MAJOR MAGAZINE INTERVIEWS WITH

AND

STORIES ABOUT

HUNTER S. THOMPSON

 

Buffalo New Times

Goffin, Gene Paranoia & Wild Turkey Hunter Thompson in Buffalo;3/3/74

California

Anderson, Jennifer

Fear and Loathing with the Princes of Porn;9/91, p. 14

"Reached at his home in Woody Creek, Colorado, Dr. Gonzo promised that scenes from The Night Manager will compose one of three sections of Polo is My Life, his book-in-progress, to be published by Random House."

"The writer forbade strippers from chewing gum onstage, installed a new video system and often showed up for work armed with a .45-caliber Beeman air pistol engraved, FOR THE BUSINESS WE HAVE CHOSEN."

College Papers

Felton, David An Interview with Hunter Thompson. Hunter Thompson has cashed his Check; Spring/80, p. 47

Esquire

Salisbury, Harrison E. Travels through America; 2/76, p. 28
"You know when the last bomb goes off and the last cypress tree falls in the last mud bog there'll still be some, you know, weak, ugly, human voice saying, wait a minute, I'm here. I don't know - it's still in my interest to believe that right now. And that we're totally doomed, which I do on one level. But I think there's a perversity in people that I kind of like and have great faith in." - HST referring to a book by University of Virginia Press of conversations with William Faulkner when he was a writer in residence there.

Lemann, Nicholas The New Hunter Thompson Stands Up; 9/79, p. 92

Harper's

Vonnegut, Kurt Jr Political Disease; 7/73, p. 92
"He is that rare sort of American author who must be read. He makes exciting, moving collages of carefully selected junk."

"From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter Thompson's disease."

 

High Times

Rosenbaum, Ron

Hunter Thompson The good doctor tells all...about Carter, cocaine, adrenaline and the birth of Gonzo journalism; 9/77, p. 31

"When I arrived on board the huge yacht, I found Thompson ensconced on the command deck, munching on a handful of psilocybin pills and regarding the consternation of the snooty Newport sailing establishment with amusement." - Rosenbaum

"He didn't run this weird Horatio Alger trip from Plains, Georgia, to the White House, only to get there and find himself hamstrung by a bunch of hacks and fixers in the Congress." - HST

"Jimmy Carter is a genuine original." - HST

"We don't want to cause a national panic by saying that a gang of closet coke freaks are running the country - although that would probably be the case, no matter who had won the elections." - HST

Well, I was a juvenile delinquent, but a straight juvenile delinquent. The kind that wore white bucks, buttoned-down Oxford cloth shirts, suits. It was a good cover to use to rob crowded liquor stores." - HST

"To hell with the American Dream. Let's write it off as a suicide." - HST

Stratton, Richard

Hunter Thompson The Last Outlaw cover; 8/91, p. 34

"Some theorize that the Thompson persona is theater. No one, they argue, could be this crazy and live to write about it. But what Dr. Thompson is really up to is Life as Art."

"At a time when all too many of the '60s generation have retreated into degenerate uppism or fear-addled quietude, Thompson refuses to let the 'Just Say No' dictates of the Reagan era cramp his lifestyle."

McGuire, Judy

In Search of Hunter S. Thompson; 8/91, p. 6

Hyde Parker California #1: The Notebooks of Hunter Thompson; 1973, p. 33

Nation

Lyons, Gene

How Stoned Were You?; 10/13/79, pp. 342

"I shall not masquerade as a grave literary moralist and deny that Thompson can make me laugh, nor that he knows more about Americans and the national condition than many of his sterner and more responsible colleagues in the press."

D'Arazien, Steven

Wild Man's View of the Campaign; 8/13/73, p. 120

"Thompson discards any pretention of godlike objectivity. Rather than disguising his natural, human bias, he puts it 'up front.'"

