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.
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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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Posted in Aspen, Drugs, Politics, Woody Creek | 2 Comments »

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)

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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 | 5 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.
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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
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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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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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The Chateau Marmont – Part One

October 6th, 2009

ChateauMarmont2 copy
Hunter went to Hollywood many times and was first documented doing so in the 1978 BBC documentary Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood, and by me in my film Breakfast with Hunter. Also, a short film I made from my unused scenes for the Criterion Collection called Hunter Goes To Hollywood is on their superb DVD of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (along with the BBC doc). Whenever we went to Hollywood, Hunter always preferred to stay at the Chateau Marmont. For a poor boy from Louisville who grew up amongst the rich, to stay at the Chateau on Sunset Blvd cemented his status as a VIP in his own mind, and suitably impressed those who hoped to meet him.

In March, 1997 Hunter went on perhaps his most important Hollywood mission – to do what even F. Scott Fitzgerald could not, control the fate of his own work in Hollywood, in this case by replacing Alex Cox, the director/writer of Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas with another director… any director other than Cox.

The following are my notes from that time, with more to follow about that fateful trip in the next episode.

I put the Beast in the Limo with the 23 year old assistant-in-training at 6:15 a.m. Saturday in Johnny Depp’s driveway after an all-nighter at Depp’s mansion above Sunset – an incredible castle set on three acres, once the home of Bela Lugosi.

Last Monday, six long nights previous, Hunter came to Hollywood to kill the soon-to-be former director of Fear and Loathing – the one I shot in Woody Creek when Hunter threw him out of the house. Jennifer [ Erskine, my longtime companion and Associate Producer ] had a limo for him at the airport. The limo first picked up the assistant-in-training – a Brooke Shields type who looked fifteen, but I checked her driver’s license. Had to. He wanted her on the rental contract for the black V-8 Mustang Jennifer also procured. She’s 23. Somebody who wrote him a letter. No help to me at all. Some fucking assistant. But I guess his needs are different than mine.

I didn’t shoot his arrival at LAX per his previous command. He was worried about attracting paparazzi. Too much to do anyway wrangling his arrival. Had cell phone communication with the limo in the space at the curb I had held with the Isuzu until it arrived. And with Jennifer in her VW, circling LAX for a quick pickup of his bags by her so he would not have to wait.

Jennifer seemed a little reluctant when I asked her to pickup his luggage. “Is there anything inside?” she asked. “I don’t know, and its’ better not to think about it. Makes it easier to pass a lie detector test.” She still wasn’t accepting the assignment. “There’s nothing. Okay? Forgettabout it. “ She took the job.

I raced ahead to the Chateau Marmont where I planned to film his arrival. On the cell phone I confirmed that Jennifer had the bags and was not in custody.

Good stuff at the arrival all recorded. Hunter tipped the limo driver a hundred bucks and kissed his hand. The front desk clerk game him a good tour of the suite, and Hunter handed him a hundred bucks. The clerk was so shocked he refused the tip.

When I went back down to the desk later in the evening the clerk seemed edgy, asking about what I was doing with the camera. “It’s just personal right? You know, I have to ask. We have very important people here. And then when he tried to give me all that money, it really made me wonder. It’s just personal, right?”

“Oh yeah. Just personal. I’ve been doing this with Mr. Green ( the name he checked in under ) for years. God only knows what we’ll do with it,” I replied wondering if the hundred buck tip made him think we were trying to entice him into some kind of porno up in Suite 69 – the actual number.

I had suggested using the name “Mr. Green” for this trip.

“Why?” asked Hunter, having used up Ben Franklin and Henry Clay on previous outings.

“Makes you think of money…the environment…and other things dear to your heart,” I replied. Also, good luck for the trip I thought, not even knowing we would arrive ironically on St. Patrick’s Day with green klieg lights on Sunset Boulevard sweeping the Chateau Marmont, the twenties Hollywood knockoff of a French castle in which Orson Welles stagnated and John Belushi died.

The next afternoon I had to have Chateau engineering dismantle the doorway to Mr. Green’s suite in order for me to wake him at four PM for breakfast. I had a key, but the Beast had deadlocked the door so my key wouldn’t work. At first security maintained that there was no way in once it was deadlocked.

“What do you do if someone is dead in there,” I asked, trying to sound facetious but beginning to wonder after all the noise I had made banging and ringing the bell. Sometimes he pulls a trick like mumbling he’s up and then you hear the shower running, but this time not even running water. Security rolled over at the mention of a stiff and called engineering. I got in.

I had to shake him roughly to wake him. The Beast mumbled that he’d been up until ten in the morning. From the looks of the suite he’d ordered a lot of room service, but eaten only little bits of everything. The assistant in training who was with him when I left had vanished.

A multi-colored Tibetan prayer flag crossed the ceiling where I hung it for him the night before. Deborah had packed it in silver Halliburton case with the combination lock for good luck.

Watching him wake up is really a trip. It takes a lot of substances. All at the right temperature. Coffee. Ice. Scotch. Loud television. Dunhills, etc.

