Hunter S. Thompson (18th of July 1937 To the 20th of February 2005)

Print journalist, was born Hunter Stockton Thompson in Louisville, Kentucky, the son of Jack Thompson, an insurance agent, and his second wife, Virginia Ray. Young Hunter was an avid reader and showed an early interest in journalism, collaborating with several fourth-grade friends on a mimeographed newspaper called the Southern Star, but his even greater interest in mischief and pranks earned him a reputation as the neighbourhood hellion. Hunter’s father died in 1952, and his mother, who took a library job to support the family, was even less able to control her wild son on her own. In 1955, after a long string of brushes with the law over incidents of underage drinking, theft, and vandalism, he was sentenced to sixty days in jail for a mugging and spent his high school graduation day behind bars. Joining the military after his release seemed like the best option. While serving at Eglin Air Force Base, in the Florida panhandle, he took night classes at Florida State University and marked the formal start of his journalism career, talking his way into the sports editor position on the weekly Command Courier, the base newspaper.

Honourably discharged in 1957, Thompson bounced through a series of short-lived journalism jobs in Pennsylvania, New York City, upstate New York, and Puerto Rico while piling up rejection notices for his fiction, taking a few literature classes at Columbia University, and practising the novelist’s craft by copying Hemingway and Fitzgerald on the typewriter. (He never finished college; the title of “Doctor” he would later flaunt came courtesy of an inexpensive mail-order divinity degree.) In 1962 he wangled a spot as the South America correspondent for the new National Observer, which had been created by the innovative Dow Jones executive Barney Kilgore as a general-interest weekly version of the Wall Street Journal. In stories about smugglers in Colombia, nightclub shootings in Rio de Janeiro, and his own bouts with exotic tropical diseases in Peru, Thompson began to develop a casual, subjective, often comic style that tended to blur the line between fiction and fact.

In 1963, after a year in South America, Thompson returned home and married his long-time girlfriend, Sandra Conklin. They soon moved to the San Francisco Bay area, where they lived hand-to-mouth while Thompson quarrelled with the Observer (he thought his assignments were too lightweight, while some staffers suspected him of fabrication) and struggled with a novel. Their son was born in 1964; his wife would eventually have three miscarriages and two children who died within hours of birth.

Blurring the Lines

A turning point came in 1965, when the Nation, the venerable liberal weekly, assigned Thompson a story about the Hell’s Angels, the outlaw motorcycle gang that had recently been the subject of an outraged investigation by the California attorney general’s office. Thompson’s story, which appeared in the 17 May 1965 issue, garnered enormous attention with its contraire conclusion that the attorney general and the press were “conning” the public by spreading an alarmist view of a gang actually made up of “outsiders and losers.” He spent the next year riding, drinking, and partying with the Angels to gather material for a book, Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (1966), in which he blended an anthropologist’s eye view of an out-group and a picaresque, even fantastic adventure tale featuring himself as a central character and culminating in a dramatic postscript about how he was “stomped” without warning by several of the bikers he’d been writing about. “It had been a bad trip,” he concluded, “fast and wild insome moments, slow and dirty in others, but on balance it looked like a bummer (1966)

The book was a flamboyant rejection of long-standing journalistic conventions of even-handed, impartial, impersonal observation. Other practitioners of the genre that was becoming known as the New Journalism–notably Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, and others clustering at such publications as New York magazine, the New Yorker, and Esquire magazine–were also challenging traditional objective journalism as disingenuous, dull, and inadequate to the complexity of the times. They used similar tactics and devices, including immersion reporting, novelistic techniques, and an unapologetically personal point of view, and sometimes embraced the principle that a higher truth could come from a lower threshold of strict accuracy. None, however, pushed the envelope as hard and habitually as Thompson, who resisted categorisation and clustered nowhere. His insurrectionary style–profane, egocentric, and often literally and purposefully incredible–would soon be dubbed “gonzo” by a friend. “With the truth so dull and depressing,” he would write while covering the 1972 presidential campaign, “the only working alternative is wild bursts of madness and filigree” (Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail 1972)

In 1967 Thompson and his family moved to Owl Farm, in Woody Creek, near Aspen, Colorado, which would be his home for the rest of his life–much of which he spent gleefully taunting the area’s rich developers and vacationers and cultivating his image as part hillbilly, part hippie, and all trouble-maker. In 1970, for instance, he nearly won election as Pitkin County sheriff on a Freak Power ticket, promising, among other reforms, to rename Aspen “Fat City” (to discourage tourism) and to replace all its paved streets with sod.

In June 1967 the muckraking Scanlan’s Monthly published a story whose fame would long outlive the evanescent magazine itself. Thompson’s ” The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved” portrayed the famous Louisville horse race, his hometown’s beloved rite, as a drunken mob scene overrun by “the whiskey gentry–a pretentious mix of booze, failed dreams and a terminal identity crisis; the inevitable result of too much inbreeding in a closed and ignorant culture” (The Great Shark Hunt). As was becoming typical for Thompson, a large part of the story was about his own extravagant adventures in covering the event; only three sentences of the seven-thousand-odd words described the results of the race itself, which Thompson confessed he had barely been able to see.