Rafferty, Terrence

Movie Reviews: Platoon; 1/17/87, p. 54

Klawans, Stuart

Book Reviews: Aquarius Revisited; 9/19/87, p. 276

Hinckle, Warren

Going for Gonzo; 6/4/90, p. 765

"America likes its famous writers to act silly."

"It was an extremely shaky constitutional ground for a search warrant, but in the Bush war-on-drugs climate it's hard to imagine a court having the fortitude to deny a drug search against Hunter Thompson."

Santoro, Gene

Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored History; Book Reviews;6/4/90, p. 795

Inside the Nixon Library; Richard M. Nixon National Historic Site, Yorba Linda, California; 9/10/90, p. 242

National Observer

Roberts, Edwin A Jr Will Aspen's Hippies Elect a Sheriff?; 11/2/70, p. 6

Perry, James Teddy White & Dr. Thompson; 9/8/73, p. 5

Putney, Michael Freaky Huck Finn Assaults Fleshpots; 8/5/72, p. 23

Simon, Marion What 'The Spire' Inspires Among Reviewers; 6/1/64, p. 17

New Republic

Menand, Louis

Life in the Stone Age; 1/7 & 1/14/91, p. 38

"But Thompson is essentially a writer for teenage boys. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is The Catcher is the Rye on speed."

New Times

Anson, Robert Rolling Stone Saga, Pt 2; 12/10/76, p. 22
"I know I am supposed to be the spokesman for the counterculture and all that, but what the fuck is this?" - Jann Wenner, on meeting Hunter for the first time

"'Gonzo,' in fact, was not his invention, but rather the description given his work by writer Bill Cardoso, whom Hunter had met while covering the 1968 Nixon campaign for the National Observer." - Anson

"That's what I've always been interested in: whatever happened to the American Dream." - HST

Playboy

Commando Journalist; 11/73, p. 188

Vetter, Craig

Interview; 11/74, p. 75

"In Washington, the truth is never told in daylight hours or across a desk. If you catch people when they're very tired or drunk or weak, you can get some answers. You have to wear the bastards down." - HST

"One of these mornings, I'm gonna buy a paper with a big black headline that says, 'RICHARD NIXON COMMITTED SUICIDE LAST NIGHT.' Jesus...can you imagine that rush?" - HST

"Actually, coke is a worthless drug, anyway. It has no edge. Dollar for dollar, it's probably the most inefficient drug on the market. It's not worth the effort or the risk or the money - at least not to me." - HST

"But really, when you're dealing with psychedelics, there's only one king drug, when you get down to it, and that's acid. About twice a year you should blow your fucking tubes out with a tremendous hit of really good acid. Take 72 hours and just go completely amuck, break it all down." - HST (Hunter goes on to tell about his first acid trip)

"So I told him exactly what I'd been doing for the past ten years. He couldn't believe it. He said, 'Jesus, Hunter, you're a goddamn mess' - that's an exact quote. Then he ran all the tests and found I was in perfect health. He called it a 'genetic miracle.'" - HST

Checking in with Dr. Gonzo; 1/76, p. 254

Vetter, Craig

Destination Weird; 6/80, p. 143

"The studio liked the idea of a low-budget comedy fictionalized out of Thompson's rip-and-slash journalism with all its drugs and violent fantasies, it's mock slander and dark humor." - Vetter

"When things get slow on the set, we all tell Hunter stories." - Bill Murray

"When he was there, Murray was a quiet host. He picked up beer bottles, made beds, washed the dishes and answered the door to the steady troop of messengers who came asking for Thompson. At night, usually into the wee hours, the two of them sat alone and talked about the movie." - Vetter

"Even when Linson yelled 'Cut!' and Murray stood up to relax, the character Thompson stood up with him; and when he talked, it was in Thompson's unique barking mumble." - Vetter

"The editor broke down under all-night demands and refused to have anything to do with Thompson or Murray, and everyone else connected to the project was getting testy. Thompson fended off all talk of deadlines by saying things like, 'When you ask a wild pig to go into the woods and shit gold eggs, you vetter stand back while he does it.'" - Vetter