Phone rings a lot. I tell everyone he’s in the shower. I’ve forgotten his need for a large bucket of ice at all times and room service is slow. He screams horribly in the background like an insane man with a desperate need for “ICE” as I plead with room service.

After about an hour and a half he comes to life and begins to work, taking calls, sending faxes, doing the Hollywood shuffle, trying to kill the director.

I take a fax down to the desk and there is “the Clerk” from the night before. He takes the fax and then brings up our arrival, saying he’s been thinking about it a lot. In fact, when he went home, he had to write about it. Now I’ve got to humor this guy to get him to sign a release so I ask to see what he’s written. He shows me his handwritten diary. Not bad actually. Like what happens to many of us after an encounter with Hunter. An insatiable urge to write.

That night was consumed by Laila Nabulsi and Benicio del Toro – the actor who is slated to play Oscar aka Dr. Gonzo. I record quite a bit of it. Hunter is consumed by his victory over the Aspen police who stalked him and busted him for drinking and driving on the night before an important local election. A quote Hunter uses from Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis referring to “private criminals” intrigues Benicio, who is clearly paying attention despite the hour.

[What you don’t see in my film is that at about 2am, after a lot of drinking Hunter baits Benicio into proposing that he (Benicio) replace Cox as the director of the movie. No sooner does Benicio fall for the trap, than he realizes Hunter is making fun of his ambitions, and we all, including Benicio, laugh at the clever trap Hunter set. Everybody in Hollywood wants to direct. I left it out to not embarrass Benicio]

The Beast never leaves the hotel that night. Nor the next, when the actor Harry Dean Stanton comes for dinner. A wonderful evening. I recorded nothing. It would have queered a marvelous scene and Hunter would have killed me.

Hunter had Harry Dean put on various weird sunglasses that Laila had brought for Hunter to give to visitors. She knows he likes toys and party favors. God only knows what she knew that got her a lock on the rights to Fear and Loathing.

Harry Dean became a different character with each new pair of glasses. He was uncanny. One moment Steven Hawking. The next a deranged killer. Incredible improv in Suite 69 that night.

Then dinner downstairs in the garden, six floors below the balcony of the suite with the view of Sunset. Hunter managed to entice over a blonde Hungarian girl to join us. She claimed to have lived in the Chateau for four months. Now lives in a house on the hill nearby. She gave him her phone number. When she goes to make a call, Hunter wonders if she’s a narc and Harry Dean spills everything we brought down from the suite. We spend the rest of the evening picking it up with our fingertips which we then lick while the blonde tells her story. Somehow there is a crazed sense of irresistible immunity in his presence. But, it’s not always true. Of this I am most aware. He got busted in Aspen. But I wasn’t with him and this blonde’s a bimbo not a cop. And we fucking own this place at $295 a night and hundred dollar tips. So the madness goes on. Too weird to film and that’s why I’m writing this, just to remember.

To Be Continued Copyright 2009 by Wayne Ewing

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The Night We Shot Keith Richards, Part 2

September 14th, 2009

“Be careful. It changes you and it changes me,” said Hunter as he handed me the grinder. “This is a very important night.”

We were sitting in his car on Galena Street in downtown Aspen next to the Ritz Carlton Hotel (now the St. Regis) – about to meet Keith Richards for the first time.

We were as ready as you could hope to be after almost a week of insane preparation. (see Part 1 of this for the back story) A Hi-8mm video camera loaded with a fresh tape was in my hand. Hunter had his own personal public address system – a bull horn on top of an audio cassette player in the form of a square briefcase, powered by a dozen D-cell batteries with a shoulder strap to handle the weight. Before leaving Owl Farm for town I had replaced the batteries and cued up one of Hunter’s favorite tapes – pigs being killed. Their squeals of death made me quite uneasy.

Another dozen D-cells powered the combo taser/cattle prod that Hunter also carried. Blue bolts of electricity would dance up and down the two foot shaft, accompanied by a 110 decibel siren that made your ear drums bleed.

We left the car with the Ritz Carlton doorman who wisely asked no questions. The staid après ski crowd in the lobby bar was too inviting a target and Hunter immediately hit PLAY. Heads snapped at the sound of dying pigs, but no one stopped us as we headed for the elevator.

“What’s Keith’s room number,” asked Hunter.

“Suite 1017,” I said “But we have to go to Jane’s (his manager) room first and she will take us to Keith. He won’t open the door for anyone. Jane has to get us in. That’s the plan”

“Fuck your plans,” said the Beast who had just replaced the Nervous Fan of Keith Richards that had been with me in the car. “We’re going to Keith’s room.”

“We’ve got to go to Jane’s first,” I insisted..

“Fuck You. We’re going straight to Keith’s,” growled the Beast.

The pigs began to squeal as the elevator opened on the tenth floor. A few squeamish guests opened their doors to investigate the horrible noise, and closed them very quickly when Hunter brandished the sparking cattle prod. At the large double doors of Suite 1017 Hunter turned up the pigs’ volume and hit the cattle prod’s siren, screaming “Keith, Keith Come out,” and damned if he didn’t.