Exploding the American Dream

Radicalised by the brutality of the Chicago police against antiwar protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and appalled by what he saw as the darkness and venality of the Richard Nixon presidency, Thompson focused more and more of his writing on politics and on his conviction that the American dream was terminally ill. The relationship he began in 1970 with the counterculture magazine Rolling Stone and its editor, Jann Wenner, led to his most celebrated works. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream was published first as a two-part magazine article in November 1971 and then as a best-selling book. Written in the voice of Thompson’s alter ego, Raoul Duke, a cynical, chain-smoking, whiskey-guzzling, gun-loving connoisseur of illicit drugs, it chronicled the chemically enhanced adventures of Duke and his companion, Dr. Gonzo, as they explored the crassness of American culture. “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. . .,” it begins. “And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: ‘Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'” (1971) – (1998). Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 (1973) also appeared as a book after serial publication in Rolling Stone. Thompson took the increasingly popular journalist-covers-campaign-coverage genre to an extreme in a garishly opinionated, gaudily caustic blast at journalism, politics, and politicians (except for the Democrat George McGovern), the peace candidate, whom he clearly preferred to the “bonehead” senator Edmund Muskie, the “crazy” former senator Eugene McCarthy, the “dunce”. New York City mayor John Lindsay (1973) – (2006,) and the “treacherous, gutless old ward-heeler” “former vice president Hubert Humphrey, who “always campaigned like a rat in heat.” (1973) Many readers and reviewers seemed to agree that his scabrous view of the bizarrely artificial world of the campaign trail was truthful, if not always factually correct, but others were perhaps confused; some readers reportedly believed Thompson’s suggestion that Muskie’s erratic moods were caused by his use of a rare Brazilian hallucinogenic drug. Some critics, notably Wayne C. Booth, in the influential Columbia Journalism Review (Nov./Dec. 1973), were troubled by Thompson’s evident contempt for the political process and by the untrustworthiness of his facts.

Celebrity

In the mid-1970s Thompson began a series of missteps that some friends speculated were evidence of the toll taken by his celebrity, his notoriously heavy drinking and drug use, or both. When Rolling Stone sent Thompson and his long-time collaborator, the illustrator Ralph Steadman, to Zaire to cover the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” between the heavyweight boxers Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, Thompson sold or lost their tickets and missed seeing Ali’s upset victory over the champion Foreman. After his story on the fall of Saigon in 1975 failed to meet expectations, his contributions to the magazine dwindled. He and Sandy Thompson were divorced in 1980, at her initiative.

Thompson continued to write for a variety of publications, ranging from running magazine (he covered the Honolulu marathon for the April 1981 issue) to the San Francisco Examiner, for which he wrote a weekly column of media and political criticism from 1985 to 1990. Although most of his best work was behind him, he had become a cult figure; he was the model for the Uncle Duke character in Garry Trudeau’s popular Doonesbury cartoon strip (a distinction Thompson disliked). He was also immensely popular on the college lecture circuit, was the subject of several documentaries, and was portrayed in two feature films: by Bill Murray in Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) and by Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998). But serious critical attention was also coming his way from biographers and scholars who saw him as a pungent critic of culture and politics and as an underrated journalist responsible for expanding the boundaries of permissible language, style, tone, and subject matter. Anniversary reprints of his earliest books brought them renewed notice, and a series of anthologies, including The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (1979), Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ’80s (1988), and Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream (1990), made a large body of his previously uncollected or unpublished articles, letters, and fiction widely available (although critics carped that some of the work hardly deserved the attention). In 1998, forty years after his penniless struggles to succeed as a novelist, The Rum Diary, a tale of drinking, sex, and hack journalism in Puerto Rico that was rooted in his own experiences there, was finally published in full.

In 2003 Thompson married Anita Bejmuk, who had been assisting him with his correspondence. Debilitated by health problems and in visibly depressed spirits, at the age of sixty-seven he shot and killed himself in his home. A memorial celebration held at Owl Farm six months later included the elaborate send-off he had been seen planning in a 1978 BBC documentary: his ashes were blasted from a cannon on top of a specially constructed fifteen-story monument into the Colorado sky. “He loved explosions,” his widow told the Associated Press (6 Apr. 2005)

Bibliography

Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs

This began as an article for The Nation newspaper titled “The Motorcycle Gangs: Losers and Outsiders.” Hunter S. Thompson left nothing to chance and melded with the Hell’s Angels gang in an above and beyond style which left no stone in the gang’s world unturned. For any Thompson fan this is a must read. For a collector a first edition is valuable asset.

Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. Hunter S. Thompson 1966 – 1967

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

This is probably one of only a few books around that needs no introduction.

In a trip that began as coverage for an article and ended as a search for the American dream, HST branded the literary world with “pure Gonzo journalism.” I think we can safely say it is the Holy Grail of Hunter Thompson’s first editions.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, Hunter S. Thompson 1971

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. 1971, Hunter S. Thompson.

“Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72” has been described as “the least factual and most accurate account” of the 72 Presidential Campaign. It is by far my favourite Hunter Thompson book. Thompson quickly made a name for himself while covering this campaign. Through this book you’ll get a great insight into Thompson’s love, and expert knowledge of politics, not to mention his great wit. This book was born out of the presidential campaign articles he wrote for Rolling Stone Magazine throughout 1972.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72. Hunter S. Thompson 1972

“The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales From a Strange Time” The Gonzo papers Volume 1.

This is the first in a series of 4 Gonzo Papers Volumes. It covers Thompson’s essays and articles from1956 to 1970 inclusive. There is more than enough in this book to keep everyone happy. If I was asked to recommend a HST book to a “non fan” it would be this one.

The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales Form a Strange Time

Hunter S. Thompson 1979

The Curse of Lono

This was conceived after Thompson was asked by Running Magazine to go to Hawaii to cover the Honolulu marathon. He decided he wanted to bring Ralph Steadman who did the fantastic illustrations. Naturally things took a turn for the interesting. An underrated book in my opinion.

The Curse of Lono

Hunter S. Thompson 1983

Generation of Swine Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ‘80s

The Gonzo Papers Vol. 2 are, in a nutshell, Thompson’s San Francisco Examiner articles loaded into a book. These snappy pieces are a perfect example of how he practised the journalism craft in his unmistakable way. First published in 1988 it’s maybe not as collectible as his earlier work, but give it time.

Generation of Swine Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ‘80s.

The Gonzo Papers Vol.2

Hunter S. Thompson 1988

Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream

The Gonzo Papers Volume 3 is a selection of some of Thompson’s best work. It includes some of his funniest articles and essays. Also includes excerpts from his unpublished novel “Prince Jellyfish.” For a collector there are some nice quirky editions.

Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream

The Gonzo Papers Volume.3

Hunter S. Thompson 1990

Screwjack

This is three-story piece that, in Thompson’s own words ‘build like Bolero to a faster & wilder climax that will drag the reader relentlessly up a hill, & then drop him off a cliff. That is the desired effect.’ The three stories are “Mescalito” “Death of a Poet” and “Screwjack.”

Screwjack. Hunter S. Thompson 1991

Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie

Trapped Like a Rat in Mr Bill’s Neighbourhood

The Gonzo Papers Volume 4 is the only volume of The Gonzo papers that contains mostly new material. The main focus is on Bill Clinton and his election. Also included, some mention of Thompson’s own campaign for Sheriff. A funny and all too underrated book.

Better Than Sex, Confessions of a Political Junkie

Hunter S. Thompson 1994

The Rum Diary

Thompson’s long lost novel. Written in the 60s published in 1998. It is an account of fictional journalist Paul Kemp’s trip to Puerto Rico to work for “The Daily News”

News paper. Some describe it as a treacherous, violent, sexy account of a crazy journalist loose in San Juan. Sound familiar? Recently released as a movie starring whom else but Johnny Depp.

The Rum Diary

Hunter S. Thompson 1998

Fear and Loathing in America

The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist 1968–1976” Fear and Loathing letters vol. 2 is Thompson’s second book of letters. Through these letters we can see the Thompson we know of today begin to emerge and form. As usual his letters are an

Interesting way to learn about the real HST.

Fear and Loathing in America

The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist

Hunter S. Thompson 1968–1976

Hey Rube

Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness” is a

Collection of over 80 articles written by Thompson for ESPN: COM’s Page 2. His column was called Hey Rube. Mostly covering sports-related topics it does drift into other subjects from time to time.

Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness ©

2004 Hunter S Thompson.

Fire in the Nuts

Published by Hunter S. Thompson, Ralph Steadman, Joe Petro III and Walt Bartholomew. A total of 176 copies were made. 26 lettered copies in a box with a Ralph Steadman print, and 150 numbered copies. Signed by Thompson and Steadman.

Gonzo

A book of photographs with an introduction by Johnny Depp. Published by Ammo Books in 2006. Also published in a limited edition of 3000.

FILMOGRAPHY

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

This is one of my favourite films ever made. Written By Hunter S. Thompson and Terry Gillian, directed by Terry Gilliam. Need I say more!

The film Centred around journalist Raoul Duke (Hunter S. Thompson’s alter ego) and his psychopathic lawyer. They travel to Las Vegas in search for the American dream and embark on a series of psychedelic escapades. Johnny Depp was born to play this part; he plays it that well that it could be Hunter S. Thompson himself. Benicio Del Toro also plays a fantastic part as Dukes Lawyer. With the two of them playing their parts perfectly and Hunter S. Thompson with Terry Gilliam at the helm, It’s a match made in heaven and couldn’t be any more perfect.

Director: Terry Gilliam

Writers: Hunter S. Thompson (book), Terry Gilliam (screenplay)

Stars: Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro, Tobey Maguire.

The Rum Diary (2011)

American journalist Paul Kemp takes on a freelance job in Puerto Rico for a local newspaper during the 1960s and struggles to find a balance between island culture and the expatriates who live there. Once again Johnny Depp is fantastic as always, I love the film but at the same time it can’t be compared to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’s adaptation to the book. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that Hunter S. Thompson was not still with us to watch over the filming and script, also the genius of Terry Gilliam.

Director: Bruce Robinson

Writers: Hunter S. Thompson (novel) and Bruce Robinson (screenplay),

Stars: Johnny Depp, Giovanni Ribisi, Aaron Eckhart

Where the Buffalo Roam (1980)

Semi-biographical film based on the experiences of Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. As much as I love Bill Murray, Johnny Depp just wipes the floor with him and really makes the part his own in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. After Fear and Loathing it’s hard to take to watch Where the Buffalo Roam in the same way.

Director: Art Linson

Writers: Hunter S. Thompson (stories), John Kaye (screenplay)

Stars: Peter Boyle, Bill Murray, Bruno Kirby

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (2008)

A portrait of the late Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.

Fuelled by a raging libido, Wild Turkey, and superhuman doses of drugs, Thompson was a true “free lance, ” goring sacred cows with impunity, hilarity, and a steel-eyed conviction for writing wrongs. Focusing on the good doctor’s heyday, 1965 to 1975, the film includes clips of never-before-seen (nor heard) home movies, audiotapes, and passages from unpublished manuscripts. This documentary really is amazing and a must see for any fans of the genius that is Hunter S. Thompson.

Director: Alex Gibney

Writers: Alex Gibney (screenplay), Hunter S. Thompson (writings)

Stars: Hunter S. Thompson, Johnny Depp, Joe Cairo

Trivia about Hunter S. Thompson

The character of “Duke” in Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” comic strip is based on him.

Lived next to Don Johnson.

Ran for Sheriff of Aspen, Colorado, in 1969 on the Freak Power Party ticket, and narrowly lost.

Graduate of Louisville (Ky.) Male High School, class of 1955. Missed his graduation exercises because he was in jail. He later started calling himself Dr. Thompson, after purchasing a doctorate in Divinity from a church by mail order.

Appeared on a 1967 broadcast of “To Tell the Truth” when his book detailing his experiences with the “Hell’s Angels” was published.

Once sold a Cadillac Eldorado to Lyle Lovett.

Underground cartoonist turned comics and animation historian Scott Shaw based a recurring character in his works after Thompson: an anthropomorphic dog named “Pointer X. Toxin”.

His final wishes stipulated that his body be cremated and his ashes be shot out of a cannon across his Colorado ranch. Journalist friend Troy Hooper said “He was a big fan of bonfires and explosions and anything that went bang and I’m sure he’d like to go bang as well.” This finally happened on August 20, 2005, along with a big celebration, attended by Sean Penn, Johnny Depp, Lyle Lovett, and other close friends and family.

