Gonzo

by Corey Seymour

  CURTIS ROBINSON

  If you were working as his road manager, when you got in the car with him, you would make sure the jimson weed and bowl were easily available, because that’s one of the things he would go searching for at ninety miles an hour—a smart person would have those in his hand. I always said that advancing Hunter was always about the next fifteen minutes. You really couldn’t plan beyond that.

  When you tried to get him to events—and I had a great record of getting him to events pretty much on time—you’d lose him. If you were able to get him out of his house or his hotel room or wherever he was holed up, you wanted to move him like a candidate. You didn’t want any hang-up. If the elevator wasn’t there—“It’s a sign; I’m going home.” If there was no parking spot in front of the venue—“It’s a sign; I’m going home.” Town Car instead of a limo . . . anything. I developed a rule: Anyone you send in to bring him out of someplace—if they’re not out with him in twenty minutes, you write them off. They’re part of the problem.

  With Hunter, there were no days off. He got up and went through first gear with breakfast: read the papers, have a beer. Second gear: scotch, phone. Third gear: the boomer gear. That was the fun gear. Fourth gear could be free fall.

  WAYNE EWING

  There was a lot of fun on the road, but we didn’t do the road so much toward the end. It became more and more difficult for Hunter to travel, and when he did, he really needed to go on a private plane. That was a sad thing to watch. It was just the physicality of being in small tight spaces as much as anything. There were some security concerns as well after 9/11, but security was always there. And once you’ve flown private, you can’t go back. Once you’ve been in a Gulfstream, it’s hard to go back to the friendly skies of United. So that was always part of it—the search for a private plane that somebody might come up with.

  He’d call his famous friends, and very often they would come through, but sometimes they wouldn’t. So he traveled less and less. I think it was really a testament to Hunter’s writing ability and his perceptual abilities that he could sit in his kitchen and watch a thirty- six-inch TV and talk on the telephone and know as much as he needed to know about the world and be able to synthesize it and comment on it as well as he did. That’s primarily how he worked the last decade of his life. The forays into Hollywood or New York or anywhere else were rare.

  DOUG BRINKLEY

  After the Louisville event, Depp came out to Woody Creek and lived in Hunter’s basement, which Hunter forever after called Johnny’s Room. I came out and stayed in the cabin, so it was really Deborah, Colonel Depp, myself, and Hunter for a week. I was going through Hunter’s files and finding things related to Vegas for the second volume of letters, Fear and Loathing in America, so Johnny could read some of that stuff. We dug up clothes from the basement so Depp could dress just as Hunter did.

  DEBORAH FULLER

  Johnny was a great guest; he never missed a thing and would help with anything. I would retrieve things for Hunter, and Johnny would see where I had gotten something, and after Hunter was done with it, he would put it away. He would be the first one to take the dishes out of the dishwasher. Watching him study Hunter was hysterical. I would get Johnny the same hats and jackets, and of course he used Hunter’s cigarette filters. I found all the original clothes that Hunter wore in Vegas—they fit Johnny to a tee—and he had copies made of everything.

  They would stay up until all hours. Johnny quickly became a trusted friend who could roll with Hunter and keep the same schedule. They had the best time talking, calling people, drinking, going to the tavern, going for wild drives, buying matching guns, shooting on the range, plotting scenes for the movie—you name it and they covered it. They would be up for as long as it took. Hunter had found “a bright boy and a gentleman,” as he put it, a Kentucky Colonel that he could play with, one that he respected. Hunter also loved to have Johnny read his work. Johnny knew all of Hunter’s writing and had a true feel for it; he also had a beautiful voice and understood how to read Hunter’s work. Of course, Hunter trained him—“Slower, slower, goddamn it! Emphasize that this is music . . .”

  JOHNNY DEPP

  I knew then how special every second of that time was. You can make more room in your body and in your brain and in your heart to store that stuff, and I did. I never got sick of it. Even talking about things that I wasn’t particularly interested in—point spreads or various sporting events and things like that. You’d be talking about Michael Jordan and his brilliance or his athletic abilities one second, and the next thing you know you’ve made some turn and you’re talking about moonshine running.

