Note that many safety Nazis might say this is a HORRIBLE unsafe video. I may not disagree. That being said everybody left happy and healthy.
I’ll also note that all his life of drug and firearm use, the only time I know of the Good Doctor getting hurt by a firearm was when he put a S&W .45 to his head and pulled the trigger. Hardly an accident.
Well too bad you went out on such a low note, but you gave me some smiles and laughs when you were alive, and I’m still smiling today when you’ve been in the ground for years.
That’s what immortality looks like!
I’ve actually never read any of Hunter’s books and little of his writings (maybe an article here or there).
One of these days I’ll have to remedy that situation
I certainly recommend, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” as his best piece of work. Also “Hell’s Angles” is a damn good read, but a lot more serious than what he’s known for.
“Fear and Loathing in America: The Gonzo Letters” is just a collection of Hunter’s fucked-up letters, some are really amusing, others I just skimmed and skipped.
Books I haven’t read but need to are:
“The Rum Diaries” and “Fear and Loathing along the Campaign Trail of ’72”
He was WAYYY out there, some of his observations I dismiss as musings of a mad man, but many of his views of Freedom are the same types of ideas that scare the squares that I embrace.
He also had great tastes in guns, and rubbed elbows with a who’s who of American counter culture.
Rum Diaries is good. More or less autobiographical regarding his time in San Juan except for his relationships are more normal in the book than Sandy says they were in real life…at least in the interviews she’s given, and they were friends after their divorce, but he could be pretty mercurial and at times violent.
Wrote some nice stuff and managed to hang on to enough money to maintain his freedom at Owl Farm and get away with a lot of stuff most people wouldn’t have tried to get away with for a hell of a long time.
He didn’t just rub elbows with counter-culture, it was with EVERYBODY. He and Nixon got along when they talked about football. He was a great reporter and a lousy one at the same time, because he tended to make himself the center of the stories he was covering, rather than the story, but that isn’t a bad thing. Tom Wolfe’s observational abilities with a big streak of exhibitionism and craziness 🙂
Shame he ended up feeling trapped in the role he created for himself and was failing in health and checked out, but he wasn’t the sort of person that would do well being tended to as a cripple, and he was well on his way there when he shot himself.
Oh and you should definetly rent a copy (or just buy it) of “Gonzo: The Life and Times of Hunter Thompson” its a GREAT biography filmed about a year after his death by his family, friends and admirers.
Also I couldn’t recomend more the Special Edition of the Terry Gilliam “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”
http://www.amazon.com/Fear-Loathing-Las-Vegas-Collection/dp/B00007ELDF/ref=sr_1_2?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1280153775&sr=1-2
There is a commentary track with Hunter, his wife Anita, and one of the executive produces who exactly relation to Thompson is unclear to me, but they are very close. Several times during the film he pauses the movie and calls up actors and friends and prattles with them while ignoring what is playing on screen for the kids at home.
Also Gilliam and Depp didn’t seem to mind some of the harsh words he had for them during the cometary and those made the cut. Very interesting.
Awesome.
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