The Amanuensis

July 28th, 2010


Amanuensis is an interesting word. I discovered it this morning in The New York Times obituary for Judith Peabody, a New York socialite who devoted her life to philanthropy, caring for AIDS patients, and, strangely enough, Lenny Bruce. After reading an article about the profane comedian’s legal troubles in the 1960’s she wrote him a check and became his “part time amanuensis, helping him with his legal research,” according to The Times.

An amanuensis is a scribe or writer’s assistant “employed by an individual to write from his or her dictation or to copy manuscripts” (from Encarta World English Dictionary) – exactly what I came to be with my camera for Dr. Hunter S. Thompson over a very long period of time. Writing was never easy for Hunter. I don’t think it is for anyone, no matter how successful they are. But, Hunter took the task to extreme levels of frustration and exasperation, as you can see in my latest film Animals, Whores & Dialogue.

When the going got too tough to actually get the words directly from his brain onto a piece of paper, Hunter would fall back on a device he discovered early in his career – a tape recorder. Perhaps that’s why he described a Gonzo journalist as having the “eye and mind of a camera.” If you could just record events and your interaction with them, then there would be no need for the pain of writing.

When we were working on Kingdom of Fear, the pain and frustration levels were extremely high. Hunter would recall, almost proudly, how blocked he became trying to finish Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972. Holed up in San Francisco’s Seal Rock Inn after the campaign, Hunter simply could not write the conclusion to his bi-weekly reports from the Presidential race that had been serialized in Rolling Stone. In desperation, his editor recorded his conversations with Hunter and then transcribed and edited them into their final form.

Those who might think less of Hunter as a writer for relying on this method, might consider the case of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, aka Mark Twain, who often worked in exactly the same way, especially towards the end of his life. In a review of the Autobiography of Mark Twain, the first volume of which is coming out this November, Larry Rohter reported in The New York Times that

Twain dictated most of it to a stenographer in the four years before his death at 74 on April 21, 1910. He argued that speaking his recollections and opinions, rather than writing them down, allowed him to adopt a more natural, colloquial and frank tone, and Twain scholars who have seen the manuscript agree.

Kingdom of Fear was as close to an autobiography as anything Hunter ever wrote, even though much of it was pulled together out of the basement from existing published and unpublished material. Given the eclectic nature of those pieces, we were desperate for some sort of thread to tie the book together, just as I use the scene of Hunter writing a column for ESPN over one long night as the glue that holds together Animals, Whores & Dialogue.

The original connective tissue for Kingdom of Fear was to be the story of “The Witness” – the 99 day saga of the early nineties when Hunter made the mistake of letting a woman who prided herself on producing pornography into Owl Farm. As a result, Hunter was busted for sexual assault and a litany of drug charges, and fought a winning battle for 99 days to stay out of the system.

Hunter wrote the first installment of The Witness which appears on pages 19 through 28 in Kingdom of Fear in early 2002. Those nine pages are some of the most concise and hysterically wonderful words he ever wrote. Take for example his description of the porn film produced by The Witness called Nazi Penetration:

Nazi Penetration has always been one of my favorite films of the sex genre. It is a story of shipwreck, sadism, and absolutely hopeless female victims confined on a tiny tropical island with only a Nazi war criminal and two cruel Japanese nymphomaniacs to keep them company. The naked white girls are innocent prisoners of some long-forgotten war that is never mentioned in the movie except by way of the frayed and often bottomless military uniforms worn by the demented villains….

And, Hunter’s description of his role in the sex business as the Night Manager of the O’Farrell Theater (where we first met as you can read in The O’Farrell herein) is classic Gonzo:

The Night Manager gig was only a cover for my real responsibility, which was to keep them [the Mitchell Brothers) out of jail, which was not easy. The backstairs politics of San Francisco has always been a Byzantine snake pit of treachery and overweening bribery-driven corruption so perverse as to stagger the best minds of any generation.

We used to howl in the kitchen when those first nine pages were read and re-read, but unfortunately that went on for many months without any more new material being written. Hunter was desperate to finish the book; he needed the money naturally. And, I was desperate as well. I wanted to finish my film -Breakfast with Hunter – and release it at the same time as the book.

Thus, we came to fall back on the tried and true method of extracting truth, wisdom, and a good laugh out of the Doctor – recordings, but now video as well as audio – ‘cause I figured if I was going to devote a year or so of my life to the book, I should at least get something for my movie in return.

I suggested we have Sheriff Bob Braudis come to the kitchen and interview Hunter about The Witness, since he had been intimately involved on the law enforcement side when Hunter was busted. The Sheriff agreed and spent two long afternoons interviewing Hunter. I filmed the scene with two cameras – one that I would leave running on its own on Hunter and the other handheld moving around on Bob. I then took that footage and transcribed the audio, and Hunter and I and Anita and Jennifer Stroup – another long-suffering, amanuensis; but young, blonde and far better looking than I – edited and massaged those transcripts into what became the second Witness section in the book (pages 116 – 142).

In the end we finished the book, Hunter got paid, and I captured a very poignant moment with the two big men. When I filmed the scene, I never even saw the gun in Hunter’s hands since I was framing the Sheriff at that moment. Years after he shot himself sitting in the same spot in the kitchen, I discovered the footage while editing Animals, Whores & Dialogue. It’s still not easy for me to watch, but that pain is lessened by the look in the Sheriff’s eyes as he listens to his best friend sum up the meaning of his life.

Copyright 2010 by Wayne Ewing

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Hunter’s Birthday

July 7th, 2010

July 18, 2010 is Hunter’s 73rd birthday, although for many years he would not acknowledge that date whenever asked. Instead, he would say proudly, “I’m like a thoroughbred. All horses have the same birthday, January 1st.” Which is true. In the world of racing all horses are considered to have been born on the first day of the year in order to make it easier to calculate age qualifications for a race.

In Hunter’s case, his claim on New Year’s Day as his birthday was part of an interesting strategy of denial at the passage of years which he picked up from his Mother. He would often say that not only was he born on January 1st but that his Mother was as well. They were both thoroughbreds in his mind, immune to time.

So for many years we purposely ignored Hunter’s birthday until his 50th came around in 1987. We could not resist celebrating his half century and assumed he would be pleased if we had a bit of a surprise party for him. About a dozen of us gathered at the Woody Creek Tavern at the corner table by the front window under the buffalo head and waited for Sheriff Bob to deliver him with the excuse of just stopping by the tavern for a drink.

When they came through the front door, we all screamed “Happy Birthday!”

Hunter yelled “Fuck You!” turned on his heels and went back to the car, followed by the Sheriff. They sat out there talking while we waited under the buffalo head. After twenty minutes, they drove off. I always wondered what they talked about. Getting old, I imagine.

“Who do you think you are? Peter Pan?” Hunter would often exclaim. I have a feeling that he wished that he was, like we all do.

However, towards the end of his life, Hunter began to acknowledge and enjoy his birthdays. He actually encouraged Deborah and Anita to have parties for him on July 18th . They were wonderful summer time affairs with gin watermelons and fireworks. We brought him gifts without fear. He particularly liked things that exploded unexpectedly, and we all had great fun.

So I think Hunter would appreciate the present I have for him this July 18th . Animals, Whores & Dialogue is the sequel to Breakfast with Hunter and somewhere on the edge of the desert in Utah right now they are pressing the DVDs that we will begin shipping early next week to those who want to spend some more time with Hunter.
Here’s a preview:

I’m hoping more than a few will have a Gonzo birthday party and gather their friends to watch the new film and celebrate Hunter’s life and work. We will be shipping via First Class Mail on Tuesday, July 13. So, if you’re in the continental US you should receive the film in time for a screening on the 18th . We’re also offering all four of the films together at a discount with Priority Mail shipping.

“It’s not art unless it sells,” Hunter often said, so I feel little shame in pitching. His Estate also benefits directly from the DVD sales; Hunter was a shrewd business partner.

When my Producer Jennifer Erskine looked at the first cut of Animals, Whores & Dialogue she said with a tear in her eye, “Now he’ll live for ever.”

A lot of us have a hard time watching the film with dry eyes, but there’s much fun to be found there too, not unlike those afternoons in July with watermelons filled with gin, exploding ketchup bottles, and a twinkle in Hunter’s eyes.

Happy Birthday, Hunter!

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The Premiere

May 15th, 2010

The May, 1998 New York premiere of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was of course filled with both fear and loathing for Hunter. He feared the film would be panned, and he loathed Terry Gilliam.
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Hunter had already seen the film at an unusual screening in Aspen two weeks earlier. Universal sent a 35mm “double system” print of the film in which the sound is separate from the film. Only in Aspen could you find a 35mm projector capable of playing two monstrous rolls of 35mm picture and sound together in sync. The screening room of an Owl Creek mansion owned by a women’s clothing magnate had just the right equipment, including luxurious sofas and an elaborate bar in the back. Sheriff Bob drove me, Hunter, and Heidi – his assistant and girlfriend at the time – to the screening and stayed to see the show.

“This is better than I thought. I’m pleasantly surprised,” hollered Hunter, as the credits rolled and the Stones played “Sympathy for the Devil. “

“It is ugly,” Hunter then added, a bit begrudgingly.

“It’s your life. What do you expect?” Heidi countered.

“Like a drug survival trip,” Hunter admitted.

“We survived,” the Sheriff concluded.

But, surviving the actual premiere in New York was another matter. For some reason Terry Gilliam seemed intent on insulting Hunter while publicizing the film, and Ralph Steadman joined him. The two of them sat down for two and a half hours together to talk about the film and Hunter. Ralph taped their session, and then gave the tape to The New York Times. Amidst what is actually an interesting conversation about film making and Gilliam’s career, they went out of their way to disparage Hunter:

GILLIAM. He is an outrageous romanticist, a huge romantic about America, and a hugely self-absorbed person as well. That’s why he thinks he’s the Messiah in a strange way. He’s God, he’s God.

STEADMAN. He’s a Messiah of a kind.

