"HUSTLER, AUGUST 1998" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thompson Hunter S)
A Strange and Terrible Saga of Guns, Drugs and Hunter S. Thompson
by Kevin P. Simonson
used with kind permission
In 1971, Hunter S. Thompson set off for Las Vegas armed with a keen sense of the absurd and a plentiful cache of drugs. The resultant book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, is a classic in the literature of depravity. Nearly three decades after publication, Thompson's demented masterwork is finally making it to the big screen. Join the doctor of gonzo journalism as he ponders movie-biz ironies with explosions and cautionary words at his Aspen, Colorado, fortress.
Hunter S. Thompson lives in a hidden fortress several miles outside Aspen, Colorado. Beyond the bumpy, rock-strewn driveway is a pair of giant, gnarled poles flanked by demon vultures crafted of rusting metal. At night the eyes glow red as Tabasco, following a visitor's every move. A bowie knife the size of a meat loaf protrudes from the rustic frame of the house's side door. A few inches away, a bullet hole pierces a thick windowpane.
"I had a couple of handymen doing some work on the porch," explains Thompson, the man credited with forming gonzo journalism - a style of reporting in which the writer becomes a part of the story. "I snuck up behind them and shot off a couple of rounds between them through the window. Scared the bejesus out of them."
Inside the main house of Owl Farm - as Thompson calls his property - the kitchen walls are covered with 30 years worth of gonzo memorabilia; an uncashed ten dollar check from Carl Woodward, a rubber Nixon mask, dozens of newspaper articles and Scotch-taped notes. A machine gun sits against the side of a large-screen TV. Thompson, a self-described news junkie, usually has the set turned to CNN or a sporting event.
Thompson's refrigerator is adorned with black-and-white photos of him and Bill Murray riding in a high-power motor boat. In the photos, Murray is pasty, bloated and barely recognizable.
Murray and Thompson were roommates for a brief period prior to the filming of 1980's Where the Buffalo Roam, a fictionalized film version of Thompson's life as a gonzo journalist. Murray, who played the self-titled Good Doctor, signed on for gonzo boot camp, and Thompson became the actor's mentor and drill sergeant. Many lesser revelers who fall under Thompson's spell feel compelled to keep up with him toke for toke, drink for drink and line for line.
The time spent with Thompson took its toll on both Murray and Where the Buffalo Roam. Murray's new persona reportedly alienated him from his cohorts on Saturday Night Live, and the movie was universally panned - even by Thompson.
"He did a good job," Thompson says of Murray's acting, "but it's a silly film, a cartoon. The studio paid me to write new beginnings and endings, but it was a bad script. You couldn't cure it."
The movie also stars The Usual Suspects' Benicio Del Toro as Thompson's partner in crime, mammoth Samoan lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta. The remainder of the cast includes Gary Busey, Christina Ricci and Tobey Maguire. The film is slated for an early-summer release.
For the uninitiated, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas details Thompson's drunken, drug-addled adventures in Las Vegas while covering an off-road motorcycle race and concurrent law-enforcement convention. The book is on many reading lists in college classrooms throughout the country. Signed first editions can fetch up to $2,500.
Random House marked the novel's 25th anniversary with a Modern Library Edition, the literary equivalent of an Academy Award. Hunter S. Thompson can now boast that his peers include fellow hard-drinking scholars William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway.
The 25th anniversary of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas's release was celebrated in a different manner by the author himself. Thompson invited his professional sidekick, artist Ralph Steadman, and a few select others to Owl Farm. There, in Thompson's sprawling backyard, the revelers strapped a propane tank and exploding target to an idling John Deere tractor. Stradding the tractor was a voluptuous blow-up doll.
"Hunter took aim and shot it," recalls Steadman, a well-mannered Brit who has illustrated many of Thompson's books in his scrawling, nightmarish style. "Boom! The whole lot went up like an H bomb. We got it all on film."
"It's wonderful to watch in slow motion - the screen goes white when this propelling gas goes up. The explosion was an amazing thing, and this was his celebration party piece."
* * *
Life hasn't always been a cabaret with guns and explosions for Thompson. In the '60s and early '70s, he lived on the road and travelled the Western hemisphere as a correspondent for such diverse publications as Time, Scanlan's Monthly, the New York Herald Tribune and a bowling tabloid in Puerto Rico. On the rare occasions he found himself at home, Thompson served as night manager of the infamous Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre, a porn emporium in San Francisco.
Thompson and Steadman were first paired up to cover the Kentucky Derby for Scanlan's, a doomed sports magazine. From that point on, things got weird.
"I think the whole thing with the friendship is that there's a certain chemistry - it's like chalk and cheese," says Steadman. "He has a way of inspring loyalty in me, even though I sometimes hate him for it."
The odd couple were next sent to Newport, Rhode Island, to cover the America's Cup. At the world's most prestigious regatta, Thompson and Steadman made an ill-fated attempt to spray-paint the words FUCK THE POPE on the side of one of the competing yachts. They were run from the event when a security guard heard the clack of the spray-paint can as the two rowed between the multimillion-dollar boats.
Steadman calls the trip a dress rehearsal for the Vegas book: "It's how Fear and Loathing came about. I've hated boats ever since."
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