Dan Winters Johnny Depp on the awning of Rolling Stone. Johnny Depp sighs. Hell. Maybe none of this can be explained.
He puts down his basin cue and alcove for his drink. It is now four weeks ashamed he accomplished arena Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's adapt ego, Raoul Duke, in the blur of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but abounding of Thompson's mannerisms and behavioral tics are still with Depp, and they actualization no signs of absolution go. Axial his head, it may be even worse. Depp considers how this alluringly abhorrent accompaniment of diplomacy anytime came to be. If all added excuses accept dribbled dry, try geography. "I anticipate the accomplished affair stems from accepting from Kentucky," he says. "The aphotic and blood-soaked arena of Kentucky."
Hunter S. Thompson was built-in in Louisville, Kentucky, on July 18th, 1939. Johnny Depp was built-in about twenty-four years afterwards in Owensboro, Kentucky, on June 9th, 1963. They both afterwards larboard their citizenry and catholic around, anniversary adequate abundant adventures, abounding of which are able-bodied documented. They would not accommodated until the Christmas of 1995.
Depp had gone to Aspen, Colorado, with a affair that included Kate Moss and her mother. One acquaintance adapted they go to Thompson's bounded hangout, the Woody Creek Tavern. "In walks Hunter, wielding two beasts prods," Depp recalls. "With austere voltage traveling up and down. A baton of electricity. You could see it, crackling up." Depp laughs. "He's not a disappointment at all."
Thompson knew little about Depp. He had apparent alone one of Depp's movies, Cry-Baby. "I never saw the end, of course," Thompson apologizes, "because I had a little acid. It seemed like watching Oklahoma go on for three years."
The biographer and the amateur hit it off. "I bethink bedlam constantly," says Depp. "He zeroes in on faults and acceptable credibility immediately. I was with Kate, and I anticipate he went beeline for the affair jugular, bits like whether I exhausted her enough. I allegedly told him, 'Yeah, she gets a astringent beating.'" As the atramentous affliction on, Depp's affair was arrive up to the home that's referred to, on the ashamed accessory of Thompson's a lot of contempo book, as "a adherent compound." Safely inside, Depp admired a admirable nickel-plated shotgun on the wall. "I'd developed up about guns," he says. "My ancestor was a absolute gun fanatic; I attempt accoutrements if I was eight years old."
It was now two in the morning. "Hunter said, 'Come with me,'" Depp says. "The baleful words." Leading Depp into the kitchen, Thompson adapted they put the gun to use: "He calmly me a propane catchbasin – I've got a cigarette aphotic out of my aperture – and he calmly me this affair about the admeasurement of a matchbox and says, 'Tape these on the propane canister.' I was, 'What are these things?' and he says, 'Oh, that's nitroglycerin.' The cigarette anon went in the sink."
They took the completed bomb into the ashamed yard. "He knew what he was traveling to do," Depp says. "And, fuck, I trusted him. You apperceive he was not traveling to get you killed, somehow. He's survived all these years."
Depp hit the ambition aboriginal time. "I shoot this fucker," he says. "A seventy-five-foot explosion, an enormous, huge access of fire." Admitting Depp was accepting fun, this agitated late-night behavior fabricated others in his affair a little edgy. Moss' mother, for instance. "She just anticipation Hunter was a dement and angrily dangerous, and that we should escape as anon as possible," says Depp. "Hunter, accepting a Southern gentleman, went out of his way to try to accomplish her comfortable. By the time we left, afterwards the explosion, and no one had been abominably austere and absent any limbs, she was Ok."
ME: [to Thompson] What did you anticipate of him, that aboriginal meeting?
THOMPSON: I acquainted apologetic for him.
DEPP: Understandably.
THOMPSON: Well, he was a homeboy from Kentucky who had been spurned by his own people.
DEPP: [Laughing] He said, "You beggarly you're not in the Kentucky Hall of Fame?" I said, "Fuck no. And I'm abiding they would accept Florence Henderson over me."
THOMPSON: I'm absolute acquainted of the blood.
2. "Hunter wrote that as if he was a war correspondent. It just happened that the battery was a self-bombardment, with drugs, and his academician was the battleground. And rather than traveling area absolute accoutrements were accepting accursed and absolute bodies were dying, he goes to the affection of America: Vegas. But he's advertisement as if he's a front-line war correspondent."
-Director Terry Gilliam, March 1998, in the amount of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
In 1971, while advertisement a adventure for Rolling Stone about the annihilation of an East Los Angeles announcer and radio ambassador alleged Ruben Salazar, Hunter S. Thompson befriended a Chicano lawyer, Oscar Zeta Acosta. As it was proving harder to get time alone with Acosta, Thompson adapted that the advocate accompany him on a weekend car cruise to Las Vegas, area Thompson would be accoutrement a motorcycle race. They could get out of L.A., allocution on the way, relax a little. Afterward, in ambuscade and batty that his activity was in crisis because of the Salazar case, Thompson began to address up their escapades for fun.
His accustomed asperity and the drug-crazed affairs of his cruise both set the accent of and bankrupt into his writing. "Pressure. That's what it was," Thompson says. "Extreme pressure. It's like the calefaction that creates diamonds." Later, he and Acosta (who appeared in Thompson's writings as Dr. Gonzo) alternate to Vegas for a commune attorneys' arrangement on drugs; on paper, Thompson would eventually accelerate the two trips into one.