GILLIAM. And they come to the mountain all the time, and he’s stuck in there. I think that’s a sad side of Hunter’s: he’s stuck in time. I keep saying the guy died around 1974, and the guy that’s here is this mummified version of him. He has to keep living a life, and being here.

The ending of The New York Times piece was particularly offensive to Hunter:

GILLIAM. When I first met Hunter, there was a bottle of Chivas, a bottle of wine, a can of beer, I think. There was a tin of coke. He had his hash — what else did he have?

STEADMAN. He snorts whiskey, too. Have you seen him clean his nose with whiskey?

In a FAX to Depp on the day the piece was published Hunter wrote, “Well, Mr. Gilliam has done his version of Pearl Harbor on me in the NY Times (May 3, ’98)…Chatting intimately about his Personal Access to me puts him on the same level as a Police Informant, like some crab-ridden slut on the street who sells tips to cops and mendacious gossip to Tabloids – some kind of failed whore who turns in her customers.” At the premiere in New York, a confrontation with Gilliam seemed inevitable, and could easily result in real violence.

The Carlyle Hotel at 76th and Madison was one of Hunter’s favorites, and mine as well. The staff at the Carlyle was discrete and understanding of their guests’ needs. Once, after being nominated for an Emmy Award and then losing at the awards dinner, I returned to the Carlyle with my girlfriend and in despair we drank every bottle in the mini-bar. Upon checkout I discovered a $445 dollar charge for the binge on my bill, and complained that it must be in error.

“How could anyone drink the entire mini-bar in one night?” I protested to the cashier.

“Of course, you’re right, Sir. I’ll remove the charge completely,” said the cashier with a look that still shames me today to remember. The man knew I was lying, but was too polite to argue. Just the kind of slack Hunter would require when he checked in under the name “Omar Gray” switching from his first choice of “Victor Suave” at the last minute since it had been used before. I see from my notes that Depp was checked in at the Four Seasons under the name “Mr. Stench.”

A taxi strike was in the offing, but that worried me more than it did Hunter who would hardly settle for anything less than a stretch limo. A mere town car could be a source of immense dissatisfaction (the Beast did have long legs and a bad back), and I made sure a stretch would be there courtesy of Universal to get us to the premiere. We charged Hunter’s rental tux to Omar Gray’s account at the Carlyle so that Universal would also end up paying for the monkey suit along with thousands of dollars in room service.

The night before the premiere Ed Bradley dropped by the Carlyle for a visit. Hunter was highly agitated, wondering what to say to the press about the movie. Ed had a good answer which I wrote down in my notebook and would repeat for Hunter over the next 24 hours like a mantra:

“I hope people who have read the book will see the movie, and I hope people who have seen the movie will read the book.”

I was staying at the New York Hilton courtesy of my sister Kathleen who had connections there for a rate far less than the Carlyle. Even though I worked as the Road Manager off and on for years, I usually paid my own expenses. Making my self “useful,” as Hunter put it, enabled me to make my film along the way. Kathleen and her assistant Sara Lyons came up from Washington, DC to help me wrangle the Beast through the city. But that meant I had to take taxis (provided they weren’t on strike) which could take a half hour from the Hilton to the Carlyle. So I moved my dress clothes into a large closet off of the living room of Hunter’s suite at the Carlyle to change for the premiere.

When I emerged from the closet in my coat and tie, George Plimpton was standing in the middle of the living room making notes while Hunter dressed in the bedroom. Plimpton was everything you expected him to be and more – quite the gentlemen with a wry sense of humor and great patience and respect for Hunter. He later wrote that “Everyone seemed involved in getting Hunter ready for his premiere like preparing a somewhat balky float for a parade.” Later, Hunter complimented Plimpton that the writing was a “good lick” just as he would have said to Keith Richards about his guitar playing.

George Plimpton was a wise, soothing companion for Hunter on the way to the premiere, first in the elevator of the Carlyle and then in the stretch going downtown, as you can see in Breakfast with Hunter.

Plimpton’s line, “How is any filmmaker going to get into your head? It’s impossible,” is a keen observation about both Hunter and the film, even though George hadn’t seen the movie yet; the interior, drug-fueled monologues throughout FLLV are what made it so hard to translate to the screen.

Always caught between my dual role as filmmaker and Road Manager, I neglected the latter when we arrived at the theater. Hunter wanted a plan before we got out of the car so I said “let’s jump” like paratroopers. Kathleen and Sara were waiting at the curb, and they led Hunter quickly inside, rushing by the mob of mostly amateur paparazzi behind the barriers and into the theater too quickly. For some stupid reason I thought Hunter wanted to avoid the mob, forgetting that the press, even if it was a mob, is the whole purpose of a premiere. Naturally, we were booed heavily by the photogs behind the barricades for running by so quickly, leading to bitter complaints from Hunter. Once Plimpton was by his side, Hunter calmed down like a nervous thoroughbred with his favorite stable mate.

Hunter lumbered down the red carpet and then onto the escalator to the lobby of the theater below, leaving the gauntlet of A-list press upstairs also unsatisfied, even though they had gotten Hunter to stand still for a few shots, unlike those outside. Perhaps Hunter and I thought there was more press downstairs in the theater lobby, but once we got down the escalator he refused to go back up the stairs.

Jann Wenner joined Laila Nabulsi in pestering Hunter to go back up for more photos. They seemed to think he was being a diva, and then Hunter sadly whispered in my ear, “My legs are giving out. I can’t walk back up the steps.”

I pulled Plimpton aside and told him the real problem Hunter was too embarrassed to admit. George instantly thought of a solution. “We’ll make the escalator go up rather than down,” George declared and hurried to find the manager to reverse the escalator.

Unfortunately, no one could find the key for the escalator control so we stayed in the lower lobby where Hunter began to get even more agitated. I spied a door off to the side with a combination lock on it and got the manager to give me the code. Now we had a more private place to retreat. Fortuitously, that was where they stored the popcorn in tall, clear plastic bags. When Hunter saw the popcorn, his eyes brightened in the same way they would at the sight of a fire extinguisher. A prank was in the making.

Johnny stopped by to hang with Hunter who gave him the calla lilies he had been carrying since leaving the Carlyle. Universal’s publicists also came to his hideout off the lobby, saying that they had brought the press into the downstairs lobby. But Hunter could see that Gilliam was now posing with Depp and Benicio del Toro and refused to have his picture taken with Gilliam. Hunter waited until Gilliam was pulled away by a savvy publicist and then pounced with the popcorn.

The rest of the evening was a blast, and I concentrated on enjoying it while still taking care of the Beast and shooting a bit along the way. The official premiere party was at the China Club where Hunter contrarily insisted he wanted to watch basketball on television. I found a television set in the manager’s office, which became Hunter’s headquarters and the new VIP room of the China Club for the night. All the right people stopped by to knock on the door and see if we would let them in.

The next event was even more discreet – a dinner hosted by Depp at Jezebel’s, a fancy, lace-curtained restaurant without a sign outside, but inside there was to be NO SMOKING in the days when this was not a law but rather a rarity in New York. I think Johnny must have pleaded Hunter’s case to Jezebel since she grudgingly allowed Hunter, and only Hunter, to smoke. Years later, one of the reasons Hunter rarely ventured from the kitchen at Owl Farm was the escalation of the war against smoking. Even the Woody Creek Tavern became a No Smoking Zone, and he rarely went there and then only after closing time.

I wrote about my experience with Jimmy Buffett that night leaving Jezebel’s earlier in my vodcast “The Gonzo Pilot” so I won’t repeat the story here except to say moments like that justified the difficulties of life on the road with Hunter.

The night ended with George Plimpton about 3am at Elaine’s – the fashionable writers’ watering hole on the East Side often identified with George. While we guzzled a bottle of Cristal Champagne compliments of Hunter’s old friend and lawyer John Clancy (look for a fascinating piece by John Clancy in Warren Hinckle’s soon-to-be-released book Who Killed Hunter S. Thompson), I eyed the two NYPD cruisers parked directly in front of Elaine’s window, the two cops sitting together in the front car, just staring back at me through the window. Paranoia started to creep up my spine, and I thought about how many possible missteps it was from the front door of Elaine’s to our limo sitting a few yards in front of the cops. Fortunately, Hunter behaved himself on the sidewalk as we left; he could see the obvious danger as well as I. He hated cops, and though he had no fear, he would never taunt them.

Back at the Carlyle I gathered up my dirty clothes from the closet and packed up my camera. Hunter was as pleased as I ever saw him in twenty years, and spontaneously inscribed a blad of The Rum Diary to me. Blads are pre-publication sales tools for books that usually have only a chapter or two. They are often considered highly collectible, especially if signed by the author, but I would never part with mine in a million years.
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On the street outside the Carlyle at 4am I wandered helplessly, clutching my dirty clothes and the blad, searching for a taxi. “Did they strike,” I wondered. It certainly seemed so that morning in Manhattan. But, I didn’t care; we had shot the gap.

Copyright 2010 By Wayne Ewing

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Louisville – Part Two

April 4th, 2010

“Did you hear? They found a dead student underneath the stage,” Hunter growled, giving me quite the wake up call at the Brown Hotel in Louisville the morning after his “Tribute.”

“This is going to look terrible in the local papers,” I thought, certainly overshadowing the key to the city Hunter had received upon his return to the scene of so many boyhood crimes. But, I wasn’t surprised; after the crowd had gone crazy and set the Green Room on fire at the Memorial Auditorium, the dead student seemed not only possible, but likely. I felt a rush of guilt – a sensation Hunter rarely, if ever, experienced – and knew I shouldn’t have left the venue so quickly.

“Jesus! When did they find the body?” I asked.

“This morning,” Hunter replied with a bit of hesitation, giving me hope.

“What killed him?”

“Nothing! Just kidding. But after you pissed that mob off it could have happened,” confessed the inventor of Gonzo Journalism, employing one of the central devices of his genre: if it “could have” happened in a dramatic fashion, then why not say it actually did if it makes your point? And, if the hyperbole is funny, you must use it.

