting them and firing them whenever he could.
* where you goin' with that gun in your hand? *
when he's at big sur, he would go
wild-boar, wild-pig hunting with a submachine gun.
juan thompson: I had a bb gun when I was like seven, probably.
those are some of my best memories from that time,
because it was something we both enjoyed doing,
but it was also because it was time
we were building our relationship
as a father and son, and not just as kind of roommates.
wenner: the guns - they weren't just for amusement.
he liked the noise, the violence and the destruction of it.
and he had that in his personal life too.
we had a real violent streak.
wright: the first time he took acid, hunter says,
"sondi, get me the gun." i said, "I can't get you the gun.
I知 terrified something is gonna happen to juan."
and- and hunter says,
"you get me that gun
or I知 throwing this boot through the window."
he throws the boot through the window.
depp: "had my brain turned into jelly from too much acid?
what was I doing with all these guns?
my angst began to fester
as the gun-control argument raged closer to home.
more and more people began telling each other
that the gun was the ultimate cure for what ails us...
the american way."
brinkley: by 1968, hunter takes on this idea
that he's gonna be able to write on the death of the american dream.
and hunter thought that covering politics-
'68 was gonna be the book.
depp: "I went to chicago as a journalist.
my candidate had been murdered in los angeles
two months earlier."
* come on, come on, come on *
* come on
* didn't I make you feel... *
crouse: hunter was in chicago right in the midst of the gas
and the beatings and everything else.
and I think that that was a milestone event
for hunter that he never got over.
and he never forgave humphrey who was the candidate,
and he never forgave muskie who was the vice-presidential candidate
for supporting mayor daley and his chicago police.
* take it, take another little piece of my heart now, baby... *
depp: "I witnessed at least 10 beatings in chicago
that were worse than anything I ever saw the hell's angels do.
I left in a state of hysterical angst,
convinced by what I had seen
that the american dream was clubbing itself to death."
* if it makes you feel good... *
wright: there were only tears twice that I remember ever in our 19 years together.
I remember one, when he came back from the democratic convention.
and he was telling me the stories
about the people being beaten
and he- you know, the tears just-
and that was very- you know.
it was - hunter was a man that didn't cry.
* and baby, deep down in your heart... *
wright: and he cared so much. hunter was a patriot.
he knew the constitution, he cared about it,
and then there he was in chicago and it's all being destroyed.
* take it, take another little piece... *
wright: I think chicago inspired him to do-
to do more, to get more involved.
* take another little piece of my heart *
- * now, darling, yeah yeah yeah * - * oh, have a...
wenner: right away, riots started - chicago, '68 took place.
then that was kind of a radicalizing, galvanizing event.
we were already eschewing mainstream nostalgia in politics
saying, "look, the system is too rigged. politics is...
fine, but in some other venue."
I got a letter from hunter out of the blue,
complimenting me on "rolling stone," how much he liked it.
so I wrote him back and said, "what are you doing these days?
i'd love to have you in the magazine."
then he mentioned he was running for sheriff.
so I said, "how about that? sounds great."
it's the kind of thing we would run today,
you know, somebody running for sheriff in aspen, trying to take over the town.
james salter: hunter thompson is a moralist
posing as an immoralist.
nixon is an immoralist disguised as a moralist.
this is james salter.
there'll be thieves and auto wrecks in aspen whoever gets elected,
but hunter represents something wholly alien
to the other candidates for sheriff-
ideas, and the sympathy
towards the young, generous, grass-oriented society,
which is making the only serious effort
to face the technological nightmare we have created.
the only thing against him is
he is a visionary who wants to cure the world.
george stranahan: first of all, he drove everybody batshit nuts.
hunter was my friend and neighbor,
the man who never paid his rent, broke up my marriage
and taught my children to smoke dope.
now hunter was outrageous,
but there was such a sort of movement
that this guy may be crazy,
but better that than whitmire.
announcer: the american sheriff's job was carved out of the rugged west.
it was a desperately- needed position
of few words, much action, and little praise or glory.
today the sheriff has reams of responsibility.
but still- as in the past- the number-one responsibility
is to protect his people and enforce their laws.
vote for and elect
carrol whitmire for our sheriff.
I think a lot of places are beyond this kind of politics.
we seemed to be running an experiment that people were watching.
stranahan: hunter came to aspen, he had moved into our farm.
hunter liked to talk politics.
I was just at that age of war protest- 1968.
I was becoming political...
and so hunter and I had a lot in common to talk about.
bob braudis: aspen then was a magnet for intellectuals
who wanted to drop out.
and hunter convinced us
that we didn't have much effect on what happened
in washington day to day
and what happened in washington from day to day didn't have much effect on us.
but what happened in pitkin county had a visceral,
daily, hourly effect on the way we lived here.
people didn't understand that aspen was a battleground.
aspen was more of a disneyland.
hunter was a visionary. he understood more about land use
and development than any of us did.
nobody at the time was standing up to the bulldozers.
"tentative platform, thompson for sheriff,
aspen, colorado, 1970:
1- rip up all city streets with jackhammers
and sod the streets at once.
2- change the name 'aspen' to 'fat city.'
this would prevent greedheads, land-rapers
and other human jackals from capitalizing on the name 'aspen.'
these swines should be fucked, broken,
and driven across the land.
3- it will be the general philosophy
of the sheriff's office that no drug worth taking
should be sold for money.
my first act as sheriff
will be to install on the courthouse lawn a set of stocks
in order to punish dishonest dope dealers
in a proper public fashion."
juan: I was only about six at the time,
but legend has it that my father shaved his head
so he could say, "unlike my long-haired opponent, sheriff whitmire."
I just wish I could have been old enough
to really understand people's reaction
about this crazy, bald, freak drug-fiend
who was about to take over the whole political mechanism.
* holly came from miami, f.l.a... *
hunter thompson is the only candidate who has the imagination
and intelligence to be a law-enforcement executive.
elect hunter thompson sheriff.
you haven't been listening!
why doesn't anybody listen to me anymore?!
this is for your own good!
* hey, honey, take a walk on the wild side... *
braudis: at the start, I think it was more to get a message out
knowing that defeat was certain.
the serious component of hunter's campaign snowballed
and, as the movement gained momentum,
I think hunter actually believed that he had a chance.
and a lot of us that were supporting hunter shared that belief.
we're trying to get together a list of endorsements
for hunter thompson for sheriff.
braudis: we were all freaks-
the people who came together in support of hunter-
but I think our biggest issue at the time was the environment,
and a secondary issue
was the illegal status of drugs.
what is that you're smoking?
this is what I believe to be marijuana.
you mean you can't tell?
an awful lot of us were smoking dope
because the government said, "thou shalt not."
we said, "we shall."
marijuana laws are one of the reasons
that has engendered this lack of respect
that cops complain about all over the country.
when you get a whole generation that grows up
as felons, they know the law is ridiculous
and they're told us all this gibberish about it-
"it drives you crazy and makes your brain soft, and your feet fall off."
even the police know it's a silly law.
it's time that we either bridge that chasm
with some kind of realistic law enforcement or else-
I don't think it's gonna be bridged in this country. we're going to revolution.
wright: I think that was one of hunter's
greatest times, myself.
he had the passion to move people,
change people's thinking,
make them act
and bring them out- not just defy authority
and take as many drugs as you want,
but to make a real difference trying to change the system,
make the system work
and make the system good.
he had that in him.
whitmire: if he was elected sheriff, I can foresee
that you would have an influx of what we call the hippies.
and I think if this happened,
it would actually destroy aspen.
man: when you publicly come out with statements
of mescaline, marijuana-
my good god!
this isn't the way of american life.
* you walk into the room *
* with your pencil in your hand *
* you see somebody naked *
* and you say, "who is that, man?" *
they are raping our forests.some of them are living like animals.
* because something is happening here *
* but you don't know what it is *
* do you, mr. jones? *
hunter thompson...
has no grip on reality. I think he's psychotic.