The aboriginal allotment of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Affection of the American Dream was appear in the November 11th, 1971, affair of Rolling Stone. The author's name – and that of the narrator aural the adventure – was Raoul Duke. Thompson had just agreed to awning the 1972 presidential election. "I was anxious about traveling to Washington, alteration my image," he says. "And I anticipation this was maybe a bad way to acquaint myself afresh to the Secret Service." (The beard was, however, a adequately chiffon one. In Jann Wenner's editor's letter, Raoul Duke was alien to readers as a above "weapons adviser to our Sports Editor, Hunter S. Thompson." And if the absolute was aggregate the afterwards year into a book, Thompson absitively he capital to grab any celebrity going: "Fuck the Secret Service.")
In 1971, Johnny Depp wasn't decidedly afraid about the awe-inspiring escapades and barbarous disappointments that anticipate you if you amount up a convertible with too abounding drugs and seek in arrogant for the debris of the American dream. He was eight. His ancestors had just confused to Florida. In those days, Depp's big obsessions were Evel Kneivel and Apple War II. He couldn't apprehend abundant about Nazi Germany. In the Depp ashamed yard, aggressive by Hogan's Heroes, he dug a tunnel; he would ascend underground and sit there. He was absolute abundant a boy in his own world. He acclimated to afford aberrant noises, which afraid his family. He dreamed of accepting the aboriginal white affiliate of the Harlem Globetrotters.
In his backward teens, afterwards Depp had alone out of top academy and was arena in a band, he apprehend Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. His beforehand brother, Dan, had angry him on to it. "It was the a lot of alone affair I'd anytime read," Depp says. "Fuck, those guys were heroes, man. I mean, they had to be, out there, active that."
Thompson had consistently capital Fear and Loathing to be a movie. "I wrote the book as an experiment," he recalls, "trying to advise myself how to address cinematically, but I forgot the autogenous monologues and the hallucinations."
Nonetheless, there was absorption from the start. Jack Nicholson was intrigued. Larry McMurtry wrote a script. There was a filmmaker alleged Clive Arrowsmith who had ideas. If Thompson wondered how Arrowsmith would portray the abominable aberration in which the bubbler sports reporters about-face into alligators, Arrowsmith told him, "It'll be simple – we'll just get reside alligators, we'll accord them some quaaludes, and we'll attach their fucking paws to the bar. And afresh if they deathwatch up, we'll annihilate them." "That was the affection of the Seventies," says Thompson. "Anything was possible." But the Seventies passed, and the blur wasn't made. In 1980 a strange, bedraggled blur about Thompson, Where the Buffalo Roam, was released, with Thompson played by Bill Murray. Its abortion didn't help. "[The idea] fell out of favor for a while," says Thompson, "because drugs became uncool."
By 1996 a new accomplishment was beneath way. At about seven o'clock one New York morning in March, during the filming of Donnie Brasco, Depp's buzz rang. "'Listen,'" Depp remembers Thompson saying, "'they're talking of authoritative a cine of Vegas – what do you anticipate about arena me?' And I bethink saying, 'Absolutely.' "For a while, Depp heard nothing. A few months later, he adapted that the Viper Allowance – the Los Angeles club that Depp co-owns – book an actualization by Thompson. "I bethink him cutting a blow-up baby with a bend onstage," says Depp. But the cine wasn't mentioned.
Later that year, Depp got the alarm from his agent: Alex Cox was traveling to absolute Fear and Loathing, and he capital Depp as Raoul Duke. Depp capital to accomplish abiding that he still had Thompson's blessing: "I said to him, 'If I even accidentally do an authentic portrayal, you'll allegedly abhorrence me for the blow of your life.' He said, 'No, no, no – I'm still accompany with Murray.'" (Thompson, reminded of this conversation, says, "Actors yield themselves too seriously. Is he adage I'm a monster? Does he beggarly I'm traveling to see myself bare naked? He worries too abundant . . . . He couldn't possibly do an authentic job. He's too short.")
In December, Depp went to Louisville, Kentucky, to apprehend at a Hunter S. Thompson tribute. He chose what he calls "the beachcomber speech" from Fear and Loathing – Thompson's absent-mindedness about the time in the mid-Sixties if it seemed as admitting adolescence ability and its new faculty of what was adapted in the apple was triumphant, and how that moment receded – "which," says Depp, "is the abstruse area of the book." Scared, Depp loaded up on red wine. He forgot that he was chewing gum until he started reading. It didn't affect the words, but in amenities terms, it was a blunder. "And," he says, "Hunter has never let me overlook it." It was during this cruise that Thompson fabricated acceptable on his affiance to adjust Depp's abridgement of acceptance from his bearing state. Onstage, Depp was handed the adapted proclamation: He was now a Kentucky Colonel in the Kentucky Colonels Association. From afresh on, Thompson would accredit to Depp as the Colonel. "We went ashamed champions," Thompson would reflect, "and danced on the graves of those who dared not salute."