After the dead student trick, I almost didn’t give the Beast the good news, but I couldn’t help myself.

“I met a woman last night who wants you to autograph her ass. Seriously!”

“Interesting. Tell me more about this woman,” said Hunter.

Raven was her name, at least her stage name. She was a stripper that I met in a club down the street from the Brown Hotel. After the Tribute event my friend Mark and I caught up with Hunter and his sea of admirers in a bar for a couple of drinks, and then parted ways. Hunter left with Sheriff Bob to take a local poetess home, a drive the Sheriff later described fearfully: Hunter made Bob sit in the back while he squired the poetess, driving to her front door at high speed on a narrow sidewalk between stately elm trees and a rock wall

At the same time, Mark and I were admiring the view of Raven on the other side of town. She came over and had a drink with us after her performance and asked what we were doing in town. I explained we were filming an event over at the Memorial Auditorium, a tribute to Louisville anti-hero Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.

Raven brightened at the mention of the name. “I love Hunter Thompson,” she cooed. “He’s my favorite author. I’ve always had this fantasy of having his autograph tattooed on my ass. It would be quite something to see when I’m on stage, don’t ya think?”

“I don’t know if Hunter has the patience, or the skill, to do a tattoo,” I ventured, ”But you’re talking to the right guy. I’m his Road Manager.” I could see this girl was quite serious about the tattoo, and had thought about this before, given her quick answer.

“All he has to do is sign my butt with a Sharpie, you know, those indelible markers, and then I’ll have a real tattoo person trace over it with the needle,” she countered brightly.

“Call me at the Brown Hotel before noon, and there’s a chance you’ll get your autograph,” I suggested.

The next morning, not long after Hunter’s dead student wake up, Raven called my room. I told her to be in the lobby at 1pm. Hunter planned to visit his Mother in the rest home and said the stripper could ride in the car. He’d do the autograph on her ass along the way.

Raven was in the lobby promptly, clutching a half dozen medium and fine point black and red Sharpies in her hand. Funny how in the light of day, most strippers lose some of their allure. Yet, Raven was still quite attractive, just a bit more zaftig than I remembered. She certainly had a good, broad canvas for the Gonzo autograph.

Sheriff Bob showed up first in the lobby to drive Hunter to see his Mom. I explained Raven’s presence, and while we waited Bob, told me about his dinner bonding with Warren Zevon the night before. They were now the best of friends. Bob would eventually make Warren an honorary Deputy Sheriff after we did the Free Lisl Auman rally in Denver in 2001. You can see the rally in my film Free Llsl: Fear & Loathing in Denver.

“Zevon’s really pissed off about getting old. He’s losing his hair, and he can’t get laid so easy on the road anymore,” Bob reported sympathetically.

“That explains the wig,” I thought. Interestingly, Zevon only wore the odd wig in rehearsal (see Louisville – Part One herein), not for the performance. Perhaps he took a good look at himself in the mirror.

Sheriff Bob related his fearful story of Hunter driving the poetess home the night before, and concluded, “Today, I’m driving!”

Hunter eventually lurched into the lobby. I introduced him to Raven, and loaded them into the car, the Sheriff behind the wheel in the front and Hunter in the back with Raven, her handful of Sharpies at the ready.

“Done deal,” I thought, as they pulled away. Getting Hunter to give autographs, or sign a book, was always problematic. But, with the Beast stuck in the back seat with a girl who wanted to bare her butt for his penmanship, I figured it a sure thing for Raven.

Sheriff Bob told me what happened on that Kentucky drive on the long journey back to Aspen the next day. Rather than going directly to see Hunter’s Mom in the rest home, Hunter first had a secret mission in mind: he wanted to visit an old girl friend many miles away on the Indiana border. After hours of driving to Indiana and back, Bob, Hunter and Raven finally made it to the rest home where Bob sat with Raven in the car trading backgrounds for an hour or so while Hunter visited his Mom. In the end, Raven never got him to autograph her ass, despite riding in the car with him for the whole afternoon and into the evening.

Perhaps Hunter thought he was doing her a favor, not leaving her with the Gonzo Brand to explain to potential suitors for the rest of her life. More likely, he found Sheriff Bob’s presence in the car inhibiting, or he simply enjoyed her company – Hunter always needed a pretty girl at his side – and feared that once he gave the autograph she would be gone.

In Louisville I learned that you find Gonzo fans in the oddest places, and the Gonzo Brand or HST quotes tattooed on more people than you might imagine. I’m just sorry that Raven didn’t get hers. Or maybe she did, and Bob and Hunter, being the gentlemen they are, never told me the truth.

Perhaps we might find out about Raven’s tattoo and certainly discover just how creatively Hunter’s fans have decorated their own bodies with his brand in one form or another, if readers start posting pictures of their Gonzo tattoos in the Gonzo Room here at HunterThompsonFilms.com. I’ve started a new thread in the “HST Influence” Forum labeled “Gonzo Tattoos.”

Should be quite a gallery of Gonzo body art before long, and perhaps we’ll see if Raven finally got here wish in one form or another.

Copyright 2010 by Wayne Ewing

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Louisville – Part One

March 27th, 2010

1996 marked the 25th anniversary of the publication of Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, and the Gonzo celebrations of that fall produced great scenes for Breakfast with Hunter (and the soon to be released Breakfast with Hunter, Volume Two which I’m considering calling instead Animals, Whores and Dialogue. What do you think?).

Fortunately, I had just gone fully digital the summer of 1996, buying the first Sony prosumer mini-digital video recorder, the DCR VX1000. What a beast! Almost impossible to focus, especially while zooming, but it produced images that I hoped might be good enough to blow up to 35mm one day. In 2003, I did just that to qualify Breakfast with Hunter for the Academy Awards, and the movie looked surprisingly sharp.

The fall of 1996 was a rock and roll style Fear & Loathing tour: first, the Viper Room appearance with Johnny Depp; then, the Lotus Club in New York with George Plimpton, P.J. O’Rourke, and hundreds of other literati and stars. That Manhattan night ended with Hunter splayed out, fully clothed in the bathtub of his suite at the Four Seasons Hotel, overwhelmed by adulation. For me the high point was feeding Kate Moss french fries in Hunter’s crowded bedroom (one at a time, very slowly) while Johnny watched suspiciously from across the room.

But, the return of Billy the Kid to Louisville in December, 1996 for “A Tribute to Hunter S. Thompson” at the Memorial Auditorium was the true climax of the tour. Returning to Louisville as a hero after leaving in disgrace was Hunter’s revenge on all those who doubted his youthful certainty that he would write the great American novel.

I flew into Louisville a day early to advance the event. Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis brought Hunter in the next day, flying commercially via Chicago, and I met them at the gate at the Louisville airport. This was my first gig with Sheriff Bob, and he seemed relieved to see a radio in my hand.

“He’s got the shits,” remarked Bob. “He could barely get out of the bathroom in Chicago. You got a car?”

“Right here,” I said, raising the van driver at the curb outside on the radio.

“Nice,” observed Bob, as Hunter lumbered up the ramp from the plane.

That radio link to the van cemented my relationship with the Sheriff. Every once and awhile, when things get really rough in the indie film making world I think of taking him up on his jesting offer after Louisville to become a Deputy Sheriff. That’s how artist Tom Benton survived some of the last of his years, as a jailer for Bob. But, then I think about having to show up everyday, even if it’s a powder day.

The van took Hunter and Bob to the classic Brown Hotel downtown, while I returned to the Memorial Auditorium to finish lighting the stage and see if the dozen fire extinguishers I had ordered for Hunter had been delivered yet. Most importantly, they had to be the CO2 type, not the dry chemical type. CO2 just tickles you a bit, and might even freeze your skin if exposed at a close distance, but the dry chemical type makes your tongue dry up like beef jerky, and breathing almost impossible. Back in New York, Hunter had used the dry chemical type on Jann Wenner (as you can see here), who swore that it cost $10,000 to clean the fine, white powder out of his office after wards.

The fire extinguishers were on stage when I arrived at the Memorial Auditorium, a classic Louisville venue with a façade of Doric columns. A local sound company was setting mikes, and I tried to make the only four lights available illuminate the whole scene. Daylight flooded the stage annoyingly as the back door opened and Warren Zevon entered, wearing the oddest wig I have ever seen in rock & roll. Trying to ignore the hair piece, I introduced myself as Hunter’s Road Manager & Filmmaker. Zevon seemed to care little who I was. Too many years on the road, the last few essentially alone, had left him gruff and even more cynical than his lyrics. Years later, when we did the “Free Lisl” rally in Denver we would become friends, but today in Louisville he was cold and mistrusting.

We worked on the mix for a bit, Zevon hitting the first chords of “Lawyers, Guns & Money” repeatedly until he got the sound where he wanted it. “I think it should be beastly,” he commanded. A good excuse for a rough audio system, I thought.

Then Hunter arrived, taking over the stage and the rehearsal with his charismatic presence. I barely got a sound check from him. Hunter was more intent on playing with the fire extinguishers lined up on stage than jabbering into a mike for an empty auditorium. I worried how the show was going to go, with no script that I could discern, except for crumpled sheets of typed and illegible handwritten pages that Douglas Brinkley carried.

A film making comrade, Mark Muheim, arrived to operate my new, second Sony DCR VX1000. We were now a crew of two – a far cry from my last concert production filming the Eagles return to the Rose Bowl for 80,000 fans. There I directed four film cameras remotely from beneath the stage. At least here, I hoped security wouldn’t be an issue.

After doing all I could to make sure the set was ready for the show I went back to The Brown Hotel. Hunter’s son Juan was sitting in the lobby of the Brown with his laptop writing intently. I wondered what he was up to, and found out later that night when he delivered one of the most insightful and elegant appraisals of his iconic father that has ever been written. Juan’s speech appears throughout Breakfast with Hunter, and this is how it and the film ends.

