Unfortunately, Hunter went to rest with the Lords of Karma with The Rum Diary very much in limbo. Johnny displayed his enormous love and respect by making Hunter’s outrageous funeral wish possible, as documented in When I Die. And, then Johnny did something even more important to Hunter: he kept The Rum Diary alive. Now it’s finally a movie, opening in theaters in just a few days. No doubt, the Beast is stirring and quite pleased.

Holly’s rebuttal to The FAX reveals the nature of classic “Gonzo” writing by Hunter; the facts are often either exaggerated or wrong in a way that serves the truth quite well. As Frank Mankiewicz observes in Breakfast with Hunter about Hunter’s book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972, “It was the least factual, and most accurate account of the campaign.”

Michael Thomas showed up in Woody Creek in June 2001 to meet with Hunter and talk about the script. I assume he must have been paid by then. Hunter and he got along famously, even though I feared for Thomas’ safety when he declared that the movie should be a “comedy.” The memory of the horrible scene recorded in Breakfast with Hunter when Alex Cox and Tod Davies came to see Hunter about their script of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas hung over this script meeting four years later. To my surprise, Hunter agreed whole-heartedly that the movie should be a comedy.

Ironically, a week after Michael Thomas met with Hunter, the Hollywood Reporter front page declared, “Shooting Gallery Running Low on Firepower” and noted that the company’s financial situation had “deteriorated substantially.” In short order, The Shooting Gallery went out of business, and development of The Rum Diary slowed to a creep.

Now, ten years later writer/director Bruce Robinson is releasing his take on The Rum Diary and damn if it’s not one hell of a HILARIOUS COMEDY.

When I contacted Holly earlier in the week, I was afraid that she would either not respond or send a gaggle of lawyers my way. As most true Hunter fans already know, she was the object of extreme vilification by Hunter in an infamous FAX he sent her in 2001. A company she worked for at the time – The Shooting Gallery, now defunct – had optioned The Rum Diary after she met with Hunter and Johnny in the Tiki Hut in 1999. After more than a year of phone calls and visits, there was still no writer attached or a script. Hunter wrote her a FAX that became legendary in Hollywood for expressing an author’s frustration with a studio executive. I wanted her side of the story.

The FAX will be covered in the next episode of this series, but as you can see here in Episode Seven, Holly had unexpected observations about Hunter and The Rum Diary.

I probably should not have been so amazed that Holly welcomed my visit. First, she answered her cell phone when I called. Second, she agreed to consider an interview, and third, she told me she cried when she heard Hunter’s voice on line in one of the first episodes in this series. How strange to find that this woman, now legendary in Hollywood as the object of Hunter’s bitter FAX, truly loved him, just like all of his who were lucky enough to dwell in his kitchen.

Hunter had that odd ability to insult people into lasting friendships as I noted earlier about the author William Kennedy in Episode Three. Once Hunter shot into the frame of a door in which I was standing with a shotgun pistol. One degree of difference in his well-aimed blast and I would have been gut shot and dead in a very painful way. I took it as a hug from Hunter, just as Kennedy and Sorensen took his well-written insults.

Watching the fishing buddies waiting for their prey was far more interesting than the meetings, and they never asked me to stop shooting while they hung out. I had a feeling they both wanted the day preserved in more than just their memories.

Holly Sorensen came out of the darkness to liven up the night. She demanded whisky, and tolerated being filmed for a few minutes – with no explanation from anyone as to what I was doing. Usually I would tell the unsuspecting who I was and what I was doing, but in this case I didn’t want to interrupt the flow. Nonetheless, when it came time to talk about making a deal for the book, Holly gave me a withering look and I stopped shooting. I did not want to squirrel a possible deal in, literally, the eleventh hour.

Hunter was immediately impressed by Ms. Sorensen, and I figured the boys had landed, if not a big fish, certainly a respectable catch for a long day’s work in Hollywood.