Keith seemed overjoyed to meet his hero, and Hunter was beside, under and over himself with glee as well. Clearly this meeting, months in the making meant the world to these two members of a small oddball tribe of celebrities, bold-faced names who shared a love of music, drugs, and words – outsiders who had found uncommon success on the edge.

Hunter and Keith shared some laughs and I sat on the floor in front of them in the suite and recorded the scene on Hi-8. As someone who had spent decades working with real film, or better video formats, I was as nervous about the Hi-8 as Hunter was about meeting Keith.

Back at Owl Farm, a camera crew that I had hired from Denver was lighting the living room for a two camera interview shoot in Betacam SP – a far superior format that we had moved to from Hi-8 when the decision was made for me to direct and shoot the interview as a “work-made-for-hire” for Keith’s production company who would license it to ABC for their “In Concert” Friday night series. The initial plan to shoot my own project – “The Thompson Tapes” – was quickly being co-opted by money.

I left first for Owl Farm and finished lighting the set. Looking at the footage now on YouTube I’m surprised how dark the foreground is. Hunter and Keith were lit by instruments outside on the porch in and around the peacock cage with just a bit of fill light on the camera side. An interesting choice and I’m not sure why I made it. Yet, the YouTube video is still considerably darker than ever intended. The VHS off-air tape source introduces much unintended contrast.

The interview itself was, like most of Hunter’s interviews, quite disappointing. You can begin to see why it took me so many years to shoot and piece together enough material with Hunter to make intelligible films – Breakfast with Hunter & the work-in-progress Breakfast with Hunter: Vol. Two. Old television interviews with Hunter like these abound on the internet, except this one has Keith.

At 4am we stopped shooting, and I urged the crew from Denver to wrap as quickly as possible. Rather than splitting asap as you expect, Keith hung around while we wrapped, sitting on the couch in the kitchen, not wanting to leave the inner sanctum of Gonzo quite yet. Hunter clearly wanted to get the Denver crew out so he could have more private time with Keith, who by now had fallen asleep on the couch, looking exactly like the famous 1972 Annie Leibovitz shot of him splayed out in a chair. As the crew endlessly wrapped cables, an unconscious Keith began to slide off the couch onto the floor.

Hunter grabbed the “Marine Defender” – a stainless steel pump 12 gauge that I knew was loaded with OO, killer buckshot that I had recently procured for Keith’s visit. The Beast went out into the driveway where the Denver crew was  slowly loading up their van in the Rocky Mountain dawn and blew apart the garbage can next to them with the Defender. They left quickly, seeing no humor in the assault.

Back in the kitchen I gave the all tapes to Jane Rose, and left as Keith picked his butt up off the floor where it had finally ended its slide from the couch.

The lesson: if you want to make your own films don’t do a “work-made-for-hire.”            Copyright 2009 By Wayne Ewing

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The Night We Shot Keith Richards – Part I

September 8th, 2009

One of the more popular YouTube videos with Hunter is a ten minute clip wherein he interviews Keith Richards. The piece has been up for almost three years and received over 50,000 views.  I’m amazed that whoever owns the copyright has never done a takedown of what appears to be an old VHS recording of the original ABC broadcast, but I’m grateful that they haven’t. Otherwise I would never have seen something that I shot as a “work-made-for-hire” as they say in the contracts.

In the late winter of 1993 I had just finished shooting and directing the first season of the dramatic TV series “Homicide: Life on the Street” for NBC.  Episodic TV is like factory work once you have made the mold, as I did with “Homicide,” and after a season of fighting with ugly producers from New York, I thought it was time to shoot some more with Hunter and see if there was a fun movie to be made.

What became “Breakfast with Hunter,” I was then calling “The Thompson Tapes.” The original plan was that Hunter and I would travel to New York City where he would check in to the Carlyle Hotel and interview one his greatest heroes, Keith Richards, for ABC’s Friday night show “In Concert.”   Someone else from MTV would shoot the interview and I would video the whole scene in Hi-8 for my project -“The Thompson Tapes,” while Keith and Hunter emptied the mini-bar and chatted.

But Hunter came down with a virulent flu and we never went to New York. Instead, a few weeks later in the middle of March, Keith and his manager Jane Rose , along with Laila Nabulsi, Hunter’s old girlfriend who knew Jane well, and a couple of producers flew out of New York after one of those “snow storms of the century” and checked into the Ritz Carlton in Aspen.  My plan to shoot my own video was pushed aside when I took on the “work-for-hire” shooting the interview for Keith’s production company and ABC, and I never saw the results until it went up on YouTube in 2006.

I wrote the following notes the day after the shoot in March, 1993:

THE THOMPSON TAPES

OR

BEWARE OF WHAT YOU WISH FOR

3/16/93

It was a long hard night, a night that came at the end of a crazed week, a week devoted to taping, a conversation between Hunter Thompson and Keith Richards.  I had this idea I called The Thompson Tapes – Hunter’s video autobiography.  The interview with Keith was a separate deal Hunter made with ABC and Keith.