The Louisville show went far better than most Hunter Thompson stage events which usually involved rambling question & answer sessions with the answers mostly indecipherable. But, on this triumphal night returning to the scene of his youthful crimes, Hunter was remarkably well behaved, also perhaps because his Mother was there. I found her before the show sitting in a wheelchair in the Green Room backstage, a cigarette in one hand and a gin and tonic in the other. Then in her nineties, she was still imposing, and cowed me when I introduced myself, the DCR VX1000 in hand, by warning, “If you point that camera at me, I’ll break it!” I never got a shot of her, unfortunately.

The show also went well due to the supporting cast, many of whom are in Breakfast with Hunter and more to be seen in BWH, Volume Two (or is it Animals, Whores, & Dialogue ? I still can’t decide.) However, the event ended, as only a Hunter event could, with a heavy dose of weirdness and a dash of violence.

I was on stage shooting as the band, lead by David Amram and accompanied by Johnny Depp on slide guitar, finished playing “My Old Kentucky Home.” Hunter grabbed me around the neck and whispered in my ear that we had to flee. There was someone only a few feet away that he feared meant to attack him.

The potential assailant was stage left so we went stage right into the wings. I tried to raise Sheriff Bob on the radio for backup, but got no response.

“You’ll be arrested,” Hunter shouted over his shoulder as we left the stage.

I looked back but had no idea who the assailant might be, but I knew this was Hunter’s greatest fear, to be shot down by a freak out to prove he was the weirdest of all. Given John Lennon, you couldn’t consider it simply paranoia on Hunter’s part.

We found a room backstage and locked ourselves inside. Finally, I got Sheriff Bob on the radio and asked him to bring the limo around behind the auditorium where a door from our refuge opened onto the street. When the Sheriff confirmed that he was in position with the limo, I unlocked the backdoor and we started for the car. Then, a weirdo jumped out of the bushes coming our way. I screamed at him to get back.

“You’ll be arrested,” Hunter growled and the weirdo from the bushes fled down the street.

“Was that him?” I asked.

“No. It was (let’s call him “Joe”) on the stage,” he said, getting into the limo.

It took me awhile to figure out who “Joe” was. Hunter pointed him out to me in a crowd shot when we were viewing the footage back at Owl Farm. “Joe” was the boyhood friend who, according to Hunter, he went to jail for, after his friend threatened to rape a girl if she didn’t give him a cigarette one late night on a lover’s lane in Louisville. Talk about your past coming back to haunt you!

Now that Hunter was safely out of the venue, I went back inside to wrap my equipment. In our absence, chaos had erupted on stage with a huge, ugly crowd surrounding Johnny Depp who was signing autographs. Hunter always advised against starting to sign for fans, since once it started, you could never satisfy them all. The few event volunteers left behind were overwhelmed, so I started kicking people off the stage to relieve Depp.

The crowd got even nastier, and a few went into the wings and then into the green room where they set fire to an overstuffed chair. I grabbed a fire extinguisher to douse the flames, but it was empty, as was every other red canister nearby. The crowd had used them up on each other, imitating Hunter’s earlier antics.

“Someone better call 911,” I said, but being kitchen trained, I knew it would not be me who made the call. (see my vodcast “Never Call 911.”)

I gathered up my cameras and friend Mark, and we walked out the back stage door as the fire engines rolled up.

“Hunter’s probably off on some adventure. Let’s go have a beer, and maybe catch a strip show,” I suggested as we headed back to the Brown Hotel.

To Be Continued

Copyright 2010 by Wayne Ewing

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The Bobcat

March 20th, 2010

[This story first appeared exclusively this January at my friend Brian Buckman's site www.OutsidersAlmanac.com/blog/, but since I've been editing Breakfast with Hunter, Vol. 2 I've been neglecting my vodcast. So pending a new story later this week inspired by that editing, fans of the Good Doctor can chew on the Bobcat]

The Aspen Times has a picture of a bobcat on the front page this snowy January day after “Blue Monday” – the third Monday in January, considered the most depressing Monday of the year by the media. The bobcat in today’s news was crouching in the snow in a field not far from my unfortified compound somewhere near Carbondale and he appeared quite cuddly.

Bobcats remind me of another Blue Monday more than a decade ago, back in the nineties at Owl Farm with my friend Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. And that memory suddenly answered the question that I have been pondering about Hunter for more than a month.

“What did Hunter like to do outside?” asked another comrade, Brian Buckman – the force behind great web sites like the http://outsidersalmanac.com and http://HunterThompsonFilms.com

Since Hunter spent most of the last twenty years of his life glued to a high chair between the stove and counter in his kitchen, I did not have a ready answer. But today it came to me after seeing the bobcat.

Hunter loved to go outside and shoot, especially to kill something that he felt threatened him.

“People know that I will shoot,” the Beast would declare late at night with pride. And it was certainly true, as I knew from having to deal with an innocent victim of his trigger finger. (see my vodcast “Never Call 911” )

The bobcat was certainly a victim, but whether innocent or not you will have to judge. Outside on the porch of Owl Farm That January Blue Monday it was cold, so cold even a starving, yet still cagey bobcat might be forced to take a chance.

My brother Andrew and I were at Owl Farm that night, along with Deborah Fuller – Hunter’s secretary since the early eighties – and a journalist and photographer from London. The Brits were there to talk about the release in England of Hunter’s long lost novel The Rum Diary, now finally to be released as a film starring Johnny Depp in 2010.

Hunter was quite crafty about having his picture taken. From the beginning, he had an instinctual sense that branding himself properly was a key to success and fame. Thus, the Gonzo symbol, the cigarette holder, the Tillie Hat, etc. were all elements of his well known image that had to be arranged properly before any photograph could be taken. Deborah and I were charged with making sure he looked just right, and he constantly threatened terrible retribution if we failed.

“If my glasses are crooked, I’m going to hurt you,“ he would always promise.

Thus, I took the presence of a professional photographer with three cameras hanging from his neck as essentially a threat that night in the Owl Farm kitchen. If the picture in the London Observer or the The Sun wasn’t just right, I would pay.

Suddenly, there was a loud commotion on the front porch where the peacocks were huddled in their walk-in cage under a heat lamp. A huge THUMP was followed by the peacocks screeching wildly. I figured that a slab of snow must have slid off the roof and startled the birds. Deborah immediately went to investigate, and I was close behind.

On the front porch, the peacocks were going crazy inside their cage. The door to the cage was open, as usual so they could come and go, but there was something else inside with them now. A mangy bobcat was leaping from the floor of the cage, trying to grab one of the screaming peacocks whirling on their perches above.

“You asshole! Get the fuck out of here,” screamed Deborah as she charged at the bobcat.

You could see how this fearless woman could protect Hunter all those years, and even take a bullet for or from him (see once again my story “Never Call 911” But, the bobcat seemed to have no fear whatsoever. Instead of running away, the cat charged Deborah, coming after her quickly and driving us both back into the living room. The Cat was either rabid or simply crazed by hunger and the cold.

“It’s a bobcat,” screamed Deborah to Hunter. “Get the shotgun!”

I slipped back onto the porch, thinking I could drive the bobcat off before Hunter got the gun and ended up pictured on the front page of London newspapers the next day turning a cat into pink mist, alienating every animal lover in the United Kingdom. The peacocks were still screaming, but the bobcat wasn’t in their cage or on the porch. Then I saw him peeking around the side of the woodpile just off the front of the porch.

At that moment, I heard the unnerving sound of the pump action on the 12 gauge Marine Defender behind me as Hunter came out the front door screaming, “Where is he? Where is the son-of-a-bitch?”

Unfortunately, I hesitated just long enough for him to know I was lying when I replied lamely, “I don’t know.”

His voice took on a tone of threat I had never heard before as he swung the chrome plated barrel in my direction and screamed, “Tell me where he is, or I’LL SHOOT YOU!”

“He’s right there. Behind the wood pile,” I shouted, instantly, giving up the bobcat whose head disappeared behind the woodpile just as it exploded in a torrent of wood chips from the double O shot of the Marine Defender. That was one quick cat. He ducked the shot and simply disappeared.

Hunter was livid.

“Protecting a ‘poor pussycat.’ You sentimental fool. It was a bobcat that killed my beloved Screwjack,” he declared with angst. Giving me a look of disgust, he pumped the Marine Defender once to clear the weapon and went inside.

Screwjack was both the name of his black house cat, and a satirical short story about his love affair (literally) with a black cat (see this excerpt from the supplement on my “Breakfast with Hunter” DVD in which the writer P.J. O’Rourke and the actor Don Johnson take turns reading Screwjack).

Clearly, Screwjack was an attractive cat, as this post card picture that Deborah took and then sent to a few friends on his death attests. The theory of his demise was that vermin from bobcats with whom he tangled infected him with a deadly disease.

Screwjack Courtesy of Deborah Fuller

Screwjack Courtesy of Deborah Fuller

Unfortunately, Screwjack was pretty elusive, and in all my years of filming Hunter I took few, if any shots of his black cat. However, Screwjack does have a cameo appearance in “Breakfast with Hunter.” You can hear him distinctly whining in the background as Alex Cox and Todd Davies flee the kitchen after their infamous Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas script conference that led to Terry Gilliam directing the movie.

Back on the porch, I thought about the error of my ways and figured perhaps I could redeem myself by shooting the bobcat. Taking another shot gun from the arsenal, I stalked the property in the cold, hoping to see the varmit and blast him away. After an hour or so, feeling like a bad imitation of Bill Murray in Caddyshack I quit for the night. At least I didn’t blow up the 500 gallon propane tank with an errant shot.

The next afternoon I got a call from Deborah.

“He shot the bobcat,” she proudly declared.

“How did he do it?”

“I was walking over to the main house and saw the bobcat sitting in the bushes above the firing range,” she said. “ So I went into Hunter’s bedroom. He’d only been down for a few hours. But still I whispered in his ear: ‘If you get up now you can shoot the bobcat.’ And, Damn if he didn’t pop right out of bed, grab a rifle, and kill that bobcat with one shot from the front porch. Then he went right back to bed and fell asleep.”

