Gonzo

by Corey Seymour

  He had also wanted me to sleep in the cabin next door to his house—he wanted someone to be with him all the time—and I couldn’t do that. Every night I had to try to get out of there, and I’d be waiting for a natural pause in his conversation to make a move, and he’d know that’s what I was waiting for—so he wouldn’t pause.

  MARILYN MANSON met Hunter in 2000 when Johnny Depp called him one night from the Viper Room and said, “Get down here. You’ve got to meet this guy.”

  A few days before the election, he was in L.A. doing a book signing and he invited me up to the Chateau. He was always in some kind of amazingly cinematic predicament of some sort, and this time he had a pair of handcuffs around his neck—I think this symbolized a moment in his life, or in his marriage, because he really, really wanted to come to my house to get in my swimming pool, which I had told him was as hot as a Jacuzzi. He said that his “chrysalis muscle” really needed to be soaked. I said, “Will it bloom into a butterfly of some sort?” and he laughed. He had a duffel bag full of things that only bad people wish for on Christmas—it was like if Al Capone and William Burroughs and Sam Peckinpah directed Candyman. But I think he really wanted to swim with some of the women that I keep around the house. This was because of no lack of love for his companion, but at the same time I think he felt imprisoned. He talked to me about this when we went back to his bedroom to try to figure out an escape plan for him to get to my house.

  I told Hunter I was ready to go back into journalism, and we were talking about going on a college speaking tour as a team. It was a really exciting idea—he of course wanted to make sure that we’d be going only to girls’ schools—but we were talking a lot about art and politics and society and how they affect one another.

  One thing I always liked about him was that his drug use was shameless. I once made the mistake of letting someone drag me along to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting—I got asked for autographs, and then they started talking about God too much, and I just left and called Hunter immediately. He told me that he would be my sponsor and get me back on my road to recovery—to drug use and alcohol use again.

  ANJELICA HUSTON

  The last time I saw him was at the Taschen bookstore party in L.A. for the special edition of The Curse of Lono. I had gotten a call from Laila because Benicio Del Toro and Harry Dean Stanton were doing readings from Lono and Sean Penn had dropped out at the last minute, and Laila said, “Would you come read one of the stories? Hunter wants you to.” Taschen is a very select bookstore in Beverly Hills, and when I walked in, Hunter’s influence was immediately felt—the room was thick with smoke, and champagne was being poured in more than liberal amounts, and Hugh Hefner was there with four of his blondes in gonzo thongs—it had all of the earmarks of a “Hunter situation.” It immediately felt like the old days in Aspen when the mad magician was at the helm.

  Hunter was rubbing my knee throughout. He could barely walk. He was obviously in a lot of pain and was medicated—but then again, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen Hunter unmedicated. Somehow I did the reading, and he was very happy about it, which was good, and it got some laughs from the crowd. Then we all went to the Chateau Marmont, and Laila came over and said, “He wants you to go sit with him.” I went and sat on Hunter’s lap for a while, and he ordered a variety of drinks, and then he said, “Mai tais!”

  Hunter didn’t really eat much, but the variety of the drinks that he consumed was another thing—the actual scope of his drinking. Hunter could go from bourbon to crème de menthe back to fruity tropical drinks like that, or he’d order these horrible sticky drinks—Bailey’s cream with a little champagne. And he always encouraged you to order alongside him, and of course you could see a reason not to order mai tais or horrible sticky drinks, but the next thing you know your eyes are rolling in your head. That was a sign that I had to get out of there.

  I said, “Hunter, I think I’m going to go”—and he took off his amulet from around his neck and put it around my neck and said, “Here—take this.” I knew the importance of this thing—he’d had it for decades and wore it constantly—and I was taken aback. I left with it around my neck, and the next day I woke up with a bad feeling about it. It was weird. I sent it back.

  MITCH GLAZER

  When we all ended up at the Chateau after the book signing, I left feeling kind of sad. I didn’t think I’d see him again, truthfully, and I didn’t. It was a shitty night, a rainy night; the reading went well, and the whole feeling was nice. But afterward the lobby got separated into a sort of hierarchy of who was closest to Hunter; it had a very stratified feel to it that wasn’t really him. I passed along a message from Billy Murray—an edited version of it. He looked up from where he was sitting and said, “How is Mr. Murray? Is he okay? What’s going on with the family?” He kind of engaged for a second. But the rest of that night felt unsatisfying to visit. It didn’t feel completely right.

  Sometimes you don’t realize how old people really are. He was so iconic when I met him in ’77. The guy was a specimen. He was just—even at rest, even sitting in a chair—he was a physical presence. So to see him kind of broken like that was maybe inevitable, but still hard to handle.

  BEN FEE

  People came over less and less toward the end. Hunter would just tell guests straight up that they had to go, or “Get the fuck out.” If he wanted to be alone, he would make it known pretty abruptly, and everyone who was over at that point knew how to take it, so they wouldn’t get sore about it. They’d just go.