  The only thing that I knew that I wanted, that I needed, was the years of 1970 and ’71, the Vegas time, and Hunter’s relationship with Oscar Acosta, the model for Dr. Gonzo. That was really the main focus, but then it just went everywhere. We talked about everything, from his earliest memories, his youth in Louisville and beaning people’s mailboxes and petty thievery, and his air force days. I asked him if it was okay to videotape. I said, “I’m not going to interview you, but if you don’t mind, I’ll set a camera down on the counter, click it on, and then we’ll just be. We’ll just talk.” He said, “Yeah, that’s fine.” And neither one of us, by the way, looked at the camera after that. We just sat and talked for hours and hours and days. I have endless amounts of footage of that, which was very, very helpful.

  He spoke a lot about Oscar. He basically said that he had great respect for him and thought he was brilliant, but the one thing that he always stressed about Oscar was that he was scary. Hunter never knew what to expect of him—he could snap at any moment, and things could go ugly. He said that he’d never been with anyone in his life who could make things uglier and darker and more dangerous in such a short period of time—like seconds. He loved Oscar, obviously. I think he really believed that there was a chance that Oscar was still around, that he was too large a force to have been taken out so easily.

  TERRY GILLIAM directed Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

  It’s a very important thing to have chaos as part of the world order. I was only up to Woody Creek once, and it was a very funny evening. Hunter was writing the introduction to Ralph Steadman’s gonzo art book, and he read it out loud to me—“Hitler took the high road and you, Ralph, took the low road.” I was in tears. But even on an evening like that, the video camera was recording him the whole time. It was like observing the Queen Mary, with a lot of tugboats servicing him, recording his moments, making him an utterly historical figure. Every moment became a little bit of history. And that’s a lot of work.

  CURTIS ROBINSON

  I think Hunter had an intuitive understanding of the brand of “Hunter Thompson.” He knew to wear the same kinds of things when he went out. He was aware of things like entrances and exits.

  How much of Hunter was spontaneous and how much was arranged was always one of those questions that people would kick around. I found that he was like jazz. The piece was arranged. It was disciplined. But within that, he was the free instrument and he would go off. Nobody else went off because we were just trying to get through the piece, but he would go off. I always found his writing to be a lot like that. He needed a story. He needed a surprising amount of structure in his head, but within that structure he would go crazy.

  JOHNNY DEPP

  I started to get fascinated with the way that he would approach a meal. It was incredible to watch, because if Hunter had a plate of crab cakes, oysters, and some rice or something, the meal would arrive, and he would then sort of study it. “Yeahhh . . .” It seemed that aesthetically, it needed to be at the right kind of angle, and then he would take the salt and pepper and kind of hover over the dish—and he would salt and pepper his food for fucking twenty minutes. For me, it became an obsession. And then the lemon. He’d squeeze a lemon over everything—the whole fucking lemon. I started really getting into these odd details.

  He got a little freaked out when I started to act l
ike him. You had to learn to be as quick as Hunter. There was a borrowing it for a period of time—sponging to a degree that went beyond mimicry. But it used to freak him out.

  DEBORAH FULLER

  Johnny would jump into his Hunter character at any given second. The way he held a cigarette and the way he picked up Hunter’s walk—it would give us the creeps. Hunter was always screaming, “Stop that!” Johnny would turn it on and off just to fuck with him. Hunter shaved Johnny’s head again after he arrived so it was just right, and he had me trim the sides because I always cut Hunter’s hair.