Usually, it took Hunter hours to get going in the morning – an ugly ritual documented by more than one observer. But, given a score to settle with a bobcat, anything was possible, including getting Hunter into the great outside.

Copyright 2010 by Wayne Ewing

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The Eulogy

November 20th, 2009

In the spring off season the West End of Aspen is deserted.  With its multi-million dollar Victorians, the West End is the epitome of the American dream, but no one’s home.  They’ve returned to Dallas, Miami and LA, leaving their luxury under the questionable eyes of the Aspen Police until the Fourth of July.

Thus, it was hard to miss the black Wagoneer pulling up in front of Jack Nicholson’s “green house,” especially when a six four brute in an un-tucked, brightly-colored madras shirt and a Tilly’s hat emerged from the car with a tall, iced scotch and water in his hand.  Definitely, my friend Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.

By the spring of 1996 we had known each other well for over ten years.  The O’Farrell Theater in ’85 had lead to shooting the Gonzo Pilot in ’86 and then many nights visiting Owl Farm and videotaping various special events in his life. But my work as a filmmaker took me out of the valley quite a bit the next few years, covering black gangs in South Central LA and the real gangsters of Hollywood for NBC News, then shooting and directing the dramatic series “Homicide: Life on the Streets,” and most recently on the road with the Eagles for their “Hell Freezes Over Tour.”

The Eagles gig came about, like my friendship with Hunter, because I happened to live next door to Eagles singer/drummer Don Henley in Woody Creek. Ironically, Henley hated Hunter. First, Henley has no sense of humor, while Hunter was the Prince of Fun.  Second, Henley feared Hunter’s periodic bomb-making experiments were damaging the foundations of his house just down the road. Third, Hunter stole and published a photograph of Gary Hart and his infamous girlfriend Donna Rice partying at Henley’s during the 1984 Presidential Campaign. (Contrary to his editor David McCumber’s account in Salon, Hunter did not burglarize and “rifle” through Henley’s house. Rather, he simply took the photo from the kitchen table and left while the caretaker who had showed it to Hunter was distracted on the phone. But, Hunter could easily have embellished the story for McCumber in a “gonzo” way. )

And, now in the spring of 1996, Hunter was getting out of his car in front of another local celebrity’s house.  The potential was ripe, so I stopped and backed up to greet the Doctor, who seemed pleased to see me, although he hadn’t returned my call of three days before.  I should have known that he had some purpose in mind for me that afternoon when he immediately asked where I was headed and what I was doing.  “Nuthin…” I replied lamely.

Hunter explained that he was on his way home from Court, and still had to write a Eulogy for a friend’s memorial service at the Jerome later in the afternoon.  “Stop on by the house. We’ll be there in twenty minutes,” he said.

Hunter had been busted for drinking and driving by rogue Aspen City cops the previous fall on the night of a local election. This bust and his attempts to avoid being taken into “the system” ultimately would form one of the main threads of my film Breakfast with Hunter and was the reason for his court appearance this spring day. The threat of jail always brought out the best in the Beast, including his hilarious challenge to the District Attorney in this case which John Cusack reads in Breakfast…

We were talking about his upcoming trial in the kitchen at Owl Farm, having regrouped from in front of Jack’s house, with Hunter on his stool at the kitchen counter, working his black coke grinder, as always.

“Do you type?” he asked.

I instantly replied, “Sure,” before thinking through the consequences.

Deborah, the Doctor’s long-suffering personal assistant, let out a sigh of relief.  She’d only had a few hours sleep in the last two days.  Madeleine, the girlfriend du jour, was elegantly frozen in a fetal position in the big chair.  Madeleine had been without sleep for longer than she would remember.

Yet, Hunter was still functioning fairly well, despite a similar lack of sleep.  He’d been up for days getting ready to go to Court in the continuing saga of his defense against drunk driving charges.  Days of planning and turmoil, just to get ready for a five minute continuance hearing.  He had a statement, the paper called it “a rant” in the headline the next day, which he read to the Court, saying he was there for the “melancholy purpose of waiving his right to a speedy trial,” and then misattributed a quote to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, “For the wheels of justice to grind exceeding fine, they must also grind slow.”

Repeated phone calls with the editor of the Aspen Daily News – Curtis Robinson – revealed that the quote was actually by the famous German jurist Friedrich von Logau.  It was too late to fix the Court record, but the statement was corrected for the press, which was Hunter’s main concern.  He always viewed his local battles as essentially political and public opinion as the key to victory.
Aspentimes021197
In the midst of a wailing FAX machine sending and receiving The Rant, and only then after repeated badgering by Deborah, Hunter began to dictate the Eulogy for Steve Wishart which he was due to give at five at the Jerome Bar.  Less than an hour to go, including driving ten miles to town which I already knew would be my job as well.

Over the next two hours, I learned a lot about how Hunter writes – slowly above all, but also very deliberately.  He would never go for a cliché that he hadn’t invented himself.  He was always searching for just the perfect word and the wait could seem endless with my fingers perched over the keys of his “Wheelwriter” typewriter. I felt like an old time wire service transcriptionist who took down reporters’ stories over the phone word by word.   Word….by….word, in this case.

In between the words Hunter seemed to be flashing back to the early seventies and the days when the Jerome Bar was his headquarters, along with friends like Steve Wishart who I learned was a small Jewish guy who was crazy and good at barroom battles. The Eulogy was about just such a battle.  As he dictated, Hunter kept getting lost in his memories, although never with his words:  he had an uncanny ability to remember exactly what the last words were I had typed, even after a lapse of many minutes.

Sometime after five, to speed the process, I asked him just to tell me the story of the fight in the bar, and then back up and write it.  He told the story in a couple of quick lines.  It was simple:  Steve Wishart had jumped out of nowhere to tackle a drunken thug who had started a huge brawl.  The point seemed to be that he was a short guy with courage.  I kept telling him to “cut to the chase” while Deborah would scream every fifteen minutes “Get to the point, Hunter.”

But, Hunter had other things in mind for the Eulogy, and in the end he was right.  The description of the crowd in the bar became elaborate – drunken women dancing on the bar drinking liquid MDA from brandy snifters – was one of his inventions.  And, that’s what took the time: the inventions, the elaborations on reality.  As I typed his halting twists on reality, I realized that this was the essence of Hunter’s style, the nature of Gonzo Journalism – his contribution to Literature.

Tom Benton – the artist and longtime friend of Hunter’s – called from the Jerome to say the event was well underway.  Deborah, too tired to cope, pointed out that the memorial was for Steve Wishart and not Hunter who should get there before it was over.  I interjected that Wishart would probably be resurrected before the Eulogy was written, but didn’t get any laughs.

Then, at about twenty to six when the words just weren’t coming out of his mouth anymore Deborah screamed, ‘Hunter, do some cocaine and give some to Wayne too, for God’s Sakes.”

By God, she was right.  A couple of snorts later and my fingers were off and running across the keys as Hunter finally wrapped up the Eulogy and even added a short poem as an addendum.  I retyped the first page in a few minutes, Deborah had the copier already heated up, and we cut and pasted the rest and were ready to go at six, except for one thing…

Hunter wanted to ‘take something,” some token for the crowd to remember Steve Wishart by, but what?  “A bomb!” he ventures.  “Not in the city limits,” insists Deborah “they’ll bust you.”  Long pause from Hunter, grudgingly accepting the limitations of the nineties in Aspen.

“His heart, I’ll take his heart to share with the crowd.”  That idea gets a laugh from Deborah, and Hunter disappears into the room with the big refrigerator I know so well because that’s where they keep an endless supply of Molsons.

Hunter returns with a frozen beef heart in a baggie saying “Do we have any black shoe polish?” with a devilish gleam in his eye, happy now that the Eulogy was done.  Deborah refuses to offer any black polish for the heart, but helps Hunter microwave it to get the frozen juices flowing a bit.

“We should take some acid” suggests Hunter.

“Who?” demanded Deborah. “Wayne’s driving and you’re not taking any either,” Deborah screams, trying to desperately get us to the event before it’s over.

“Really…no acid for me,” I insist.

Finally, we’re in the car with two copies of the Eulogy, the melting beef heart, a picture from the Jerome Bar in the seventies, various stashes, and a tall scotch and water with ice in Hunter’s hand.  Realizing that the situation abounded with “probable cause,” I decide to take the back road into town –unfortunately, the same route upon which Hunter was busted the night of the last election, but still safer than the main highway.

As we took the high road to town, I remarked that it must be sad to see one of the original gang from the Jerome in the seventies pass away.  Hunter agreed and took the riff into a melancholy observation about how Aspen had changed, how money had ruled the day, the greed heads had won, even he couldn’t really afford to live here anymore.  In the end, he was targeted, just like his friend Loren Jenkins, the editor of the Aspen Times who was recently fired for opposing the Ski Corporation before the election.  “They want me out of here,” Hunter concluded.

People like Hunter make the rich very nervous.  He’s right about that.

Rooms run up to $1,000 a night at the Jerome Hotel where Tom Benton stood waiting nervously in front as we pulled up.  After being renovated ten years before, the Jerome and its Bar were never as popular with Hunter’s people. This hundred year old hotel was fairly funky in its last days before renovation: women prisoners of Pitkin County housed on the upper floor, orgies being held in stark rooms with bare bulbs on the floors below.  I once lived in the suite above the bar for a month in the mid-seventies like a cowboy in from the range.  That’s the first time I ever saw Hunter. He was drinking at the end of the bar which had been his campaign headquarters in his race for Sheriff in 1970.  But I was too shy then to approach him, thinking “another time perhaps,” having no idea that I would become one of his Boswells.

The memorial service was being held in the Antler Bar, part of the new addition to the hotel.  At the entrance to the Antler Bar was a long-haired man in a black Madison Avenue top coat speaking intently into his cell phone. The Antler Bar was New Aspen, but the people inside today were old, hardened characters who had survived acid, MDA, cocaine, alcohol and nicotine – heavies I’d never seen before who seemed to have come out of the woods for this gathering to honor a man who they drank with in the old Jerome Bar.