At six o’clock last night, I was still feverously working on the autobiography.  Hunter – nothing if not a perfectionist – had taken my observation to heart that his Canon L-100 – a five thousand dollar camera – was soft.  This was one of his main concerns this last week, second only to the fact that he was convinced (perhaps rightly so) that “a ni**er in the woodpile,” as he referred to the MTV director slated to helm the interview with Keith, would creep into his house with a camera crew, as he had done not too long ago, tape Hunter’s antics, and then sell the footage to every news outlet between Woody Creek and Saigon. [ which is why Hunter in the end insisted I shoot the interview ]

So Hunter’s Canon was fuzzy, and to rent another camera for the event I committed some four hundred dollars of mine that Hunter’s staff promised to reimburse along with the $334 for 250 rounds of .44 Magnum bullets, thirty pounds of gun powder, and 100 double 0 12 gauge shells that could blast through steel.

“What are you guys doing up there?” inquired the fat man in the Basalt Police cap behind the counter at Western Sports as he slid the special order of 00’s across the counter.  “Nuthin.,” I mumbled, wondering as I wrote a corporate check whether or not I, as President of Wayne Ewing Films, Inc., would be held somehow responsible for the killed and wounded.  Nonetheless I was excited by the prospect of the next day, Saturday, when Keith would arrive and we could witness Hunter’s pyrotechnics.

Hunter’s mood had been foul all week, but it was particularly nasty that Friday afternoon.  He fired all his staff – Deborah and Nicole – because the housekeeper’s boyfriend, who was hired to clear the firing range of snow, had made an unholy quagmire of mud.  I first heard the news while waiting for an hour and a half for him to meet me for a cheeseburger at the Tavern.  I spent some of the time with Nicole who was hiding out, trying to gauge Hunter’s movements so as to make a dash back to the house for cover once he left.  Once Nicole left, I went in search of “the Beast.”

I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall back on Deborah for protection as I entered the gates of Owl Farm.  Nicole had reported her MIA after the Beast had threatened to shoot out the tires of her car to keep her from leaving.  Hunter had become a walking contradiction of anger; firing Deborah, and then threatening to shoot her car out from under her to keep her from leaving.

Now he was leaving as I drove up.  Noriss the housekeeper darted about the garage, as he gunned the Wagoneer into reverse.  I jumped into a snow bank to keep from being crushed.  The Beast screamed “Get in!”

He gunned the car down the small two lane road.  I scanned the horizon for dogs, deer, police, and other solid objects that might impede our supersonic trip back to the Tavern.  At the Tavern, he growled at college sophomores on ski vacations demanding autographs. I warned them that he was dangerous, yet they still kept coming, holding out soiled napkins with pens for a record of their momentary brush with fame, even when we moved to the bar for more protection.

Hunter just couldn’t stop lamenting the muddy firing range, insisting that Keith’s visit was ruined, and refusing to even consider taking Keith onto the range.  I kept suggesting wacky solutions, while I thought of the $334 worth of ordinance that Keith would miss.  Losing ground on the firing range issue, I switched to suggesting goofy ideas for the video with Keith.  “It’s not your movie!” the Beast growled at me, “It’s Keith’s!”

We returned to Owl Farm, barely missing two head on auto collisions and three deer.  Ron, the firing range mutilator, was lurking by the side of the garage.  Nicole’s car was gone.  “Lucky for her,” muttered the Beast.

We hung in the kitchen for an hour, maybe three.  I concluded that Hunter’s irrational lashing out at his loyal staff (and, unfortunately, I seemed to be creeping into the serf-to-be-beaten category in his eyes) seemed to apparently stem from his deep anxiety about Keith Richards’ visit.  His ability to transfer anxiety was quite creative.  The arrangement of objects on the piano, the shine of the kitchen floor, and the placement of liquor bottles on the cabinet by the front door all were objects of intense concern and belittling of the “staff.”

It was dark when we heard the car in the driveway.  Hunter immediately became like a guilty little boy, dreading his mother’s return, then quickly lashed out at himself.  “Look at me.  I’m quaking, worried about Deborah coming back. See what they do to me,” he observed, adroitly turning the guilt back on the staff for making him feel guilty.

I went out to meet Deborah, thinking I could capitalize on his guilt, and arrange a rapprochement between Hunter and her.  I knew that Deborah was tough, you’d have to be after ten years or more taking care of the national treasure known as Hunter Thompson.  She wouldn’t back down easily.

“He wants everything to be alright with you.  He’s just uptight about Keith,” I implored.

It was an easier sell than I anticipated.  Deborah smiled and handed me bags of groceries.  “I know that,” she said, as if her intuition had been insulted.

Hunter hugged her at the door.  I was overwhelmed.  I felt like Kissinger with the Vietnamese – a true diplomat in the land of the terminally crazed.  Deborah and Hunter laughed and joked, even about the firing range.