Alex Cox and his script-writing partner, Tod Davies, paid Thompson a arrangement at home on January 12th, 1997, a Sunday. "It didn't go absolute well," says Depp. "I anticipate that it could accept got abundant uglier than it did. As far as I accept it, Alex went up to Woody Creek, and, like a accepting could calmly do – if you absorb time with Hunter and you apperceive his circadian routines or assimilation – a accepting could anticipate that he's a dement and try to beat him in a arrogant way. They were absolute adored about their script, admitting Hunter had accounting one of the greatest pieces of avant-garde literature, and I would say that's something to be adored with, not a screenplay."
"It's bad afterlife to draw too abundant absorption to things like that," says Thompson. But he remembers Cox's arrangement clearly. "Wayne [Ewing, a filmmaker who has been recording Thompson's activity for years] and I set up a sex baby covered with claret out in a snowdrift on the accessory of the alley as a marker. Theatrical claret – I accumulate all these things around. Acceptable humored. And I adapted my adapted sausage, and the abortion was on. And, Jesus Christ, it's a archetypal archetype of how not to work, as a director, with writers. First, he hated football – he banned to watch football. And afresh I adapted absolutely acceptable sausage, which I prize, and he disdained that: vegetarian. Actuality in my abode comes this adder, this asp. And he just persisted to insult and clay the best locations of the book. It's a phenomenon I didn't fucking ache him with a fork."
Cox was off the project, and Terry Gilliam (Brazil, 12 Monkeys) was adapted as the director. Depp and Gilliam were agog to plan with anniversary other. Afore autograph any of the Software with his partner, Tony Grisoni, Gilliam went to L.A. to accommodated Depp, Thompson and Benicio Del Toro, who would play the Gonzo/Acosta character. "I met Hunter in the Chateau Marmont at about one in the morning," Gilliam says. "The night before, he'd been bankrupt by the cops and abject out of his hotel." Something to do with a blaze extinguisher. "He said, 'You've got to remember: We were austere people. I was a austere journalist, he was a austere lawyer. And this book was alone one weekend.'"
The accord was done, and Gilliam got to work. So did the Colonel. It was time to alpha visiting Thompson in Colorado. If Depp was traveling to play Thompson (or, rather, Raoul Duke, admitting Depp estimates that Raoul Duke is "ninety-seven percent Hunter"), he capital to do it right: "I said, 'I charge to absorb time with you, and if you get ailing of me accepting there, just acquaint me and I'll fucking leave,'" Depp remembers. "I told him that I'd allegedly become a fucking affliction in the ass, because I'd be allurement him a lot of questions and taping the conversations and autograph things down, and it'd be like I was a fucking acquittal officer. But he never kicked me out, which was good."
"I saw him as addition worker," says Thompson. Depp was put to work, allowance to allocate and adapt the belletrist in The Appreciative Highway, the aboriginal aggregate of Thompson's correspondence. "I was acquainted of what he was doing. If I hadn't admired him . . ." says Thompson, who generally doesn't accomplishment sentences that don't charge finishing.
Depp would breach in the basement. "In the dungeon," Depp says. "It's a little allowance with makeshift bookshelves and a lot of spiders, and a small, little daybed affair that folds out into a bed, and this astronomic keg of gunpowder, which they let me apperceive about if I'd allegedly been there, smoker in bed, about 5 days."
Depp abstruse the routine: "A accustomed day is in actuality animate up at about eight, nine at night, watching ESPN, watching sports or CNN. Deborah [Fuller, Thompson's primary abettor and abettor for abounding years] would baker breakfast and accord us vitamins. She's a saint. Not abundant blubbering for the aboriginal few hours – Hunter's animate up. And afresh we'd sit and allocution for hours and hours, and afresh maybe drive down to a adjacent boondocks and accept a alcohol or two, and afresh appear ashamed and allocution until three, four, 5 in the afternoon." All the time, Depp was studying: "Watching his mannerisms, the way he rocked ashamed and forth, the way he talked, his expressions. It's awe-inspiring with Hunter – it's added array of watching the way he thinks. You can see the auto turning, and you can see an abstraction coming. That was absolutely the key for me – 'cause he's cerebration constantly. He's very, absolute quick, and there are no lulls."
Depp knew that downstairs, next to area he was sleeping, was the Hunter S. Thompson annal – the War Room. Aggregate was there. But Depp didn't wish to ask: "I didn't wish to be abhorrent actor-boy who says, 'OK, let's accept aggregate now.' I capital it to appear added naturally." Thompson would ask Depp to apprehend old pieces of Thompson's writing, and afresh he'd appraisal Depp's account – "Punctuate that! You've absolutely got to hit that!" The three 1971 boxes, artlessly apparent "the Vegas book," appeared in the kitchen one afternoon afore Thompson had risen. It had all been saved: the abstract from the biologic convention, napkins with addendum on them, the purloined confined of Neutrogena soap – "no one had affected them ashamed 1971," Depp says – and the three beat-up, decrepit circling notebooks in which Thompson had scribbled his observations.
"It's all true, and there's more," says Depp. "There's abundant more. The notebooks and the absolute manuscript, it's added batty than the book."
So you're adage he in actuality . . . toned it down?
"Yeah. It's bass down. It was allegedly added outrageous, and added insane, than he can write. I anticipate the book is a calmer adaptation of what in actuality happened."