I think if there was ever gonna be any excesses
within the sheriff's department,
i'd look for more out of hunter thompson than carrol whitmire.
* and you go watch the geek... *
braudis: he was a redneck and very popular
with the people who controlled this valley then.
they didn't want a smart sheriff.
they wanted people who would do their bidding.
* be such a freak...
I知 not at all embarrassed at the use of the word "freak."
I think the way things are going, in this country today
it's a very honorable designation. I知 proud of it.
* and something is happening here... *
hunter: we have a situation here, an isolated town,
with a very unusual kind of population.
we do have a freak power base. it's undeniable.
we have about 1,000 votes that wouldn't-
if I went out there and walked through the streets naked with a bomb in each hand,
they would still vote for me.
braudis: one of hunter's "freak power" tools
was to register people who had never voted before.
okay, where's this voting place?
hunter, 182; whitmire, 137.
- ricks, 10. - yeah!right!
woman: one could do it, one could do it.
the suburbs- the silent majority.
- Okay, here's the totals. - He's not available right at this second.
whitmire, 204;
hunter, 173.
okay, uh...
unfortunately, it proved what I set out to prove-
and it was more a political point than a local election-
- that the american dream really is -. -
very hard to have a baldheaded lunatic-
I値l do that for the cameras. hey, you fellows.
man: all right!
and we made a mistake in thinking...
that the town was ready for an honest political campaign.
depp: "we frighten the bastards so badly
that on election day they rolled people in wheelchairs-
Even on stretchers, into the polling places to vote against us.
and when I lost, they instantly got down to making sure
that nobody like me could ever run for office again."
we ran that story,
had the infamous poster of a two-thumbed hand
holding a peyote button.
he came in and talked to an editor named john lombardi.
afterwards, lombardi, who was from philadelphia
and was not quite used to the west coast crazy-
he said, "you know, that hunter thompson is weird.
he's really weird.
he came in with a box full of wigs and hats.
he was taking them off and putting them on
in the middle of the conversation."
* please allow me to introduce myself *
* I知 a man of wealth and taste... *
wenner: ralph is crazier than hunter ever was.
whereas hunter could always pull back from the edge,
ralph was a true believer. and if it was time
to take the fucking thing down, ralph was prepared
to go in like guy fawkes and blow up parliament.
and so we had this purity of vision,
and hunter saw that.
I know you from somewhere. I wonder where.
* pleased to meet you... *
have I seen you somewhere before?
are you listening to me? are you listening?
please!
stewardess: on behalf of rocky mountain airways and your flight crew,
we'd like to thank you for flying with us today.
have a pleasant stay in aspen
or wherever your final destination might be.
steadman: I think what he saw in this connection
was somebody that somehow saw the thing in pictures
as he saw it in words. and that seemed to me
to be part of the whole chemistry, of our chemistry,
that made gonzo possible.
here I go.
perry: i've seen the illustrations steadman was doing
before he worked with hunter.
he was much more conventional before hunter got ahold of him.
hunter told me he liked steadman's stuff,
so he asked him to help him cover the kentucky derby
for a magazine called "scanlan's."
and ralph told me as soon as he got off the airplane,
hunter gave him some psilocybin and his life changed.
- come on, buddy. - come on, hey! hunter!
* when after all it was you and me... *
so nice to see you.
wright: ralph- when he first met hunter,
he'd never done any drugs.
he drank, but he'd never done anything hallucinogenic.
and so here comes hunter, he gives him mescaline
and he loses it.
you know, ralph loses it.
steadman: I was a choirboy-
you know, decent, innocent abroad.
you know how things are.
and so I guess it was attractive,
that kind of raciness.
* oh, yeah
* get down, baby...
steadman: I think the birth of gonzo happened
when the evil came out of me in the drawings.
depp: "unlike most of the others in the press box,
we didn't give a hoot in hell what was happening on the track.
we had come to watch the real beasts perform.
when the crowd stood to face the flag
and sing 'my old kentucky home,'
steadman faced the crowd and sketched frantically.
thousands of raving, stumbling drunks
getting angrier and angrier as they lose more and more money."
wolfe: in that story, you get all of the attitudes
to the derby, and you never get to the derby.
you're there to- he said to come to the derby,
and you get all the drunk southerners,
you get all the weird socialites,
the weird bookies, the hangers-on.
depp: "it was a face i'd seen a thousand times
at every derby i'd been to.
I saw it in my head as the mask of the whiskey gentry-
the inevitable result of too much inbreeding."
hunter: first, i'd realized i was doing something different.
a friend of mine, he wrote me a note saying
"that derby piece was pure gonzo."
and I thought, "well, if that's what it was..."
I thought it was a brutal failure.
i'd botched my assignment, you know?
it was one of my worst failures
and I got this onslaught of mail- mail, calls-
saying I made a great breakthrough in journalism.
well, christ, if I made it-
as a breakthrough, we've gotta call it something.
so I liked the word "gonzo," and it seemed to me what I was doing-
kind of nice and crazy, like zen. gonzo.
* hope you guess my name... *
- I知 edward. - steadman: he has a bird called edward.
he's such a marvelous character.
I think hunter tormented it, but it was kind of a two-way affection.
hunter would use it, I think, to bounce off,
to bring into the story
how he was feeling about it, who was the bird.
I suppose that at some point i, in a way, became the bird.
speak up, edward. speak up! speak up! talk to me!
he banged the cage- bang bang bang bang!
"edward. it's me, edward.
I知 coming to get you, edward."
he'd open the cage, and he'd say, "edward, there is no bird god
that's gonna help you now, edward."
and this bird's going...
steadman: I feel like edward sometimes...
now, we're going to talk, edward.
steadman: ...holding me like a bird,
and I知 trying to bite my way out of it.
I never felt fear
when he was at the wheel.
there's no holes over here.
- ooh! - this is a big box.
no wonder why I don't buy american cars. god damn it.
move over, I知 gonna kill somebody! you're too small!
I want to kill somebody a lot bigger than you!
- what's the speed limit? - 70. oh my god, it's 75.
holy shit. no wonder he's going-
duke's voice: we were somewhere around barstow,
on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.
suddenly, there was a terrible roar all around us
and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats,
all swooping and screeching and diving around the car.
and a voice was screaming, "holy jesus, what are these goddamn animals?!"
did you say something?huh?
never mind.
- it's your turn to drive. - * everybody's dancing... *
duke's voice: "no point in mentioning these bats," I thought.
"the poor bastard will see them soon enough."
wenner: "fear and loathing in las vegas" - it starts off like a rocket.
"we were somewhere on the edge of barstow
when the drugs began to take hold."
well, that just grabs you- damn- right there,
the description of the trunk what was in the trunk-
all the drugs, the salt shakers
full of mescaline, cocaine- on and on and on.
it was mad genius stuff.
duke's voice: we had two bags of grass,
75 pellets of mescaline,
five sheets of high-powered blotter acid,
- a salt shaker half-full of cocaine... -
...a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls.
not that we needed all that for the trip,
but once you get locked into a serious drug collection,
the tendency is to push it as far as you can.
* don't matter where you come from... *
radio host: a house subcommittee report
says illegal drugs killed 160 american gis last year,
40 of them in vietnam. drugs-
- * one toke over the line, sweet jesus... * - one toke, man!
* one toke over the line
* sittin' downtown in a railway station *
* one toke over the line... *
wenner: through all this time, he's traveling with oscar acosta.
they went there and had this drug rampage.
- I found some good grass for $12 a lid. - hunter: good.
- I just ordered two lids. I値l get it tomorrow. - God bless you.
wenner: hunter's raoul duke- the author of the book-
we published whatever was published in "rolling stone."
it was published as "by raoul duke."
oscar transmogrifies from oscar zeta acosta,
crusading chicano attorney, into dr. gonzo.