We had gotten there just in time.  The crowd was primed as Tom Benton read the Eulogy.  When they laughed uproariously at the images of “drunken women dancing on the bar” and all the other extraneous detail that Hunter had invented for the story, I realized how right he was back in the kitchen, driving us crazy searching for the words.

He was wrong about one thing though – the beef heart.  Over the top, but still appreciated by the crowd for its daring. As the event broke up, people thronged around Hunter.  I stood behind, content to hold onto his Dunhills and the bleeding heart.  A fading blonde in her fifties told me how she was the first person to greet Hunter when he came to town in the sixties with a live skunk in his car.

We moved to the couches in the lobby so that Hunter could get some air.  He was obviously fading fast, yet was tempted by the many invitations to party on in town. He worked his way to Main Street in front of the Jerome talking with one old blonde after another and drinking from the tall glass of scotch.  The Aspen Police cruised by, eyeing us carefully, and I knew I best get him out of town soon.

He followed me to the car, still wanting to continue the party with old friends, but too tired after the fight in Court to go on.  More than ten years younger, and not having been in Court that day, I was already done for the night.  Fortunately, Hunter gave up without a struggle.  He still made me cruise the Sardy House, insisting we go up the driveway where they used to deliver the corpses when it was a funeral home and not a luxury Bed & Breakfast to make sure it wasn’t open.  .

I delivered him back to Owl Farm at sunset where the peacocks screeched a greeting.

Hunter thanked me for all my help. I told him it was “an honor,” and meant it.

Copyright 2009 by Wayne Ewing

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Fear and Loathing in Hollywood

November 11th, 2009

Six months had passed since Hunter’s trip to Hollywood in the spring of 1997 to replace Alec Cox as the director of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (FLLV), and now, with the film in production, the Beast was bedeviled by another director interpreting his most famous work. Terry Gilliam inspired a special paranoia in Hunter, especially when it came to Hunter’s cameo role slated for the film.  Thus, in September, 1997 Hunter asked me to advance his appearance on the set of FLLV.

Since Hunter’s spring stay at the Chateau Marmont (see “The Chateau Marmont Parts 1 & 2” herein) I had sailed the Barney Google to Ventura, where I was directing the TV series “Mike Hammer” with Stacy Keach.  So it was an easy reach between episodes to drive down to the classic small, old time movie studio in Hollywood where they had built the major sets for FLLV and were shooting.  Hunter’s former girlfriend, Laila Nabulsi had taken comfortably to her role as the Producer of the film with a nice office overlooking the lot where we met to talk about Hunter’s cameo.

“It’ll be so easy. All Hunter has to do is sit on a stool in front of a green screen. Terry wants to have his face just float through a scene, like a hallucination,” said Laila off-handedly.

Having listened interminably the night before to Hunter ranting about how he would not be “manipulated” or “abused” by Terry Gilliam, I imagined it more likely Gilliam could get a 500 pound panther on meth to sit for the shot than Hunter.

“Hunter won’t stand for that, much less sit, once he realizes the green background makes it so Terry can do whatever he wants with his image,” I warned, and then suggested an idea that had occurred to me driving down the Pacific Coast Highway to the studio. “How about if Hunter and Johnny have a brief, chance encounter in some scene? They just pass by each other. Maybe with some recognition. Maybe not.”

And Laila, bless her persistent soul, took to the idea immediately, suggesting that the Matrix Club scene scheduled to be shot in the next few weeks might be perfect. The real, old Hunter could be sitting in the crowd as Johnny walked by as the young Hunter of FLLV.

Depp was friendly as ever and his trailer looked like a good place to stash Hunter when we came back.  The sets were cool, especially the Circus Circus promenade which was built on an extreme angle to create the illusion that Johnny and Benicio would be walking bent over from the ankles.  When I was introduced to the set dresser as Hunter’s “road manager,” she inquired what would be an appropriate book to have in the hotel room. Since Hunter had just been raving about The Death Ship by B. Traven, I suggested that title, and sure enough this cultish book about a man enslaved by the lack of a passport on a tramp steamer appears in the final film prominently next to Depp’s head when he awakes from a drugged stupor.

Hunter was far from stupefied when he arrived at the Burbank airport a few weeks later on a Lear jet to appear in his own movie.  His neighbor and friend Don Johnson had loaned Hunter the plane to get to Burbank after they had flown together from Aspen to San Francisco.

Hunter’s long time secretary Deborah Fuller who rarely traveled with us, came along to make sure the cameo went well. Since my berth on the Barney Google was now seventy miles away in Ventura, I slept on the floor of her bungalow at the Chateau Marmont until she left and then Hunter got me my own room, where I lived like a troll in luxury under the stairs off the lobby. Depp lent Hunter his blue Porsche since Hunter had lent the production his red convertible for the film.  Every morning I expected to find it trashed in the Chateau garage. But Hunter never put a scratch on that slick car, despite some wild rides around Hollywood.

One night Hunter took the Porsche and his Brooke Shields look-alike girl friend to the industry watering hole known as the Buffalo Club. While the car survived, he did manage to injure the pride of a fellow diner when he dramatically threw a drink nonchalantly over his shoulder, soaking the haute couture of a Bel Air madam. The wet lady threatened to call the police until the proprietor of the Buffalo Club – Tony Yerkovitch (who also created “Miami Vice”) – bought her dinner.  But that was after Hunter’s visit to the set of FLLV.  Until then – for one night – he was all business.

The making of FLLV into a movie from Hunter’s pov is one of the main threads in Breakfast with Hunter and his set visit and cameo appearance are an interesting counter point to Cox’s disastrous visit to Owl Farm earlier in my film. Yet, there is much that I had to leave behind that happened that day in a warehouse/studio in the San Fernando Valley.   The company had moved out of the old time studio with the great sets in Hollywood and taken up residence in a cheaper location in the valley to finish the film.  Hunter began the day apprehensive but in a good mood all things considered. Rolling Stone writer Chris Heath accompanied us in the limo to the set where we arrived on time (per the call sheet below) promptly at 11:30 a.m. for Hunter to shoot his scene. (Note that it will be day 47 of 44. Clearly Gilliam is over budget)

FLLVcallsheet

Hunter and Gilliam began sparring as soon as they met on the set, as you can see in Breakfast with Hunter. The dialogue between them about the art of writing vs. filmmaking is quick and clever, and the sub text is that these two egos have little use or respect for each other. Ultimately, this animosity would increase to the point where at the premiere of FLLV in New York the next spring, Hunter would refuse to be photographed with or stand near Gilliam who had made a point of trashing Hunter during the FLLV publicity tour.  (Also note Chris Heath in the background of the conversation, madly scribbling down every word in his notebook, as if recording devices had yet to be invented. But, he did report their dialogue accurately, as you can see if you follow the link on his name above to his article.)

Looking back, I’m not sure if it was sheer incompetence, or the Assistant Director giving us an early call expecting a very late arrival, or Terry Gilliam simply fucking with Hunter, but we spent the next nine (9) hours waiting for Hunter’s scene with disastrous results. The waiting might have been easier if Hunter had been given his own trailer, but there was no trailer with “Dr. Thompson” on the door, which Hunter took as a direct insult from Gilliam.  Instead, we relied on the good manners of Depp who shared his with us for the day.

After hanging out on the set until lunch, we retreated to Johnny’s trailer.  Dramatic filmmaking is one of the most boring occupations imaginable, despite the supposed glamour, unless you happen to be blowing up cars that day.  That’s one of the many reasons I came back to documentaries.  Hunter’s reaction to boredom was to drink more, and by mid-afternoon he was flat out drunk and slurring his words, as you can see when he tries his old trick of tossing a large bottle of Chivas Regal in the air and catching it with one hand. Earlier in the film at Simon & Schuster in New York, Hunter does the trick perfectly.  In Depp’s trailer, he forgot to put the cap on the bottle before flipping it in the air.  “I thought it would come around faster,” he remarks, as Depp bends over with laughter.

Given too much time on his hands, Hunter also defaced himself with an indelible, black Sharpie marker as you can see in the previous clip, making his own form of a mustache which a makeup girl later spent an hour patiently erasing.

I keep going back to the set and asking when Hunter’s scene would be shot.  “Soon,” became “later” and then “we’re not sure,” until finally it was apparent that they had intended from the beginning to shoot Hunter’s Matrix Club scene at the very end of the day.  When we were finally called to the set at almost nine at night, Hunter had sobered up and was ready to fight.  And there was much to quarrel with since what Hunter would do in the scene had yet to be determined.

Hunter insisted that he be seen as he was in 1969 in San Francisco – “an observer.”  Gilliam seemed to agree, but Hunter was so perturbed that he disagreed with every direction from Gilliam, and argued with Laila who was now dressed as Grace Slick to make her own cameo appearance in the Matrix Club scene.  When Hunter watched Lyle Lovett’s scene where he appears as an acid dealer in an extreme wide angle shot, he insisted he would not be grotesquely distorted as Gilliam had done to “poor Lyle.”  I found the endless bickering boring and left it out of the final film. However, I did include Johnny Depp, despite suffering from the flu, doing his best to comfort his friend Hunter, and saying, “Whatever you want to do, I’ll be there.”

In the end, what Johnny and Hunter did in the course of three takes was interesting. Hunter wanted to do something other than just sit there, while Gilliam was looking for “barely a glance.” Of course, in his film Gilliam used the take he preferred, one in which there is only a quick look exchanged between them, and I used the one Hunter and I liked – the third in which he reaches out unexpectedly to seize Johnny who has taunted him into the move.

Hunter never did appreciate Gilliam’s version of his classic novel. Hunter did like Johnny’s performance and Benicio del Toro’s as well. But, the best he ever felt about the movie as a whole was that it wasn’t the disaster he feared. Hunter felt that Gilliam had no understanding of the sixties in America, having been an émigré in England at the time, and even less understanding of drugs, which Gilliam took pride in never having taken.  Nonetheless, Hunter did his best to promote the film, and kept his opinion of Gilliam more private than Gilliam did his of Hunter.