Slowly, Depp would acquisition himself acceptable added like Thompson. "Kind of a sponge," Depp says, "which is a abhorrent way to access a beastly being." ("He's not like a Method actor," says Gilliam, approvingly. "Osmosis is what he uses.") Depp visited several times, for up to two weeks at a time, and aswell spent time with Thompson in New York and San Francisco while he was on a book tour. (Depp acted as Thompson's roadie and bodyguard, beneath the alias Ray.)
Depp affected notebooks, taped conversations and even dug out abundant of Thompson's 1971 wardrobe. Finally, Thompson let him yield the Red Shark, the Chevy convertible that actualization in the film, ashamed to Los Angeles. Depp larboard Woody Creek at 3 a.m. in the freezing cold. The car's top was ashore down, its motor broken. Thompson – "he was absolutely accepting absolute benevolent at this point," says Depp – gave him some flashlights and a acknowledgment arranged with capital supplies. He listened to a carriageable band recorder – as Thompson and Acosta had on the aboriginal cruise – arena songs that Thompson mentions in the book. In Las Vegas, Depp, cutting Thompson's clothes, had banquet with Terry Gilliam. "The clothes hadn't been washed," Deborah Fuller says, "in thirty years."
The final time Depp visited, the top of his arch had been almost baldheaded afore duke in Los Angeles to resemble Thompson's. This cool Thompson out a little. If they met at the Aspen airport, Depp was cutting a hat, and Thompson asked that he not abolish it. But if Thompson relented, and did audit the baldness, they both agreed that the L.A. aggregation hadn't gone far enough: "Hunter looked at my head," Depp says, "and decided, 'I can fix this.'" Depp took a seat, and the atom cream appeared.
"I trusted him, I absolutely did," says Depp. "He was absolute gentle. No cuts. No weirdness. He wore a mining light, so he could see. He's able for fucking everything."
There were disagreements, of course. In July, anon afore filming began, Depp faxed to Colorado apparel analysis photographs of himself as Thompson. Thompson faxed them ashamed defaced with comments bluntly criticizing the accouterment ("clothes all amiss – ugly, screwy, flashy"), the hair ("mange?") and the physique accent ("Jesus! Stance is too exaggerated"). Thompson likens the faxes to a Ping-Pong game: "Any formal, affable accord would be false," he says. "It's in befitting with the attributes of the affinity we had founded. A little assault actuality and there is acceptable for you." That accord – which is account belief both for the amusement of its aboveboard blubbering and as an acumen into the abnormal means in which they adjourned a abysmal account for one addition – connected as follows:
Doctor,Too backward . . . Fuck you!
The Colonel
Okay – go advanced and accomplish an ass of me on the awning – your about-face will appear + history will not acquit you. Beware.
Doc
Hunter,
Please apperceive that I am not, in any way, 1) aggravating to accomplish an ass of you in the film, 2) about-face you into some over-the-top caricature, 3) fuck you over in some affectionate of cartoony way, 4) amusement this absolute like an adventure of The Red Skelton Show, 5) abort you, or annihilation abutting to any of those things. I am accomplishing my best to amalgamate pieces of you (the you of today that I've gotten to know), the you that I've advised from some of the beforehand video absolute and the actualization from the book, Raoul Duke.
We are at the alpha of this abominable ride, and things are just starting to yield shape, alone starting! So don't aberration out. Accord it, and me, a chance. The apparel is not area it needs to be yet, and I wish your advice with it. Fuckin' A! Accept that I am not a scumbag and that all I wish out of this affair is for you to be appreciative of the work, and the film. Nobody's accepting fucking affluent here, accept me. I am an amateur and can alone do what I can do. I am Not and Cannot be you. But I can appear appealing fucking close, and will. This is my work!!! If you bethink ashamed about a year or so ago, I asked you if you were abiding that I should be the amateur to play you in the film. Your acknowledgment was "yes." Well, it was at that point that I told you that if I was able to do it properly, and did even a accidentally acceptable job or authentic portrayal, that you would a lot of acceptable abhorrence me for the blow of your life. That is the blow I run here, and Okay accomplished I'll accord with that. But don't anytime anticipate that you can bandy a agglomeration of bits at me and apprehend that I'll eat it. You've got the amiss boy in this case. I account and adore you abundantly and authority our accord in absolute top regard, but don't amusement me as if I were a weaker animal, because I will abruptness you. Your plan is yours. My plan is mine. We charge to bethink that. Alarm or address or not.
Yours in adulation and war,
The Colonel
[Thompson's additional acknowledgment – unsigned]
Cheer up. I was just answering yr. question(s) about the wardrobe. Yr. absolute fears are still to come.
Just afore the filming began, Terry Gilliam recorded the Depp voice-overs that would accent and adviser the film. In the studio, alert to Depp speak, Gilliam was reminded of an earlier, acclaimed voice-over: Martin Sheen's in Apocalypse Now. "It was like traveling upriver," says Gilliam. "We were off to war."
"I anticipate he's right," Depp nods. "A Savage Journey to the Affection of the American Dream. The American dream is ugly. It's hideous, a fucking aberrant nightmare. It's just a sack of blood. It's awful."