* I felt the joy and i learned about the pain *
* then my mama said...
laila nabulsi: raoul duke and dr. gonzo
were hunter thompson and oscar acosta.
he just used that as a cover.
you have these sort of antiheroes.
it's "butch cassidy and the sundance kid."
it's just the next version in a way.
they're outlaws. these guys were fighting
and they really were in real life.
oscar acosta was using the law
and the brown power movement
and hunter was fighting with the pen and using journalism.
so they really were warriors of their generation.
*...in a railway station, one toke over the line *
* one toke, one toke over the line. *
brinkley: when hunter went to las vegas,
he was on an assignment for "sports illustrated"
to write about this motorcycle race.
they only wanted a very brief, almost like a little box about the race.
he delivered this screed that went on for about 60 pages
detailing the desert and everything that happened.
and it had in it a little bit of that
wild, druggy...
feel that the final "fear and loathing in las vegas" had.
duke's voice: ignore this terrible drug. pretend it's not happening.
uh... hI there!
my name...
uh...
- raoul duke. - your suite isn't ready yet, but...
someone was looking for you.
no! we haven't done anything yet. move!
I can handle this.
at that point there was still
kind of that timothy leary approach to psychedelics
going around, where it's this very pious thing.
you sat on a persian rug and listened to indian music.
there had been very little in the way
of actually dealing with the fact that when you're stoned on psychedelics,
you're often just way out of control
and you don't know how you're gonna handle things.
and hunter made that his real topic.
depp: "what leary took down with him
was the central illusion of a whole lifestyle
that he helped create-
a generation of permanent cripples,
failed seekers, who never understood
the essential old-mystic fallacy of the acid culture:
the desperate assumption that somebody or at least some force
is tending the light at the end of the tunnel."
woman: I don't know about you, but I知 starting to feel that drink.
- peanuts, man. - oh, god! oh, god.
two cuba libres with beer and mescal on the side.
duke's voice: terrible things were happening all around us.
it's impossible to walk in this muck - no footing at all.
perry: at last there was a vocabulary for talking about psychedelics,
and it was also an early clue to the new direction-
more and more craziness from hunter. of course, he was high anyway.
I never saw the guy without either a can of bud
or a bottle of wild turkey in his hand.
he drank a bottle of bourbon a day,
and that was on top of all the pills he was taking,
so he was just constantly pushing the limit of consciousness.
duke's voice: I was right in the middle of a fucking reptile zoo
and somebody was giving booze to these goddamn things.
it won't be long now before they tear us to shreds!
please!
tell me about the fucking golf shoes!
all: huh?
the rejection by "sports illustrated" infuriated him.
and it was only at that point that he started realizing,
like, "eureka! chicago may not be
where the death of the american dream is.
it's las vegas."
* ooh yes!
* these long strange nights
* these long strange nights... *
wenner: hunter had rented a cadillac and wanted me to pay for it.
I said, "no," you know? "I知 not paying for the rent of a cadillac."
and he was like, "well, I can't cover the goddamn american dream
in a volkswagen. what the fuck is wrong with you?"
and um...
you know, of course that's quite true.
* drive your stake
* through a darkened heart *
* in a red mercedes benz... *
depp: "breakdown on paradise blvd."
"at this point in the chronology,
dr. duke appears to have broken down completely.
the original manuscript is so splintered
that we were forced to seek out the original tape recording
and transcribe it verbatim."
hunter: testing- one, two.
closing. okay, it is now 11:30 a.m.
depp: "the transcription begins somewhere
on the northeast outskirts of las vegas-
zooming along paradise road in the white whale."
- hello. - may I help you?
- yeah.you have tacos here? - mm-hmm.
but they're five for a dollar?
I値l take five of them.
do you want anything to drink?
beer. no, I have beer in the car-
tons of it - the whole back seat's loaded with it.
we're looking for the american dream.
we were told that it was somewhere in this area, but-
- the american dream? - yeah, the american dream.
- I値l tell you something- go to paradise. - is that it?
we're here looking for it because they sent us out here,
all the way from san francisco, to look for it.
that's why they gave us that white cadillac.
they figured that we could catch up with it in that.
hey, luke, do you know where the american dream is?
acosta: she's asking him.
- what is it? - that's what we don't know.
we were sent out here from san francisco to look for the american dream.
now are you guys serious?! because-
acosta: no, look at the car. I mean, do I look like-
could that be the old psychiatrists' club? it was a discotheque place.
all we were told was, "go till you find the american dream.
take this white cadillac
and go find the american dream.
it's somewhere in the las vegas area."
are you taking pictures of it or-
- no, no, pictures, just... - somebody just sent you on a goose chase.
it's sort of a wild goose chase more or less, yeah.
woman: it has to be the old psychiatrists'.
but the only people who hang out there
is a bunch of pushers, peddlers,
- uppers-and-downers and all that stuff. - maybe that's it.
- dopers. - could be it.
I think this place, the way you're describing it-
I think- you know, maybe that's it.
wenner: hunter said, you know, vegas is the city
that was the death of what he thought
was the american dream. in that famous scene,
he sees that opportunity and possibility that was represented by the '60s.
"the wave rolls back
and," he said, "once for a beautiful moment there,
- we thought we had it." - * it feels the way we die... *
duke's voice: san francisco in the middle of the '60s
was a very special time and place to be a part of,
but no explanation,
no mix of words or music or memories
can touch that sense of knowing that you were there
and alive in that corner of time in the world,
whatever it meant.
* and you may not know why... *
duke's voice: there was madness in any direction, at any hour.
you could strike sparks anywhere.
there was a fantastic universal sense
that whatever we were doing was right,
that we were winning.
and that, I think, was the handle...
I have seen... the promised land.
duke's voice:...that sense of inevitable victory
over the forces of old and evil.
not in any mean or military sense;
we didn't need that.
our energy would simply prevail.
we had all the momentum.
we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.
I may not get there with you...
but I want you to know tonight...
that, we, as a people, will get to the promised land!
duke's voice: so now, less than five years later,
you can go up on a steep hill
in las vegas and look west
and with the right kind of eyes
you can almost see the high-water mark,
that place where the wave finally broke...
and rolled back.
martin luther king was shot and was killed tonight.
nabulsi: it's amazing to think that in 1971
he already saw that final nail in the coffin of the '60s,
which is really bittersweet.
and I think for hunter it was bittersweet,
so I think speech sort of encapsulates that.
I haven't read anything else on that generation,
that subject that moves me as much.
I felt it was so important.
to me, it was the driving thing
that made me wanna do the movie.
well, I don't like the idea of it-
that isn't one of the best fucking things i've ever written-
to turn it into some kind of a stupid cartoon show-
woman: it's one of the best things that anybody's ever written.
I just happen to have a very high affection
for that one piece and so do other people.
nabulsi: before terry gilliam was hired to direct the film,
there was another director, but things didn't work out
when he wanted to put this animated sequence
in the wave speech of this little hunter on a wave of bones.
you can see that I might be a little bit edgy
when you talk about putting it in a cartoon form
with me on some kind of tidal wave
across some imaginary mickey mouse desert.
man: you've been put in a cartoon form already.
the problem is that you've published a novel with cartoons.
- I hired ralph to do some drawings. - and they're great.
- no no no no. - you're really getting me angry.
nabulsi: I know hunter well enough
that even if he was mad, I知 not terrified
and I know how to get through it,
but I was just sort of shocked
that it had gone so awry.
hunter on tv: just don't fucking go and make it a cartoon!
all right, we're having a little problem here
with your goddamn stupid fucking cartoons in this thing.
if you think you're in charge of this movie,
we're gonna have a real problem right now.
if you want war- here we go, baby-
there's gonna be a nasty fucking war.
yeah, but I don't like you turning on me at the end.
I must say I don't like that at all.
hunter: what should I have said?
"no, i've known laila for many years...
...and she would never say that."
