Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson

Birth : 1937-07-18, Louisville, Kentucky, USA

Death : 2005-02-20

History

Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author. He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to such a degree that they become central figures of their stories. He is known also for his unrepentant lifelong use of alcohol, LSD, mescaline, and cocaine (among other substances); his love of firearms; his inveterate hatred of Richard Nixon; and his iconoclastic contempt for authoritarianism. While suffering a bout of health problems, he committed suicide in 2005, at the age of 67.

Profile

Hunter S. Thompson

Movies

Johnny Depp: The Love of the Bizarre
Self (archive footage)
Johnny Depp started off as a punk band guitarist, turning to acting to help pay the bills. But his dabbling catapulted him to global fame and there was no going back. Throughout his career, Depp has had fame and infamy in equal measure. His roles are often that of the isolated anti-hero: Edward Scissorhands, Donnie Brasco, Raoul Duke in Las Vegas Parano, and Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean. His poetic outsider characters reveal a critical view of American society.
Freak Power: The Ballot or the Bomb
Self (archive footage)
Hunter S. Thompson went to the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago as a journalist and returned home disgusted, yet motivated by what he’d just seen: violently suppressed protests, riots, corrupt politicians, and abusive cops. Back in Aspen, he finds more of the same. The local police and sheriff’s departments are targeting young people, harassing and charging them with absurd crimes and trying to push them out of town. Hunter decides he has to do something to change the police brutality that has become the norm.
Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President
Self (archive footage)
This rockumentary-style presidential portrait shows how Jimmy Carter reinvigorated a post-Watergate America—with the music of the counterculture, including the Allman Brothers, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and Jimmy Buffett.
For No Good Reason
Self (archive footage)
For No Good Reason a film about Ralph Steadman. Johnny Depp guides the visually stunning journey, smashing narrative conventions, moving seamlessly from interview to animation and in the finest Gonzo tradition questions of witness and authenticity are challenged. Steadman's art is for the first time animated, including illustrations from Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vagas. Featuring Richard E Grant, Terry Gilliam, Bruce Robinson and with music from Slash, The All American Rejects, Jason Mraz, Crystal Castles, Ed Hardcourt and Beth Orton. A touching and at times funny film about honesty, friendship and the ambition driving an artist. This is a true record of the demise of the 20th Century counterculture and hipster dream with Ralph Steadman the last of the Gonzo visionaries.
The Rum Diary
Story
Tired of the noise and madness of New York and the crushing conventions of late Eisenhower-era America, itinerant journalist Paul Kemp travels to the pristine island of Puerto Rico to write for a local San Juan newspaper run by the downtrodden editor Lotterman. Adopting the rum-soaked lifestyle of the late ‘50s version of Hemingway’s 'The Lost Generation', Paul soon becomes entangled with a very attractive American woman and her fiancée, a businessman involved in shady property development deals.  It is within this world that Kemp ultimately discovers his true voice as a writer and integrity as a man.
Animals, Whores & Dialogue: Breakfast with Hunter Vol. 2
Self (archive footage)
Animals, Whores & Dialogue is more than just a sequel to Wayne Ewing's 2003 Breakfast with Hunter which Variety declared to be a movie "that captures the essence of his [Hunter Thompson's] jazzy pop journalism." This new feature length documentary goes even deeper into Gonzo journalism with intimate scenes of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson at work writing, editing, and recounting the creation of classics like Hells Angels and Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. Animals, whores & dialogue were metaphors and an element Hunter almost always wove into his writing, and the words were emblazoned on his typewriter.
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
Writer
Fueled by a raging libido, Wild Turkey, and superhuman doses of drugs, Thompson was a true "free lance, " goring sacred cows with impunity, hilarity, and a steel-eyed conviction for writing wrongs. Focusing on the good doctor's heyday, 1965 to 1975, the film includes clips of never-before-seen (nor heard) home movies, audiotapes, and passages from unpublished manuscripts.
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
Self (archive footage)
Fueled by a raging libido, Wild Turkey, and superhuman doses of drugs, Thompson was a true "free lance, " goring sacred cows with impunity, hilarity, and a steel-eyed conviction for writing wrongs. Focusing on the good doctor's heyday, 1965 to 1975, the film includes clips of never-before-seen (nor heard) home movies, audiotapes, and passages from unpublished manuscripts.
Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens
Self (archive footage)
An account of the professional and personal life of renowned American photographer Annie Leibovitz, from her early artistic endeavors to her international success as a photojournalist, war reporter, and pop culture chronicler.
Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride
Self (archive footage)
A personal, intimate look at journalist Hunter S. Thompson with a special emphasis on his Hollywood relationships. It captures the legacy and "gonzo" spirit of one of this century's most notorious figures - a man whose life and work regularly intersected with some of the biggest names in the world of film, politics, journalism and sports.
Fuck
Self (archive footage)
A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.
Come on Down: Searching for the American Dream
Self
The director paints a car with the Canadian flag and embarks on a road trip through America in search of the meaning of the so-called American Dream, ultimately searching out Hunter S. Thompson to hear his wisdom.
Breakfast with Hunter
Self
Breakfast with Hunter is a feature length documentary starring the infamous outlaw journalist Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Edited by director Wayne Ewing from cinema verite film and digital video that he shot over many years on the road with Dr. Thompson, Breakfast with Hunter follows several story lines in the trials (literally) and triumphs of this cultural icon who created his own genre of writing - Gonzo journalism.
Hunter Goes to Hollywood
Self
Hunter Thompson visits the set of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Tripping
Self
A look at the life and influence of acclaimed sixties writer Ken Kesey. Features archive footage of his 1964 Magic Bus Tour with The Merry Pranksters.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Novel
Raoul Duke and his attorney Dr. Gonzo drive a red convertible across the Mojave desert to Las Vegas with a suitcase full of drugs to cover a motorcycle race. As their consumption of drugs increases at an alarming rate, the stoned duo trash their hotel room and fear legal repercussions. Duke begins to drive back to L.A., but after an odd run-in with a cop, he returns to Sin City and continues his wild drug binge.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Other Duke in Matrix Flashback (uncredited)
Raoul Duke and his attorney Dr. Gonzo drive a red convertible across the Mojave desert to Las Vegas with a suitcase full of drugs to cover a motorcycle race. As their consumption of drugs increases at an alarming rate, the stoned duo trash their hotel room and fear legal repercussions. Duke begins to drive back to L.A., but after an odd run-in with a cop, he returns to Sin City and continues his wild drug binge.
Anthem
Self
When twenty-six-year-olds Shainee Gabel and Kristin Hahn quit their Hollywood jobs, packed up a borrowed car and hit the road, it was with the deeply felt conviction that somewhere, shrouded in the din of talk shows and tabloid headlines, they'd discover the real America, alive and well in all of its regions and demographics.
Hunter S. Thompson: The Crazy Never Die
Self
Hunter S. Thompson speaks out on: the Iran/Contra affair, George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Politicians and Lawyers, John McFarlaine, Oliver North, and Richard Nixon.
Where the Buffalo Roam
Story
Semi-biographical film based on the experiences of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.
Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood
Self
Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood, also known as Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision, is a documentary film produced by BBC in 1978 on the subject of Hunter S. Thompson, directed by Nigel Finch. The road trip/film pairs Thompson with Finch's fellow Briton the illustrator Ralph Steadman. The party travel to Hollywood via Death Valley and Barstow from Las Vegas, scene of the pair's 1971 collaboration. It contains interviews with Thompson and Steadman, as well as some short excerpts from some of his work.