Pages tagged “hunter s thompson”

Sampling an iconic and prolific figure of any artistic discipline can be a daunting task. When a kid asks about Robert Pollard or Martin Scorsese, where do you start? What do you leave out? It can be a bit trying. So, in an effort to introduce the uninitiated to the erratic genius of Hunter S. Thompson, I've compiled the following list. Use it as a beginner's guide of sorts, a springboard into HST's vast oeuvre. There is plenty more with these five came from:

The Killers are kicking the pre-release buzz for their forthcoming Day & Age album into high gear. Following the debut of the video for lead single "Human" (which showcases Brandon Flowers in a bizarre feathery jacket) and an appearance on Saturday Night Live, the Las Vegas-based band have announced it will hit the road come January.

The Gonzo Tapes: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, a five-disc collection of Thompson’s frenzied ramblings, speed freakouts, and drug-addled insights into The American Psyche will see the light of day for the first time on Oct. 28. The tapes document what Thompsonites consider the high point of the Dr. of Journalism's career ('65-'75), featuring notes and interviews that led to Hell’s Angels and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, as well as numerous unfinished or aborted articles on disparate topics like Sigmund Freud's cocaine habit and the end of the Vietnam war. So expect a lot of unfiltered ramblings about acid freaks, the Death of the American Dream, marrywanna, and—of course—The Fear.

Release Date: July 4
Director: Alex Gibney
Writer: Alex Gibney, Hunter S. Thompson (writings)
Cinematographer: Maryse Alberti
Starring: Hunter S. Thompson, Johnny Depp, Jimmy Buffet, Pat Buchanan, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Jann Wenner
Studio/Run Time: Magnolia Pictures, 118 mins.

My favorite thing about Alex Gibney's entertaining documentary, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thomspon, is that it makes me want to read what Thompson wrote. True to its name, the film trains its fair but reverent lens on the man's exploits and writings, in roughly equal measure.

Since most of what I knew about Thompson's life came after the fact and second hand, through his appearances on David Letterman and Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I've only recently discovered what a great writer he was. Johnny Depp reads his words engagingly in this documentary, but they're better on the page where even his account of a 1972 presidential election, which dwells on historical footnotes and also-rans, crackles with wit.

To modern eyes, that account is also startlingly relevant, which may have inspired the film. Gonzo feels like a contemporary lament for the void left by Thompson's suicide in 2006, an audible wish that the man had found a way to rekindle the passion instead of calling it quits.

The movie begins with a prescient essay Thompson wrote on September 11, 2001. "We are going to punish somebody for this attack," he wrote, "but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say." The film then pops back to Thompson's heyday of the '60s and '70s when he was infiltrating the Hell's Angels, running for mayor of Aspen, Colo. on the Freak Power ticket, and covering a presidential election for Rolling Stone. His adventures became the stuff of legend and formed the spine of his written work.

After making documentaries about Enron and Abu Ghraib (including the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side), Gibney is emerging as a chronicler of American public life, but he hasn't yet developed a distinctive style of his own. In Gonzo, he recreates bits of Thompson's history with reenactments that look like home movies. They're fake, but sometimes they're married to real audio recordings, creating a sort of confusion that was also a hallmark of Thompson's work. He famously reported that candidate Edmund Muskie was rumored to be under the influence of a powerful narcotic called ibogaine, but he omitted the fact that he’d started the rumor. However, I'm not sure we need Gibney to dabble in Gonzo documentation as much as we need him simply to relay the stories.

He's managed to get some great interviews with people who Thompson supported, skewered, or supported then skewered: Jimmy Carter, Pat Buchanan, George McGovern. Thompson's truth-telling about the '72 election sprang from an idealism that could bear both hope and despondency as its fruits. Gary Hart calls such rigid expectations naive because politics is the science of compromise, and I suppose Gibney's belief that our generation needs a Hunter S. Thompson may be just as naive, since our world is a vastly different place. Fewer hitchhikers. More media consultants. And so many weblogging firebrands and editorializing pundits that we could almost stir them with a stick.

We don't need people to do precisely what Thompson did, because they're doing it. (Perhaps not as well, and with decidedly fewer intoxicants.) But we still need people to find the holes in the system, slip through, and pry them open from the other side. Thompson's erratic, drug-addled demeanor may have obscured that singular talent, and while Gonzo is honest about his excesses and failures, it's also an important protector of his deserved legacy because it shows respect for his work.

Watch the trailer for Gonzo:

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On Independence Day, a film exploring the life of one of the most staunchly independent thinkers in U.S. history will be released in theaters. Gonzo, the highly anticipated forthcoming documentary about the late journalistic and literary legend Hunter S. Thompson, is set to come out July 4. Written and directed by Oscar-winner Alex Gibney and produced by Graydon Carter, the film features appearances not only by entertainers like Johnny Depp (who narrates) and Jimmy Buffett, but also a good bit of political star power from the likes of Jimmy Carter, Pat Buchanan and George McGovern. Many more appear to comment on the massive legacy of Dr. Thompson, alongside lots and lots of cigarettes and sunglasses.