I asked Deborah for my Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum that I had left the other night to avoid complications in case I were stopped weaving my way back to Taylor Creek at three in the morning.  She brought it from the safe, in the shoulder holster that Hunter had given me the day we bought it.  He seemed to like when I wore it around Owl Farm, as if I were some kind of pseudo bodyguard, so I put it on to give them a few laughs.

It turned out to be a wise move, for the .44 soon became my only security as I stood between Hunter and Deborah, now screaming at each other across my face.  I had checked the revolver to make sure it was unloaded before putting it on so I felt it would be safe to pistol whip them without fear of an accidental discharge if things really got crazy.

Crazy doesn’t begin to describe the level of argument.  Hunter made more and more outrageous accusations to the point where Deborah returned the fire with incredible force, ending with the simple observation that “You’re an asshole, Hunter.”

Hunter smiled, taking it like a man, and was the Beast no more.  “That’s impressive, Deborah.  Really impressive,” he said, genuinely complimenting her outburst.

Deborah smiled proudly and I followed her into the red room.  “I’ve never seen him like this,” I said.

“It’s OK,” she replied.  “Anger’s good sometimes.  Hunter thrives on anger. It’s just when it gets so misplaced, that it’s bad.”

The “tempest of the century” was shutting down the East coast by the time I left the farm, and Keith’s Lady Jane called to say they couldn’t fly out of New York on Saturday.  As I white knuckled Frying Pan Road, I figured there was no way Keith would ever come to Woody Creek, and wondered how to avoid a $400 rental charge for the Hi-8 camera we would never use.  I felt lucky though.  Lucky to have seen the fury of the Beast and know that my hopes for his “video autobiography” were best doomed.  The gypsy’s curse about “getting what you wish for” seemed particularly appropriate.

Despite this rare moment of wisdom and insight, come Monday (or was it Sunday?), when the word came down that Keith was coming, I scrambled, along with the rest of “the staff” to somehow document this historic event – the meeting of the two “bad boys” of our time.

Copyright 2009 By Wayne Ewing

To Be Continued

Here’s the video: Hunter appears in the first five minutes and the last minute.

Posted in Aspen, Drugs, Fear & Loathing, Film, Guns, Music, Woody Creek | 2 Comments »

The Gonzo Pilot

August 30th, 2009

In the late winter of 1986 I began filming with Hunter for the first time. The idea was to make a short, entertaining pilot to prove to the right television programmer that Dr. Hunter S. Thompson could actually host his own, regular television series.  We were going to call the show either the “Gonzo Tour” or “Breakfast with Hunter” – the latter being Jack Nicholson’s clever idea spoofing morning television talk shows.

These were the days before cheap, digital video. Shooting 16mm film was expensive. We planned to travel to Key West, and Hunter demanded to be paid so I found a producer in Ross Milloy of Austin, Texas who financed the deal, and I handled the filmmaking.

We began shooting in Woody Creek on a snowy day.  Hunter was a natural performer; he loved the camera, and the camera loved him. You can see some of the results here in the credit sequence of “Breakfast with Hunter.”


Notice how Hunter ad libs coming out onto the porch. All I told him was “pretend you’re on your way to Florida” and he emerged in his shorts in the snow with all sorts of “business” to do, even ironically checking the time on his wristwatch in the end.  Hunter never cared about the time and was habitually late to everything.

Once in Key West among his old friends – drug smugglers, drunks, and Jimmy Buffett – he was much less forthcoming. We all stayed in Hunter’s favorite Florida motel – the Sugar Loaf Lodge on Sugar Loaf Key, about 15 minutes from Key West proper.  His girlfriend Maria (who is on the boat with him in the credit sequence above) was there, along with his secretary Deborah, my girlfriend Lynn, the patient soundman John McCormick and our money man Ross.  A captive, one-eyed dolphin named Sugar swam endlessly in circles in the motel lagoon while we waited for Hunter to perform for the camera each day.

After a week at the Sugar Loaf, I figured Hunter was actually in front of my camera for a total of about two hours. He never arose until well after noon, no matter what plan we made the night before, and when I went to beat on his door he would mumble that he needed to take a shower. The water would go on, and it could still be heard running when I returned a half hour later. Of course, Hunter had gone back to bed (“I never turn on the hot water,” he would say in defense of the ruse).

After two days, the Sugar Loaf Lodge Management (who actually were rather fond of Hunter from his previous stays) threatened to kick us all out, unless one of us moved in next door to him. The loud sounds in the middle of the night – light bulbs exploding, Maria gurgling as if she were being strangled – were upsetting the guests next door who checked out complaining bitterly. So Lynn and I moved in next door, and hoped every night that the screams were from pleasure and not pain.

The cinematic breakthrough came with the boat ride which plays throughout the credit sequence.  Hunter had bought a boat on an earlier trip to Key West and he was keen to take it out of storage and race around the Keys. An old buddy of Hunter’s supplied the second boat for my camera, and part of the time I would shoot boat to boat and sometimes on board with Hunter and Maria.