- man #2: fuck. - he had a kind of over-the-top
dramatic way of being.
yeah, I値l talk to hunter now. yeah, okay.
hunter, how are ya?
wenner: hunter always had to have a running crisis.
going on of some type of other-
to animate him, to get him going.
what disease? I mean, do you - is it a potentially serious thing?
brain- brain damage.
I see.
jimmy buffet: hunter did everything for effect.
he was not ever happy, I don't believe,
when things were stable and tranquil.
crouse: hunter was a force of nature.
hunter would sit
very still and very straight
with his arms up like this, waiting.
and all of a sudden, he would get a jolt and he would type.
he also had deadlines,
and hunter never met a deadline.
he was completely behind deadline.
he hadn't written a word and jann was calling and screaming.
hunter was, at that time, carrying around the mojo wire...
announcer: just insert the document-
...which was a suitcase-sized portable transmission machine.
announcer: in just six minutes or less,
an exact copy of the document
can be received anywhere in the country.
he said, "i've gotta do the story." i said, "you haven't written the story."
"it doesn't matter. just- when I tell you to,
just take the plug and unplug it-
in and out- on the machine."
he called up "rolling stone" offices,
"well, it doesn't seem to be working."
the entire place is shut down
because everything has been done except these four pages
- you've been holding for hunter. - I was usually the guy,
at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning,
who had to be there to get the feed from hunter.
he took the fax machine, held the phone like this and destroyed it.
and then he went into this rave
about some editor on the other end,
then hung the phone up and went to the bar.
perry: jann was generally so happy with the kind of stuff
that hunter was turning in that it didn't matter.
it was just merely a damn inconvenience for us.
young wenner: the editor's note says
"after long, heavy and occasionally brutal negotiations,
dr. thompson is back on the payroll.
his gibberish will appear regularly
in an unpredictable length on a wide variety of subject matter.
we have total confidence in him, for good or ill."
wenner: after "vegas," it was clear
what an enormous talent hunter was,
and, with the energy and the reporting level,
he was going to be better than anybody else at "rolling stone."
would you have any other place to publish your stuff
if it wasn't for "rolling stone"?
wenner: so it was always looking for what would be next.
what would be the next assignment?
what's the biggest thing we could think of?
I came up with the idea that he should move to washington,
become the full-time correspondent
for the mcgovern campaign.
two of the classical works of american politics
came out of that campaign and out of that assignment for "rolling stone."
one is "fear and loathing: on the campaign trail" by hunter;
and "boys on the bus" by tim crouse,
who was one of our little junior stars.
but he wanted to be up there and cover the campaign,
so I said, "sure. go right ahead. you can help hunter while you're at it."
part of the reason I was there
was to take care of him.
and what I felt from him
from the very beginning was a sense of protection.
and we became a very good team that way.
young wenner: if you were really interested in what was happening
on the mcgovern campaign, the election,
you would've also- although it was not as widely known-
turned to "rolling stone" to find out really what was going on.
hunter's coverage and record of it-
his coverage was just brilliant.
pat caddell: when he showed up at the campaign, no one knew who he was.
but I知 still in college, so I read "rolling stone,"
so I knew who he was. nobody else knew.
that was his great advantage-
nobody was paying attention to him...
until he started publishing,
then all hell broke loose.
depp: "so this is more of a jangled campaign diary
than a record or reasoned analysis
of the '72 presidential campaign
from december '71 to january '73
in airport bars, all-night coffee shops
and dreary hotel rooms all over the country.
there is hardly a paragraph in this saga
that wasn't produced in a last-minute teeth-grinding frenzy.
every deadline was a crisis
when I was cranking it out of the typewriter
one page at a time and feeding it
Into the plastic maw of that goddamn mojo wire...
...to some hash-addled freak of an editor
at the 'rolling stone' news desk in san francisco."
there. chew on that gibberish for a while, you heartless scum.
you pushed me too far.
mcgovern: I couldn't read that book, "fear and loathing,"
without being in a place where I could laugh out loud
from time to time.
it was a hilarious book.
I have been quoted many times and I値l say it again-
it was the most accurate and least factual account of that campaign.
mcgovern: I値l say one other thing:
that book was written for "rolling stone"
as the campaign progressed.
it wasn't something written from the hindsight
of the campaign. those chapters rolled off
of his typewriter as the campaign moved along.
perry: it was a journalistic risk.
he had covered political campaigns before
he was just sick of the conventions,
sitting around and reporting the speeches.
and the speeches were all written for reporters to write about.
depp: "as far as I was concerned,
there was no such thing as 'off the record.'
unlike most other correspondents
I could afford to burn all my bridges behind me,
'cause I was only there for a year.
and the last thing I cared about
was establishing long-term connections on capitol hill."
he wanted to stir things up.
buchanan: there was no one quite like hunter.
he was on the edge and beyond the edge,
and it was very funny.
I remember he wrote that hubert humphrey,
the great father of the civil rights movement-
he said, "they ought to stuff hubert in a goddamn bottle
and send him out with the japanese current."
depp: "there is no way to grasp what a shallow, contemptible
and hopelessly dishonest old hack hubert humphrey really is
until you've followed him around for a while on the campaign trail.
hubert humphrey is a treacherous,
gutless old ward-heeler."
buchanan: he had a view of the ridiculousness of it all...
thank you. shalom shalom.
...and hunter did some of his best work on the liberals.
mcgovern: he was particularly hostile to hubert,
but he certainly loathed richard nixon.
depp: "our barbie doll president with his barbie doll wife
and his boxful of barbie doll children
is also america's answer to the monstrous mr. hyde.
he speaks to the werewolf in us
on nights when the moon comes too close."
nixon represents everything that's wrong with this country...
down the line.
buchanan: well, he first came into our consciousness
in the beginning of 1968. he was writing for "pageant" magazine.
he came up to cover us. I was with nixon in the new hampshire primary
and hunter would importune me to get some time with the candidate.
so we got hunter- as I recall it-
we put him in the car with nixon
in the backseat of the limo
when nixon was going to manchester airport.
man: wasn't it in 1968 you tried to interview nixon?
hunter: no, I did it. I had a wonderful talk with him.
what did you talk about?
football. I was the only person in the press corps
who could talk about football.
is this a need that occurs to him during-
oh, yeah. he's a complete football freak.
and I said, "no, of course. I知 a freak. I know all about it."
he said, "but you- you're the one who wants
to talk about vietnam and that kind of thing."
I said, "no, I値l talk about football. don't worry."
he said, "okay, if you promise, then you can ride
in the car with him back to the airport."
it's about an hour and a half ride,
just me a nixon in the backseat.
was he an amiable fellow?
oh, absolutely. yeah. it was kind of pleasant. it was weird.
four more years, four more years...
tonight I again proudly accept that nomination
for president of the united states.
hunter: richard nixon represents everything that i...
not only have contempt for but dislike and think should be stomped out.
depp: "he was a cheap crook and a merciless war criminal
who bombed more people to death in laos and cambodia
than the u.s. army lost in all of world war ii.
when students at kent state university
in ohio protested the bombing,
he connived to have them attacked and slain
by troops from the national guard."
"some people will say that words like 'scum' and 'rotten'
are wrong for objective journalism,
which is true. but they miss the point.
it was the built-in blind spots
of the objective rules and dogma
that allowed nixon to slither
into the white house in the first place.
he seemed so all-american."
* and the skies are not cloudy all day. *
depp: "you had to get subjective to see nixon clearly.
he was so crooked that he needed servants
to help him screw on his pants every morning."
I am filling with hate and rage right now just thinking about it.
gary hart: I had never tried to psychoanalyze hunter
in mood swings and so on,
but I think in his bad moments or worse moments
he thought it was all fear and loathing.
crouse: "fear and loathing in las vegas"
is ostensibly about a man in search
of the american dream.
and "fear and loathing: on the campaign trail"
is about a man in search of an honest politician.
and the only one in sight who even vaguely qualified
- was george mcgovern. - when you support george mcgovern-
at the position I am in the polls,
that's an act of courage.
depp: "george mcgovern - the only candidate
in either party worth voting for
is hung in a frustrated limbo
created mainly by the gross cynicism
of the washington press corps.
