For these reasons, this could not be an ordinary memorial. It had to be a tribute worthy of a fallen warrior. The Greeks built burial mounds, and wept and moaned and offered sacrifices to the gods when a hero died. Hunter’s ceremony had to be worthy of the man.
On the third day after my father’s suicide, I sat down with some of his good friends and tried to figure out how to accomplish this. We decided to hold a private commemoration on March 3, 2005, two weeks after his death, at the Hotel Jerome in downtown Aspen, a favorite place of Hunter’s in the old days. The commemoration consisted of essentially a party with music, photos, and videos interspersed with testimonials from friends and family. Around four hundred people showed up. That was good and necessary. For some, it was sufficient. But it wasn’t what Hunter had asked for.
He had made it very clear to me and others over the years that when he died, he wanted to be cremated, and have his ashes shot out of a cannon at Owl Farm. He had first mentioned it back in the ’70s, on a cross-country trip from Denver to Los Angeles by way of Las Vegas with his good friend and collaborator Ralph Steadman. In L.A., they stopped by a mortuary and Ralph laid out his sketch for the funeral director showing just what Hunter had in mind. This was captured in the 1978 BBC documentary Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision. At the end of that documentary, standing in the yard at Owl Farm, Hunter points to the bluff behind the house where he envisions the cannon standing. The drawing shows a massive tube like a mortar surmounted by a fist clutching a peyote button (a small, flat, and round light green cactus without spines, which causes hallucinations when ingested). In the documentary Hunter grabs the pen from Ralph’s hand and quickly draws a second thumb on the first, telling him, “Two thumbs, Ralph. Two thumbs.”
Over the years, he brought it up now and then, sometimes seemingly in jest, but often in a matter-of-fact way. That Friday night before he died, he brought it up again. Therefore, there was no question of how to proceed. A cannon would be built.
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JENNIFER, A METALWORKING FRIEND of ours named John Doherty, and I discussed the options. We figured we could probably build a cannon twelve feet tall or so from steel, and we could place it up on the bluff. To make it from ordinary carbon steel would cost only a couple of hundred dollars. We considered using stainless steel instead, but that would have cost at least $10,000, maybe more, and we didn’t have that kind of money. We figured we could drive it most of the way to the top of the bluff, and perhaps drag it in a sled the rest of the way. We hadn’t figured out how to shoot out his ashes, but we were taking it one step at a time.
A few days later, Doug Brinkley, Hunter’s good friend and editor of his letters books, came to our cabin and told us that Johnny Depp had called him and said he wanted to pay for the construction of the cannon. We were astonished. Hunter and Johnny were good friends, ever since Johnny starred in Fear and Loathing and Las Vegas and had shadowed Hunter for months to study his every mannerism. But it is one thing to be a friend; it is another to volunteer to build a friend’s death cannon. Johnny had asked Doug to find out if that was okay with me. Johnny didn’t want to do anything without my full agreement and involvement. I said yes.
Johnny came to the first commemoration on March 3. He had a suite at the Hotel Jerome. One of his assistants found me in the crowd and asked me to come with him to Johnny’s room. We walked through the sitting room to the bedroom door, which was closed. I could hear music coming from the bedroom. An assistant slowly opened the door and I entered the dark room and looked around, and in the center of the bed was a sculpture, lit from within. A giant boom box was playing Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky.”
The sculpture was a tapering silver tower made of aluminum, about three feet high, topped by a bloodred fist, the two-thumbed fist. The peyote button glowed from within with shifting colors. There was a small hole in the top of the fist where the projectile would exit. Around the base were arranged a dozen struts like the small fins on a rocket, and among these, miniature boulders.
Hunter had described a monstrous cannon, but he hadn’t provided actual dimensions. It had to be of a size in keeping with his persona and his ego—huge. Johnny’s cannon was 153 feet tall, 15 stories, taller even than what Hunter imagined, taller than the Statue of Liberty. It was to be built in L.A. by a prop fabrication company that could build anything you could imagine, and then shipped in pieces on flatbed trucks to Owl Farm. It would take several months to construct. It was a graceful thing, not the crude and massive pipe of Ralph’s drawing, and because of that I at first had doubts, but it was truly beautiful, and it won me over.