At one point, as you can see in the film, a school of dolphins gracefully surfaced and began to swim in formation with Hunter.  “I’m back, Boys,” Hunter called out.

“What did you mean by that?” I later asked in the bar at the Sugar Loaf.

“I’m Lono and I’m back with my people,” declared Hunter.

(Lono was a mythical Hawaiian figure featured in “The Curse of Lono” who Ralph Steadman concludes is reincarnated as Hunter)

After the boating sequence I figured we were on a roll, so I suggested to Hunter in the bar that we continue filming and shoot an interview to tie the whole pilot together. He agreed, and I left him with Maria and three Bloody Marys while soundman McCormick and I lit a set in McCormack’s motel room. In less than a half hour I went back to the bar to get Hunter.

“I’m feeling too dumb to do the interview,” mumbled Hunter, now sipping Scotch.

“Okay. We’ll just keep the set ready in McCormack’s room until you are,” I suggested amiably.  Hunter said he’d call and retreated to his room with Maria…for over two days, until I got the call at three am on the third night.

“I’m ready for my interview now,” the Beast said.

So we all scrambled awake and shot until dawn. Not the greatest interview he ever did, but it sufficed.  You can see part of it in the clip above.  Note the jacket, advertising the “Cigarette” boats used for speedy purposes in Florida.

Jimmy Buffett provided another high point, agreeing to be filmed in conversation with Hunter in his backyard at the beach in Key West.   Years later in New York City at 3am as I was leading Hunter out of Elaine’s after the premiere of “Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas” I heard a voice call out, “Your film is still the best, Wayne.” I looked up to see Jimmy smiling from the back of a black SUV, and knew he was referring to the “Gonzo Pilot.” For that I will forever be grateful.

But the programmers at HBO weren’t of the same opinion. Producer Milloy reported that their head of documentary programming at the time threatened to call Security if he ever mentioned Hunter’s name again. These were the days of Reagan and a middle aged dope fiend was not welcome on the air waves.

The best of the Gonzo Pilot is to be found either in the credits of my film “Breakfast with Hunter” (above) or in Alex Gibney’s “Gonzo” which has the scene we gave him with Buffett. Someday we may find the right use for the rest.

That winter of ’86, I left Hunter with Maria in Key West, and returned to Aspen, not hearing anything for about a week and then he called.

“You’ve got to help get us out of here. I’ve spent all the money you gave me and have no credit cards to get a plane ticket,” he pleaded. “If you will pre-pay our plane tickets home, I promise I’ll pay you back the minute I’m at Owl Farm.”

American Express and every other credit card company known to man had long before cancelled any card in the name of Hunter S. Thompson or anything similar.

What else could I do, but pay for the tickets and hope for reimbursement from my new television star?  In fact, when they returned, Hunter immediately wrote me a check, saying “Let this be a lesson to you, Wayne. Never lose your credit cards.”

Copyright 2009 By Wayne Ewing

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McGovern’s Birthday

August 24th, 2009

“Thank God you’re here,” said Hunter, collapsing like a rubber man into my arms at the gate of his flight arriving at Washington Dulles airport from Denver.

It was April 7, 1997, and in those pre-911 days, you could still get through security to meet folks as they came off the plane. As the Road Manager it was my duty to be there to greet the Rubber Man, and thankfully I was on time since he clearly could not make it any further without assistance. As he continued to go limp in my arms, I spied an empty wheelchair sitting in the boarding area. He could barely put one foot in front of the other as I dragged him into the chair.

“What happened?” I asked.

“The stewardess was giving me a hard time about drinking. I decided the wise course was to take a Halcion rather than get in a fight with her,” replied the Rubber Man.

Keep in mind that Halcion is a cleverly named drug for the treatment of insomnia. George Bush Senior once blamed the pill for causing him to vomit on the Prime Minister of Japan at a state dinner in Tokyo and then pass out. Hunter took it regularly, but never before while traveling. But this was an important trip and he dared not be delayed by armed FAA agents upon arrival. The next day was George McGovern’s birthday and Hunter was expected at a lunch in George’s honor and a symposium afterwards at the National Archives.

The stretch limo was waiting at the curb outside the baggage area. Unfortunately, I had found on the way to Dulles that the driver did not have much of a sense of humor, so I feared he would be the next source of trouble. Life on the road with Hunter was always the Art of the Next Fifteen Minutes; what could go wrong next?

In the limo, Hunter came around quickly from the Halcion, and it’s after effect kept him from fucking with the driver, although he did let loose a ton of abuse on the cell phone at his secretary Deborah when she dared to suggest that he should not have stayed up all night before getting on the plane for Washington, DC.

“Fuck You!. I’ll do it again and again anytime I want to, “he screamed into the phone.