3. The hair. The clothes. The voice. The walk. The actions. And the ears. Depp never discussed the ear affair with Thompson, but throughout the filming, he wore earpieces abaft his aerial to accomplish them stick out at the adapted angle. "It fucking aching like a bastard, too," Depp says. "It hurt. Don't put annihilation abaft your ears. Don't try this at home, kids."
For the aboriginal arena of Fear and Loathing to be filmed, alfresco a Las Vegas auberge front, Raoul Duke – Depp – is apparent agilely amusement ether.
"I did it straight," Depp says. "Well, I bethink Hunter cogent me that ether was the agnate of twenty-three bottles of wine in a quick sitting, so I ability accept had some wine."
This is a book, of course, whose axial characters alpha out with a backing of grass, mescaline, acid, cocaine, tequila, Budweiser, ether, amyls and altered added uppers and downers, afresh alpha analytic for kinds of actinic aberancy that will really get them going.
ME: [A accurate question] Bodies will be consistently analytical as to how all-important or adapted it was to alike assorted locations of the documented, acclaimed consumption, both artlessly as accepting Hunter and as active up to aspects of the book.
DEPP: [A accurate answer] I can say candidly that I was absolute amenable as a beastly accepting in my access to the alertness and the plan on the actualization Raoul Duke. Absolute responsible.
ME: [A description requested] So you managed to arch your albatross to accustomed activity and to the character?
DEPP: [A description given] Yes. I was not capricious in any way to either the absolute or to Hunter or to myself, or to anyone that ability affliction about me. I did annihilation horribly wrong.
They filmed for eleven weeks, in and about Las Vegas and in Los Angeles. Thompson backward in Colorado. "I anticipation that for him, and for me, a adequate ambit would suffice," says Depp. "It's harder abundant to yield that book and construe it into blur afterwards accepting the columnist of the book around, screeching, 'That's not right! Goddamned! You anticipate I formed all my activity to do this thing, and you assholes . . . !'"
Depp and Thompson were nonetheless in connected blast contact. Depp would call, requesting clarifications: "How would he accede to a assertive thing? What would he think? Area would he sit in a bar?"
"I abhor those prick actors who say, 'I was in character,' and 'I became the character,' and all that stuff," Depp says. "It's hideous. It's just masturbation at the accomplished level." But nonetheless: "There was something that was stronger than me on this film. It was my acquaintance of Hunter. Acutely I'd spent too abundant time with him, and it had taken over."
Did bodies affliction you were blow yourself in this?
He answers, agilely and slowly, "Um, yeah. Yeah."
4. Whenever Depp meets bodies who acquisition out what he's been doing, they consistently ask two questions. "The first," he says, "which is absolutely amazing, is 'Did you accommodated him?' 'Um, yeah . . . .' Afresh they say, 'Is he still . . . ?' That's all they accept to say. 'Yes. Yes, he is.' They accept to know. They don't wish to be let down. He's active for a lot of people."
Los Angeles, October 8th, 1997: Hunter S. Thompson is in boondocks to accomplish a adornment actualization in the film. They accept asked him to be on set by 11 a.m.; his arena is to be attempt anon afterward.
Outside the Chateau Marmont, an ice-filled bottle of Chivas Regal in one hand, Thompson accomplish into the cat-and-mouse limousine. There are four of us: Thompson, Deborah, myself and Wayne, video camera in hand. Thompson tells me that he has had me barred from the set – "I did it out of meanness," he cool – afresh fiddles with the ailing adumbrated about-face to accessible the limo roof. "The Japs' animus for Hiroshima," he mutters.
We blubbering affably about means to able coconuts and how his bad leg consistently plays up in limos ("maybe it's the antipathetic in me"), afresh he spills some of his alcohol assimilate his trousers. "Ahhh!" he shouts at himself. "Shit on you, you goddamned addled drunk!"
After that we altercate enemas. Enemas accept been on Thompson's apperception anytime ashamed he apprehend Gilliam saying, in Time magazine, that this blur would be "a accurate enema." He has been aggravating to plan out absolutely what Gilliam meant. "Terry," Thompson announces, "is a abundant acquaintance of enemas."
Filming takes abode on one of those bearding flat lots that clutter Los Angeles. Gilliam and Thompson altercate Thompson's accessible acting, which occurs during a anamnesis to a arena of deranged LSD burning axial San Francisco's Matrix club during the mid-Sixties. The abstraction is that the adolescent Thompson and the old Thompson will be apparent in the aforementioned frame.
"I like the abstraction of you and Johnny passing," says Gilliam.
Thompson disagrees. "I'd like to be pictured as I was in those days," he says. "As an observer." His point is that he wants to be apparent as a writer, not a participant. "I use words," he reminds Gilliam.
"I just point and grunt," says Gilliam. "More or less."
They curb to Depp's trailer. Thompson doesn't achieve until a bench is begin on which he can put down his drink. "I should accept a rolling table, angry to my waist," he says. Depp shows an astonishing still of himself as Thompson. "It looks like me," Thompson agrees, "but I assumption that's you. It's spooky."
Thompson fills Depp in on our bang debate. He complains already added about Gilliam's description.
"I anticipate what he meant by 'cinematic enema'," pacifies Depp, "is that it'll be like a Roto-Rooter into the ass of Hollywood. So it's like cleansing Hollywood."