Later in the spring I got a call from a man named Jon Equis. He was an event planner from L.A. who handled events such as the Emmy Awards and celebrity weddings. He’d been hired by Johnny to assist with the arrangements. He was coming to Denver to meet with me and see what I had in mind. He brought drawings and photos. He had gotten an aerial photo of Hunter’s property at Owl Farm, with property boundaries, and had already proposed a location for the cannon and the tent. Unfortunately, it was impractical to erect the cannon on the mesa, which was an hour’s hard hike up a steep roadless hillside, so we settled for the meadow that extended a good half mile behind Owl Farm. We spent a few hours talking about what the event was supposed to be, and I was insistent that it was to be a private occasion for family and close friends, and that it was a commemoration, not a party. The purpose was to honor the passing of a great man. Equis said that Johnny had told him that although he was paying for this event, it was not about him. He wanted to be informed of what was happening, but he would be in the background, and he wanted me to be happy with the result.
Over the next several months Equis and I talked frequently. What emerged was a two-part event—a private affair for friends and family that would begin as a ceremony and end as a celebration.
In the early summer the troops arrived. There was the team erecting the cannon, and there was a separate team putting together the event. Each team consisted of around eight people who flew in from L.A. and who were living in Aspen for the duration of the project. Equis rented a house a mile or so up the road from Owl Farm that became the command center. Work started early in the morning and lasted until late at night, after which there was music and drinking into the early hours. People slept on the floor or on couches. There was a cook to feed the troops. There was an art director, a logistics manager, a sound guy, a lighting person, an accountant, a few runners, a security manager, the project manager from the prop fabrication company, and several others.
In the field behind Hunter’s house, there were trucks with sound equipment, lighting, a massive tent, furniture, more props brought in from L.A., carpenters, and Jon Equis in the middle of it all, keeping every detail on track.
The other team was the cannon team, assembling the massive thing, putting the final touches on the huge red fist, so large that my son and two of his friends could easily stand in the recessed area in the palm where the peyote button would be located.
In those final days, Will would get up in the morning, grab a walkie-talkie, and walk back to the building site to watch the progress. The crew would keep an eye on him, and we could always reach him on the walkie-talkie. At one point, the painter for the cannon crew painted Will’s bike the same bloodred as the fist.
Throughout this entire process of planning and building, Johnny remained in the background. It was one thing for him to say this was about Hunter and not him, but to actually do it was very, very impressive, and showed me that Johnny Depp is indeed the kind of person he appears to be. He has my eternal gratitude and deep respect for all that he has done for my father. I know that he loves Hunter deeply.
On the afternoon of August 20, the day of the event, Jennifer, Will, Deb, and I walked up from the cabin toward the giant tent. The cannon was shrouded in shimmering crimson cloth, and I could hear the rhythmic pounding of the Japanese drum band playing on the small stage in front of the cannon. I knew we had succeeded
in setting the right tone.
We had shuttles bring people from the parking lot at the local racetrack a few miles away. They began showing up around six p.m.
The shuttle bus drove up a newly laid gravel road from the street up to a circular drive. Guests stepped out of the bus onto a path that led to the tent. The path ran between two rows of posters with the Gonzo fist symbol facing the guests as they approached. If they looked back, they saw portraits of Hunter on the back of each poster.
