Breakfast with Hunter

Hunter S. Thompson is a cultural icon, this isn't news. What is, is a real inside view into his life in this film. The documentary is a collage of Hunter and some of his antics as filmed by friend and neighbor Wayne Ewing over the past twenty years. A rare look into life at his "fortified compound" and the tribulations of making "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" into a movie are just some of what makes this film an absolute must for any fan of The Good Doctor. This is real life Gonzo, from The Legend himself, the writer who changed American Journalism and the way we read it.

The documentary is a thinly veiled attempt to "break into" the life of the famed Gonzo fiend and shed light on his inner madness. Many funny scenes throughout the film, especially when Hunter is berating glib English director Alex Cox. The film itself comes across slightly amateur-esque in its editing and presentation, but is certainly a must-see for Hunter fans.

of the topics and the time span covered. It includes old bbc footage from the sheriff election from the early seventies to 1996. Hunter's mumbling is very clear for mumbles and it does not have that dark documentary look weh they shoot at night (most of the film) great DVD ad ons as well. Don johnson (another lucky neighbor of Owl Farm) reads along with pj o'roarke and some other sot and it is interesting to hear hunter's words with others voices. The insanity it tempered with a visible devotion to his work and it is too bad this was not filmed post 9-11 since i believe some of his best work has come about since. In the end it is the difinitve (to date) piece on the Good Doktor.

It wasn't until I randomly looked on the message board for this fly-on-the-wall documentary, Breakfast with Hunter, that I found out it was available on an internet video site. For the first time ever I watched something longer than a short (it's 90 minutes in running time), and I couldn't get enough. Hunter S. Thompson is one of those rare cases in literature and journalism where fact meets fiction and does a very weird dosey-do into the deranged and brilliant. As a political-type person says on a panel when Hunter visits the old democratic hopefuls from 68 and 72 at a reunion function regarding the book Fear & Loathing On the Campaign Trail, it was "the most accurate AND the least factual." But then again, when you have someone like the good Doctor leading himself through the story- more than the story leading him (though sometimes that too is the case)- who needs solid, objective facts? Thompson's approach is to say 'f*** it', and take out a few guns with some whiskey and have some fun, while never completely losing his head (seemingly anyway).

Wayne Ewing's documentary only offers so much of a glimpse of Thompson, at a crucial point during the 96-97 period where Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas- perhaps the pinnacle of his career, if at least his most well-regarded and notorious masterwork- was having it's 25th anniversary, and amid the celebrations and reverence there was still work to be done, and some trouble on the horizon. Ewing sets up a quasi structure then around two things: the pre-production on the film adaptation of Fear & Loathing, and the DUI charge he got brought against him by a not totally honest police officer (albeit Thompson WAS heavily drunk during the drive, but as he writes about it and is read on stage by John Cusack on the doc, the details behind it are gruesomely funny). Sometimes we get some random adulatory type scenes, of Hunter almost in the midst of all of the praise and celebration in either small rooms filled with joy and alcohol (at least one of those anyway) or on a book tour.

But the best moments are seeing him at his most candid, and as his nature, sort of sweetly insane. One of those, which I got a big laugh out of, is when he visits an old friend at Rolling Stone magazine, and while intending just to bring flowers, he doesn't hesitate to bring along the fire extinguisher to bring that to him FIRST and then say "but I brought flowers." Or seeing him, as a distinct favor to Johnny Depp, teaching his bird how to talk (truly uproarious, however in poor quality Ewing shot it). Or seeing him with at the time his quasi-protégé Depp, who basically because a version of Hunter, as was his niche to play Raoul Duke in the film, and even went so far as to talk like him, smoke the same cigarettes, and shoot off the same amazing guns. This doesn't totally we mean we don't see Hunter being soft in appearance to the viewer. In fact, one can see the flip-side to the good Doctor's coin, where one side reads bizarre affection and camaraderie with his guests and fellow colleagues and old friends and the like, and the other shows if he doesn't dig you, he can come close to biting. The latter is shown when Alex Cox- the original writer/director of the Fear & Loathing movie before (rightfully) leaving the project- doesn't get that doing a cartoonish version of the book, complete with Raoul Duke actually riding 'the wave' as written in that great piece about San Francisco is totally wrong.

What ends up coming out through seeing that, juxtaposed with hearing various pieces of Hunter's writings and hearing and seeing various stories of his form of Gonzo journalism (not to mention his near-win at becoming Sheriff in 1970 in Aspen, shaved head included, as part of the 'Freak Power' ticket), is that Thompson was all about going for craziness and over-the-top ways, but only if it worked for his work. The only one that one can see that can control the world that Thompson has created, both on the page and with the atmosphere of Owl Farm in Aspen, is (or rather was) Thompson himself. Nobody, not the law, or horrid politicians, or misguided filmmakers, can really put a hold on Thompson and his own form of subjective reporting. It's sadder still to see this all after his death, and see how in an ironically quiet way he was really a true force to be reckoned with in American culture, not just with literature. And this documentary, at it's best moments, captures the poetic lunacy of this man, while never getting in the way.

I'm a total junky for the guys writing, but I also really enjoy watching his antics and if possible see a bit of his real personality. There aren't too many legends around these days, and most have gone completely soft. Hunter to me is not as much of a put-on as some seem to suspect. He is obvious very intelligent and he takes writing seriously, exactly as it should be. People make a terrible mistake in assuming that he is some sort of comedy act, or even a outright liar. In all of his writing he dares people to have some imagination, and to not look at the world through a normal set of sense organs. His version of the truth works better for me than CNN ever will, and I have great pity for anyone who believes otherwise.

He has written of a distrust of movie-people, in particular the Hollywood bunch so it is pleasant to get a good couple of hours of him on film. I tend to agree that Hunter deserves a well executed movie, but there are some pretty obvious reasons why that may not be practical. No one wants a camera in their face all the time, HST least of all. It isn't accidental that an Aspen resident ended up compiling/recording this movie, because I get the impression that the only thing which would make him comfortable enough with the idea is chillin' with the locals.

The 1980 BBC documentary was alright. It covered a slightly different era, and some of their research was a little weak. Until breakfast came out however, it was certainly about as candid as I was able to find in one place.

It really was a collage of footage with very little keeping it focused. It didn't appear to be as a result of a deliberate editing technique but more just having to work within the available footage and whatever Hunter was going to allow to be used. There is little bad to say about it from a freaks point of view.

I have enormous respect for him.

I'm still waiting for some more books, do you hear that Hunter!? Forget ESPN.com, write another novel. I hear Afganhi hash is pretty cheap these days.