'he'd be a fine president,' they say,
'but of course he can't possibly win.'
- why not?" - I just wanted to say hello.
I知 senator mcgovern, folks. nice to see you.
yes, you too.
you fellas know I知 running for president?
I hope you'll help me out.
crouse: mcgovern's program was
immediate withdrawal from vietnam...
mcgovern: even if we stayed there
and bombed for the next five years
and americans continue to die, five years from now
we're going to be right where we are now.
so let's recognize that we made a mistake.
let's bring this war to an end.
...amnesty for draft dodgers and deserters,
equal rights for women
and- and a cut in the defense budget.
well, good luck.
mcgovern: the transcendent issue of '72 was vietnam,
and I desperately wanted to win that election
to put an end to that senseless war.
I知 sick and tired of old men sitting around
in air-conditioned rooms here in washington
dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
mcgovern: it is a tide that would sweep away
the barbarism of war
and end the folly of vietnam once and for all.
depp: "mcgovern is the only major candidate
who lines out the painful truth,
and his reward has been just about the same
as that of any other politician who insists on telling the truth:
he is mocked, vilified,
ignored and abandoned as a hopeless loser."
the president is attacking...
hart: hunter never trusted anybody who was elected.
that was the irony,
because to be estimable in his judgment
you had to be a loser, in effect.
a noble loser.
brinkley: what was bold about hunter with mcgovern
is he wasn't being objective.
he was saying "this is the guy I want to see as president.
I知 gonna try to help make him president."
mcgovern: leaving out george wallace, who was shot,
the two strongest democratic contenders
were muskie and humphrey.
therefore, hunter saw them
as a threat to be unmasked,
because by then I think he was pretty strongly committed to me.
crouse: hunter's pieces were a very particular hybrid
of very clear-minded,
accurate straight reportage
and then sometimes flat-out fantasy.
it was all run together,
and some people found it hard
to tell the fantasy from the other stuff.
it occurred to me about halfway during the campaign
that people actually believed
a lot of the things I was writing about-
muskie eating this strange brazilian drug.
hunter had it in for muskie
like you couldn't believe.
hunter just could not lay off of muskie.
what did you do to ed muskie?
nothing. ed muskie did it to himself.
I just helped him along.
depp: "not much has been written about the ibogaine effect
as a serious factor in the presidential campaign,
but toward the end of the wisconsin primary race,
about a week before the vote,
word leaked out that some of muskie's top advisors
had called in a brazilian doctor
who was said to be treating the candidate
with 'some kind of strange drug.'"
what was the drug that you said he was on?
- ibogaine. - ibogaine.
perry: first we saw his work, then we had to look it up
and then we started wondering
whether somebody could sue us about this.
then we realized how silly that would be,
so we went ahead with it.
caddell: "rolling stone" reports
democratic presidential candidate edmund muskie
is in fact addicted. it ended up on the wires as a straight story.
it caused a major sensation.
it was just this magical lyrical moment of hunter's.
depp: "it had been common knowledge for many weeks
that humphrey was using an exotic brand of speed known as 'wallot.'
and it had long been whispered
that muskie was into something very heavy,
but it was hard to take the talk seriously until I heard about the appearance
of a mysterious brazilian doctor. that was the key."
by attacking me, he's proved himself to be a gutless coward.
depp: "I immediately recognized the ibogaine effect
from muskie's tearful breakdown
on the flatbed truck in new hampshire..."
perry: he said, "well, look at the way
the guy gives his speeches.
it exactly fits the symptoms
of somebody who's stoned on ibogaine."
and the charge was so bizarre, so off-the-wall,
it really brought a lot of attention to hunter's reporting.
do you mind if I state my view?
depp: "...to the delusions and altered thinking
that characterized his campaign in wisconsin,
and finally the condition of 'total rage'
that gripped him in florida."
but I am speaking to these people who are willing to listen to me!
man: the rumor began to spread everywhere
among all the people who were covering the campaign
that muskie was in fact on this bizarre drug.
- you finally said you made it all up. - I had to.
I couldn't believe people took this stuff seriously.
people really believed that muskie was eating ibogaine.
I never said he was. I said there was a rumor in milwaukee that he was...
which was true. I started the rumor in milwaukee.
yeah, if you're really careful-
I知 a very accurate journalist.
depp: "muskie's always taken pride
in his ability to deal with hecklers.
he's frequently challenged them,
calling them up to the stage in front of big crowds
and the forcing the poor bastards to debate with him in a blaze of tv lights.
but there was none of that in florida.
when the boohoo began grabbing at his legs
and screaming for more gin,
big ed went all to pieces,
which gave rise to speculation among reporters
familiar with his campaign style in '68 and '70
that muskie was not himself."
...shredded, torn, battered and beaten
beyond all recognition.
depp: "in retrospect, however,
it is easy to see why muskie fell apart
on that caboose platform in the miamI train station.
it is entirely conceivable,
given the known effects of ibogaine,
that muskie's brain was almost paralyzed
by hallucinations at the time,
that he looked out at the crowd
and saw gila monsters instead of people.
that his mind snapped completely
when he felt something large and apparently vicious
clawing at his legs."
that's crazy stuff.
nobody was writing like that.
I mean, in the serious world of political journalism
they thought that way of hunter,
that he was getting away with stuff
that they couldn't in what they were doing.
and they all lived vicariously through him.
crouse: the social scene of the press-
in those days it was almost all males
and they almost all drank pretty seriously.
and hunter, he was kind of impervious man
when it came to drugs and to liquor.
you saw that stuff go in
and there was no discernable effect
in his behavior.
and that left an impression
on the people he was with.
hunter couldn't resist, ever,
trying to shock the squares.
hunter would turn to me and say,
"maybe at the next stop we can shoot up,"
or "hey, if they have a men's room,
it would be good to eat some acid."
and hunter, in this sense,
almost had the attributes of an action hero.
mcgovern: I got a call from hunter.
he invited eleanor and me to meet him for dinner.
when we got there, the waitress materialized
and he said, "bring me three margaritas
and six beers,"
and the girl laughed.
she said, "are you expecting some other people, sir?"
he said, "no. find out what these two folks want,
but bring me three margaritas
and six beers."
hart: I don't think hunter ever thought mcgovern was gonna win.
I think he was along for the ride.
this thing picks up speed fast, doesn't it?
man: oh yeah, so is your campaign.
hart: and all of a sudden,
this thing begins to be serious.
man: of the six democratic candidates,
which one are you supporting in the primary?
- mcgovern? - why?
because I think that he's the only man that can unite the country.
- george mcgovern. - man: why?
because I think he's the people's man.
uh, what's his name?
- man: wallace? - no no no. no.
- lindsay? - no.
- humphrey? - no.
- muskie? - no.
- mcgovern? - yes, you've got it right there.
I think you're coming on good to labor people.
- yeah. - hart: I think hunter realized
that the man he was following might actually have a chance.
man: muskie, jackson, lindsay trail badly.
what the hell have you been doing?
we won by a landslide.
the press coverage is unbelievable.
he's gonna be on the cover of "newsweek,"
probably the cover of "time,"
and they're calling him the frontrunner
for the democratic nomination.
now we've got to worry.
man: senator george mcgovern,
having received the majority vote
of this convention of certified delegates,
is hereby declared
the 1972 democratic nominee
for president of the united states.
depp: "mcgovern appeared to have a sure lock
on the white house when the sun came up
on miamI beach on the morning of thursday, july 13th.
since then he has crippled himself
with a series of almost unbelievable blunders."
hart: the polls going into that weekend
showed mcgovern with a chance to win.
now it's very difficult to defeat an incumbent,
particularly at war time,
so you had to have everything go right.
you could not have one thing go wrong.
and of course we had a huge major thing go wrong within hours.
there was this disaster
with the choice for the vice president-
thomas eagleton, senator from missouri.
frank mankiewicz: he meets the main requirements
senator mcgovern set down when he began his consideration,
which is a man in whom he would have
absolute and complete confidence
and in whom he believes the american people would have complete confidence
to become president of the united states should an occasion arise.