Gilliam’s FLLV is a study of the difficulty in turning great writing into great cinema. Ironically, Hunter meant for FLLV to be a movie from the very beginning and wrote it with that purpose in mind. But, as he always said, laughing at himself, “I forgot about the camera.  It has to be somewhere other than inside your head.”

FLLV is filled with fantastic dialogue and action inside the minds of Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo, but not much on the outside where the camera can observe their actions.  This is the dilemma Alex Cox was struggling with and led to his demise when he insisted on using what Hunter called “cartoons” that would cheapen his greatest prose. Ironically, Terry Gilliam – a director who began his career as a cartoonist – was hired to replace Cox.

After our day on the set, we stayed at the Chateau until Heidi Opheim arrived to replace the Brooke Shields look-alike.  I found a Cadillac to rent for the Beast with a powerful Northstar engine, and he and Heidi headed up the coast where he had a paying gig to address the Stanford Medical Society in Pebble Beach.  That trip became the basis for much of the article he wrote for Time Magazine entitled “Fear & Loathing in Hollywood: Doomed Love at the Taco Stand” (11/10/97 issue) in which Heidi concludes, “You’re very strange and you don’t know why, do you?….It’s because you have the soul of a teenage girl in the body of an elderly dope fiend.”

I always thought that was one of the most insightful observations anyone ever made about Hunter and insisted that he use it at the end of his last book Kingdom of Fear where it appears as “Fear and Loathing at the Taco Stand” (and wherein Heidi is now “Anita.”)

Hunter did not return to Hollywood until a year or so later in December, 1999 when we went to pitch The Rum Diary to producers with Depp in the Tiki Hut in his backyard. Hunter’s first and only published novel presents many of the same dilemmas as FLLV being adapted to the screen, and it will be interesting to see how writer/director Bruce Robinson (Withnail and I) meets the challenge now that the film will be released in 2010. Over the years I shot far more with Hunter about The Rum Diary than I ever did about FLLV, little of which has ever been seen…..yet.  Stay tuned!

Copyright 2009 By Wayne Ewing

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Posted in Fear & Loathing, Film, Hollywood, Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

The O’Farrell Theater

October 21st, 2009

For a few years in the early eighties I lived just over the hill from Hunter in Woody Creek, Colorado but did not know him, even though he had always been one of my heroes. Reading the installments of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972 as they appeared in Rolling Stone inspired my first film If Elected… (broadcast on PBS in 1973). Hunter was a hero for me because he was a great, witty writer with an unique view of American culture and politics, and also because he seemed to deliver, to get the work done, despite his love of drugs and drink. Who wouldn’t want to be live like that if they could?

Ten years later I was right next door and looking for a subject for a new film, having just finished two for the series “Frontline” on PBS – A Journey To Russia, and The Bloods of ‘Nam.  When I heard that Hunter was working as the Night Manager of the Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theater in San Francisco, I called David Fanning, the Executive Producer of “Frontline,” and suggested a film about Hunter and his work as the Night Manager of a sex theater. Fanning was surprisingly receptive to the idea, and said that he would consider it if I could get Hunter to agree, but I’d have to pay my own expenses to get the project going.

I was able to make contact with Deborah Fuller, Hunter’s assistant at the time (and into this century as well) and made my pitch on behalf of “Frontline.” Then I waited to hear from the Doctor. A few days later the phone rang at 3am. (The beginning of decades of 3am calls, but as Sheriff Bob says, “Now when the phone rings at 3am it can only be trouble”) Hunter said he was interested in doing a film and invited me to visit him in San Francisco for the weekend, as long as I brought Deborah along with me. Elated, I booked two plane tickets and two hotel rooms that March of 1985.

Deborah is an unrepentant refugee from the sixties. Having lived in a commune in Northern California, she seemed to have the right tolerance for Hunter’s life style. She was also fiercely protective of him and his privacy. (see my story Never Call 911 and The Night We Shot Keith Richards Part 1 herein for more about Deborah)

Our hotel was on California Street, just a few blocks from the O’Farrell, but Hunter was staying across the Golden Gate Bridge in Sausalito where we met him for dinner the first night. For an icon of the sixties, he chose an odd, country club like restaurant filled with wealthy retirees with fancy, blue hair bee hives. A bit like a Steadman drawing from Fear and Loathing come to life, I thought, as Hunter entered, wearing shorts, and accompanied by Maria – a short, dark-haired beauty that was undoubtedly one of the great loves of his life. Maria was the student coordinator for one of Hunter’s appearances at the University of Arizona, and had probably not left his side for long since she picked him up at the airport one fateful day in Phoenix.

Hunter was charming, and immediately exceeded my expectations, except his mumble was annoyingly hard to understand. The film producer in me flinched, but I figured that the right sound man and a bit of direction would solve that problem. Little did I know that his mumble would be one of the main objections at HBO when I showed them the Gonzo Pilot a year later.
OFarrellticket copy
After dinner we went with the Night Manager to work. The O’Farrell Theater was owned by Jim and Artie Mitchell, the creators of the seminal film Behind the Green Door with the Marilyn Chambers. Hunter wrote about them eloquently in the beginning of Kingdom of Fear:

Jim and Artie Mitchell were as bizarre a pair of brothers as ever lived. I loved them both. But the sex business had made them crazy…They were deep into San Francisco politics, but they were always in desperate need of sound political advice. That was my job. The Night Manager gig was only a cover for my real responsibility, which was to keep them out of jail, which was not easy.

I came to San Francisco hoping that Hunter’s fascination with the sex business was essentially political, not unlike the anarchists of the early twentieth century who believed in free love as the ultimate liberation from societal domination of the individual. I was not disappointed. Warren Hinkle was also at the O’Farrell that weekend. As the legendary editor of Ramparts and then Scanlans, Hinckle commissioned the first piece of Gonzo Journalism from Hunter. (look for Hinckle’s new book this winter, Who Killed Hunter S. Thompson?) With Hunter’s help, the Mitchells had made pornography and live sex shows a cause celebre and were now winning the battle with Mayor Diane Feinstein.

Here are the notes for the film I made that night at the O’Farrell for Hunter with his comments handwritten in red
OFarrellfilmoutline
The Night Manager’s office was just above the entrance on the second floor with a large semi-opaque picture window looking out on O’Farrell Street. There was no desk. Instead a pool table filled the room, and the walls were peppered with dings and holes from a wad shooting pistol the Brothers had given Hunter. Beautiful, naked women walked in and out from the dressing room next door, sometimes wearing at most slender g-strings for decorum, between their stints downstairs.

Hunter insisted that Deborah and I take the full tour of what he called “the Carnegie Hall of public sex in America.” On the first floor were three venues – the New York Stage where one girl would dance while others gave lap dances to the audience, the Copenhagen Room where patrons sat around the perimeter with flashlights and girls performed in the middle or on your lap, and the Ultra Room, a room with private cubicles from which you watched while the girls did each other in the box and you fed them tips through slots in the glass.

“Be careful not to touch the walls,” one girl thoughtfully warned Deborah with whom I shared a cubicle.

Deborah and I bonded in the way that only the newly acquainted can when confronted with raw sex and confined to a sperm-lined box three feet square. Back upstairs, Hunter wanted a full report. I tried to be blasé, but Deborah took a comic approach to the experience which Hunter clearly liked more. Maria was writing intently in a school book with ruled paper.

“What are you writing,” asked Hunter.

“Just making some notes after watching a group of Japanese men who got off a tour bus” she replied.

Almost twenty years later, when we were working on Kingdom of Fear, I found that piece of ruled paper with the girlish hand-writing amongst Hunter’s papers. Maria was a keen observer: the writing was quite erotic and had little to do with Japanese tourists.

The next night we all went to dinner with Jim and Artie, and a couple of girls from the O’Farrell at a Mexican restaurant far out on Geary Street. I sat between Jim’s wife who seemed like a normal suburban mother/housewife and Bambi from the O’Farrell who wanted to know where to get cowboy chaps for her act.

[As you can see in the comment below, I misidentified the girl in the gorilla suit as "Bambi" when in fact it was Simone Corday. Bambi was actually the victim. Simone has written a fascinating memoir of her life at the O'Farrell entitled 9 1/2 Years Behind the Green Door and has a web site where you can buy the book. Thankfully, other than the confusion on names Simone says that I remembered the scene and dialogue quite accurately]

When Hunter heard her asking about wardrobe he interjected, “Do you still have that gorilla suit, Bambi?”

“Oh yeah,” purred Bambi. “One of my favorites.”

“And the strap on?”

“Always,” said Bambi

“When we go back to the O’Farrell, I want you to wear both and do another girl on the New York Stage,” commanded the Night Manager.

“Anybody I want?” she asked.

“Any body who wants to as well,” he said.

A strange joke to impress me, I assumed and concentrated on getting out of the restaurant balancing a half dozen large Styrofoam containers of margaritas Hunter had insisted on ordering to go. A wild ride down Geary in an open convertible with Hunter driving took us back to the O’Farrell. I sat in the back clutching the margaritas, trying to pass a joint in the horrific slip stream, thinking that this is just about what you would expect after reading his books, and regretting I wasn’t filming right then. If it was just ten years later when cheap digital video became available, I would have been shooting my brains out. Today the distinction between research and principal photography gets lost. Back then, it was a given, and this was pure research.

The research got even stranger back at the O’Farrell. I lost half the margaritas on the way inside and then Hunter ignored the rest when I offered them up. Instead, he was intent on taking his place on a stool upstairs next to the spot lights above the New York Stage. Down below a young blonde was finishing her act when Bambi entered wearing her full gorilla suit and a strap on dildo. The blonde stayed to play out the scene with Bambi as the Night Manager had instructed. Even given the conditioning of the Ultra Room, I was still amazed and shocked.

As the girls left the stage, I turned to Hunter and asked, “What did you think?”

“Not what I expected,” he said, and walked away to his office.

