Archive for the ‘Hollywood’ Category

The Premiere

Saturday, May 15th, 2010

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

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

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

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

“Like a drug survival trip,” Hunter admitted.

“We survived,” the Sheriff concluded.

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

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

STEADMAN. He’s a Messiah of a kind.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright 2010 By Wayne Ewing

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Fear and Loathing in Hollywood

Wednesday, 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 | 6 Comments »

The Chateau Marmont – Part 2

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright 2009 by Wayne Ewing

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