Grandson, son of his only child Juan, was born 1998.

Wife, Anita, was 35 years younger than he was.

Shortly before his death, he talked in his ESPN.com column about ‘inventing’ a new sport: Shotgun Golf.

He was the basis for the character Spider Jerusalem in the comic series “Transmetropolitan” by Warren Ellis and Darik Robertson.

Has a song entitled “Bat Country” written after him by the band Avenged Sevenfold.

Wanted his remains to be shot out of a 150-foot long canon. The canon had to be built especially to fulfil this last wish.

Johnny Depp, who starred in two movie adaptations of Thompson’s books (“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Rum Diary”), helped to fulfil his last, wish.

In order to improve his writing style, he once copied F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby” word for word, from start to finish.

Rode a BSA A65 Lightning most notably whilst researching his seminal book Hell’s Angels. Towards the end of his period with the Hell’s Angels, he wrote that he was beaten up by them.

Rode a BSA A65 Lightning most notably whilst researching his seminal book “Hell’s Angels”. Towards the end of his period with the Hell’s Angels, he wrote that he was beaten up by them.

His favourite pastime was to load a barrel or oil drum with explosives and then shoot it from a safe distance with one of his many handguns.

After covering the 1972 Democratic Convention in Miami for Rolling Stone Magazine, Thompson went for an evening swim in the ocean to clear his head. A light tropical storm blew up, Thompson got caught in a riptide, and he was swept out to sea. He spent the rest of the night fighting to swim back to the beach, finally crawling ashore at 9:00 A.M.

His son Juan graduated from college Magna Cum Laude.

His Mother is a chronic alcoholic.

With the aid of two friends he robbed a liquor store by starting a fight with the clerks and then cleaning out the cash register in the confusion.

During his adolescence, he and two friends broke into and robbed the same Lexington (Kentucky) gas station on three consecutive nights.

Critics have often contended that his writing style noticeably declined after his wife, Sandy, divorced him.

Following high school graduation, he joined the Air Force as a condition of his parole.

When he lived in Big Sur in the early 1960s, he rode his BSA Lightning so much he was known as “The Wild One of Big Sur”.

Pleaded no contest to a drunken driving charge in San Francisco in 1987.

When he lived in Big Sur in the early 1960s, his next door neighbor was Joan Baez.

When he was living in Big Sur in the early 1960s, a group of religious fanatics moved in next door. He got rid of them by nailing the head of a wild boar to their front door, and by putting its entrails in their car.

One of the most widely quoted lines from tributes and obituaries to him was from one written by Frank Kelly Rich, editor and publisher of Modern Drunkard Magazine: “There was always a powerful comfort in knowing he was out there somewhere in the night, roaring drunk, guzzling high-octane whiskey and railing against a world amok with complacency and hypocrisy.”

His lifelong antipathy for Richard Nixon was known by the former president, who barred him from the White House.

Following Richard Nixon’s appearance in New Hampshire during the 1968 campaign, he offered Thompson a lift to the airport on the condition that the two of them talk about nothing but football. Thompson accepted, mostly because he thought Nixon knew nothing about the sport. He discovered that, in fact, Nixon was an avid fan, clear down to which colleges the top players were from!

Was a staunch opponent of the War in Iraq in his later years.

Was extremely critical of the Bush administration. He once said “if Nixon were running, I would happily vote for him instead”.

Shortly after Ernest Hemingway’s suicide in Ketcham, Idaho, he wrote an article titled, “What Lured Hemingway to Ketcham”. Thompson concluded that Hemingway had become depressed because all of the author’s favourite haunts – such as Paris and Cuba – had changed, and all of his friends were dead or different. Hemingway had nothing to live for. Ironically, the same thing happened to Thompson.

Biography in: “The Scribner Encyclopaedia of American Lives”. Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 538-541. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007.

Had his first run in with the law at the age of 9, when him and a group of friends knocked a federal mailbox in front of a city bus.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Trivia

Near end of this film, Duke takes too much “andrenichrome” and has a nasty experience. Andrenichrome was a substance that Hunter S. Thompson made up for the book when he originally wrote it, and was kept in the script by Terry Gilliam. The name itself wasn’t new – Adrenochrome is an oxidation product of adrenaline, while Adrenochrome semicarbazone, also known as carbazochrome, is used as a medicinal drug to reduce capillary bleeding – however, neither compound is a hallucinogenic drug as portrayed in the book/film. After showing a rough-cut of the film to a test audience, Gilliam was approached by a group of young men, one of which complimented him on the film in general, but said that his favourite scene was the andrenichrome scene. He said that he had used the drug and that Gilliam had captured the effects perfectly. Gilliam didn’t have the heart to tell the kid that it was made up, and went along with his story.

Hunter S. Thompson himself shaved Johnny Depp’s head. They were in Thompson’s kitchen, Depp refused to look in a mirror, and Thompson wore a miner’s hard hat.

Hunter S. Thompson had previously been portrayed by Johnny Depp’s Ed Wood (1994) co-star Bill Murray in the film “Where The Buffalo Roam.” Prior to filming, Murray called Depp with the advice “Be careful or you’ll find yourself ten years from now still doing him…Make sure your next role is some drastically different guy.”

Near beginning of the movie, while Dr. Gonzo and Raoul are driving down the highway, there is an accident involving many cars. There is an ambulance about to put a person that is covered with a white sheet in it. If you look on the white sheet, there is a smiley face in blood on it.

Benicio Del Toro gained 40 pounds for his role as Dr. Gonzo and, in the commentary during the Criterion Collection version of the DVD, says to have done so by eating multiple donuts every day.

The T-shirt that the hitchhiker (Tobey Maguire) wears has a Ralph Steadman picture on it. Ralph Steadman did the original illustrations for the book and the typeface of the credits is based on his handwriting.

Author Hunter S. Thompson strongly objected to the scene where Raoul Duke tosses change at the dwarf waiter, finding it distasteful and inaccurate to the character.

