Hunter S. Thompson dead

[kerosene 0]

You know what pissed me off about the film, they butchered one of the funniest scences in the book, where him and his attorney go to that hardware store to get supplies for the trip, and it ends with the attorney threatening to go back and toss a bomb through the window, in the fim they took the line but put it in a completley random place when there driving down the strip.

[hellfish6 7]

You know what pissed me off about the film, they butchered one of the funniest scences in the book, where him and his attorney go to that hardware store to get supplies for the trip, and it ends with the attorney threatening to go back and toss a bomb through the window, in the fim they took the line but put it in a completley random place when there driving down the strip.

That was really one of the only scenes out of the book that didn't make it into the movie, though. I think everything else was damn near verbatim - something to be admired in this day and age, methinks. Just look at how they're gonna butcher Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

[denoir 0]

I like the film, although I'm probably biased in that question as I saw it before I read the book. It was after the movie, which I liked immensly, I started reading HST. The only work of his I had trouble getting through was "Fear and Loathing on the campaign trail 1972", which while good in general has a shitload of details about the primaries and the candidates etc. I wouldn't recommend that one as a starting point for reading Thompson.

"Fear and loathing in Las Vegas", I've read probably four times or so. It's great as toilet reading material

I didn't like the other movie, "Where the Buffalo Roam" too much. Although Bill Murray did a good HST impression, the story was basically a bunch of things ripped from various books, altered and put out of context.

[Tovarish 0]

And he may yet make another bang!

Quote[/b] ]DENVER (AP) - Hunter S. Thompson, the "gonzo journalist" with a penchant for drugs, guns and flame-thrower prose, might have one more salvo in store for everyone: Friends and relatives want to blast his ashes out of a cannon, just as he wished.

"If that's what he wanted, we'll see if we can pull it off," said historian Douglas Brinkley, a friend of Thompson's and now the family's spokesman.

Thompson, who shot himself to death at his Aspen-area home Sunday at 67, said several times he wanted an artillery send-off for his remains.

"There's no question, I'm sure that's what he would want," said Mike Cleverly, a longtime friend and neighbor. "Hunter truly loved that kind of thing."

Colorado fireworks impresario Marc Williams said it's doable.

"Oh, sweet. I'd love to. I would so love to," said Williams, 44, owner of Night Musick Inc. in suburban Denver and a fan of Thompson's writing.

Thompson's wife, Anita, and son, Juan, are looking into the cannon scenario, said Brinkley, who has edited some of Thompson's work.

Brinkley also said Thompson did not take his life "in a moment of haste or anger or despondency" but probably planned his suicide well in advance because of declining health. The author of books including "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" was in pain from a host of problems that included a broken leg and a hip replacement.

"I think he made a conscious decision that he had an incredible run of 67 years, lived the way he wanted to, and wasn't going to suffer the indignities of old age," Brinkley said. "He was not going to let anybody dictate how he was going to die."

Thompson had spent an intimate weekend with his son, daughter-in-law and young grandson, the spokesman said.

"He was trying to really bond and be close to the family" before his suicide, Brinkley said. "This was not just an act of irrationality. It was a very pre-planned act."

Family members had no hint that Thompson planned to take his own life, Brinkley said, and he did not leave a note. "There was no farewell salutation," he said.

Williams, the fireworks impresario, said it is not uncommon for families to have their loved one's ashes scattered across the sky in a fireworks shell, though his company has never done it.

If the Thompson job were his, Williams said, he would probably blast the ashes from a 12-inch-diameter mortar 800 feet into the sky. Then a second, window-rattling blast would scatter them amid a blossom of color 600 feet across.

"If you were going to light up a flash-bomb worthy of Hunter S. Thompson, you'd want to make it an earth-shaker," Williams said.

Sales of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and other Thompson favorites have soared since his death. "Fear and Loathing" was No. 15 on Amazon.com as of Wednesday and publisher Vintage Books has ordered a sizable reprinting.

"We usually sell about 60,000-70,000 copies a year of that book and our next printing will be close to that total," Vintage spokesman Russell Perreault said.