  JOHNNY DEPP

  I’d been staying there for weeks, and my nightstand was this barrel. It was where the lamp was and it was where my ashtray was. I was in there doing my homework at night before I’d fall off to bed, and I had stacks of photos of Hunter and Oscar and all the bits and pieces from the manuscript of Fear and Loathing, Hunter’s early works, tons of reading materials—important stuff. I’d be going through that, and at a certain point, as I was putting a cigarette out, I thought, “Fuck, man—that’s a keg. There’s no way in hell this thing can be, like, live, can there be?” It’s where my ashtray was and the whole bit—matches and lighters. I went upstairs and said to Hunter, “I need you to come downstairs for a minute, man; you’ve got to check this out.” He said, “What’s the problem?” He came downstairs, and I said, “Come in my room. What the fuck is that?” I pointed to the keg. “Is that what I think it is?” He looked at it and he goes, “Oh fuck—that’s where it is!” I said, “Is it gunpowder?” He said, “Oh yeah . . .”

  By the time I had to go back to L.A., I had amassed a collection of copies of stuff and photographs and bits of his notes from the Vegas years—a lot of stuff. I had a bunch of his clothes from that period, and not only that, but I was getting ready to drive the Red Shark to L.A. from Colorado. It was cute in a way, because I guess some part of it had to do with the fact that I was leaving, but he got a little like, “Fuck you—you come here, you sponge off me and move into my house, and now you’re leaving and taking all of my clothes and all of my shit with you.” We sort of battled and verbally challenged one another to outdo the other. I’d say, “Yes, Hunter, that’s true. But it’s for the greater good now, isn’t it? You want to be represented well, don’t you?”

  TIM FERRIS

  Johnny was completely earnest. The first time we ever hung out together, Hunter had left the room, and Johnny, with this tremendous sincerity, said, “He really is quite remarkable, don’t you think?” I was really touched by it. This was a guy who was putting himself on the line for Hunter. I mean, it was a lot of time, a lot of work, and a lot of abuse to make a film that nobody expected was going to make any money or advance anybody’s career.

  JOHNNY DEPP

  When it was just Hunter and me in our relationship, I was the Colonel. In other instances, such as out on the road, he would refer to me as Ray. It was always, “Well, go talk to Ray. He’s got the music set up.” I’d made these CDs for Hunter—there would be the CD that we would listen to in the motel before we split, and there’d be the CD we’d listen to in the car on the way to an event, and then I would go in and set up the blaster and put the CD on for the event itself. It was “Spirit in the Sky” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “One Toke Over the Line,” “Sympathy for the Devil,” “White Rabbit”—all that stuff. And he fucking loved it—we’d drive down the street, and he’d be whooping. He had a polo shirt made for me that said, “Just Call Me Ray,” and when he introduced me to people as Ray and they said, “Well, but that’s Johnny . . . ,” he’d go, “No! His fucking name is Ray.”

  We were on the road on a book tour for The Proud Highway, and Hunter’s back went out on him—sciatica. He was in a lot of pain. His back had been acting up before that, but now we were locked in his hotel room in San Francisco together, just the two of us, for about five days.

  One night the phone rang. I picked it up, and the guy on the other end said, “Dr. Thompson?” I said, “No, this is not Dr. Thompson. This is Ray. What can I do for you?” He said, “My name is Ramundo. I can do things.” I was dead sober, thinking, “What the fuck?” But again, when you were in those situations with Hunter, nothing was bizarre anymore. I guess I sounded confused, because he said again, “Yes, my name is Ramundo—I can do things.” I said, “Excuse me?” He said, “I can do things.” I said, “All right . . . uh, we don’t need anything right now, but thank you very much for your call, and take it easy.” Click.

  Maybe forty-five minutes later, Hunter and I were sitting there still talking, and Hunter flinched and suddenly said, “What the fuck . . . Did you hear that?” I said, “No, I didn’t hear anything.” He said, “That sound—I heard a dog; fuck, it’s a mastiff; I heard a mastiff.” For him to be that specific—I was laughing my guts out. I said, “Hunter, c’mon.” He said, “No, no—we’ve got to check this out.” So we got up—and Hunter was hobbling because of his back—and we were trying to look out the peephole head-to-head, and there was nothing in the hallway. Then we looked down, and there was a black business card that had been stuck under the door. It had gold lettering, and it said, “Ramundo: I can do things,” with a phone number below.