"Fuck those people...if they're still out there, I'm going to find them...you hear me, Lazlo?...I'm going to find them and I'm going to gnaw on their skulls with my very own teeth. Because it still hasn't gotten weird enough for me." - Thompson and Murray's collaborative ending for the film

Passavant, Tom

Aspen When It's Hot; 8/88, p. 113

"Drugs, alcohol, firearms and the company of lunatics. Pure insanity. But nobody was hurt or killed that day. Everybody survived. In a way."

Vetter, Craig

Aspen When It Was Cool; 8/88, p. 114

"Thompson, who keeps roughly the hours of a vampire bat, arrived sometime after midnight, and from that moment on, the room was hot to a carnival of loons - bartenders and waitresses, cowboys and carpenters, politicians and artists, smugglers and athletes - all of whom described themselves as refugees from whatever is serious about the world."

Vetter, Craig

The Unmaking of the President 1992; 10/92, p. 124

"His unusual technique notwithstanding, the Doctor has the art market pegged: 'It ain't art,' says the gonzo Gauguin, 'unless it's sold.'"

"People have to get pissed off enough to vote. That's what happened at the end of the Fifties. I thought John Kennedy was kind of a wimp when he started running. When it dawned on me that here was a guy who could beat Nixon, it became a holy crusade and I signed on. And we beat the bastard, but only by a hundred thousand votes. Clinton might make it."

Psychiatry Digest

Mandell, Arnold J Md

Dr.Hunter S. Thompson and a New Psychiatry; 3/76, pp. 12-17

"The interplay of drug effects, the changing environmental stimuli, and the associative processes of the writer are all unified and described as external happenstance."

"I think that the knowledge of what psychiatry is becoming is lying latent within all of us who have treated patients with psychopharmacologic agents."

Reason

Person, Lawrence

The New King of Gonzo Jrnlsm; 6/89, p. 52

"Has Hunter still got it? The answer is, alas, no."

Rolling Stone

#318 Steadman, Ralph

Gonzo Goes to Hollywood; 5/29/80, p. 38

"I am nothing if not an opportunist. I ripped off a drawing entitled Spirit of Gonzo, and within twenty-four hours Nigel and I were on a plane bound for Aspen, Colorado."

"Hunter met us off the plane from Denver. Well, he nearly met us. He damn near ground me into the airport wall in his red drop-head Volkswagen Beetle, stopping dead from thirty miles per hour just three inches from my shins. It wasn't malevolence, I believe, just showing homage to an old working companion he hadn't seen for three years."

"As Hunter pointed out on his first day on location, tin the desert twenty miles out of L.A., while he watched the kind of activities that seem so necessary to those engaged in them, the should rename this film The Death of Fun."

#318 Felton, David

When the Weird Turn Pro; 5/29/80, p. 39

"Oscar, a crusading Chicano lawyer from East Los Angeles, and Hunter, the father of gonzo journalism, met in Aspen in the late Sixties and became fast and furious friends, bounded by mutual tastes for disruptive politics, exotic drugs and reckless macho adventure."

"Perhaps no other living legend has been twisted, torn up and trampled on in so many ways during the making of a film."

"Oscar, broke and desperate, asked Hunter to finance an 'illegal business operation.' Hunter refused, saying the plan had the 'smell of doom' to it. They parted amicably. Oscar was never heard from again."