"Oh," Thompson says, taken aback. "You're the aboriginal one who's said that. The New Beachcomber enema!" The abstraction is growing on him. "First Hollywood, afresh the world."
They both sit smoker Dunhills through the artificial filters Thompson is accustomed for. Later, Thompson bliss the armchair in foreground of him hard, beeline into Depp's CD player. "Don't do that," Deborah says. Depp just laughs. "I'm anxious today," says Thompson.
"I was in San Francisco with you," Depp laughs. "This is not edgy."
A few account afterwards . . .
"OoooOOOOWARRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!!" Hunter S. Thompson lets out a scream that is absolutely primal. He must, I assume, be ability some doubtful torment. Whatever it is that could annihilate such anguish, I'm abiding it is above the ability of accustomed humans.
Fortunately, I am with experts. Deborah looks around, spots and calmly to Thompson his missing packet of cigarettes.
"Thank you," he says matter-of-factly. Perfectly calm. He smiles naughtily. "Oh," he says, "the Alzheimer's will get you every time."
"Inexpensive, too," says Depp.
Thompson is encouraged to arrangement the apparel department. "What do you mean, 'Try some things on'?" he roars. He credibility to the balance of the limo alcohol blow on his trousers: "Do you anticipate these berry stains on my pants are wrong?"
He hits the armchair again. "There acclimated to be accoutrements on chairs," he fumes. "The old days. Instead of . . . applesauce like that!"
Thompson gets some lunch, afresh makes accessory demands: ketchup, ice, a newspaper. Depp has gone to beddy-bye in the added bisected of the trailer: He is activity terrible. He has the flu. Perhaps this is accidental to Thompson's alteration mood.
There is baseball on TV. Thompson bets with Del Toro and applies red lipstick afterwards searching in a mirror. "Want some?" he asks Del Toro.
"What's that, Chap Stick?" Del Toro asks. He knows abounding well.
Thompson nods and calmly it over. Del Toro smears lipstick over his own mouth.
"Whiskey?" he asks Del Toro. Thompson swigs. "It burns my throat. Whiskey was the alcohol of the Nazis."
One of the aggregation asks Thompson to assurance a archetype of the book. "Good work," he writes, "and acceptable luck in jail." He calmly ashamed the book. "I haven't abstruse annihilation in forty years," he says. "I'm still the aforementioned as I was if I was fifteen: bashed adolescent delinquent."
"It doesn't accomplish you all bad," says the aggregation member, uncertainly.
"I never looked aloft myself as bad," says Thompson. "I attending at myself as innocent."
Thompson is accepting bored. The antecedent arena is arid on. He wonders whether it is a trick: whether they wish him to do the arena if he is drunk. He says that he's not traveling to breach actuality into the evening. "I'm not accepting paid for it," he says. He begins casting altar at abundant acceleration into the debris bin on the added accessory of the trailer. He grabs a blubbery atramentous pen.
"Hunter, don't!" shouts Deborah. It is, alas, too late. He is applying a agee atramentous felt-pen mustache to his top lip. Del Toro creases with laughter. "When Terry asks about your mustache," he suggests, "tell him you're a Method actor."
"What mustache?" says Thompson with a beautifully affected ablaze innocence. This time, we all laugh.
Still, a assertive astriction is building. It is now evening. Deborah clears the trailer. Thompson needs some privacy. Depp worries about their scene: "What if Hunter freaks out, rips my wig off, starts arid into me, calling me names?" Thompson sits in the trailer, alert over and over to Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky," allegedly chief that it is the key to everything. There are bad accordance in the air. "He was pissed," Depp surmises, "that I went to sleep."
They are, finally, alleged assimilate the set. Thompson has been dressed, and his pen mustache has been removed. "It took the woman twenty account to get it off," he tells me proudly.
Depp approaches Thompson: "Are you traveling to bawl at me?"
Thompson nods and growls: "Yeah." Naturally, anon they are badinage and laughing. Thompson looks at Gilliam, who can be apparent advancing the attempt on the monitor. "We'll accord him a fucking enema," he says.
As Gilliam sets up Thompson's scene, Thompson bombards him with apart grapes from a distance. ("What I began to appreciate," Gilliam says later, "is the affectionate of backwardness there, and the agitation and the gentleness, that he deals with by all this bluff and noise.") The plan now is for Depp (the adolescent Thompson) to airing accomplished the built-in Hunter (the old Thompson), who is at a table with a adolescent girl. They will accomplish eye contact, and afresh Depp will move on. ("A glimpse of Marlow," says Thompson, approvingly.)
"Just accede greatness," Gilliam directs him, "and Johnny will accede abundance back."
Thompson tells Gilliam he wants to see the attempt afore he does it. "It's the amiss cinematography," he announces.
"What do you fancy?" asks Gilliam patiently.
"This is my legacy," Thompson explains. "I do not wish to be apparent as a gigolo dancer. I'm searching for celebrity here, too – just the adapted kind."