I think it was mankiewicz who asked him
if he had any skeletons in his closet and he said no.
tom said he couldn't think of anything
and then the clock started to tick.
hart: the weekend after the convention in miami
we had gotten an anonymous call at headquarters
saying that senator eagleton had had...
shock therapy, which we had not known.
* well, I think I知 going out of my head *
* yes, I think I知 going out of my head *
* over you...
on three occasions in my life,
I have voluntarily gone into hospitals
as a result of nervous exhaustion and fatigue.
buchanan: i'd been in st. louis. i'd heard about the eagleton stuff,
even before- when they nominated him.
it would surprise me when they nominated him.
when that hit, that was the coup de grace.
I was in nixon's office
and there was what I would say was considerable merriment.
nixon said, "well, pat told us, didn't he, chuck?"
depp: "tom eagleton was exactly the kind of vp candidate
that muskie or humphrey would have chosen-
a peace offering to the old politics gang,
because mcgovern thought he needed
those bastards to beat nixon."
is it your intention then to remain on the ticket?
- categorically, yes. - depp: "it's hard to see
how george could have done any worse,
even with charles manson for a running mate."
hart: all of a sudden, hunter jumps on that critical bandwagon.
his whole critique of mcgovern in the fall campaign was
"sellout, compromiser."
but you can't be serious about american politics
and be infantile about it.
and there was an infantile-
I say this with all respect to my late friend-
an infantile aspect to hunter.
he wanted it all to be fun,
all to be amusing, all to be good and evil,
and "we're the good guys, they're the bad guys
and we're gonna crush 'em,"
and overdramatizing
what is really some of the toughest things
human beings have to do,
and that is to try to govern a democracy.
mcgovern: the public debate of senator eagleton's
past medical history
continues to divert attention
from the great national issues
that need to be discussed.
therefore we have jointly agreed
that the best course is for senator eagleton
to step aside.
crouse: when mcgovern finally had to give in,
it made mcgovern look like a liar,
it made him look like a waffler.
it was a blow from which the campaign
never really covered.
wish I wore my drip-dry suit.
mcgovern: the national press wasn't very responsible at that time.
I don't condemn the press.
they were doing what they thought was right,
but they spent far more ink
dwelling on my mishandling
of the vice-presidential selection
than was ever devoted to the watergate break-in
on the part of the nixon people during the campaign.
it was hard to get them interested in that.
depp: "at the stroke of midnight in washington
a drooling red-eyed beast with the legs of a man
and the head of a giant hyena
crawls out of its bedroom window
in the south wing of the white house
and leaps 50' down to the lawn,
pauses briefly to strangle the chow watchdog,
then races off into the darkness
towards the watergate, snarling with lust,
loping through the alleys behind pennsylvania avenue
and trying desperately to remember
which one of those 400 identical balconies
is the one outside martha mitchell's apartment."
depp: "due to circumstances beyond my control,
I would rather not write anything
about the 1972 presidential campaign at this time.
on tuesday, november 7th,
I will get out of bed long enough
to go down to the polling place
and vote for george mcgovern.
afterwards, I will drive back to the house,
lock the front door, get back in bed
and watch television as long as necessary.
it will probably be a while before the angst lifts.
but whenever it happens,
I will get out of bed again
and start writing the mean, cold-blooded bummer
that I was not quite ready for today."
crouse: he was the right man in the right place
and he was equipped to capture
a certain moment in history
as nobody else was equipped to do.
in his best pages,
I think he captured certain truths
about human perversity
that will never lose their sting.
and I don't think that anybody can be too surprised
that we find ourselves in the nightmare we're in today
because it's essentially the same
as the nightmare he described back then.
and I think it will always be salubrious
and cleansing to have someone express
the mockery and the rage
and finally the despair
that are the only reaction
of a real human to that nightmare.
reporter: massachusetts has gone
for the democratic candidate-
the only state going for mcgovern.
reporter #2: we project that president nixon
will come out of this the winner.
with about 60% of the popular vote.
i've never known a national election
when I would be able to go to bed earlier than tonight.
* put a candle in the window... *
crouse: "this may be the year when we finally come
face to face with ourselves,
finally just lay back and say
that we are really just a nation
of 220 million used-car salesmen
with all the money we need to buy guns
and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world
who tries to make us uncomfortable."
mcgovern: never again will we send
the precious young blood of this country
to die trying to prop up
a corrupt military dictatorship abroad.
"the tragedy of all this is that george mcgovern,
for all his mistakes
and all his imprecise talk about new politics
and honesty in government,
is one of the few men who would run for president
of the united states in this century
who really understands what a fantastic monument
this country might have been
if we could've kept it out of the hands
of greedy little hustlers like richard nixon."
* guess i've got that old traveling bone *
* gonna feel really alone... *
...whether or not their president is a crook.
well, I知 not a crook.
* but I won't- I won't be losing my way, no no... *
crouse: "mcgovern made some stupid mistakes,
but, in context, they seem almost frivolous
compared to the things richard nixon does
every day of his life on purpose
as a matter of policy
and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.
jesus, where will it end? how low do you have to stoop
in this country to be president?"
* put a candle in the window *
* though I知 going, going *
* I値l be coming home soon *
* long as I can see the light... *
whew.
wenner: as much as he was reviled and revulsed
by nixon, he identified with him.
he understood that darkness of the american spirit.
you know, hunter was deeply invested in america.
whether you call it the american dream or american politics,
all the things he wrote about
were always looking at the dark side as well as the hope.
but during his lifetime it kept looking like,
once again, the evil, the darkness would triumph.
crouse: in 1972, he began to feel disillusioned.
and with jimmy carter, he was trying
to give politics one last chance.
depp: "I have heard hundreds of speeches
by all kinds of candidates and politicians,
but I have never heard a sustained piece
of political oratory that impressed me more
than the speech jimmy carter made on law day
at the university of georgia
one saturday afternoon in may, 1974.
it was a king hell bastard of a speech.
by the time it was over, it had rung every bell in the room."
carter: senator kennedy and distinguished fellow georgians,
friends of the law school of georgia and-
hunter: I was the only reporter there
and I was with kennedy.
I had no interest in carter
and no intention of either listening to him
or reporting anything he said.
carter: not paying any attention to me,
he was going outside every now and then
to replenish his glass of what was apparently ice tea
but was really wild turkey whiskey.
I started speaking from my heart
about the defects
in the american judicial system.
depp: "but what sent me back out to the trunk
to get my tape recorder instead of another drink
was the spectacle of a southern politician
telling a crowd of judges and lawyers
that 'the source of my understanding
about what's right and wrong in this society
is from a friend of mine-
a great poet named bob dylan.'"
* I ain't gonna work on maggie's farm no more... *
carter: she said...
hunter: "at this point, carter was attacked
by what was later identified as a 48 lb slope."
carter: I was speaking to a bunch of lawyers
and the reaction among them was one
of stunned silence.
"...he was greeted with horror.
still, once that change was made-
a very simple, difficult change-
no one in his right mind would want to go back
to circumstances prior to that juncture
in the development of our nation's society."
it changed my life.
of course, hunter is the person that found jimmy carter.
hunter would go around the country and play it for people.
brinkley: his cover story on "rolling stone"
that hunter wrote endorsing carter
helped jimmy carter win that election.
he was the most popular writer in the united states.
my next guest is one of the most controversial writers in america
and the inventor of gonzo journalism.
we're delighted that he could be with us tonight.
welcome, please, dr. hunter thompson.