During the early stages during the initial development hell to get the film made, Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando were originally considered for the roles of Duke and Gonzo, and Nicholson was attached, but he, and Brando, both grew too old. Afterward, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi were considered for the duo, but that fell apart when Belushi died. John Malkovich was later considered for the role of Duke, but he too grew too old. At one point John Cusack was almost cast, but then Hunter S. Thompson met Johnny Depp, and was convinced no one else could play him. Cusack had previously directed the play version of “Fear and Loathing”, with his brother playing Duke.

Duke’s tribute to Dr. Gonzo – “There he goes. One of God’s own prototypes. Some kind of high-powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die” – is taken from the foreword of “Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo,” the semi-autobiographical novel written by ‘Oscar Zeta Acosta’. Zeta Acosta was the famous “Chicano lawyer” and friend of Hunter S. Thompson whose notorious party binges served as the model for Dr. Gonzo. Thompson changed Zeta Acosta’s ethnic identity to “Samoan” because Latin-American influence in Hollywood objected to having an Anglo actor portray a Latino.

Benicio Del Toro improvised the part in the beginning in the car when he licked the spilt cocaine off the suitcase.

Much of the clothing (shirts, hats) worn by Johnny Depp in the movie were actual pieces of clothing that the real Hunter S. Thompson wore in the ’70s. Thompson himself let Depp borrow them for the movie, after Depp spent four months with Thompson learning his mannerisms and proper vocal inflection for the role.

Prior to filming, Johnny Depp swapped his car for Hunter S. Thompson’s red Chevrolet convertible and spent weekends driving it around California in preparation for the role. Meanwhile, Thompson spent that period in Depp’s car with a woman named Heidi, writing an essay called “Fear And Loathing In Hollywood: My Doomed Love At The Taco Stand” that was partially published in Time Magazine, along with a new Ralph Steadman drawing of a gargoyle-like Dr. Gonzo.

Raoul Duke’s typewriter has the words “OFF THE PIGS” written on the top.

During the scene in which Duke is tripping on adrenochrome, he mutters, “La llama es un quadrupedo.” This is a quote from a sketch in Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969). Subtitles on some versions of the film simply say “Duke mumbling incoherently”.

Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone each tried to get the film off the ground, but were unsuccessful and moved on.

The Bazooko Circus Casino was modeled closely after the Circus Circus Casino in Las Vegas, which was mentioned in the original book. The real casino refused to have anything to do with the film, and even forbade the use of its name. The casino sign shown in the film replaces Circus Circus’ neon clown’s pinwheel with a mallet, and the interior shots were partially filmed in the (now closed) Boardwalk Casino in Las Vegas. The carousel-themed “Merry-Go-Round” bar in the real Circus Circus (called the “Horse-A-Round” bar) revolves in the opposite direction as the one depicted in the film.

According to Terry Gilliam’s commentary on the Criterion Collection DVD, at the beginning of the movie when they stop on the side of the road after Duke starts seeing bats and wants Gonzo to drive, you can see a strange looking cactus in the background. It was designed by Ralph Steadman and appears many times in the background of the movie in various scenes. Gilliam complained of having to lug it around wherever they went.

According to Terry Gilliam’s commentary on the Criterion DVD, in the scene where Raoul and Gonzo raise havoc at the Debbie Reynolds concert, the voice heard in that scene that is supposed to be Reynolds singing actually IS Reynolds. Gilliam is friends with Carrie Fisher, Reynolds’ daughter, who spoke to her mother about recording a couple lines for the movie, and Reynolds agreed.

While Hunter S. Thompson developed a strong friendship with Johnny Depp and heartily approved of his performance, he once said that if he ever saw anyone acting the way Depp does in the film, he would probably hit them with a chair.

Animator/filmmaker Ralph Bakshi tried to convince producer Laila Nabulsi to let him do “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” as an animated movie, done in the style of Ralph Steadman’s illustrations for the book. Bakshi is quoted as saying: “Hunter had given the rights to a girlfriend of his. I spent three days with her trying to talk her into me animating it – she wanted to make a live action of it – I kept telling her that a live action would look like a bad cartoon but an animated version would be a great one. She had a tremendous disdain for animators because it wasn’t considered the top of Hollywood. Hunter also could not make her change her mind. So she made the pic with Johnny Depp (who is a great actor) and got the film I told her she would get – it would have been more real in a cartoon using Steadman’s drawings.”

Gary Busey (Highway Patrolman) improvised the “Give me a kiss” line. The producers and Hunter S. Thompson were initially horrified by it, but Terry Gilliam thought it was funny, and left it in the final cut. Thompson said that after a few more viewings, he found the line quite funny.

When Raoul Duke is calling his attorney about a new assignment, there is a poster on the back wall of Dr. Gonzo’s office. It has an two-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button inside a sheriff’s star. This is actually a political poster from Hunter S. Thompson’s campaign for sheriff of Aspen. He ran on the Freak Power party ticket, a political party he made up himself. The ‘gonzo fist’ symbol can also be seen in the bathtub scene, written on the wall behind Duke in shaving cream.

According to Johnny Depp, the gorilla statue outside the Bazooko Circus, now “lives” in his front yard.

In the book Hunter S. Thompson listens to “Sympathy For The Devil” by The Rolling Stones, but the rights to play it in the film were too expensive for the production budget.

In the trailer for the movie, when Gonzo fires the gun in the car, it actually goes off instead of just clicking.

The scene in which Raoul Duke calls his attorney from Baker is partially filmed backwards. In the back ground smoke can be seen coming back into a fire, and Duke bangs in reverse on the side of the phone booth.

When Raoul Duke goes out for a gamble and comes back to find Dr. Gonzo tripping out on acid in the bathtub, there is the infamous Gonzo Fist drawn with shaving cream on the pink bathroom wall behind him.

The Grateful Dead appear briefly in an outdoor concert during the 60s flashbacks.