Other Thompson books selling well include "Hell's Angels,""Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72" and "Hey Rube."

[Winters 1]

I heard about that this morning, it's fitting for him to want to be handled that way.

Now the question is how long before some hippies go out to that field and try to smoke/snort his ashes

[kerosene 0]

I had a feeling he probably shot himself cause he didnt want to go into his 70's or 80's and mabye lose his dignity or something, but its still sad.

[Tex -USMC- 0]

Stay wierd, you crazy bastard

[Guest]

Heheh....hope they do it. *bang* What a way to go!

F&L In Las Vegas was a very good adaptation. Terry Gilliam is one of the very few directors who could hve pulled it off, if not the only. Tim Burton is about the only other guy I can think of off the top of my head.....both of them would have used Johnny Depp anyway.

As for Hitchhiker's G2TG Movie....don't get me started

[Tovarish 0]

Thompson 'shot himself on phone'

Quote[/b] ]The widow of US writer Hunter S Thompson has said her husband killed himself while they were speaking to one another on the telephone.

Thompson - best-known for his 1972 account of a drug-addled Nevada trip, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - shot himself on Sunday at his Colorado home.

His widow, Anita Thompson, 32, told the Aspen Daily News she heard the "clicking of the gun".

She said: "I was on the phone with him, he set the receiver down and did it."

Mrs Thompson said her husband had asked her to come home from a health club so they could work on his weekly column, but instead of saying goodbye, he shot himself.

She added that she heard a loud, muffled noise, but did not know what had happened.

"I was waiting for him to get back on the phone," she said.

Supportive

Thompson, who was a leading political journalist and one of the most important US authors of the 20th century, was found dead by his son, Juan.

The 67-year-old shot himself in the head in the kitchen while his son, daughter-in-law and six-year-old grandson were in the house.

Mrs Thompson told the newspaper her husband had repeatedly talked about killing himself in the months running up to his death.

He had also left verbal and written instructions about what he wanted done with his body, his unpublished works and his assets.

"He wanted to leave on top of his game. I wish I could have been more supportive of his decision," she added.

Strange, the news story I posted earlier said he did not leave a suicide note.

[IsthatyouJohnWayne 0]

'Verbal and written instructions about what he wanted done' with his body etc do not necessarily constitute a suicide note. He might have written it down weeks or months ago.

The news itself sucks obviously (even if he was past his best, seems like a waste- but then hell, ive promised myself ill become a heroine addict if i live to eighty). I read an article about him quite recently, before which i had kind of forgotten he was still alive.

[Guest]

I think it means he left a will rather than suicide note. Waaaay more important.

[Schoeler 0]

I don't remember who asked, but Thompson's weapon of choice is the .357 Magnum.

He once showed up to give the keynote speech at a Harvard graduation waving one wildly and swigging out of a bottle of Jack Daniels. He was never asked back.

[denoir 0]

I don't remember who asked, but Thompson's weapon of choice is the .357 Magnum.

He shot himself with a .45

Quote[/b] ]

DENVER — On the last day of his life, Hunter S. Thompson woke with his usual breakfast of fresh fruit inside a thin layer of jello with gin and Grand Marnier drizzled on top.

His wife, Anita, carefully put a lemon on the side and hovered near his chair. It was 5 p.m., the time the writer normally began his day.

"Suddenly he began talking about something weird, I can't remember exactly what," she recalled in an interview Friday. "He began to get angry with me. He had a strange look on his face. He told me to get out of the room. I was like: 'What do you mean?' He had never kicked me out of a room before."

The final countdown had begun.

Angry and hurt, Anita grabbed her bag and stomped out.

"When I got to the gym in Aspen, I called because I felt bad," said the 32-year-old, who lived with Thompson for five years before marrying him in 2003. "He was so sweet. I asked if he wanted me to come back, and he said he did. He said we could work on a column. We usually made up when he wrote."

Then Thompson did something strange. He took her off speakerphone — his preferred method of talking to people — and picked up his headset and continued talking.