- brinkley: he had just delivered "hell's angels"
"vegas," "campaign trail,"
and all those great "rolling stone" pieces.
people didn't know where this guy was gonna stop at that point.
you didn't know whether he would have 30 years of this kind of productivity.
he was- he was so hot.
he'd give a speech at a college
and 20 women wanted to party with him all night.
classic rock 'n' roll attitude.
and hunter saw rock stars,
and he thought, "why shouldn't a writer be a rock star?"
he became that rock 'n' roll - trash the hotel room,
throw the typewriter out the window,
let the women in, too much drugs-
meanwhile, there was this other side of him.
he was the squire of woody creek,
who had a wife and a kid.
* devil or angel
* I can't make up my mind *
* which one you are
* i'd like to wake up and find *
* devil or angel
* dear, wherever you are
* I miss you, I miss you... *
wright: here was all this fame,
all these famous people,
all these hanger-on girls
and people coming into my kitchen
with heels like this.
we lived out in woody creek-
and in tight jeans and stilettos
and everything gorgeous.
and I said, "who are these people?
and what are they doing in my world?"
juan: you don't think how it should be different.
you just accept that my dad gets up at 5:00 in the afternoon
for the 5:00 news.
he eats breakfast, I eat dinner.
it's a shame he wasn't around more,
but that's who he was.
I met hunter in john belushi's dressing room
at "saturday night live."
he was the ultimate bad boy,
but we became fantastic friends.
and one night he was talking to someone
and I guess by the way he was talking to them-
when he hung up I said, "oh, who was that?"
and he said, "well, that's sondi."
I said, "well, who's sondi?" he said, "my wife,"
and I said, "your wife?"
brinkley: meanwhile, his marriage was getting very rocky,
he was starting to drink and do too many drugs
and fell into fame.
caddell: what had given him his strength-
his anonymity- was gone.
by writing and becoming the political reporter he was,
he had lost that anonymity that had been his cloak.
so now he was the story.
I used to be able to stand in the back
and observe stories and absorb them.
now the minute I appear at a story,
then I become part of it.
first time I went to a press conference with jimmy carter
I had to sign more autographs than carter signed.
and the secret service had no idea who I was.
they thought I was an astronaut.
wenner: at that point, you know, it was hard.
how do you find stuff for hunter to do?
you're always looking for a story that somehow
can top the campaign story or vegas,
something big enough for his talent.
going to zaire seemed like a natural assignment for hunter,
a big spectacle, heavyweight fight;
ali, whom he knew or had written about before.
he went. steadman came down from london.
I知 gonna retire the heavyweight champion of the world!
september the 25th, the world will be stunned!
brinkley: his hero, number one, was muhammad ali.
he used to always say that he was related
to cassius clay in the bloodline.
i've never fully believed it-
it could be true- but he loved to say
that he was blood-related to muhammad ali.
hah! sucker, you ain't nothing.
you're too ugly to represent us colored folks.
brinkley: and remember again, muhammad alI is
this touchstone for hunter,
that the kentucky boys are making it big.
you out, sucker.
wolfe: he went to zaire to cover the rumble in the jungle.
it was the foregone conclusion
that george foreman was going to knock out muhammad ali.
there seemed to be no way
that alI could survive that fight.
he stops, and he looks up at the drug dealer and he says...
you know, and it got worse and worse and worse and worse.
this was when hunter gave our tickets away.
I can't remember what I did.
I just think I tried to watch it on television or something
so I would get some idea of it,
but hunter had gone down to the pool
with a bucket of ice
and a bottle of whiskey,
drinking and smokes- his dunhills.
and hunter decided to...
take a dip in the pool,
float in the pool at the hotel
throughout the entire fight.
announcer: 30 seconds left in round eight.
as it turned out, it was one of the...
classic fights of all time.
announcer: another sneaky right hand.
this time he worked over his shoulder.
unbelievable!
referee: four, five, six, seven-
this was called the biggest fucked-up journalistic story
in the history of journalism-
that we really didn't get a story.
wenner: zaire was hunter's first big failure as an assignment.
there was a big expense bill- which I paid for-
and didn't do the piece,
and that was disappointing to us all.
I think hunter felt a strong sense of failure.
that was kind of the beginning of a period of decline there.
he, as a writer, a journalist and a person,
ran up against some wall there or a period there,
whether it was coming from exhaustion
or something going on with his marriage - somewhere he just lost it.
wright: hunter came back from africa,
he didn't wake up for a day and a half.
and all of a sudden he just couldn't write.
he couldn't piece it together.
his life really changed after that
and he knew that he wasn't the writer that he wanted to be.
* man...
* you know I done enjoyed things *
* that kings and queens will never have... *
wenner: he stopped writing full-time in the mid-'70s,
then he'd just do the articles.
part of what happened was I think
there were so many people hanging around woody creek,
and he was very welcoming and enjoyed it all,
but it really made it difficult to work.
"...safe for my young son."
"but the front doors are a different matter."
brinkley: I was a bit of a straight man entering his carnival life.
he used to call himself a drug-addled compound junkie.
* and good times, mmm
* I have had my fun...
stranahan: i'd go around to take care of hunter.
if he can toss the heineken bottle and catch it,
he hasn't had too much to drink.
and he began to retreat to owl farm more and more.
juan: then eventually he didn't really go out at all.
I guess people came to him.
wenner: he was writing occasional columns
for the "examiner" and he did that "lono" book.
they were all right.
but he wrote three pieces,
just- they were just brilliant.
elko, pulitzer, "polo"- those are beautiful,
but his work never got quite back to those levels.
it was all just repetitive,
not funny goofball stuff.
hunter wanted a persona,
but he became a hostage to that persona
as he got older and older
and he was being ridiculed as a comic-book character.
when garry trudeau first made duke
a character in doonesbury
it was absolutely, literally,
the raoul duke character that hunter invented.
it was hunter's literary property.
so I think he should've- he could have and-
in retrospect- should have stopped that.
but then he said, "what can I do?
I decided to own it. they want to see uncle duke?
I値l give 'em uncle duke times five."
- wow. - man: you see what I mean?
caddell: he hated "doonesbury." he hated being a caricature.
he also loved being a star,
but also it interfered with him being a reporter,
which is what he wanted to be.
hunter: if you want to be a famous american writer,
you don't really think of...
being in the comic strips,
you know, being-
oh, are we doing things like that?
yes, in front of the camera
and it will be on film, won't it? mmm.
hunter did become, in a way, a prisoner of his own fame.
wright: I was getting more distraught with his fame.
it was total chaos in the house.
just thoughts of booze, drugs,
staying up for days and parties.
and little did I know he was having affairs all over the place.
it was unhealthy for me, it was unhealthy for my son.
brinkley: eventually sondI uncovered a tape
of a woman that he was with.
woman: I知 gonna burn up with unfulfilled desire
if I have to stay here one more minute alone.
no, I don't want the delivery boy. I want you.
wright: so I remember sitting on the phone,
I looked up at him and I said,
"you know I can't do this anymore.
I知 gonna have to have a divorce."
well...
he just blew up and then I got scared
and I ended up calling the sheriff.
and a sheriff's deputy comes out to the house.
the guys says...
"um, does he have any guns?"
and I said, "'does he have any guns?'
he has 22 guns
and every one is loaded."
woman: hey!
brinkley: it was not an easy divorce for hunter.
he refused to leave owl farm.
sandy said, "the only thing he owns is this land.
I have to have half of what hunter owns,
'cause I知 divorcing him.
and I don't want half the land
because I have to live next to the son of a bitch."
so I got to buy my land back.
well, i'd given it to hunter.
so then I ended up making payments to sondI for the next 15 years.
buzz off! I知 going to florida.
brinkley: he couldn't write.
he was completely shattered
and jimmy buffet came to his rescue
and allowed him to come down
and stay at his house in key west free of charge.