  Hunter started walking back to the living room, and suddenly I heard a dog, a big dog, way down the hall. I called the number on the card, and it’s this fucking guy Ramundo. I said, “Were you just in the hallway?” He said, “Yes—I left my card, which is how you are calling.” I said, “Do you have a dog?” He said, “Yes, I do.” I said, “Do you have a dog with you?” He said, “Yes, I do. A bullmastiff.” I said, “Where are you now?” He said, “I’m across the street” at such-and-such a bar, “and I just want you to know that if you need me, I can do things.”

  Hunter and I fucking howled. We had no fucking idea who “Ramundo” was.

  When Allen Ginsberg’s memorial was being held in Los Angeles, Hunter couldn’t come down for it. But since we’d both known Ginsberg, Hunter and I talked and he said, “Listen—I’m going to write this piece, and you’re going to be at this deal anyway, and I’d like you to read it.” Ten days later, nothing. I called and said, “Hunter, the thing’s tomorrow, man.” He said, “Yeah, yeah—it’s coming. I’ll get it to you; it’ll be there tomorrow morning.” I wake up in the morning, and it’s not there. The thing was at eight p.m., and I talked to Hunter in the afternoon at three or four, and he said, “I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I don’t like anything that I’ve written, and fuck it—I’m just not going to do it. I’m abandoning the piece.” I jumped all over him and said, “Fuck you, man—you can’t do that. These people are expecting me to be there to read your words.”

  I had to leave the house at 7:30. At 7:29, it came in on the fax machine, and I read the piece in the car on my way to this memorial, howling with laughter. He called Allen “a dangerous bull-fruit with the brain of an open sore and the conscience of a virus.” It was unbelievable. He wrote, “He was crazy, queer, and small,” and said that Allen was happy, that he was looking forward to meeting the grim reaper “because he knew he could get into his pants.”

  TERRY GILLIAM

  We had this fairly scratchy relationship. I was a huge fan, but we always seemed to be circling each other the whole time during the film, which was interesting. When you make a film of somebody else’s book, you’re so wanting to impress him and so wanting to make him feel good about the way you’re interpreting his work, and at a certain point you learn to hate him because it’s causing you so much anguish trying to live up to—or down to—the standards that he’s set. It was a strange experience. I had to be cut off from him. I didn’t want to have to be beholden to him.

  JOHNNY DEPP

  He only came to the set of the film toward the end—only when we were in L.A. I had wanted to get him back to Vegas, but I think Gilliam was probably a little frightened of the idea of Hunter being on set in Vegas. I kept him well informed, that’s for sure. I talked to him every day and every night to tell hi
m what we did, and I would also call him if I was unsure about the context of the book versus the screenplay and the situation we were working on.

  TERRY GILLIAM

  It was always a wary dance that we performed, and it was good fun. But I could only take a certain amount of Hunter on the phone with his long ramblings, because I had work to do. He was happy with the script and he was happy with what we were doing. That was the important thing. He dredged up extra bits and pieces, which were very nice.

  The only real time during the shooting that we had to deal with Hunter was the day he turned up to be in the film. He was like a child, with this great big ego that demanded immediate attention. We were in the middle of shooting, and suddenly bread rolls were bouncing off the back of my head. But at the end of the day, we had to do the scene where Hunter actually appears for the one and only time. He dressed exactly like Johnny, or Johnny was dressed exactly like him, with the corduroy patch jacket and the hat with the green visor and things like that. It was just a funny idea—that Johnny, playing Hunter, would have a weird flashback to himself. We had all these extras and we were running into overtime, and suddenly Hunter decided that he didn’t want to do it.

  Laila and Johnny and I were doing everything to convince him, and finally he walked on and looked at the set and where we’d positioned him and said, “No. I wouldn’t have been in the middle of things. I would have been an observer over on the edge. I would be watching. I’m a journalist.” So we rearranged the whole fucking set, and then he found another reason to stall.