Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride
I wrote before about the Hunter S Thompson Death Industry - and it grinds on with the showing of the documentary “Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride” on American TV (tonight, I believe, on Starz Pay TV channel) and the publication of the staggeringly unoriginally titled Gonzo, a deluxe photobook accompanying the exhibition of the same name that retails for $300. Even with Amazon’s usual hefty discount, it’s still $225. Ouch.
Books like this exasperate me because I want to see the content but I know before I even do see it that it can’t be worth the money. There’s some of Hunter’s photos showcased in the exhibition and book available to view online at the M + B Gallery site. Pity the good Doctor himself won’t be arriving in the Art Gallery to spraypaint “Fuck The Pope” on the wall.
The Starz documentary sounds a lot more promising - here’s an excerpt of the blurb from their site:
Both of the actors who portrayed him on film, Johnny Depp (Fear and Loathing) and Bill Murray (Where the Buffalo Roam ), became lifelong friends, as did former Sen. George McGovern and CBS News correspondent Ed Bradley. They all appear here, along with actors Sean Penn, Gary Busey, Benicio Del Toro, John Cusack and Harry Dean Stanton, film critic Leonard Maltin, and authors William F. Buckley and Tom Wolfe.“He was a beacon for dissent, he was a place people could turn to, to get a moral argument from an immoral outlaw,” says Cusack.
Wolfe included several Thompson essays in his 1973 book “The New Journalism,” along with pieces by writers such as Norman Mailer and Truman Capote, and he lauds his talent in an interview for the film. “No one categorization covers this new form unless it’s Hunter Thompson’s own word, Gonzo,” Wolfe says. “If so, in the 19th Century, Mark Twain was the King of all the Gonzo writers. In the 20th Century, it was Hunter Thompson, whom I would nominate as this century’s greatest comic writer in the English language.”
But although there are early photos and reminisces, the film concentrates on the years after Thompson became well known. It seeks to define Hunter S. Thompson the person, versus Dr. Gonzo, the infamous writer. It is a fine line at times, given Thompson’s predilection for hard living, drugs and alcohol, firearms and general rebelliousness. But the distinction is there, often framed best by Thompson himself in clips from various interviews over the years.[Read more]
I got sent a copy of the documentary on DVD which I haven’t had a chance to watch yet, but it definitely sounds like it’s on the right track to leaving a more fitting legacy than the crazed cartoon character that already seems to overshadow the moral imperative and impeccable writing that is HST’s real legacy.
Other Splinters posts of interest:
- Biledriving Ah, good to see Hunter S. Thompson …
- The Hunter S Thompson Death Industry Swings Into Action
- Gonzo king to go out with a bang
- Breakfast With Hunter
- Heavenly Fear And Loathing