* wasting away again in margaritaville... *
that's where we are.
* searching for my lost sugar and salt... *
hunter: you have never seen people drive so fucking slowly.
it's incredible. you dirty sons of bitches.
move over. go get in the fast lane, you cocksuckers.
buffet: the first thing I see is
"gonzo journalist comes to key west,"
front page, fucking "miamI herald."
hunter's stretched out in my apartment.
and then all of a sudden, i got a call from my accountant.
he said, "what's this
$9,000 telephone bill?" and I went...
"oh my god, hunter's down there and I left the phone on."
and like always...
then he got a boat and I thought, "oh, jesus."
you know, I expected to read the obituary during those days.
* if I had a boat, i'd go out on the ocean *
* and if I had a pony
* i'd ride him on my boat *
* and we could all together *
* go out on the ocean
* I said me upon my pony on my boat *
* I said me upon my pony *
* on my boat.
anita on tape: say hello to the dolphins. well, hello.
okay.
anita: well, the first time I met hunter,
it was just kind of a big writer that I was curious about.
when we got married, he promised me 10 years.
I just figured he was such a powerful force
that he would know.
if he said 10 years, that meant 10 years.
he had talked about suicide a lot since i've known him,
and now I know, talking to his former wife
and other girlfriends, that he had talked about it all the time.
depp: "trouble can come at you
from any direction these days,
like being chased through a crowded parking lot
by a pack of vicious stray dogs.
the world's situation has become so nervous and wrong
that disasters that would've been inconceivable
two years ago are almost commonplace today."
anita: I did start to worry about him
right after the bush election.
that I think was the trigger.
he didn't get angry, he just got depressed.
you know, I could handle when he was angry,
feisty or sulky-
anything but depressed or something I wasn't used to.
* goodbye, norma jean... *
there are certain moments that I知 really glad I had the camera.
there's a moment I walk out onto the balcony-
he had been listening to "candle in the wind" over and over and over.
there was a look of a grin,
like a roguish eye in his eye
when he was about to have some fun.
whoo-hoo-hoo.
anita: seeing him look at the keys-
especially to music- when he was having fun,
you could see it in his face and also on the page.
* I would have liked to have known you *
* oh, but I was just a kid *
* your candle burned out long before... *
- * your legend ever did. - I feel wet.
anita on tape: uh-oh. good.
when he did die, his words took on a new sparkle,
maybe because they are finite now.
we have a finite amount.
and just the fact that we have the words is a lucky thing.
I mean, imagine in a twisted universe
when he died if somehow he took
his words with him, his work.
anita: oh, come on, hunter.
- that was not cool at all. - I was tossing it to you.
- no, you weren't. - what are you talking about?
- I didn't hit him in the head like that. - anita: that's enough.
wolfe: to feel compelled to be gonzo all the time
must have been a burden on his poor mind.
he was so identified with the life he's described,
it was hard for him not to be in costume,
not to be the actor that was required.
hunter must have felt trapped - trapped in gonzo.
hunter: so, I知 really in the way as a person.
the myth has taken over
and I find myself, you know, an appendage.
I知...
I知 no longer necessary. I知 in the way.
it'd be much better if I died,
then people could take the myth and make films.
like, when I go out to-
when I got invited to speak at, say, universities,
I知 not sure if you're inviting duke or thompson.
so I知 not sure who to be-
so I知 not sure who to be.
I suppose that my plans are to figure out some new identity.
you know, I have to kill off one life and start another one-
kill off one life and start another one.
* hey, mr. tambourine man, play a song for me *
* I知 not sleepy... *
* and there is no place I知 going to... *
juan: it was no secret that
that's the way he would die.
he'd made that clear many years before,
that when the time came, he was gonna-
he was gonna take himself out
and it would be with a gun.
so that- that was no surprise.
but it's one thing to know that at some point,
you know, he was gonna kill himself
and it's another when it actually happens.
it was important to him
that we were there.
it was a sunny afternoon in the winter
and it was just a very peaceful time.
his family was there and he decided
"all right, this is a good time to go out."
it sounds kind of sappy,
but it was a warm family moment.
* I知 ready to go anywhere *
* I知 ready for to fade... *
steadman: when he did it, juan was in the next room
and he said, "when it happened
I thought I heard a book drop."
it went like that.
juan went outside with a gun
and shot three times into the air.
steadman: it was a kind of salute to him
as much as anything- or shock.
wright: hunter was very much about preserving a legacy,
and this was perfect.
this was romantic.
and in a lot of people's minds,
it was a very strong act. it was a noble act.
"go out when you're on top." he wasn't on top.
he was nowhere near on top.
but some people thought that,
and some people thought it was a very courageous act.
I think just the opposite.
I think this is a time
when a together hunter thompson
could make a difference in this country.
* I wouldn't pay it any mind *
* it's just a shadow you're seeing *
* that he's chasing... *
buffet: it's a tragic mistake. I wish he was still here.
I wish there was still a hunter around to talk to.
it's an amazing thing. you think on one side
it's fun to reminisce, but its sad that he's gone.
we could have used a few more years of hunter.
he could wield a pretty effective sword
against what's going on right now.
* I値l come followin' you... *
you know, just all of it.
just all of it.
hunter, no! you bastard!
fuckhead!
- oh shit. - hunter: you're okay.
I can't talk about it.
buchanan: he flamed out too quickly,
because of the way he lived his life
and chose to live his life.
so in my view it was- it was self-indulgent.
maybe that's what he wanted to do,
but he had so much more he could give his readers
and his people... and himself.
that's fitting. that's fitting.
- man: that's fitting for hunter. - a motorcycle...
...roars off.
okay.
steadman: it seems we're here today to discuss
some kind idea for a monument.
if I show you this- this is the basic idea,
but actually, hunter hasn't approved it yet.
it's just a thought, yeah.
he lives in aspen
- in colorado. - man: that is different.
is this something that you would want to do
- in the near future? - hunter: he's written-
- I知 not sure. - I mean you're talking about something
that maybe you want to do after you die.
oh, yeah, it's in the will. it's all described.
it's gonna be a little hard to do, particularly with me gone.
this rim of mountains is a giant valley 20 miles across.
- is this property that you own now? - hunter: yeah.
the property goes back over the cliffs,
so I can do whatever- if I wanted to build a...
mcdonald's, I could do it back there.
hunter: it's gonna be a pile of rocks about 100' tall.
* when I die and they lay me to rest... *
a giant cone- conical.
going around and tapering down to the top.
about every two years, the doctor tells me I知 gonna die.
for all I know, somehow i might live for 10 more years.
well, that's something - none of us know how long we're gonna live.
on top of the big arm,
a double- a fist with double thumbs- the symbol.
i've told you 1,000 times for 10 years-
you've got to put two thumbs on the fist.
steadman: it's better than no thumb, which is what you had.
* so you know that when you die *
* he's gonna recommend you *
* to the spirit in the sky *
* gonna recommend you to the spirit in the sky *
* that's where you're gonna go when you die *
* when you die and they lay you to rest... *
hunter: after the cremation, they put the ashes in a canister
and shoot it out of the top of the fist over the valley.
say 500' up, it explodes
and the ashes drift out all over there.
that I do know about. we place ashes in different areas.
I知 a firm believer in "ashes to ashes, and dust to dust."
and that's it. that's my funeral.
man: one, two, three, four!
* I went home with the waitress *
* the way I always do
* how was I to know
* she was with the russians too? *
* I was gambling in havana *
* I took a little risk *
* send lawyers, guns and money *
* dad, get me out of this
* hah!
* I知 the innocent bystander *
* somehow I got stuck
* between the rock and the hard place *
* and I知 down on my luck *
* yes, I知 down on my luck *
* well, I知 down on my luck *
* and I知 hiding in honduras *
* I知 a desperate man *
* send lawyers, guns and money *