Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

The Eulogy

Friday, November 20th, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you type?” he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We should take some acid” suggests Hunter.

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

“Really…no acid for me,” I insist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright 2009 by Wayne Ewing

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

The O’Farrell Theater

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What are you writing,” asked Hunter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And the strap on?”

“Always,” said Bambi

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

“Anybody I want?” she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright 2009 By Wayne Ewing

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

McGovern’s Birthday

Monday, 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.”

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