Hunter had agreed to stay at the Fairfax Hotel, a fashionable choice just off Dupont Circle and the home of the storied Jockey Club. Checking into a hotel was always stressful for Hunter, especially the part where they asked for his credit card, so upon arrival I walked him straight through the lobby and into their elegant bar, crowded with men and women in serious suits. Distracted by the women, Hunter gave up his credit card with surprisingly little resistance, and I went to find the Manager to make sure “Mr. Ben Franklin” (his road name that spring) would have a choice room.

The manager must have read a bit of “Fear & Loathing” and seemed to know the dangers involved in any delay so I was back in the bar in less than five minutes with the room key. The Rubber Man was gone, replaced by a suave and sophisticated “Mr. Franklin” who had already managed to pick up a thirtysome lawyeress from Nashville with great legs and a sweet accent in town for a job interview with US Securities and Exchange Commission. Thinking that this development could either make my job a whole lot easier or worse, I sat down for a drink to see how it played out.

“You look just like that crazy writer….you know…what’s his name?” observed the Lawyeress.

“I’m not him,” replied Mr. Franklin with a sly grin.

“Yes he is,” I interjected, anxious to cut to the chase and get him to the room.

Hunter actually welcomed my intervention since it hooked her so thoroughly that she instantly agreed to go to the room with us, rather than being left behind in the wake of fame. Up in the room, we all got quite drunk and giddy as Hunter held court, attempting to seduce the Lawyeress into spending the night with him. I kept trying to excuse myself, but he seemed to want me to stay, fearful that she would bolt as soon as they were alone.

After a few hours of this game, the mouse finally left, insisting that she had to get ready for her job interview. Hunter and I talked for a bit about McGovern’s birthday. Making a sharp appearance was most important to him, and he wanted to be ready for the event. He had marked certain passages in the campaign book to remember, and asked me to read them to him while he got in bed and soon fell asleep. It was a touching moment with The Beast, one that I had never seen before or after. Usually I faded away while he partied on, but not on the eve of McGovern’s Birthday.

The next morning I showed up at the Fairfax sharply at 8am as agreed. Apprehensively I walked down the corridor of his floor, wondering what to expect. At other times I’ve had to call hotel security and have the door removed from its hinges to get him up, but not today, not on McGovern’s Birthday. As I rounded the corner he was already opening the door and grabbing the newspaper from the floor with a smile.

The rest of the day was smoother than a Biff from the Woody Creek Tavern (Bailey’s Irish Cream with an Irish Whiskey floater). The limo driver tolerated us and everyone Hunter invited into the stretch along the way for refreshments. You can see most of the day in “Breakfast with Hunter,” a short preview of which is included here.

The staff of the National Archives even let him smoke in a special room back stage at the symposium. For Hunter, that was a bit of true respect, and that’s what he was looking for that day in Washington, DC. He was lauded by two Presidential candidates – Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern – and his old friends from the Washington press corps from Bill Greider to Jules Witcover came out to hear him speak. That night we went to the Australian Embassy where the Ambassador – a rabid non-smoker – spent the evening chasing Hunter around to stop him smoking, and we ended the night in stitches drinking at the apartment of PJ and Tina O’Rourke.

The next day when I dismissed the serious limo driver, Hunter put a hundred dollar bill for him in an envelope with a piece of Fairfax Hotel stationery on which he wrote:

“Good Luck in Jail”

Still without a sense of humor after three days with Hunter, the driver read the note and then asked sorrowfully, “Am I going to jail?” I noticed that he didn’t ask “Why?” – just whether or not he was. So I replied “Not yet, but I’ll let you know.”

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Posted in Aspen, Drugs, Fear & Loathing, Film, Nixon, Politics, Woody Creek | 2 Comments »

Never Call 911

August 14th, 2009

“Have you noticed how no one comes to the door unannounced since I shot Deborah?” Hunter asked with an odd sense of pride.

About a month had passed since the shooting incident at Owl Farm which you may remember since it was covered by over 800 news outlets worldwide. GONZO WRITER SHOOTS SECRETARY was a popular headline and essentially true, but the local press was particularly misleading with their banner HUNTER THOMPSON SHOOTS WOODY CREEK WOMAN. You’d think Hunter had done a drive-by shooting on the Woody Creek tavern, leaving some biker bleeding through her latex.

In fact, the real story was far stranger, and as the only one to witness it other than the victim and the shooter who can no longer be held accountable, I’ll tell you the truth.

Hunter and I were working alone on the second letters book – “Fear & Loathing in America” – that long night into the morning. My habit was to wait until about 3am when the cops were busy processing their drunks picked up after the bars closed in Aspen and then head for my cabin up the Frying Pan River. But if the work persisted I would give up on my two beer rule as dawn approached and sleep next door in Deborah’s spare bedroom for a few hours and then head home. Even though I usually left for Owl Farm in the dark I always brought my sunglasses for the possible ride up river against the sun.

