Hunter S. Thompson Interview Up At AICN

[Khephra]

http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=15824

[bluestateguy]

1. Who the hell is Hunter S. Thompson?

One of these names I always hear thrown around.

[WestVAprog]

2. Author, Freelance Writer

Wrote 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,' a cult classic, and many magazine articles. I greatly enjoyed his most recent book, 'Kindgom of Fear.'

For a short introduction rent the movie 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,' it's accurate to the book and Johnny Depp plays Thompson as realistically as any actor possibly could.

[ixion]

3. yeah, but

"Where the Buffalo Roam" is much better ;-)

[morningglory]

4. For me he started with Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail

Nixon and all the players.

[BigLed]

5. On the campaign trail

was my first exposure to a radical political viewpoint but I started with Hunter with Hell's Angels which I read while I was in high school. It's a great read as well.

[thebigidea]

6. blegh

personal taste, but phew - Bill Murray did a good job, but it was a sub-Porky's script - "Lazlo"? the stupid gunsmuggling bit? flat direction, about as stylish as an infomercial.

[On the Road]

7. Yeah, the Movies Were Both Pretty Vapid

compared to HST's writing and his life, which he has made into a kind of performance art. The man is a living legend, and justifiably so.

Hunter Thompson is famous for a drugged out-of-control lifestyle, tall tales about things he supposedly did, his run for Sherrif of Aspen, CO on the Freak Power ticket, and the most amazing rants and screeds. But he's a good serious journalist as well, and did a very sober and insightful series on South America for the New York Observer(?) in the early 60's.

Sometimes the HST approach is exactly what's needed. He was one of the few journalists who the Hell's Angels would have allowed to hang around for a year. And he was one of the few who could go beyond the stereotypes, really nail the subjects, and tell surprising and hair-raising stories no one else had access to.

I have never seen anyone write about politics the way he did in his book on the '72 campaign -- the "least facutal and most accurate account," as it was called. It reeks with anger, panic, greed, and vengeance -- all the base emotions you never see in NYT editorials. Here's a quote I used as a sig line at one point:

The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes...is one of the few men who have run for president of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts in the human race this country might have been, if we could just have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon.

McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.

Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to sotop in this country to be President?

[Wonder]

10. the HST approach

is a breath of fresh air!

[Wonder]

8. Fuck, if that's not Nazi Germany

Okay I am cheating. I can't help it. This is where I am up to in the interview. I love this guy!

[Wonder]

9. "it haunts me that I never pursued the 'who killed Kennedy' story,"

says HST, and on that end note I say, "yeah perhaps if Garrison hadn't have been made out the gadfly he wasn't, and we'd have answered that question beyond a reasonable doubt, there mightn't have been a nixon adminstration or an irangate and we wouldn't have witnessed that pyre in in lower manhattan, though I still think even with the who shot JFK question answered, probably clinton would have been nabbed with his pants down anyway, BUT what do I know? It's bed time.