by Eva Dameron
Journalist's funeral an explosive final farewell
Hunter S. Thompson went out with a bang.
In Woody Creek, a small town outside of Aspen, Colo., the Gonzo journalist and author once lived on a piece of land he called Owl Farm. A funeral for 350 friends and family was held Saturday.
I got a chance to attend the celebration that took place afterward. Actor Johnny Depp financed the event, which cost more than $2 million and included the custom-made 153-foot cannon shaped like the Gonzo fist that shot Thompson's ashes into the air.
His trademark symbol, the fist, is double-thumbed and holds a peyote button in the palm and rests atop a dagger. Thompson created the method of Gonzo journalism, which replaces strict objective rules of reporting facts with more focus on the mood of an event. The reporter puts himself into the story.
People speculated that no one would be allowed within a three-mile radius of Thompson's property. Thompson's neighbor Jimmy Ibbotson made the local papers when he opened shotgun fire on a member of the paparazzi for walking across his property.
Security was fiercely tight around Owl Farm, but beyond those perimeters most talk of security was scare mongering. Imagine the irony of a famous outlaw leaving this world surrounded by security guards and rent-a-cops.
From across Thompson's favorite hangout, the Woody Creek Tavern, I climbed up a steep hill and over a low rusty barbed wire fence, and higher still, to reach one of the town's closest and safest views of the cannon without the fear of gunshots looming.
My friends and I went up six hours early in case security decided to rope off the bottom of the hill.
I guess if I were a real fan, I'd have taken two tabs of LSD and burst through the Owl Farm barriers unnoticed, in honor of the way Thompson would have done it. But I was playing it safe.
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Everyone on the hill bonded immediately. We played mind games and riddles to pass the time.
By sunset, the red tarp was taken down from the cannon. The peyote button in the middle of the cannon's fist began to glow in a changing array of colors - green, blue, red, purple, green. About half an hour into the glowing display, fireworks laced with Thompson's ashes blasted through the sky.
The whole thing lasted 30 seconds, but the sky was lit up for 10 minutes. Gonzo fists were silhouetted against the sky like the Batman logo in the cartoons.
During the explosion, all the cars on Highway 82, which overlooked Thompson's property, stopped to watch. I expected to be filled with some sort of emotion, inspiration, a ghost.
But nothing came. I was too excited for that sort of thing. The impact hit me the next day on the airplane back to Albuquerque and is growing still.
What did hit me big-time happened around lunchtime earlier that day. I was sitting on a rock outside the tavern. A long row of cars drove slowly down the narrow road. Out of the row, I noticed a red convertible. I smiled at the driver and he waved back. I turned to my friend and said he looked like Juan, Thompson's son.
Turns out it was. He was driving the original "Great Red Shark," used by his father in the book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
No one else seemed to notice him because the media crowded half the tavern and people were wrapped up in interviews.
I met a fan named Steve Wilkerson who flew out from Louisiana for the event. He mentioned to me that the locals seemed a bit on the edge because of all the media present.
The Gonzo fist sprouts up all over Woody Creek - in bright red atop his four mailboxes, outside the Woody Creek Store, inside the store and the tavern and even printed on the napkins at the Owl Farm funeral. It was then I realized what an impact Thompson had made on Woody Creek, and how lonely it was going to be with him gone. At least for half of the people.
According to a local contractor I met, half the people here hated Thompson and the other half worshipped every word he wrote. He said some of the neighbors had a problem with him because he had friends coming to the house from all over the country, partying all night for days, wildly shooting off guns.
Thompson's wife, Anita, felt bad for those who hadn't been invited to attend what she called a celebration of his life. So she arranged for a late-night party at Belly Up, a bar in Aspen, to show close-up footage of the cannon firing. She personally delivered the film.
At Belly Up, Douglas Brinkley - who edited collections of Thompson's correspondences into book form - propped up onstage a large photo of an older Thompson wearing his signature white hat.
Anita spoke before the firing footage and thanked everyone for being there and apologized that they could not all attend the funeral.
"I want to let you know that Hunter is home now," she said. "He's home. He loved you all very much."
When the footage ended, Brinkley demanded the crowd make a ruckus of loud noise for one minute.
We yelled, clapped, stomped and whistled because Hunter wouldn't have stood for that silence.
Forgotten Thompson film inspires future writer
by John Bear
Daily Lobo
Hunter S. Thompson is up in heaven now, or wherever it is literary rock stars go when they exit the mortal coil.
I will be honest that I was disturbed when I first heard the news he had committed suicide. I idolized this man when I was 19, even going so far as to stomp around town decked out in full Gonzo attire: Hawaiian shirt, bucket hat, aviator sunglasses, cigarette holder and all of Thompson's strange little mannerisms. I wanted to be this man.
And this is what being a Gonzo journalist comes to.
Unhappy endings notwithstanding, Thompson inspired me to become a writer. I first became aware of his existence not by reading his books, because I am a member of the MTV generation, not known for its reading prowess. Instead, I happened to chance upon a film called "Where the Buffalo Roam."
The film, based loosely - very loosely - on the exploits of Thompson, stars Bill Murray, accompanied by Peter Boyle as his attorney, Lazlo. It opens with Murray sitting in a log cabin dressed like the 19-year-old me. He is typing away methodically between massive pours of Wild Turkey when the fax machine on the other side of the room begins screeching. After an initial period of screaming at the inanimate object and feeding it newspaper scraps, he strikes a tactical pose and pumps six rounds into it with a .375 magnum. His Doberman, which he has trained to sic balls whenever he utters the kill word Nixon, sits in the corner watching with minor curiosity.
I sat mesmerized by this scene. I knew at that moment I wanted to be a writer - of course I would later come to the stoic realization that writing entails a whole lot more than the ability to guzzle rocket fuel whiskey and mishandle firearms, mainly long hours of solitude, hunched over a keyboard.
The film continues with a slew of similarly amusing vignettes. Thompson dances with a drug-addled nurse, a fifth of whiskey attached to an IV stand, hose taped to his mouth. The attorney, Lazlo, incites a riot in a courtroom while Thompson sips a Bloody Mary in the gallery. Thompson plays football with two hotel employees in the hotel room.
The next morning he dictates into his tape recorder, "Last night two third-world drug abusers dressed as hotel employees broke into my room, ransacked it, did all my drugs and stole my dinner." These bizarre rants into the microphone ubiquitously taped to his forearm serve as some of the funniest moments in the entire film.
"Where the Buffalo Roam" is arguably not as good a film as the more recent "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Murray plays a workable Thompson but fails to immerse himself into the role entirely like Johnny Depp. Depp appears to be channeling Thompson's soul in "Fear and Loathing." Murray's raving lunatic interpretation of the character comes across more like the gardener he played in "Caddy Shack."
There is also the question of why his attorney - who was a Mexican turned Samoan in the book - was switched to a Hungarian named Lazlo. It would be prudent to mention that, unexplained race-switching notwithstanding, Peter Boyle nails the role of attorney and warlord.
When the books are opened, "Where the Buffalo Roam" will probably be forgotten in favor of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," which arguably does the legend of Thompson more justice.
Nevertheless, I must bestow props unto this film for leading me to one of the great American writers. He in turn would teach me, indirectly of course, about how to construct a proper sentence, how to utilize active voice and, most importantly, how to use an em-dash properly.