#512 O'Rourke, PJ

(interview with HST); 11/5/87, p. 230

"I'm a great fan or reality. Truth is easier. And weirder. And funnier. Not all the time, but you can fall back on the truth. You can't fall back on the story you made up, because then you start to wonder if it is good or funny or right." - HST

" I would not be anything else, if for no other reason than I'd rather drink with journalists. Another reason I got into journalism: you don't have to get up in the morning." - HST

"Everybody's wife's a lawyer now. Five of the seven Democratic candidates have wives who are lawyers." - HST

#581 Sager, Mike

Trial of Hunter S. Thompson; 6/28/90, p. 64

#582 Sager, Mike

Charges Dropped Against Hunter Thompson; 7/12/90, p. 21

"'They fled like rats into the darkness,' Thompson said of the prosecution, prior to a lengthy 'celebration orgy' at Woody Creek Tavern. 'Everybody's house is a lot safer today. If we'd lost this case, they'd have been at your house next.'"

#277 Plimpton, George

Notes from the Battle of New Orleans; 11/2/78, p. 52

"In New Orleans I had seen Hunter briefly the night before the fight. He had said that he was on the track of 'Evil,' speaking of it as a palpable entity. 'You cover the fight; I'll handle the Evil.'"

#249 Powers, Charles T.

Literary Lasagna (Elaine's); 10/6/77, p. 47

#194 Von Hoffman, Nicholas and Trudeau, Garry

Manifest Destiny in Pago Pago; 8/28/75, p. 32

#254 Felton, David

Lifer, My Years at Rolling Stone; 12/15/77, p. 122

"Hunter looked at me and Annie Leibovitz and raised a question I've heard him raise many times since. 'Now it seems to me we have two choices,' he said. 'We can either go to bed and call it a night. Or we can take the rest of this mescaline, get completely twisted and act like animals.' As always, it was a rhetorical question." - Felton

"I'm obviously guilty. Annie, I think you better photograph this." - HST

"To be sure, a fine line exists between our pursuit of happiness and our neighbor's right to be offended." - Felton

#632 Green, Robin

Naked Lunch Box; 6/11/92, p. 51

#632 Eszterhas, Joe

King of the Goons; 6/11/92, p. 61

#632

The Contributors; 6/11/92, p. 190

Saturday Review

Whitmer, Peter O.

Hunter Thompson: Still Crazy After All These Years; 1-2/84, pp. 18-21

"A close look at some of his 'pre-fame' work shows a man with as much heart as curiosity and more insight and prescience than one would expect from a writer who later seemed to drop skill for hype."

Smart

Jenkins, Loren

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and the Last Battle of Aspen;Jan-Feb/90, p. 38-46

Time

Allis, Sam

An Evening With (gasp!)...; 1/22/90, p. 64

"I gave up on the interview and started worrying about my life when Hunter Thompson squirted two cans of fire starter on the Christmas tree he was going to burn in his living-room fireplace, a few feet away from an unopened wooden crate of 9-mm bullets."

"Hunter Thompson is a scared little puppy beneath the alcohol, tobacco and firearms."

"WHERE IS MY F____ WIG?!" - HST

"I guess we will never see each other again." - HST

Griffith, Thomas

Fear and Loathing and Ripping Off; 7/19/76, p. 52

"Since he is the best-known Pied Piper of journalistic commandos, his tune is worth listening to."

"Despite Dr. Thompson's political wise-guyism and all the macho whisky-and-drug talk, this is not opium for the masses but Dr. Pepper for the credulous."

Stanley, Alessandra

When War Winds Down Grenada w/Naipaul; 12/5/ 83, p. 47

"The gonzo journalist is quirky, boisterous, happiest when surrounded by cronies in the hotel bar; the gentleman writer is quiet, refined, more comfortable at afternoon tea. But careering around the island, chasing slender threads of news, they seem a matched pair."

Kelly, James

In His Grandfather's Footsteps; 2/3/86, p. 75

"'Who is this Hunter S. Thompson?' asks Grandfather Hearst in a tone half haughty, half perplexed. Will Hearst, who helped hire the duke of 'gonzo' journalism as a columnist replies, 'He's irreverent, a little risky, but uh, fun to read, you know."

Tresniowski, Alexander/Cole, Wendy

Fear and Loathing in Aspen; 12/9/91, p. 69

 

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