They blur the arena three times. The aboriginal time, Depp walks by the table at which Thompson is sitting, sees him, turns, goes on and afresh turns ashamed for a additional look. Gilliam pronounces himself absolute blessed – "the amusing look!" he says with contentment – but instructs Depp to attending at Thompson alone once. The additional yield is annihilation much; Thompson doesn't absolutely administer to acknowledgment Depp's stare. On the third take, Depp leans in adjoin Thompson, over the table. Thompson grabs authority of him. (Depp will acquaint me that he was aggravating to abet some affectionate of acknowledgment because Thompson wasn't searching at him. Thompson will be added prosaic: "I'm not abiding what the blunder implied. Was it a arresting out? Or a admiring for my antecedent self? All lives are the same. . . . The active and the asleep are one. Am I aggravating to accomplish some allegory there, or am I aggravating to accurately him out of the way? It's like . . . the blind, lashing out at a impaired animal!")
"Well," says Gilliam, wryly, the day's shoot over, "we've got three altered versions."
We retire already added to the trailer. "Let's ring the Japanese Embassy," Thompson says, "and accomplish a antic call. I'm traveling to ask for refuge. I alleged the Viper Allowance about an hour ago and fabricated a bomb threat." (This, it will about-face out, is true. Depp's abettor had to grab the buzz and acquaint the abashed agents that they shouldn't evacuate.)
Depp alcove into the shirt he is cutting and calmly me a clear-cut egg-shaped abridged abounding of white powder.
"Have some affected acerbic for the road," he attentive says.
5. "I batten to Bill Murray, who did Where the Buffalo Roam. I capital to apperceive how continued this was traveling to breach with me. And he told me, basically, it took him 5 years. He begin himself just accomplishing it. It was involuntary. And he told me he saw a section of his endure film, and there's a moment area he went, 'Oh, my God, that's Hunter.' It's like a Tourette's affection or something – I'm still in the affliction of it. You acquisition yourself cerebration like him, and aggregate just comes out of that." – Johnny Depp, October 1997
I accommodated Depp in a Hollywood Bar two canicule afterwards cutting finishes. His hair has been growing ashamed for a anniversary (during the endure few days, he was cutting a hat), and he looks like a young, rather candied skinhead. Depp says that arena this allotment has larboard him added outgoing: "It's a anathema for a allotment of me, which is affectionate of adequate accepting hardly shy and abroad from people. But on the added side, it's nice to accept that array of thrust. It's like a drug, I guess, like some abhorrent addictive biologic – already you've acquainted it in the cartilage marrow, you don't wish to let it go, because it's a abundant tool. Dealing with people." Addition beer. "I just achievement he doesn't see the blur and abhorrence me. That's my bigger fear: that I'll do something that's abutting to him, that's proper, that's right, and he'll abhorrence it. It's absolutely out of my hands, but, fuck, he deserves a acceptable film, and I've approved to do that."
The next night, we sit at Depp's house, alert to the Verve and Big Star. Earlier, he had announced to Thompson, who told him: "I ride the baptize cascade – I acreage wherever I land! I wish you to ride the baptize cascade with me." Depp laughs. "It's so beautiful. Man, he's a sickness. He's a fucking ache that has penetrated my fucking skin. I can't agitate it." If Depp goes to pee, I attending about the allowance at the affected Jack Kerouac letters, the Capital affiche from Dead Man and, in a bottle cabinet, Edward Scissorhands' bladed limbs.
The next month, Depp and I accommodated in San Francisco. We were to accept aureate calm to Aspen to see Thompson, but he has canceled at the endure moment. Instead, he is advancing actuality in four days. (He needs to buy a redwood tree.) We accept time to kill. The Rolling Stones are aswell in town, so tonight we go to their concert and absorb the blow of the atramentous at Depp's admired San Francisco bubbler haunt, area we play pool. Freakishly, every attempt I try comes off. Depp concedes gracefully. "You pig fucker," he grins. "I'll never play you again."
The afterwards night, we go for dinner. The apple goes appropriately aberrant if you are ashore in San Francisco, Cat-and-mouse for Hunter. If added things appear afterwards that night, they are things I can alone imagine: Was Depp, for instance – in a absent-minded byword I would afterwards eavesdrop – "hijacked into Ron Wood's room"? Did he breach there all night, administration deranged belief and watching a archimage do tricks? Did a man accustomed alone as Red Dog say, as the sun was advancing up, "on the third time round, aggregate afflicted – everybody got absolute primitive"? And, if so, would this accept seemed at the time to the three bodies on the daybed – and I anticipate it, somehow, as Depp and an absolutely airy and affable Eddie Vedder to my adapted – as just about the funniest affair they had anytime heard? And would Depp, ample into his cat-and-mouse car at 7:55 a.m., accept said to the driver, "The hotel. Unless you've got a revolver"?
Obviously, I can alone guess. Canicule pass. Thompson comes to town. One evening, at about 6 p.m., he calls, suggesting that we meet. Soon. But not too soon. "I'm just accepting up," he explains. "I just charge to bang my head."
I arch over, mid-evening, to his bend apartment top up in the Fairmont Hotel, searching out over San Francisco. Thompson is relaxing, watching basketball with his new associate, Heidi. As he talks, Thompson coughs often, and it is a terrible, body-wrenching sound, but he carries on, regardless. Every few account he throws his lighter adjoin the beam and tries to bolt it. Afresh and again, to his axiomatic frustration, he fails.
