Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

Louisville – Part One

Saturday, March 27th, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Was that him?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To Be Continued

Copyright 2010 by Wayne Ewing

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Fear & Loathing, Film, Music | 8 Comments »

The Night We Shot Keith Richards, Part 2

Monday, 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

Tags:
Posted in Aspen, Drugs, Film, Gambling, Guns, Music, Woody Creek | 2 Comments »

The Night We Shot Keith Richards – Part I

Tuesday, 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 »