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>>Gonzo examines the fevered legacy
and tragic genius of Hunter S. Thompson

PORTRAIT OF THE AMERICAN CHARACTER: Thompson

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

In his two previous films, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Taxi to the Dark Side, American director Alex Gibney rails against two aspects of the American character that has led the country down a perilous path, one that it seems hell-bent to keep stumbling upon: obsessive greed and unspeakable violence.

The first examined the swift and catastrophic demise of one of the world’s biggest energy traders, the other the chain of events that led to the detention, torture and murder of a 22-year-old Afghan cabbie by U.S. troops. His latest feature, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, is lighter, though it still explores the dark corners of a supremely talented writer’s mind, one that changed the way his readers looked at the American Dream, the Sixties and journalism.

Thompson, the drug-crazed, drunken anti-hero of American letters, burst onto the literary landscape with a roar with his 1966 book Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. His career was as meteoric as it was bizarre: writing gonzo journalism for periodicals like Scanlan’s Monthly and Rolling Stone, he explored the sordid underbelly of America, from the Kentucky Derby to Las Vegas to the 1972 George McGovern campaign for president. Fearless, hilarious, moralistic and inevitably high, drunk or both, Thompson started to flame out in the mid-1970s, beginning with him famously blowing off the 1974 Ali-Frazier “Rumble in the Jungle” fight in Zaire. While he continued to write, he lacked the same vigour that propelled him in his earlier days. Back problems, and continued drug abuse and drinking, led to his suicide in 2005, age 67.

“I think it was the alcohol,” says Gibney over the phone. “All that drinking all that time eats away at you. He lost that balance, that equilibrium.

“I don’t think he ever lost [his talent for writing],” he adds. “I just don’t think those flashes of brilliance popped forward as often.”

The cartoon trap

In a way, says Gibney, it was the fame that found him after Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was published in 1972 that ultimately affected his work, more perhaps than his lifestyle.

“He was trapped in his own creation,” he says. “He fell into fame, and it became tougher for him to focus and concentrate. He became the cartoon.” The cartoon is Doonesbury’s Uncle Duke, a caricature that led to his famous quote about Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau in Playboy: “If I ever catch up to that little bastard, I’ll rip his lungs out.”

INTO THE DARK CORNERS: Alex Gibney

There is an impressive array of talking heads in Gonzo. Contributors include both his ex-wives, his son Juan, who was in his father’s house when he killed himself (Juan calls it a “tender family moment”), former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, McGovern, right-wing pundit and former Richard Nixon speechwriter Pat Buchanan and Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner. Johnny Depp, who played Thompson in the Fear and Loathing film, reads selected Thompson works aloud.

Gibney says most were approachable and eager to participate, but getting them on board was tough. Depp was extremely busy, but eventually found the time. And Wenner needed convincing from Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair and one of the movie’s producers. Initially reluctant, saying it was too soon after Thompson’s death to be discussing his legacy (work on the film began two years ago), Wenner eventually agreed, but at one point in the film tears up, saying he can’t go on.

Farce and tragedy

If Thompson as a writer is unparalleled, his work as a journalist can be generously characterized as extremely unorthodox. Tales of blown deadlines and astronomical expense bills abound, and he was always disgusted by the supposed even-handed objectivity of American journalism. Thus, in his famous 1994 Richard Nixon obituary for Rolling Stone: “Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism—which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place.”

Gibney, like many of the people appearing in his film, paints a sense of tragedy surrounding his subject. Though never a rabid fan, he was familiar and appreciative of his work, and misses his caustic wit today, when it is so needed. He speculates that the true death knell of the Sixties generation, in the pungent form of George W. Bush’s re-election, may have helped push him over the edge.

“I think he was a deeply contradictory character who embodied in his work and art the American character, in all its possibilities and explosive violence. Chemically, I think he was kind of bipolar,” he says. “He was a man who was able to channel the light and dark corners of the American soul. And he was also funny as hell.”

GONZO: THE LIFE AND WORK OF DR.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON OPENS THIS
FRIDAY, OCT. 10