Tracey Jacobs, Johnny’s dedicated agent from the beginning of his career, having booked him on the TV series “Twenty-One Jump Street” in the 80′s – set up a day long series of pitch meetings for them. Johnny graciously offered the Tiki Hut by the pool in his backyard as a venue, and we arrived early in the afternoon and stayed until almost midnight. Johnny’s mansion in Hollywood is reported to have been built for Bela Lugosi, and those who have seen Breakfast with Hunter will remember the scene I shot at 4am inside with Hunter and Johnny almost two years earlier.

That cool day in December was truly a marathon for all, but we still had fun. The ultimate test for Hunter was always “will it be fun.” Not a bad rule for living.

1999 was the year in which The Blair Witch Project had made a phenomenal amount of money at the box office as the result of the first guerrilla internet movie marketing campaign. The success of Blair Witch caused the Intermedia executives – Nigel Sinclair and Kathy Goodman – to think that strategy could be applied to a project involving Hunter. Given the lightning like evolution of the internet, it’s hard to remember how novel the world wide web was in 1999, but while filming the conversation I was thinking the whole time “I’m shooting it already, guys!”

This is the first of two webisodes in this series set in the Tiki Hut. Watching Johnny and Hunter together in these scenes will give you a sense of their relationship more, I think, than any interview could possible tell. They truly loved and respected each other.

Now having seen The Rum Diary at the world premiere last Thursday night in LA, I can safely say that Hunter would be extremely pleased with the movie that Johnny is finally releasing twelve years later. If nothing else, it’s a lot of FUN!

“I feel like hell, but you might as well come up and shoot this,” he sneezed, more than said.

I headed out for Woody Creek quickly. In those days my cameras were always loaded, charged, and ready to go. If I had hesitated, this scene would never have been captured. In the morning when I returned home I found a new phone message from Hunter waving me off, saying he was too sick to film and not to come. But I was already half way there.

Marianne Macdonald – the writer for the London Observer -provided quite a bit of fodder, not just for this series of webisodes, but also for my first film about Hunter – Breakfast with Hunter – where he describes to her his early life as “The Billy the Kid of Louisville.” For that I am grateful to her. But after her piece was published, both Hunter and I considered her to be a treacherous violator of the rules of the Owl Farm kitchen. The cardinal precept – along with “Never Call 911 – was “What happens in the kitchen, stays in the kitchen” unless otherwise authorized by Hunter to be revealed. He specifically asked Ms. Macdonald not to write about his open use of a certain white powder at times during the night. Otherwise the interview would be over before it started. She agreed, and then went on to make his use of the substance the lead of her piece in the Observer. I guess she thought it was big news that Hunter Thompson did drugs.

Ms. Macdonald then went on to describe me as a “camp-follower” which is a euphemism for a “whore.” While that may be true, I’m not sure how she came to that conclusion so quickly.

Unfortunately, I can’t find her original 1997 article on line, but did find this recap of that night written by her in the Sunday Times after Hunter died. She’s still writing about the white powder, and I’ve risen to the stature of “a sort of camp-follower.” Yet, her recollections of that evening are still interesting in a Roshomon sort of way.

If nothing else, Ms. Macdonald is a good reader of orgiastic scenes, and this particular one and the character involved – Chennault – will continue as a theme in The Rum Diary Back-Story.

Stand by for more

While enduring this bleak reality, a twenty-two year old Hunter Thompson began writing The Rum Diary. Thirty-eight years later, he finished the novel in the summer of 1998, as you can witness here in Episode Three of The Rum Diary Back-Story.

Hunter’s 1960 letter pleading for help continues:

“I can’t even get to people. I don’t know where they are. I am 13 miles from San Juan in a negro community and not a goat-sucking soul speaks English. I must have FOOD. The swine seems to think that I am above eating. Jesus ate – why can’t I? Oh God give me the strength to dump in their eyes.”