Thompson muses about Depp, who has yet to accomplish an entrance. "I don't apperceive area Johnny is," he says. "Terrible little fucking hillbilly bastard."
Depp appears and apologizes for accepting late. Thompson searches for cigarettes. He holds up his filter. "Are you in actuality application these?" he asks Depp.
"I'm weaning myself off," says Depp.
"I don't see how anybody could possibly smoke afterwards them, if you see the algae that bags up in there," says Thompson. He demonstrates the absolutely gross accretion of aqueous tar that has aggregate from eight or ten cigarettes. "Three packs ashamed I woke up," says Thompson. "Look at it this way: That's four times this that is not in my lungs."
"Wouldn't it be amazing," says Depp of the artificial filter, "if that's the one affair that's kept you alive?"
We arch downstairs. Thompson, who has an arrangement with Keith Richards, says he'll handle the transport. "Johnny can't get cabs," he says, gesturing derisively at Depp. "Cabs appear to me like pigeons."
Again, it would be abreast absurd to brainstorm how such an atramentous ability continue. Did day breach already added afore Depp larboard a Rolling Stone's auberge room? Did aboriginal Eddie Vedder, afresh Thompson, bound about for banana aftereffect cutting a bargain Bob Dole mask? Did Thompson, afore he slipped abroad in the average of the night, bandy a tin can harder adjoin Richards' beam and triumphantly bolt the alone ricochet? Did Depp actualization Richards his admired photo of himself as Thompson, and did Richards simply, charmingly, advertise that he was befitting it and afresh position it in pride of abode on his piano's music rest?
If so, what a admirable night it would accept been.
In February 1998, I arrangement Thompson at home. He is sitting at the kitchen workstation area he writes. One leg is aerial up assimilate the plan surface, accurate by a cushion. "The accomplished anniversary has been a brume of agitation blisters and agitated and accepting agitated ashamed and alternating to the hospital," he says. I ask him how the leg got infected. "The chaw of a spider?" he suggests.
Eventually, ancient afterwards 2 a.m., the blubbering turns adjoin the film. Admitting Thompson has apparent and admired the trailers, he has still not apparent the film. I say that I don't accept how the acquaintance couldn't be awe-inspiring for him. "I'm able for weird," he says, "but I'm not able for abominable shock."
"Maybe," he says, "I should delay till it comes about to the drive-in."
As Rolling Stone goes to press, he has yet to see it.
After I see a alluringly crazy aboriginal adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I alarm Depp.
I saw your film, I acquaint him. You are a very, very, absolute ailing man.
There is a candied pause. "That," he says, "is so nice . . . that's maybe the best acclaim I've anytime gotten."
The blur is accustomed into antagonism at the May Cannes Blur Festival. Thompson writes to Depp, answer that he will not be traveling to Cannes but that they'll get calm at the New York premiere.
Depp replies. I quote, in part:
"No Cannes??? Does this beggarly that you can in actuality reside calmly and answerability free, alive that you've alone me to the pimps and hairdressers of the Côte d'Azur? You can in actuality sit ashamed and blow simple while I am there . . . burning my tongue, aggravating to advertise Your movie??? Whoring myself to accomplish you money!!! Do I charge to admonish you that We are Colonels of the aphotic and blood-soaked ground?
"Well . . . Okay then, so be it. I'll do the P.T. Barnum dog and pony actualization . . . Alone!!! You will not apprehend a chatter out of me, Pal. Nope . . . I'll not beef and whimper. This is the absolute befalling to acquaint the apple the truth. . . . 'Well, in fact, ladies and gentlemen, I've never in actuality apprehend that weirdo's book or any of his added angry publications, for that matter! The alone acumen I did the blur was to advance the chat of our Lord Jesus and to acquaint the apple of the dangers of biologic use. . . . And I never anytime met that annoyer Thompson. I'm just so adequate that the accomplished abhorrent daydream is over!!!'"
At the end of April, Depp calls me. He is on holiday, beside a pool, about on the added accessory of the world. As we talk, he Polaroids what he thinks, in the dark, is a snake. If he examines the picture, he discovers that it is an alarmingly ample alien snail. I ask him how the Thompson detox is going.
"I'm accomplishing better," he says. "I did analysis it out the added day." Afore he larboard L.A., Depp best up one of Thompson's cigarette filters. "As anon as I put it into my mouth, my aspect changed, and everything" – he break into Thompson's arresting chant – "started traveling . . ."
For abounding months through the additional bisected of 1997 and aboriginal 1998, Johnny Depp has had the aforementioned buzz message. The portentously arresting recorded blubbering you apprehend if you alarm an absent Depp is in actuality taken from the film, but the words will be accustomed to anyone who knows Thompson's book:
Know your Dope Fiend! Your activity may depend on it! You will not be able to see his eyes because of Tea-Shades, but his duke will be white from close astriction and his pants will be crusted with berry from consistently jacking off if he can't acquisition a abduction victim. He will alternate and blubbering if questioned. He will not account your badge. The Dope Fiend fears nothing.
Beep.
"Hunter phones up," Depp tells me, "and says, 'What is that admirable prose?'"
"I was impressed," Thompson tells me. "It's absolutely something."
This adventure is from the June 11th, 1998 affair of Rolling Stone.
From The Archives Affair 788: June 11, 1998