At about 6:30am in this first year of the new century Hunter and I shared a smoke and I headed for Deborah’s cabin about hundred feet from the main house. The soft bed in the spare room could put anyone to sleep quickly, and I was down within minutes. Then the phone rang, waking me slightly. I heard Hunter’s voice mumbling into Deborah’s answering machine. His usual instructions for the day shift, I figured, slipping back into sleep and then BANG!

One gun shot followed instantly by Deborah screaming, “You shot me, you bastard!”

Rising up, I started to run out of the bedroom and then realized I was naked. The question arose in my mind whether to continue or stop to put on my pants. “Get the pants,” I thought, figuring that I would not have a chance to retrieve them for some time.

Deborah was still standing in the front door way, just beginning to bleed from multiple shot gun pellet wounds to her arms and legs. The color had drained from her face, but Hunter looked even paler as he rushed up to the door with the shotgun cradled in his arms.

He never looked sadder in all the years I knew him. Hunter truly loved Deborah. She had been with him since the early 1980’s. Hunter also prided himself on being a good fire arms instructor. The idea of shooting anyone accidentally was abhorrent to him and as far as I knew it had never happened before. (He once blew out a door frame the I was standing in with a 12 gauge, but that was on purpose and another story.)
This was a true dilemma for me. “Never Call 911. Never. This means you!” was inscribed on the refrigerator at Owl Farm in his artful script, reminding me of the cardinal house rule every time I went for a beer. To call 911 would be to place all three of us “in the system” and start a legal log rolling that none of us could stop.

Looking at Deborah, I tried to assess whether she was about to go into shock. For a multiple gun shot victim she still looked pretty steady on her feet, so I figured the best strategy was to get her into my car immediately and take her directly to the Aspen Hospital. I rationalized that even if I called 911, I could get her to the emergency room faster than waiting for an ambulance. The local paparazzi were known to scan the police frequencies for celebrity fuckups just like this. No need to alert the media. I just hoped she would not bleed out too much during the ride. Dabbing at her wounds now with a towel I found no heavy, arterial bleeding.

“Can you make it to the hospital,” I asked.

“I guess I’ll have to, won’t I, Wayne” replied Deborah sarcastically through clenched teeth. She’s one tough lady. How else could she have survived twenty years with Hunter?

Leaving Hunter behind to deal with the authorities who we knew would inevitably arrive to investigate the scene, Deborah and I headed for the hospital through morning rush hour on Highway 82 (which the residents of Aspen have fought to keep as inaccessible as possible in the weird belief that traffic jams will keep out workers and tourists in cars.)

I called Sheriff Bob on his cell phone, assuming that this was not a violation of the 911 rule and that he could pave the way for me at the emergency room. Gun shot victims tend to produce many questions.

“Hunter shot Deborah,” I said as soon as Bob answered. “She’s alive. I’m driving her to the hospital.”

Sheriff Bob loved Deborah at least as much as Hunter and I.

“That sonofabitch,” Bob swore. “What happened?”

“It was an accident,” I said.

“Okay, I’ll see you at the ER,” said Bob, hanging up.

By driving on the shoulder of the road I was able to skirt the workers waiting in their cars to serve rich people, and was proud that I made what was usually a 20 minute drive in about 10. We parked in front of the emergency room, and Deborah said she could still walk, so I lead her inside.

“What’s wrong with her,” asked the receptionist behind the desk where nurses were milling about on a quiet morning for an ER.

Leaning over the desk so that no one else could hear, I said softly, “She’s been gun shot.”

“GUN SHOT VICTIM,” screamed the receptionist, and the whole room full of hospital workers froze.

The male nurse behind the desk picked up a RADIO microphone broadcasting to the world on the police frequency “Gun shot victim in the ER.”

So the media was alerted and I might as well have called 911 in the first place, except I did get Deborah to the hospital quicker than the system would have. Now I just had a bloody car to deal with, the sheriff’s deputies who were beginning to descend on Owl Farm, as well worry about Deborah’s wounds which turned out to not be so bad, all things considered. She still carries shotgun pellets in her legs as far as I know. Wasn’t worth the trouble to take them out.

Hunter on the other hand faced a world of trouble. Sheriff Bob was not going to let him get away with a shooting, especially if he meant to shoot Deborah.

The truth was, and I firmly believe this, that after I left Hunter at 6:30am he was about to go to bed as well and looked out towards Deborah’s cabin and saw a bear around the dumpster between the two cabins. He went back into the kitchen and called Deborah’s phone, leaving the message which turned out to be “do you see that bear outside your house?” Deborah heard the message, and got up to see the bear.

Meanwhile Hunter had grabbed a shot gun. He went to his side porch and shot at the ground just behind the bear to scare it off, just at the exact moment that Deborah opened her screen door. She wasn’t actually in the line of fire, but the shotgun pellets hit the open screen door frame and ricocheted into her arms and legs. Fortunately, she had not stepped outside or she would have been hit directly and more severely wounded.

In the end, Deborah refused to press charges against Hunter, all was forgiven, and I’ll still never call 911. Never!

Copyright 2009 by Wayne Ewing




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Posted in Aspen, Guns | 7 Comments »