I wondered what the scene lacked. It certainly worked for me. But that was Hunter’s nature; he wasn’t an easy man to please.

When I got back to Woody Creek on Monday, I called David Fanning at “Frontline” to report a great work-in-progress, but his reaction was also not what I expected.

“Forget about it. I must have been on drugs last week. How would I explain to Congress using Federal money to do a show about the Night Manager of a sex theater?”

“But it’s more than that. It’s about politics and personal liberation, and…”

“You’re not going to talk me into this, so don’t even try,” said Fanning, rudely hanging up on me.

And that’s one of the last times anyone at “Frontline” would ever take my call even though my last film for them, The Bloods of ‘Nam, was nominated for an Emmy.

Just as well, since it made me realize that to make a film about Hunter I would have to do it on my own, and over a long period of time. In the end, Breakfast with Hunter only took 18 years and was a hell of a lot more fun than another “work-made-for-hire” for “Frontline.”

Copyright 2009 By Wayne Ewing

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Posted in Politics, Sex, Woody Creek | 5 Comments »

The Chateau Marmont – Part 2

October 14th, 2009

Hunter’s six days at the Chateau Marmont in March, 1997 developed into an odd routine. Mid-morning I would wake up in Marina del Rey on the Barney Google – a 1960s wooden motor yacht that served as my LA base – and head out for Hollywood after calling ahead to order the first round of breakfast for Mr. Green – two Bloody Marys, two Heinekens, a pot of coffee, and a pitcher of ice.  The tray would be waiting by the time I got to the front desk at noon.  The Beast no longer dead-locked the door after that first morning, and I used my key to enter, always anticipating some new weirdness on the other side.

Yet on this journey to replace the director of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter stayed quite focused. “We are professionals after all,” he would say.  The “start date” for production on the movie was less than two months away, and unless Hunter could get Johnny to agree to change his schedule and delay production, the train would inevitably leave the station with Alex Cox as the conductor.

The Chateau Marmont was literally crawling with out of work film directors like Abel Ferrara, helmer of The Bad Lieutenant, the story of a drugged out cop gone wild. Hunter had spoken to Ferrara on the phone before we left Woody Creek, and the first time we went downstairs at the Chateau, there Ferrara was in the lobby, glad-handing Hunter with a strange, crackling laugh. Hunter took an instant dislike to Ferrara, as he did ironically with most folks who were sloppy when chemically altered. Drunken women were especially repugnant to Hunter. That chance encounter in the lobby of the Chateau ended any hope for Ferrara to direct the movie.

Depp was the key, even without a replacement director. Johnny was finishing post-production on his first directing attempt – The Brave – and we didn’t see him until the fifth night in town. Hunter’s old girlfriend, now Producer, Laila Nabulsi arranged a party in the Hollywood Hills in Hunter’s honor, and Johnny was to be there.  This was a time before Johnny came to Woody Creek to live in the basement of Owl Farm and study Hunter’s habits.  They were yet to become fast friends, and Hunter was nervous about seeing him at the party that fifth night.

Time was running out, both for getting rid of Cox and staying at the Chateau, since I had only made reservations for five nights.  The Marmont Manager ignored my pleas for an extended stay, insisting that Suite 69 had been promised for many months to another guest. I suspected that even hundred dollar tips were not compensating for the weirdness, and thought of another plan: get Johnny to invite Hunter to stay at his mansion above Sunset the next night. Hunter would not be homeless in Hollywood and they would have the whole night to scheme about the movie.

The Beast was in a foul mood as we got ready to leave the Chateau for the party, accusing sweet Jennifer of stealing his Mont Blanc pen since she had a similar model to his which we could not find. “It’s mine, but please take it anyway,” Jennifer said graciously offering him her $150 pen. And he took it without hesitation. Later I found his pen in a shirt hanging on the back of the bathroom door. Hunter was most chagrined and made a huge show of returning Jennifer’s pen months later at Owl Farm. The Beast had a charming way of making up for his transgressions, which also made it possible for him to keep misbehaving and still not lose his friends completely.

The reckless ride to party in the Mustang appears in Breakfast with Hunter to the tune of Robert Mitchum’s “Thunder Road.” Mitchum, one of Hunter’s true heroes, having been busted for marijuana with a starlet in 1948 both wrote and sings the tune. [See Hunter’s liner notes for his album “Where Were You When The Fun Stopped” for more about his respect for Mitchum, as well as a scene in my upcoming Breakfast with Hunter, Volume Two where Hunter talks about “Thunder Road” and Mitchum.]

At the party in the Hollywood Hills, Hunter swept into the garden, making a grand, late as expected entrance. His old pollster buddy from the McGovern days, Pat Caddell immediately glommed onto him. I spent some time talking with Warren Zevon who wasn’t an easy guy to get to know (until years later) and then got a chance to speak to Depp about our being kicked out of the Chateau.

“He may have to leave early tomorrow unless we find someplace else acceptable to move for just one night,” I explained.

“No problem. He can stay at my house,” said the star with an endearing grin soon to be worth tens of millions per picture.

Mission accomplished, I left the Beast and his Brooke Shields in the Hollywood Hills and retreated to the boat with Jennifer who had followed with our own car. “Always have your own wheels” was one of Hunter’s wisest rules of the road.

With Hunter, checking out of a hotel never happened by the official “check out time” unless we headed out at dawn after staying up all night. At first the Chateau management agrees to a late check out of 2pm. I arrive by noon, as usual with the Bloody Marys, but clearly this is going to be a difficult move, even though Johnny’s mansion is only a few blocks away. You could only pester Hunter so much before rousing his ire and insuring he would do the exact opposite.

2 PM comes and I call the Manager and negotiate a 4pm check out. Hunter is still reading the paper and just beginning to eat a real breakfast. 4 PM comes and the Manager now insists we have to pay for this day, and still leave by 6 PM. Hunter orders more room service, and continues to read the newspaper. At 6 PM the Manager seems resigned to our continued occupation of Suite 69. I try and pack up camp at the Chateau. Finally, I get him into the Mustang convertible with his Brooke Shields at 9pm, promising the Chateau front desk, that I will be back to finish packing.

At the Mansion Johnny’s still out working on editing The Brave – a film about a man who agrees to be killed on camera for money to save his family – while his entourage waits. The house man feeds me some lightly fried flounder, and I notice there is an actual electric chair, just like those used for capital punishment, in a room just off the kitchen. Inspiration or a prop for The Brave perhaps? Hard to tell if it’s plugged in or not.

Benicio del Toro drops by and the two of us have to eject a drunken, and now unwelcome visitor. Benicio’s not a bad guy to have as backup. But after we get rid of the weirdo, Benicio takes off as well. I figure he must have a day job.

Finally, sometime after 2am, Johnny comes home from work, and Hunter swings into high gear as a lobbyist. They disappear in the darkness of a gazebo outside to talk where I cannot film. When they return about 4am, I can see from Hunter’s mood that he is successful: Johnny has agreed to delay the start date of the movie while they replace Cox.

Now I get a chance to bring out my camera and start to shoot in the kitchen. Sweating profusely, I record this scene at the kitchen table in Breakfast with Hunter. The subtitles are a bit of a cheat since the conversation described has already occurred in the gazebo too dark to film. What Hunter is really talking about is his obsession with the 15,000 copies of the first hardcover edition of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” that he believed were lost by Jann Wenner (a story for another time).

On the other side of the kitchen from the electric chair room is an elegant barroom where Johnny keeps his mynah bird named Edward in honor of Hunter’s mynah by the same name who appears in the 1978 BBC documentary. Johnny asks Hunter to teach the bird to say his name, so we move into the barroom which is lit only by the spill light coming from the kitchen. I dare not turn on any more lights for fear of squirreling the scene.
I was working with the first mini-digital video camera available from Sony. The DCR-VX1000 was revolutionary at the time, allowing me to shoot affordable video of a quality that ultimately would blow up to 35mm film, but that camera could not see into the dark like those today. I’m still amazed that I got anything, much less a priceless piece of cinema verite.

Making a large mistake, Hunter lets the small bird out of the cage, and a pursuit begins through Depp’s dark mansion.

This scene is the essence of what I tried to do with Breakfast with Hunter – create a cinema verite based portrait of Hunter, rather than a “clip show” like Alex Gibney’s post-mortem film Gonzo. Traditional biographical docs, like Gibney’s, rely on interviews and narration to tell the story of someone’s life. Instead, I relay that information through the words and actions of the subject as they occurred and were captured in reality.

Thus, rather than hearing an omniscient narrator tell you that Hunter was jailed for rape as a youth, Hunter himself says that to the bird who bites him when it’s caught. Then, when Hunter puts the bird back into the cage in the dawn light coming through Lugosi’s stained glass windows, he says “I’ll be back. You won’t be alone. You won’t be alone. You won’t be alone…” foreshadowing a comment at the end of the film from the Chateau Marmont more than a year later when Laila says to Hunter, ”Hell for you would be…stuck in some place with no one else there.” You can get both historical and emotional truth with cinema verite, but it takes time. In the case of Breakfast with Hunter, it took almost twenty years.

Notice that the time is 5:50 am on Hunter’s wristwatch. The pursuit of Edward the Mynah actually took almost an hour, rather than the minute or so you see in the film. We were all afraid that Edward would have a heart attack, but before he keeled over in fright, Hunter grabbed him with a one-handed catch a gun fighter would envy. After the funny banter in the barroom you see in Breakfast, Johnny went to bed, and I took Hunter out to the waiting limo.

I walked back to the Chateau, too tired now to drive, and collapsed in the midst of the mess we had left. Fearing that I would be taken into custody at check out time, I called Jennifer, who left her day job to recover first the Mustang convertible from Johnny’s and then me from the Chateau. Looking now at the final $ 2957.38 bill, I see that they charged Hunter $1339.90 for room service along with a special $100 cleaning fee. But the real ”cleaner” was Jennifer.

Copyright 2009 by Wayne Ewing

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Posted in Fear & Loathing, Film, Hollywood | 4 Comments »

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