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The crown prince of Gonzo

4:16 PM Mon, Jul 21, 2008 | Permalink |
Michael Granberry

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One of the more intriguing movies lurking at an area theater is the documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, now playing at the Magnolia. During the Watergate summer of 1973, I was interning at the Washington Post and had the pleasure of spending an entire day with Dr. Thompson. It's one I'll never forget. We met for lunch, where Hunter drank a lot of beer. A friend of his, the son of JFK aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr., dropped by, and Hunter's stories went into overdrive. I learned a lot and had an amazing time. Hunter autographed my first-edition copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with his memorable HST signature, and like an idiot, I gave it away a few years ago to a young soldier headed to Iraq for the second time. I hope he's enjoying it. I wrote a story about the long afternoon for a Dallas-based underground paper called The Iconoclast. I no longer have a copy of even that. Oh, well. The movie is really cool but doesn't drive home a key point about Hunter -- despite all the wild bravado, he was actually an incredibly kind man. That was certainly my experience and that of hundreds of other young journalists. We will never see the likes of HST again. When he was on, he was really on. His insights about Richard Nixon were unforgettable. Whenever I tell my sons about Nixon, I will tell them to read HST.

Photo: Hunter S. Thompson with his wife Anita after their wedding in 2003.

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The crown prince of Gonzo

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