Upon climbing a wide wooden staircase, they saw more framed photos of Hunter, along with portraits of some of his favorite authors, including Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Conrad, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. At the top of the stairs the guests turned right or left to walk around a wall that blocked the view of the inside of the tent. Once inside, they were in a large, dark space, with dark cloth on the walls, dark cloth covering chairs and couches, and a dark red cloth covering a circular bar in the center of the tent. The floor around the bar was painted in squares of red and blue in imitation of the floor of Hunter’s kitchen. Everyone was offered a mint julep, a tribute to his Kentucky heritage, but the bar itself was closed and there were no other drinks available. By seven p.m. there were a few hundred people gathered in the tent. I took the podium and kicked off the night with a brief welcome, and then introduced a dozen or so speakers, starting with Anita, followed by Johnny Depp, Colleen Auerbach (mother of Lisl Auman), Ralph Steadman, Ed Bradley, Wayne Ewing, Jann Wenner, my wife Jennifer, Laila Nabulsi, George McGovern, George Stranahan, Tim Ferris, Bob Braudis, and Doug Brinkley. Last was a call answered by silence for Oliver Treibick. Then I spoke.
It’s been six months to the day since Hunter killed himself, and I miss him like hell.
I don’t know about you, but for me the grieving process has been a mysterious one, twisting and turning, arising and submerging in the most unpredictable ways. I’ve gotten better at just going with its flow, and it’s gotten easier since then, meaning I can now feed myself and remember my phone number, which I could not do in those first several weeks. But it’s not easy. And I don’t think it’s ever going to be easy. Tom Benton said the other day that someone asked him if this service today would give him closure, and he said “Closure! That’s a Dr. Phil word. I don’t want closure! I want to remember him.” If anyone here is under the delusion that you will have closure at eleven p.m. tonight, I’m telling you I know it ain’t so. Sorry to break the news. I’m with Tom—I don’t want closure. Missing him is a way of loving him. People who have lost their parents tell me that over the years, it gets less painful, and that the sense of longing and absence is gradually balanced by fond memories and a deeper and deeper appreciation for the beloved, but no one has said that it stops hurting, or that you stop missing them. And that is as it should be.
Several people have asked me if this is what Hunter would have wanted, this cannon, this gigantic wake, these hundreds of people on his private property. First, I am finding it’s dangerous and arrogant to claim to know what Hunter would have wanted, but that said, I am confident he would have been amazed and overjoyed by the monument and by the fact that not only was his request honored, but it has been honored in full measure, beyond what even he might have imagined. But, really, it doesn’t matter what he would have wanted. The truth is that this night is for us, the living who miss him. It’s our time to remember and share our grief, to be awestruck by the immensity of this cannon, and then to remember and share and celebrate the stories, the thousands and thousands of Hunter stories, the thousands of stories that add up to a deep love and respect for a great man and a great writer and a great friend. Not an easy man and not an easy friend, but a great one.
In the past six months, I’ve learned a few things. I used to think that Hunter was a cult hero, unknown to most but worshipped by a relative few. I sold him far short. Through all the letters, postcards, messages, and stories, I’ve begun to realize just how wide and deep his impact was on so many people. He affected far more people than we know, in far deeper ways. Hunter’s writing changed people’s lives, in the right ways and for the right reasons.
I’ve also learned just what a strong, loyal, and decent family he had here in Aspen. I can’t tell you all, and you know who you are, how much your love, friendship, and support have meant to Jennifer, Will, and me. You have drawn us into your family, your tribe, and I am so deeply honored by this. Thank you. I will always carry this honor and the emblem of our tribe in my heart.
So here we go. My speaking, like this whole extravagant night, is in a way an attempt to put off acknowledging for a little longer the fact that Hunter really is gone, but gone he is, goddammit. So let’s do this thing, let’s shout and laugh and cry and tell stories, let’s honor the great fallen warrior, the dead king, in the proper way—let us spread his ashes on Owl Farm, my father’s land, the land he loved. Let us celebrate power with power. The king is dead. Long live the king.
Death and grief had been invoked, the actions of a great man related, his virtues recounted. Leaders and men of note gave tribute to him, sometimes with humor, sometimes with pathos. There was a solemn and respectful silence throughout this portion of the night.
We turned our attention to a giant projection screen and watched the end of the BBC documentary. Hunter, a youthful forty-one, described his vision of the cannon, in his trademark white L.L.Bean shorts and his bowlegged walk, pointed at the bluffs behind the house.