  MICHAEL SOLHEIM

  Braudis was on me a lot about going out to visit Hunter in the last couple of years. He’d call me up and say, “He really needs some of the old friends more—he’s getting really tired of everybody else.” Hunter was hanging out with guys from around the tavern and younger guys from town who had no experience and who were a bother. I’d say, “Bob, it’s the same deal. I’m not too interested in hanging around with a bunch of sycophants. The people who are out there these days bore the shit out of me.”

  JANN WENNER

  I’d speak to him on the phone every few months and say, “I’m going to be in Idaho this summer, and I’m going to come down and visit for a day.” How difficult would that have been? But then I questioned if I really wanted to go down there, stay up till three a.m., and take drugs. We’d sit there and laugh and then come up with some scheme to do something, an article to write, some political move, knowing it would fall apart, and I’d see him aging. I didn’t want to do that. Maybe I was lazy or just neglectful, but I just wanted to remember Hunter in his glory. And I was angry that I couldn’t help him.

  SEMMES LUCKETT

  There were times when I didn’t go out to see him as much as I should have. Physically, I just wasn’t up to it anymore—all the substances involved at the time. And if you were there for a specific purpose, it could be two or three in the morning before you got to it.

  BEN FEE

  Having his work read to him would always make him feel better, and shooting guns on his range rejuvenated him whenever we did it. We usually shot in the afternoon because he had some cleaning ladies come, and God—he would lash out at them so hard. So I’d try to get him in a different place so they could do their job without getting harassed.

  I was never frightened of Hunter physically, but one time he was smoking a bunch of weed and then pulled out a shotgun. He was kind of weak, so the gun would just fall low and he’d pick it up high and wave it around. Things like that happened a couple of times.

  Whenever Hunter and Anita got in a fight, she would leave. Their relationship was so up and so down. Hunter was paranoid—he had all these scenarios concocted in his head about Anita taking his money. He hated that feeling. It was usually when the fumes of an argument were still in the air.

  He and Anita could be all lovey-dovey, and she would always go and give him hugs, and twenty minutes later they could be yelling at each other. It could go for a few minutes or a couple sentences back and forth, or for te
n minutes—if it ever escalated to that point, I would leave.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The End of the Road

  The hardest part of creative writing is finding your own voice—an authentic, original voice that can translate into a culture. Only a handful of writers in a generation can pull that off, and Hunter transcended his competition.

  JUAN THOMPSON

  I never had any doubt that at some point he was going to commit suicide. That’s how he was going to die, barring some strange illness or a car crash or something like that. As long as it was in his control, I knew that he was going to kill himself. I would guess that if he hadn’t broken his leg, he would have lived longer, but it would have just been a matter of time—months, a year or two.

  It’s not something he talked about—the practical details of dying. He never told me anything to the effect of, “Here’s what I’m going to do,” or “This is how it’s going to happen.” It’s more a sense that I had.

  BEN FEE

  He never talked to me about the act of suicide itself—doing it—he just talked about the control of doing it. He said he never wanted to be an old fart, or wither away, or become crippled, and he was becoming crippled. That’s just the way it happened. He saw it happening, and the closer it got to the end, the less he brought it up.

  JUAN THOMPSON

  When he finally did choose to kill himself, he was very careful not to let on. I think he’d made a decision and he didn’t want to put me or anyone in a position of trying to stop him. It would have put a horrible burden on somebody.

  There was trouble between him and Anita, sure. But after a certain number of months, there was always trouble with Hunter and his women. He was a very difficult guy to live with—very charming and extremely loveable, but very difficult too. So the difficulty now was no surprise. Just as every other woman had finally decided to leave, I assumed she would come to that point too.

  SARAH MURRAY worked as an assistant to Hunter starting in November 2004.

  I was looking in the local paper and saw a job advertised as a sort of errand girl. I called and talked to Anita, and realized very quickly that I wasn’t going to be an errand person. Anita wanted me to hang out with Hunter—maybe that wasn’t a conscious decision on her part, but I could tell that she was overwhelmed and that she had things she needed to do out of town. I spent one evening at Owl Farm from seven until three, and then shifted into this new job as assistant. It was often full-time.

  Hunter didn’t do much writing. He seemed to be entering a reflective period. We did other things. We did a lot of reading—that actually felt like an accomplishment—and he was trying to be very diligent about swimming. We would go to George Stranahan’s pool, which was something that brought him great joy—whenever we could finally get everything we needed together, that is, which would take a while.

  Swimming with Hunter was a beautiful experience. Hunter made me aware pretty quickly that it was a privilege to go swimming with him, which is not how I saw it at first. I dreaded it; I was uncomfortable with it, but I came to see that it was a privilege. It was very peaceful, very calm, and I loved it because I knew that it made Hunter feel so good physically. He would just be in total ecstasy when he was in the water; for once he was not in pain. He did need some assistance.

  It was just a very quiet time. We didn’t talk much. I was one of the few people who refused to be naked in the pool with Hunter, and that was frustrating for him for a while. Anita had told me that this was what all the assistants had done in the past, but I chose not to. We came to a kind of compromise—I would float on an inflatable raft, and Hunter would spin me around. It was amazing—I would be looking up at this amazing Colorado sky filled with stars. It was a bonding experience without words. It was special. That’s about all I can say.