Hunter had hope for more than starvation in Puerto Rico. In 1959, he saw an ad in Editor & Publisher for a sports editor position at the San Juan Star – an English language daily somewhat like that depicted in The Rum Diary. But, his cheeky letter applying for the job was rejected by the editor – William Kennedy, who would later win the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Ironweed. Hunter’s reply to Kennedy was classic Gonzo:

“your letter was cute my friend, and your interpretation of my letter was beautifully typical of the cretin-intellect responsible for the dry-rot of the American press. But don’t think that an invitation from you will keep me from getting down that way, and when I do remind me to first kick your teeth out and then jam a bronze plaque far into your small intestine.” HST letter to William Kennedy, August 30, 1959

After being rejected by the San Juan Star, Hunter applied for a job at the Puerto Rico Bowling News and was rejected. Determined to get to Puerto Rico, he applied to a new English language weekly bowling publication – El Sportivo – and was accepted. Only a few months after he arrived in Puerto Rico, El Sportivo folded, leaving Hunter with no pay and no food.

Hunter had an amazing ability to insult people into deep, long-lasting friendships, and that odd talent somehow affected Kennedy since they became lifetime friends following their series of acidic letters in 1959.

This unusual talent to berate people into friendship comes into play in later episodes of The Rum Diary Back-Story as Hunter battles to have his novel turned into a movie.

To be continued.

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Just as Hunter’s inimitable traits provided the inspiration for the lead character Paul Kemp in The Rum Diary (played by Johnny Depp in the movie), Hunter reveals at the end of this Episode that Sandy was the model for the character Chennault (played by Amber Heard in the film). Like Amber, Sandy was clearly a gorgeous young woman. This picture taken by Hunter in Puerto Rico can be found in Gonzo an excellent, over-sized book of Hunter’s photos. He obsessively documented his life and times with a keen eye. I highly recommend the book, which also has an insightful, well-written introduction by Johnny Depp.

“I live 5 miles from town, on the beach, 4- room house, motor scooter, no job, writing freelance stuff for Stateside newspapers, also fiction, so many bugs I can barely breathe, wife here and cooking, no money, vagrant artist from New York also living here, all in all life is not bad.” The Proud Highway, letter from Loiz Aldea, Puerto Rico 5/25/1960

Given Hunter’s incredible sense of self (who else would saved almost every letter they wrote, certain they would be published one day?) he undoubtedly figured that his life in Puerto Rico was like a movie, and sure enough, now that’s true. The question is: would Hunter like what Johnny Depp and the director Bruce Robinson have done with his story? Having seen quite a bit of the film, my guess is he’s smiling right now as he rests up for his eventual return to this world as a “Road man for the Lords of Karma,” as he predicted in Breakfast with Hunter.

This is Episode One, and it begins, like most days back when my friend Hunter was still alive, with a phone call.  Now when the phone rings at 3am, I know it can only be trouble.  Back then, they were calls to action and fun.  At one point, I planned to structure my first film about Hunter – Breakfast with Hunter – with these messages Hunter left me over the years.

The living room interview conducted by Timothy Ferris is one of the few times we purposely set up such a formal scene, as if his good friend Ed Bradley had come to interview Hunter for “60 Minutes.”  We were actually trying to make an “EPK” – Electronic Press Kit – to promote the upcoming release of The Rum Diary in the fall of 1998 after spending the previous six months editing the book, along with Doug Brinkley, Curtis Robinson, Marysue Rucci of Simon & Schuster, and Heidi Opheim – Hunter’s assistant and girl-friend at the time

Hunter always liked to respond to intelligent questions, and sometimes when the words were terminally blocked between his brain and mouth or typewriter, we would resort to questions and answers.  Science writer Timothy Ferris was a respected friend from their days in the seventies at Rolling Stone, and Hunter flew him in from San Francisco to lead the conversation.  Heidi operated the second camera on Ferris and did a great job under the kind of pressure only Hunter could invoke.

Simon & Schuster’s marketing department ignored the EPK, making no use of it whatsoever, and we were quite disappointed at the time.  Funny how things turn out: now it seems perfect that these scenes will be viewed on the internet, like long lost pictographs on the wall of an electronic cave, reflecting the unique vision of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and the persistence of his fine friend and great actor – Johnny Depp – to bring Hunter’s wild and infectious way of living to the wide screen.

This is the first of ten (10) webisodes that I will be releasing here at least once a week leading up to The Rum Diary opening on October 28.  Subscribe to the “RSS Feed” above right to be automatically notified or check back for more.