Gonzo Stranger Than Fiction
Buy the ticket, take the preconception-defying ride

Truth is relative. There isn’t always one correct answer.

Platitudes though these may be, they are also things we learn growing up, whether from adults who are older and wiser and have lived enough to know disappointment and how to rebound from mistakes, or simply through our own misadventures. Still, it’s worth repeating: Truth is relative.

Hunter S. Thompson, to many, is nothing more than a wild-eyed maniac, known as much (if not more) for his intoxicated predilections as his intoxicating verbiage.

But within the man was a multitude. There was the Thompson who mentally annihilated a young assistant, saying, “By the time I was your age I’d written Hell’s Angels; what have you done today?” There was the warmhearted Thompson who brought piles of gifts for the children when visiting old friends. There was the irreverently funny Thompson who delivered by phone his “Christmas greeting” during the season of giving: “This is Santa Claus—ho, ho, ho—I shit down your chimney.” And there was also a much more serious Thompson, at times a hypocritical, jealous, un-amused fellow who’d end a longterm relationship with a woman because she rode on a motorcycle with another man—this while he was sleeping around behind her back.

Two essentially different writers existed in Thompson, too. First was the man who wrote all those brilliant books, and—eventually—the public legend that slowly grew to overshadow the books and his true self.

Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson highlights without question the larger-than-life persona. The book chronicles the countless guns used to blow things up, an orange thrown through a plate glass window, all manner of drugs and drink, and celebrities from all walks of life (including Jack Nicholson, Jimmy Buffett, Sean Penn, John Belushi, Paul Oakenfold, Johnny Depp, Jimmy Carter and Marilyn Manson, to name but a few). There’s even a tale of Thompson getting a monkey drunk, before it—shockingly—commits suicide.

At the same time, though, this thorough tome presents many private elements as it touches the essential moments of this iconic author’s life. Covered is Thompson’s youth in Louisville, Ky.; his military stint; his time—and eventually his book—with the Hells Angels; his 1970 campaign for sheriff of Aspen, Colo.; the birth of “Gonzo,” his unhinged, infamously first-person style of journalism; the beginning of Thompson’s political obsession; his near-constant relationship failures; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (the book and movie); and all the rest.

Most illuminating, and depressing, is when it becomes clear that Thompson’s Gonzo persona has eclipsed his talent. The writer, in his twilight, continued to exist in high profile, but could barely finish an article. While Thompson aficionados will love this book for its minutiae (one fun fact amongst many: Don Johnson says Thompson “co-created” Nash Bridges with him), newbies will no longer be referred to as such upon finishing Gonzo. This informative oral history turns its readers, regardless of experience, into authorities on Thompson’s life.

The truth in Thompson’s work gets flipped-flopped throughout this book as much as the preconceptions about his life. Over the years, countless people have accused Thompson of flat-out making up stuff in his writing. (Should this come as a surprise to anyone who’s read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?) This happens in Gonzo, as well. But just as bountiful are the people throughout the book who claim he downplayed the reality of his written word.

And, yes, regardless of how you feel about Thompson after reading of his myriad character flaws and the way he decided to live and end his life, the fact remains that he is one of the most interesting people ever to have put words on a page.

Surely, Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner had to cut reams of content from this book, and that’s because, to quote James Carville, “Hunter did something that none of us had the guts to do—he led the kind of life that secretly all of us would like to have had the guts to lead. To hell with the whole thing, just stay drunk and high and smoke and hang out and write outrageous things.”

That he did. Yet before Thompson was a persona, he was a talent. And as his talent began to propel him into the spotlight, he realized that the persona intensified the spotlight to the nth degree, so he continued to exaggerate the character. The problem, of course, is that as he cultivated and furthered the three-ring circus that his body eventually became, he fostered addictions he found impossible to control. As those addictions went from accessories to full-blown, required ensembles, his talent slowly began to move in the opposite direction.

Which brings us to perhaps the most surprising aspect of Gonzo: While one may open the book expecting to confirm the much-talked-about “truth”—that Thompson epitomized the notion of free spirit—one might not realize the sad, downward turn that came with it. Watching the author’s genius deteriorate to the point where he can’t write a single story (much less a new book) is heartbreaking. Reading about the physical and verbal abuse that tore apart his first marriage to Sandy Thompson or how he and his son Juan never really connected until the final decade of Thompson’s life is even sadder.

All that’s left now are Thompson’s words, many of them inspired. Instead of wallowing in his passing, readers might take a cue from his myth and celebrate the work.

Thompson himself may have put it best in a conversation with Sandy, long after their divorce. Asked if things had turned out like he wanted, the merry prankster responded, "Well, of course not," pausing for a long, emphatic look. "But it's been glamorous."