Terry Gilliam, ‘Tony Grisoni, Alex Cox and Tod Davies are credited for the film’s screenplay. Gilliam and Grisoni adapted the novel by Hunter S. Thompson and used their script for the film; however, a nasty arbitration wrangle at the Writers Guild of America found that Cox and Davies had written an earlier screenplay that had also adapted Thompson’s novel, with a number of similarities to Gilliam and Grisoni’s screenplay, and should therefore receive credit for the finished work instead of Gilliam and Grisoni (who the Guild claimed did not contribute enough new material to their script). After Gilliam appealed this decision, a shared credit for all four of the writer was permitted. To this date, both Alex Cox and Terry Gilliam claim to have been wronged in this.

During the montage at the beginning of the film (where Raoul and Dr Gonzo drive around collecting things for the trip) there is a glimpse of a bunch of people packing things onto a psychedelically painted school bus. This is most likely a reference to Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters who also drove around in a psychedelically painted school bus.

The dwarf in the first movie was Cork Hubbert . The dwarf that brings the phone to Duke in this movie is Michael Lee Gogin . These are two different people, two different actors and the one who played Briggs in the first movie was not the one that brought duke the phone in The Polo Lounge.

The character of Dr. Gonzo is based on Hunter S. Thompson’s friend ‘Oscar Zeta Acosta’, who is said to have drowned sometime in 1974.

Terry Gilliam took over as director after Alex Cox (Sid and Nancy (1986)) left the picture due to creative differences. Gilliam re-wrote the entire screenplay in a matter of days to fit his unique creative vision and style, while staying true to Hunter S. Thompson’s writings.

The coconut-smashing scene towards the end of the film was not originally in the book. Hunter S. Thompson wrote the scene when he wrote Fear and Loathing and then omitted it. Terry Gilliam inserted it back into the story for this movie.

In a scene cut from the movie, Duke and Gonzo tell a DA from Atlanta about a rather gruesome incident, which happened at a McDonalds. In the final cut, during check-in scene at the Mint Hotel, a man in a cowboy hat tells the exact same story to someone over a payphone.

In the scene where Benicio Del Toro stops the car and has an “attack” with Tobey Maguire in the car, Maguire’s hair seems different. According to Terry Gilliam’s commentary on the Criterion Collection DVD, they shot this scene a few months after the scene where they first picked him up and could not get Maguire to shave his head for the wig. It would have cost $15,000 extra to put that in his contract initially but they opted not to because the movie was already becoming over budget. They ended up spending well over that using a bald cap and makeup effects, as well as using computer editing to erase the line on his forehead.

During the scene when Duke first arrives at the dirt bike race, it is suppose to be dawn but you can tell from the lighting it certainly isn’t. According to Terry Gilliam’s commentary on the Criterion Collection DVD, they had the shot set up perfectly with the sun just rising, but when Johnny Depp tried to start the car it was dead. They figured out soon enough that the driver forgot to fill the tank. Due to budget and time constraints, the shot had to be redone later that day.

Ellen Barkin wore a prosthetic rear-end for her role as the waitress.

Hunter S. Thompson’s tribute to Oscar as he boards the plane was actually taken from “The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat: Fear and Loathing in the Graveyard of the Weird,” and was later added to the forward of Acosta’s autobiography. The forward is little more than a quote, while the original article is a fascinating eulogy on the mysterious disappearance of his friend Oscar. The article is reprinted in its entirety in “The Great Shark Hunt”, Hunter S. Thompson.

The “Red Shark”, a 1971 Chevrolet Impala convertible, is Hunter S. Thompson’s own convertible.

During Raoul Duke’s acid trip in the bar of the hotel when he first arrives in Las Vegas, you hear “Roger Pratt, please report to the front desk” being said on the PA. Roger Pratt worked with director Terry Gilliam on Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Brazil (1985), The Fisher King (1991), and Twelve Monkeys (1995) as his cinematographer – but not on Fear and Loathing.

When Duke is gambling (he plays a round of roulette) there are two actual Hunter S. Thompson IDs in his wallet. One pass is his press pass, the other is his drivers license.

Bruce Robinson, director of Withnail & I (1987), was asked by Johnny Depp to write and direct “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”. Robinson turned the offer down, saying he couldn’t see “how you could get that one on the screen.” Conversely, Robinson later accepted an offer to write and direct a screen adaptation of Thompson’s novel The Rum Diary (2011).

Tobey Maguire’s character is wearing a t-shirt with a Ralph Steadman drawing on it. The title of the illustration is “Mean Mouse” and depicts a character resembling Mickey Mouse wearing American flag shorts.

Laraine Newman (the Frog-Eyed Woman) and Harry Dean Stanton (the Judge) both appeared on the 1996 Spoken Word Adaptation CD of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Stanton was the narrator while Newman played several small roles.

In retaliation for the wrangle that Terry Gilliam faced against the WGA, on 22 May 1998 during a book signing, he burned his WGA card in front of the public. That led to Gilliam and ‘Tony Grisoni (I)’ being given the dual writing credit.

Cameo

Hunter S. Thompson: at the Jefferson Airplane show. When Johnny Depp, as Thompson, sees the real

Thompson, Depp’s narration says “There I was . . . mother of God, there I am!”

Laila Nabulsi: the producer appears as Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane performing at The Matrix.

Director Cameo

Terry Gilliam: wearing a cap and holding a microphone protruding from a large tape recorder box in the motorcycle race as the cyclists take off.

Director Trademark

Terry Gilliam: [bookends] Raoul Duke driving down a stretch of desert road with the top down.

Quotes From Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Raoul Duke: We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers… Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.

(watching Dr. Gonzo leave)

Raoul Duke: There he goes. One of God’s own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die

Dr. Gonzo: Let’s give the boy a lift.

Raoul Duke: What? No. We can’t stop here. This is bat country.

Raoul Duke: A drug person can learn to cope with things like seeing their dead grandmother crawling up their leg with a knife in her teeth. But no one should be asked to handle this trip.