  We talked a lot about future projects that we would work on together in April. We always talked about “in April,” like it was going to be this new chapter of our time and our relationship together and my job with him. I would take on more of—I don’t know how to put this—an official role come April. I would work with him full-time at the house and with writing. We talked about working on a new book that would be called Dr. Thompson’s Guide to Physical Fitness. It was going to be something really light and fun for him, more of an adventure.

  ED BRADLEY

  I had gotten pissed at Hunter because he was supposed to make a toast at my wedding that summer, and he left. I was angry, and I didn’t talk to him for a while. He came to the party the night before the wedding and stayed for the whole thing, and he came to the wedding and stayed through the wedding—and he left before the reception, for whatever reason. My wife, Patricia, said, “You can’t carry a grudge like that.” Eventually I called Hunter and said, “You know, I’m not pissed at you anymore, but I want you to know I was pissed. But I’m not pissed anymore. I let it go.” We had a nice talk and put it behind us, and then I saw him at Christmas. He came to Jack’s annual Christmas Eve party, and he was in great form. He was handing out gonzo paraphernalia—T-shirts for the men, thongs for the women—and he was chuckling and having a great time. That was the last time I saw him.

  JACK NICHOLSON

  He had missed my Christmas party for a year or two—he always said he was coming and then, for one reason or another, couldn’t make it because he wasn’t well or ambulatory in the same way. But he sounded good that night. He had such a good time. He gave me a copy from a privately published edition of one of his books. It was called Fire in the Nuts.

  CURTIS ROBINSON

  Fire in the Nuts has some of the stories he wrote about being in New York, including one where things aren’t going well for the guy and he starts to beat women pretty indiscriminately. It’s not a happy story. He did several books like this that he published as very limited-edition art books.

  JIMMY BUFFETT

  That Christmas he was in pretty damn good shape. We had a great visit at Jack’s party. He was laughing. I’m glad I got to go out on that one, but then when I look back on it, you know . . . I get it.

  SEAN PENN had formed a friendship with Hunter at Tosca in San Francisco in 1988.

  Things were very, very clearly not good. I saw it when I went to pick him up at the New Orleans airport. This incredibly physical guy could barely walk. The first night we got in, I had arranged a dinner, and he was having a tough time moving around. It ended up being mostly wheelchairs the rest of the time. I could see, and I know that Brinkley could too, that this was different. What it was doing to him emotionally was different.

  DOUG BRINKLEY

  Hunter was going to do a piece for Playboy on the remaking of the movie of All the King’s Men with James Carville as the producer and Sean Penn playing Willie Stark. The climate in January was warm, and they were offering him a lot of money, and Sean sent a private plane to pick him up.

  When he got into town with Sean, he was very tired; he couldn’t walk ten yards without people holding him up. He had lost weight, and he didn’t look good. It was heartbreaking. At one point, he was in a wheelchair getting pushed over to the set, and he fell out of the wheelchair onto the street. He was really upset—he felt like a gutter person, and he couldn’t get himself off Esplanade Avenue.

  Hunter had always talked about suicide, but it was very, very low in his playing deck. But when he came to New Orleans, and even in the whole year before, it was an option he would verbalize. He’d say things like, “Well, I may have to do myself in soon.” I would naturally say, “Hunter, stop it. Don’t talk like that.” He would say, “What—I can’t talk real with you now? I don’t want to hear your fake shit. Of course it’s a fucking option of mine. Who the fuck do you think I am? Do you think I’m gonna go in to live with a goddamn Nurse Ratched in the hospital and be put through some detox thing? Fuck that.”

  The question became “What kinds of therapies could work?” He had tried to work on his knee, his hip, his head, his back, his blood pressure. He had to use an oxyge
n tank. He was monitoring his blood pressure every day and writing it down and taking medication for all these ailments. He had no real exercise, yet he was putting a lot of alcohol and drugs into his body.

  He felt his entire life would have been a failure if he went out institutionalized. To be a man, in his view, was to live. You light out after the territories, like Mark Twain said, and you carry a big club with you wherever you go, like Jack London said. He had lit out for the territories, and he had carried the club wherever he went, but he had hit a point, at age sixty-seven, where his body was not cooperating. He felt that he had lived too long, and he was hugely conscious of his image. He was a persona writer—it helps sell books—and Hunter realized that if the headline “Thompson Put in Detox Hospital” was written, all of his macho drugging and drinking and tough-guy anarchy would go down the tubes, and suddenly he would be just another frail old man.

  Sometimes he’d be screaming, but there were also these mournful, sad, quiet outrages. When he was screaming, you felt that at least there was some life going on there, but he’d get these faraway teary stares. . . . I saw him three or four times with tears in his eyes for no reason. Suddenly the mission became “How do we cheer him up?” We had only limited success, but there were moments. We went to the Circle Bar in Lee Circle. There was a bluegrass fusion band there, and Hunter loved them. He would sit at the bar, and the bartender knew Hunter’s work and was giving him free drinks and the VIP treatment. We had a wonderful night. He couldn’t walk, but he was dancing in his seat and whooping and doing his Iroquois war cheers in the air.