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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright 2009 by Wayne Ewing