(Wielding a shower curtain rod like a spear)

Raoul Duke: Don’t fuck with me now, man, I am Ahab.

Raoul Duke: There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.

Raoul Duke: And that, I think, was the handle – that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark – that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Raoul Duke: With a bit of luck, his life was ruined forever. Always thinking that just behind some narrow door in all of his favorite bars, men in red woolen shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he’ll never know.

Raoul Duke: [narrating] We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like.

Raoul Duke: [narrating] Suddenly, there was a terrible roar all around us, and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, and a voice was screaming:

Raoul Duke: Holy Jesus. What are these goddamn animals?

Raoul Duke: [narrating] No point in mentioning these bats, I thought. Poor bastard will see them soon enough.

Raoul Duke: The possibility of physical and mental collapse is now very real. No sympathy for the Devil, keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

Raoul Duke: One of the things you learn from years of dealing with drug people, is that you can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug. Especially when it’s waving a razor-sharp hunting knife in your eye.

Raoul Duke: I wouldn’t dare go to sleep with you wandering around with a head full of acid, wanting to slice me up with that goddamn knife.

Dr. Gonzo: Who said anything about slicing you up, man? I just wanted to carve a little Z on your forehead.

Raoul Duke: We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60’s. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary’s trip. He crashed around America selling “consciousness expansion” without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously… All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create… a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody… or at least some force – is tending the light at the end of the tunnel

Raoul Duke: How long could we maintain? I wondered. How long until one of us starts raving and jabbering at this boy? What will he think then? This same lonely desert was the last known home of the Manson family; will he make that grim connection when my attorney starts screaming about bats and huge manta rays coming down on the car? If so, well, we’ll just have to cut his head off and bury him somewhere, ’cause it goes without saying that we can’t turn him loose. He’d report us at once to some kind of outback Nazi law enforcement agency and they’ll run us down like dogs. Jesus, did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me?

Hitchhiker: Hot damn. I never rode in a convertible before.

Raoul Duke: Is that right? Well… I guess you’re about ready, then, aren’t you?

Dr. Gonzo: We’re your friends. We’re not like the others, man, really.

Raoul Duke: No more of that talk or I’ll put the fucking leeches on you, understand?

Dr. Gonzo: Heh heh heh…

Raoul Duke: [as the Hitchhiker stares at them nervously] Get in.

Raoul Duke: I was right in the middle of a fucking reptile zoo, and somebody was giving booze to these goddamn things. Won’t be long now before they tear us to shreds.

Parking Attendant: You can’t park your car here.

Raoul Duke: Why not? Is this not a reasonable place to park?

Parking Attendant: Reasonable? You’re on a sidewalk! This is the sidewalk!

Raoul Duke: You better take care of me, Lord. If you don’t you’re gonna have me on your hands.

Raoul Duke: Panic. It crept up my spine like first rising vibes of an acid frenzy. All these horrible realities began to dawn on me. There I was. Alone in Las Vegas, completely twisted on drugs, no cash, no story for the magazine, and on top of everything else, a gigantic god damned hotel bill to deal with. How would Horatio Alger handle this situation? Stay calm. Stay calm.

Raoul Duke: I’m a relatively respectable citizen. Multiple felon perhaps, but certainly not dangerous.

Raoul Duke: The ether was wearing off. The acid was long gone. But the mescaline was running strong. Good mescaline comes on slow. The first hour is all waiting. Then about halfway through the second hour, you start cursing the creep who burned you because nothing’s happening. And then – ZANG!

Hunter S. Thompson Quotes

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

Politics is the art of controlling your environment.

That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn’t entirely conquer – he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation.

The Edge… there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.

The person who doesn’t scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.

The trouble with Nixon is that he’s a serious politics junkie. He’s totally hooked and like any other junkie, he’s a bummer to have around, especially as President.

The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.

There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

You better take care of me Lord, if you don’t you’re gonna have me on your hands.

We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine and a whole multicolored collection of uppers, downers, laughers, screamers . . . Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge and I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon

“Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish—a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow—to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested . . . Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.”

Gonzo Papers, Vol. 2: Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ’80s, 1988

“We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear—fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer.” —”Extreme Behavior in Aspen,” February 3, 2003

“There he goes. One of God’s own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.”

“In a closed society where everyone is guilty, the only crime is getting caught.”

“When the going gets weird the weird turn pro”



“No explenation… no mix of words, music or memory could touch the sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time in the world… Whatever it meant.”

“It was a face I’d seen a thousand times at every Derby I’d ever been to. I saw it, in my head, as the mask of the whiskey gentry–a pretentious mix of booze, failed dreams and a terminal identity crisis…”

“Just sick enough to be totally confident”

“We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the 60′s. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary’s trip. He crashed around America selling consciousness expansion” without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously… All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create… a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody… or at least some force – is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.”

“A cap of good acid costs about $5. For this you get to hear the Universal Symphony, with the Holy Ghost on drums, and God singing solo.”

“true happiness in politics is a wide open hammer-shot on a poor bastard who knows he’s trapped, but can’t flee.”

“with a bit of luck, it ruined his life forever”

“It would be easy to say that we owe it all to the Bush family from Texas, but that would be too simplistic. They are only errand boys for the vengeful, bloodthirsty cartel of raving Jesus-freaks and super-rich money mongers who have ruled for at least the last 20 years, and arguably the last 200 years. They take orders well, and they don’t ask too many questions. The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yards, and they don’t mind admitting it. They worship money and power and death. Their ideal solution to all the nation’s problems would be another 100 Year War. Coming of age in a fascist police state will not be a barrel of fun for anybody, much less for people like me, who are not inclined to suffer Nazis gladly and feel only contempt for the cowardly flag-suckers who would gladly give up their outdated freedom to live for the mess of pottage they have been conned into believing will be freedom from fear. Ho ho ho. Let’s not get carried away here. Freedom was yesterday in this country. Its value has been discontinued. The only freedom we truly crave today is freedom from Dumbness. Nothing else matters.