"Then I heard a lot of clicking noises, it seemed to me to be a typewriter clicking," Anita Thompson said. "I listened for 45 seconds and heard other noises. I figured he was not going to pick up the headset again, so I hung up."

About the same time on Sunday — 5:40 p.m. — Thompson's son, Juan, his daughter-in-law and his 6-year-old grandson were in another room of the Owl Ranch compound in Woody Creek, a few miles northwest of Aspen. Juan heard a bang, a noise he figured was a book falling.

Anita Thompson had just finished a yoga class when a friend heard that something bad had occurred at Owl Ranch.

"I called my cellphone and there was a message from Juan saying 'Anita, you have to come home; he's dead.' I started to panic. I knew this day would come, but not like this."

Thompson, the hard-drinking writer who coined the term "gonzo journalism" and wrote drug-fueled best-sellers such as "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," had finally done it.

Cursed with increasingly bad health and never expecting to see 40 — let alone 67 — Thompson had decided to go out, as his widow said, "like a champion."

He had put a .45-caliber pistol in his mouth while sitting in his favorite chair at the kitchen table and pulled the trigger.

When Anita Thompson arrived at Owl Farm, guarded by two metal buzzards at the gate, the place was swarming with police. She shouted at officers and demanded to see her husband's body.

"I was certain I could turn this whole thing around with sheer willpower," she said tearfully. "The sheriff's deputies said I shouldn't see the body because they thought it would be too horrible."

She pushed into the kitchen and found Thompson still in the chair. He had done a remarkable job, she thought. The pistol shot did no damage to his face and there was little blood.

"As soon as I saw him, all that craziness, all the anger and fear, went away," she said. "I held him, kissed his head and rubbed his leg like I always did. Thank God he didn't do much damage. I said it was OK, Hunter; I know what you did. Suddenly, there was nothing but peace."

Thompson and his wife had been at odds for years about his talk of suicide. She threatened to leave the compound and wash her hands of his work and his legacy if he carried out his threat. In the end, he would back down and vow not to do it.

But the pain of hip replacement surgery, back surgery, a lung infection and a broken leg was taking its toll.

"It was definitely not a spur-of-the-moment thing," said Douglas Brinkley, a professor of American history at Tulane University and literary executor of Thompson's will. "He had been looking at his options for a few months. One option was physical rehabilitation. A second option was to stop drinking and move to a warmer climate. The other option was to kill himself. No one knows how long he considered it — he used to say he wasn't afraid to kill himself all the time."

In keeping with his outsized persona, gun-loving Thompson told friends he wanted his ashes to be blasted out of a cannon on his property. A team of experts is working on that now.

Angels Flight of Castaic, Calif., which puts human ashes into fireworks and explodes them in the sky, has offered its services.

"We have done cannons in the past. It would not be difficult to do human remains," said Nick Drobnis, company president. "But if someone didn't understand pyrotechnics and tried to cram the remains into a cannon, they could end up with a detonation."

Before he was cremated this week, Thompson's wife dressed him in his favorite blue pin-striped, seersucker suit. She put his Tilley hat on his head, a red silk handkerchief in his pocket and his reading glasses on his eyes. She also included snapshots of the two of them — along with her long, blond ponytail.

"Hunter's death was not grisly. He was in the catbird seat in the kitchen, in the mountains by his wife and family. He wanted to go out while he was still on top, not wither away," she said.

Thompson wasn't always easy to live with. He could be a 6-foot-2 angry child sometimes, his wife said.

"He hated people who talked too much, he hated cellphones and he couldn't stand a drunk — he actually never seemed drunk himself," she said. "The difference between Hunter and other writers is he never used drugs as an excuse not to work. He used them as an excuse to work. He wrote the first half of 'Hells Angels' in six months. He wrote the second half in four days on whisky and Dexedrine — and that was the best part."

Despite her vows to leave the ranch if he killed himself, Anita Thompson is planning to stay and promote Thompson's legacy.

"If you are ever weak, sad or confused, you can read Hunter and feel better," she said. "I will continue to work with Hunter for the rest of my life."

LAT