“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.

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.

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

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

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

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

“What killed him?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright 2010 by Wayne Ewing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hunter was livid.

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

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

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

Screwjack Courtesy of Deborah Fuller

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

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

The next afternoon I got a call from Deborah.

“He shot the bobcat,” she proudly declared.

“How did he do it?”

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

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

Copyright 2010 by Wayne Ewing

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)

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

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