Posts Tagged ‘Hunter S. Thompson’

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.
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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

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

Fear and Loathing in Hollywood

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

Six months had passed since Hunter’s trip to Hollywood in the spring of 1997 to replace Alec Cox as the director of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (FLLV), and now, with the film in production, the Beast was bedeviled by another director interpreting his most famous work. Terry Gilliam inspired a special paranoia in Hunter, especially when it came to Hunter’s cameo role slated for the film.  Thus, in September, 1997 Hunter asked me to advance his appearance on the set of FLLV.

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)

FLLVcallsheet

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

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Posted in Fear & Loathing, Film, Hollywood, Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

The Chateau Marmont – Part 2

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Hunter’s six days at the Chateau Marmont in March, 1997 developed into an odd routine. Mid-morning I would wake up in Marina del Rey on the Barney Google – a 1960s wooden motor yacht that served as my LA base – and head out for Hollywood after calling ahead to order the first round of breakfast for Mr. Green – two Bloody Marys, two Heinekens, a pot of coffee, and a pitcher of ice.  The tray would be waiting by the time I got to the front desk at noon.  The Beast no longer dead-locked the door after that first morning, and I used my key to enter, always anticipating some new weirdness on the other side.

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

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Posted in Fear & Loathing, Film, Hollywood | 4 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.”

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

Never Call 911

Friday, August 14th, 2009

“Have you noticed how no one comes to the door unannounced since I shot Deborah?” Hunter asked with an odd sense of pride.

About a month had passed since the shooting incident at Owl Farm which you may remember since it was covered by over 800 news outlets worldwide. GONZO WRITER SHOOTS SECRETARY was a popular headline and essentially true, but the local press was particularly misleading with their banner HUNTER THOMPSON SHOOTS WOODY CREEK WOMAN. You’d think Hunter had done a drive-by shooting on the Woody Creek tavern, leaving some biker bleeding through her latex.

In fact, the real story was far stranger, and as the only one to witness it other than the victim and the shooter who can no longer be held accountable, I’ll tell you the truth.

Hunter and I were working alone on the second letters book – “Fear & Loathing in America” – that long night into the morning. My habit was to wait until about 3am when the cops were busy processing their drunks picked up after the bars closed in Aspen and then head for my cabin up the Frying Pan River. But if the work persisted I would give up on my two beer rule as dawn approached and sleep next door in Deborah’s spare bedroom for a few hours and then head home. Even though I usually left for Owl Farm in the dark I always brought my sunglasses for the possible ride up river against the sun.

At about 6:30am in this first year of the new century Hunter and I shared a smoke and I headed for Deborah’s cabin about hundred feet from the main house. The soft bed in the spare room could put anyone to sleep quickly, and I was down within minutes. Then the phone rang, waking me slightly. I heard Hunter’s voice mumbling into Deborah’s answering machine. His usual instructions for the day shift, I figured, slipping back into sleep and then BANG!

One gun shot followed instantly by Deborah screaming, “You shot me, you bastard!”

Rising up, I started to run out of the bedroom and then realized I was naked. The question arose in my mind whether to continue or stop to put on my pants. “Get the pants,” I thought, figuring that I would not have a chance to retrieve them for some time.

Deborah was still standing in the front door way, just beginning to bleed from multiple shot gun pellet wounds to her arms and legs. The color had drained from her face, but Hunter looked even paler as he rushed up to the door with the shotgun cradled in his arms.

He never looked sadder in all the years I knew him. Hunter truly loved Deborah. She had been with him since the early 1980’s. Hunter also prided himself on being a good fire arms instructor. The idea of shooting anyone accidentally was abhorrent to him and as far as I knew it had never happened before. (He once blew out a door frame the I was standing in with a 12 gauge, but that was on purpose and another story.)
This was a true dilemma for me. “Never Call 911. Never. This means you!” was inscribed on the refrigerator at Owl Farm in his artful script, reminding me of the cardinal house rule every time I went for a beer. To call 911 would be to place all three of us “in the system” and start a legal log rolling that none of us could stop.

Looking at Deborah, I tried to assess whether she was about to go into shock. For a multiple gun shot victim she still looked pretty steady on her feet, so I figured the best strategy was to get her into my car immediately and take her directly to the Aspen Hospital. I rationalized that even if I called 911, I could get her to the emergency room faster than waiting for an ambulance. The local paparazzi were known to scan the police frequencies for celebrity fuckups just like this. No need to alert the media. I just hoped she would not bleed out too much during the ride. Dabbing at her wounds now with a towel I found no heavy, arterial bleeding.

“Can you make it to the hospital,” I asked.

“I guess I’ll have to, won’t I, Wayne” replied Deborah sarcastically through clenched teeth. She’s one tough lady. How else could she have survived twenty years with Hunter?

Leaving Hunter behind to deal with the authorities who we knew would inevitably arrive to investigate the scene, Deborah and I headed for the hospital through morning rush hour on Highway 82 (which the residents of Aspen have fought to keep as inaccessible as possible in the weird belief that traffic jams will keep out workers and tourists in cars.)

I called Sheriff Bob on his cell phone, assuming that this was not a violation of the 911 rule and that he could pave the way for me at the emergency room. Gun shot victims tend to produce many questions.

“Hunter shot Deborah,” I said as soon as Bob answered. “She’s alive. I’m driving her to the hospital.”

Sheriff Bob loved Deborah at least as much as Hunter and I.

“That sonofabitch,” Bob swore. “What happened?”

“It was an accident,” I said.

“Okay, I’ll see you at the ER,” said Bob, hanging up.

By driving on the shoulder of the road I was able to skirt the workers waiting in their cars to serve rich people, and was proud that I made what was usually a 20 minute drive in about 10. We parked in front of the emergency room, and Deborah said she could still walk, so I lead her inside.

“What’s wrong with her,” asked the receptionist behind the desk where nurses were milling about on a quiet morning for an ER.

Leaning over the desk so that no one else could hear, I said softly, “She’s been gun shot.”

“GUN SHOT VICTIM,” screamed the receptionist, and the whole room full of hospital workers froze.

The male nurse behind the desk picked up a RADIO microphone broadcasting to the world on the police frequency “Gun shot victim in the ER.”

So the media was alerted and I might as well have called 911 in the first place, except I did get Deborah to the hospital quicker than the system would have. Now I just had a bloody car to deal with, the sheriff’s deputies who were beginning to descend on Owl Farm, as well worry about Deborah’s wounds which turned out to not be so bad, all things considered. She still carries shotgun pellets in her legs as far as I know. Wasn’t worth the trouble to take them out.

Hunter on the other hand faced a world of trouble. Sheriff Bob was not going to let him get away with a shooting, especially if he meant to shoot Deborah.

The truth was, and I firmly believe this, that after I left Hunter at 6:30am he was about to go to bed as well and looked out towards Deborah’s cabin and saw a bear around the dumpster between the two cabins. He went back into the kitchen and called Deborah’s phone, leaving the message which turned out to be “do you see that bear outside your house?” Deborah heard the message, and got up to see the bear.

Meanwhile Hunter had grabbed a shot gun. He went to his side porch and shot at the ground just behind the bear to scare it off, just at the exact moment that Deborah opened her screen door. She wasn’t actually in the line of fire, but the shotgun pellets hit the open screen door frame and ricocheted into her arms and legs. Fortunately, she had not stepped outside or she would have been hit directly and more severely wounded.

In the end, Deborah refused to press charges against Hunter, all was forgiven, and I’ll still never call 911. Never!

Copyright 2009 by Wayne Ewing




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Posted in Aspen, Guns | 7 Comments »