Then the music began; Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” boomed out across the meadow. The spotlights were turned on the veiled monument, and the giant crimson shroud was slowly pulled away until it was fully revealed.
It was incredible. I think everyone there was shocked at how beautiful and overwhelming it was. Some people cried, some cheered, some laughed, but mostly people responded with silent awe. The clouds hung low that night, threatening rain but never actually following through, and the spotlights cast two fist-shaped shadows on the low clouds. It was like an apparition, a Gonzo stigmata on the sky.
Ed Bastian, among other things a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, took the small stage and read a section of Buddha’s Diamond Sutra, the Prajna Paramita Sutra, in Tibetan, from a Tibetan scroll consisting of cloth strips about a foot long and a few inches wide. Ed read the ancient words with reverence. He translated what he had read into English, and it still didn’t make sense to most of us, but again it didn’t matter. It was his respect for the wisdom and for Hunter, by his ceremonious conduct, that inspired reverence in us, a sense that something great was transpiring, that Hunter’s spirit was transforming into something timeless and grand, and we were here to witness it.
When Ed finished, the Japanese drum band resumed, six musicians standing before massive drums six feet in diameter, striking with all their might. They began slowly at first, then built gradually to a crescendo that shook our bodies and boomed into the night, bouncing off the cliffs, across the road and to the edge of the mesa a half mile away where those without invitations had gathered to watch. The drumming gradually increased in tempo and volume until it was almost unbearable, and on the final stroke, a volley of white fireworks rose in the air behind the Fist. The drummers struck again in unison, and a second curtain of light arose, this time in blue. The drummers struck a final time, and a curtain of red arose, and then a volley of shells launched from the cannon and exploded in a rapid series of white, deafening explosions. Then there was silence, and some could see a faint mist in the air, smoke and ashes, drifting down onto the ground, the tent, the crowd, and the fist, like a blessing.
After a moment of stillness, Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” began playing. Catharsis. People were weeping, and laughing, and cheering, they were hugging one another and whooping. They didn’t know exactly what to do, but they needed to do something.
As people closest to the tent turned back, they saw that the interior had been transformed from the dark and solemn enclosure to a large, comfortable living room. The dark cloth had been removed, the
circular bar had been uncovered, and low lights had been turned on, illuminating pictures and posters, along with replicas of the signs, notes, and writings that had been tacked to Hunter’s kitchen walls and cupboards. There was a stuffed peacock, a wooden Morris chair, and several comfortable couches. Two refrigerators covered in black leather, in imitation of the refrigerator in Hunter’s kitchen, were stocked with beer. It was an invocation of Hunter’s kitchen and living room. The celebration began.
It was a memorable night even without the firing of a 153-foot cannon and the solemn speeches, the Japanese drumming, and the invocation of the Buddha’s wisdom. People swamped the bar, looking for some quick relief from the intense emotions and tension of the last two hours. Lyle Lovett stepped up on the stage and sang four or five of Hunter’s favorite Lovett songs, including “If I Had a Boat.” When he finished, a guitarist from Dylan’s band played. Throughout the night other musicians played as well, including John Oates, Jimmy Ibbotson of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and David Amram. At one point Hunter’s brother, Davison, climbed up on the stage with Lyle Lovett, Johnny Depp playing guitar, David Amram on flute, and the rest of the band. They did a rendition of “My Old Kentucky Home.”
There was heavy drinking—as you would expect—and I heard there were other substances ingested as well. There was dancing, and flirting, and the sharing of stories from the old days.
I talked to I don’t know how many people that night. I talked to old friends of Hunter’s who had left Aspen twenty years ago, and the children of those friends. I talked to John Kerry, George McGovern, and Ed Bradley, and I talked to writers, bartenders, house cleaners, ranch hands, and folksingers. I thanked them all for coming, and they told me how much Hunter had meant to them. If I was lucky, they told me a story as well. I heard a number of people snuck through the tall grass from the road and managed to get into the tent.
Stories I Tell Myself Page 22