“Few people understand the psychology of dealing with a highway traffic cop. A normal speeder will panic and immediately pull over to the side. This is wrong. It arouses contempt in the cop heart. Make the bastard chase you. He will follow.”

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!’”

“The hippies, who had never really believed they were the wave of the future anyway, saw the election results as brutal confirmation of the futility of fighting the establishment on its own terms. There had to be a whole new scene, they said, and the only way to do it was to make the big move — either figuratively or literally — from Berkeley to the Haight-Ashbury, from pragmatism to mysticism, from politics to dope… The thrust is no longer for “change” or “progress” or “revolution,” but merely to escape, to live on the far perimeter of a world that might have been”

“In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: Not necessarily to Win, but mainly to keep from Losing Completely.”

“I returned to the Holiday Inn — where they have a swimming pool and air-conditioned rooms — to consider the paradox of a nation that has given so much to those who preach the glories of rugged individualism from the security of countless corporate sinecures, and so little to that diminishing band of yesterday’s refugees who still practice it, day by day, in a tough, rootless and sometimes witless style that most of us have long since been weaned away from.”

“Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish — a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow — to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested…

Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.”

“It is all well and good for children and acid freaks to still believe in Santa Claus — but it is still a profoundly morbid day for us working professionals. It is unsettling to know that one out of every twenty people you meet on Xmas will be dead this time next year… Some people can accept this, and some can’t. That is why God made whiskey, and also why Wild Turkey comes in $300 shaped canisters during most of the Christmas season.”

“Like most of the others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right. I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles – a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other – that kept me going.”

But speaking of rules, you’ve been arrested dozens of times in your life. Specific incidents aside, what’s common to these run-ins? Where do you stand vis-à-vis the law? “Goddammit. Yeah, I have. First, there’s a huge difference between being arrested and being guilty. Second, see, the law changes and I don’t. How I stand vis-à-vis the law at any given moment depends on the law. The law can change from state to state, from nation to nation, from city to city. I guess I have to go by a higher law. How’s that? Yeah, I consider myself a road man for the lords of karma.”

“A man who has blown all his options can’t afford the luxury of changing his ways. He has to capitalize on whatever he has left, and he can’t afford to admit — no matter how often he’s reminded of it — that every day of his life takes him farther and farther down a blind alley… Very few toads in this world are Prince Charmings in disguise. Most are simply toads… and they are going to stay that way… Toads don’t make laws or change any basic structures, but one or two rooty insights can work powerful changes in the way they get through life. A toad who believes he got a raw deal before he even knew who was dealing will usually be sympathetic to the mean, vindictive ignorance that colors the Hell’s Angels’ view of humanity. There is not much mental distance between a feeling of having been screwed and the ethic of total retaliation, or at least the random revenge that comes with outraging the public decency.”

“Tiny hurts people. When he loses his temper he goes completely out of control and his huge body becomes a lethal weapon. It is difficult to see what role he might play in the Great Society.”

“This is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted.”

“Why bother with newspapers, if this is all they offer? Agnew was right. The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits — a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.”

“When you bring an act into this town, you want to bring it heavy. Don’t waste any time with cheap shucks and misdemeanors. Go straight for the jugular. Get right into felonies.”

“It was dangerous lunacy, but it was also the kind of thing a real connoisseur of edge-work could make an argument for… Separately, we might pull it off. But together, no — we would blow it. Too much aggressive chemistry in that mix; the temptation to run a deliberate freakout would be too heavy.”

“(After awaking in the destroyed suite)The possibility of complete mental and physical collapse is now very real.”

“Sympathy? Not for me. No mercy for a criminal freak in Las Vegas. This place is like the army: the shark ethic prevails-eat the wounded. In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.”

“Reading the front page made me feel a lot better. Against that heinous background, my crimes were pale and meaningless. I was a relatively respectable citizen — a multiple felon, perhaps, but certainly not dangerous. And when the Great Scorer came to write against my name, that would surely make a difference. Or would it? I turned to the sports page and saw a small item about Muhammad Ali; his case was before the Supreme Court, the final appeal. He’d been sentenced to five years in prison for refusing to kill “slopes.

“What were we doing out here? What was the meaning of this trip? Did I actually have a big red convertible out there on the street? was I just roaming around these Mint Hotel escalators in a drug frenzy of some kind, or had I really come out here to Las Vegas to work on a story?”

”Let it roll!” he screamed. “Just as high as the fucker can go! and when it comes to that fantastic bit where the rabbit bites its own head off, I want you to throw that fuckin radio into the tub with me. The room was very quiet. I walked over to the TV set and turned it on to a dead channel-white noise at maximum decibels, a fine sound for sleeping, a powerful continuous hiss to drown out everything strange.”

Ralph Steadman and Doctor Gonzo

Ralph Steadman had a long partnership with the American journalist Hunter S. Thompson, drawing pictures for several of his articles and books. He accompanied Thompson to the Kentucky Derby for an article for the magazine Scanlan’s, to the Honolulu Marathon for the magazine Running, and illustrated both Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72. Much of Steadman’s artwork revolves around Raoul Duke-style caricatures of Thompson: bucket hats, cigarette holder and aviator sunglasses.

Steadman appears on the second disc of The Criterion Collection Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas DVD set, in a documentary called Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision, which was made by the BBC in 1978, of Thompson planning the tower and cannon that his ashes were later blasted out of. The cannon was atop a 153-ft. tower of Thompson’s fist gripping a peyote button; Thompson demands that Steadman gives the fist two thumbs, “Right now.”

As well as writing and illustrating his own books and Thompson’s, Steadman has worked with writers including Ted Hughes, Adrian Mitchell and Brian Patten, and also illustrated editions of Alice in Wonderland, Treasure Island, Animal Farm, the English translation of Flann O’Brien’s Gaelic-language classic The Poor Mouth, and most recently, Fahrenheit.