Hunter S. Thompson interview on "The Rum Diary" (1998)

Hunter s Thompson is known for the new journalism he a pioneer with books like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hells Angels but he originally planned to change the world with a novel he began the novel called The Rum Diary in 1959 as a 22 year old journalist now 40 years later it has been resurrected it is a story of a group of hard drinking hard living reporters living in San Juan something that he knows a little bit about I'm pleased to have him back at this table my friend dr. Thompson welcome back and I think it is entirely appropriate surgery agency yeah that's what did you bring me in the grand tradition there's everything from literally the paranoid where did you steal this steal it it did I borrowed it yeah oh yeah if these were present I'm honored I've died I don't want to yeah I don't want to take life from my bouquet receiving of it but I only get the humor of Wade might have come from this time I didn't steal him from me uh you know poor kid on the side of the street yeah these are great thank you sir yeah but uh yeah you want to just you know what you're gonna fund Elyse yeah but it's a burden hurt yes it indeed need a little more respect yeah but you know what it's the thought behind it it makes a real difference yeah like I kept the other part so I have a gigantic weirdo so I'm gonna put those right here so I can take them all right put them in a place of honor yeah all right so relax let lets in our make use of this time you started this 19 155 the more like 50 59 okay so so so some might ask Yeah right like 40 years oh well I was a novelist then you know I went well I was on the road like you could do it 8:22 yeah belch and I went to said one uh get to do the normal jobs you know like we've done all of us on the soldier circuit heads over talking about yeah job instead one and I was writing a book and Bill Kennedy the great yeah Kennedy yeah I know that the eminent novelist was then the managing editor of the said one store right he was a journalist I was a novelist what happened yeah I refused to her meet well vs1 called us wine yeah yeah fool yeah beatnik and we would go way back but uh kind of help me it was a good time with one of those there when you are the kind of confluence of talents and people it's not often you you know try to get a job on a newspaper and find Kennedy struggling along as a managing editor in the he guides it over these drunken Swedes we can't get any police reporters it was a real it was a real thing and it started writing at then and I gave it up did you give it up because he told you you ought to publish it after you die posthumously I gave it up because it dumps about seven times because what the balanced about seven times I got the standard list of rejections Lydia right and uh I came back from South America and I got into the politics of the sixties and seventies it was a full-time job and yeah I became the journalist and Jannetty became the novelist this is a very eerie village of but you you very much wanted to be a novelist at that time I mean that was the drive yeah yeah I thought if I got the me a writer was a novelist I brought something over here for the Joseph Conrad thing yeah the influence of Joseph Conrad thing Oh help help no one is helping me sorry what we can't do that now so so you it's taken so long to do it because well I wrote but other things to designer and you've been writing all those letters did you were keeping all of those copies of it that before yeah Doug Brinkley job he sorts of letters yeah I have to live with it but I this uh I've been talking about this it's on all these books by Darius Thompson right right everybody said well I can't seem to find the rub Harry yeah I remember it I uh I thought let me have a little time with this it's memorable medic notion you know that money and I was faced with the idea with a fact I'm having to dig out by forty-year-old heal story can't change it and goods running it like ye gods this is me this is the world I lived in so I got budget as a rigger it's a good story it's what's the story I do this what it it's a story of uh yeah what I call a vagrant journalist yes there's still all over the world whether the english-language newspapers you know you people have travel from the Bangkok Post always there's always an english-language newspaper in some right there's one in Kazakh stunned no there's a margarita villain cuz like I stood and well speaking of Margaritaville is what Buffett says oh yeah the rum diary shows a side of human nature that is ugly and wrong but it is a world that Hunter Thompson knows in the nerves of his neck this is a brilliant tribal study and a bone and throat of all decent people that from the kid from Margaritaville yeah well any Buffett knows that world all right but let me just say well yeah he does he does let me stay with the hitch would we've been talking about William Kennedy you know the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Ironweed the tools Hunter Thompson would use in the years ahead bizarre wit mockery without end redundant excess supreme self-confidence the narrative of the wounded meritorious ego and the idiopathic anger of the righteous outlaw idiopathic glad to look that up I would do feel happy we're all there in his precocious imagination in San Juan there too with beginnings of his future as a masterful American prose stylist I said that that way so it could just ring in your ears yeah masterful American prose stylist yeah that's I I better that that's that you really do I mean a deep inside of you I mean those of us who it is this sense of how much the word despite everything despite everything what most meaning is most meaningful to you is prose stylist is the written word like the music and the music freak so I I go with only by rhythms and I mentioned Conrad the influences that I were I was under the time which is very hard for 22 year old with dry land from the preface to the the vinegar the narcissus if you ever read that book now old man it's a it may be as a final statement on ride the writing of prose in America and in the world it's a title it since the preface to the or the nurse's unread great story and he says uh any work that aspires to the condition of art less carry is justification in every life holy Wow art is long vacation Mort is long and life is short as he says his very far off I tried to Jesse that at the age of 22 will you think hot day american-built had heard teachers in Kennedy horse merciless at unread is the most merciless of all teachers Conrad gives no ground that sets a high bar they really they bought the highest more and I've been I've always reminded when you really get into it of how you know where the bars are who the champion of champions or yeah I haven't gotten to Conrad yeah he's a very solemn man you know he didn't laugh much but this was great where who the champions for you as novelist in America well when I was growing up yeah at age I was I'm not sure how I drifted into this but I got into the influence of I lived here in Newark yeah I went to Columbia plays of the new school I fell in under bad influences but it was like the it was Garcia Lorca Fitzgerald anyway of course Faulkner I'd take no pride in this question but Paul Kemp is you not really I didn't know I didn't know well I'm since I was doing it right then I was very careful not to make any one character me but it's not your sensibilities it's not well my sensibilities really inform all the characters but I tried to split myself up I tried to do what this drill did with with Gatsby in the using the Nick Carraway character and the Gatsby the Jimmy gets it what's the same people what I was looking you know from outside right and I don't hurt time with it a lot of things look very simple do you try to do them yeah it's I got quintuple flip of a know high board and uh yes I was really both of those characters and uh the whole thing it's very real I'm not sure where I find myself sometimes in Heyman sometimes and Kemp right what's the relation between foot shaming and his girlfriend oh that's one of these uh young love things you know you fall in love at Party of New York and Havel yeah I got a job and put it Rico when you come with dealt with it yeah well we have a beach house uh you know yeah beautiful girl they Chanel pure Bex why well not really not not any like I tried to you're in for my situation informed by everything you did yeah yeah you know how much I like you and so having said that no come on okay comes right okay why is it that this is the I mean here's a guy you with your dedication to prose why is this this the first novel you have written when you wanted to be a novelist and don't tell me the answer is because you've been doing all these other things I mean is the answer that you sort of you know it was not rewarding uh well I did get paid for it you know and that what I saw you love Conrad this much and then you still can't say that that art is not its own reward art is that its own reward boy ever you been living like where have you been living at uh yeah I know I have a yeah in heaven that's like no no it's not for for a writer professional writer yeah oh yeah drew Capote said it if it's not published yeah it's not there I didn't do it I know it's it's it's for the the process and inner part is a you must have fuel oh and you wouldn't have expense money all things are possible that comes with the seventies it's a favorable okay so what's the antedate nobody paid you enough money to write a novel or are you you know you had to go off and do things that you could make money so you didn't have time I mean these are rather flimsy excuses aren't they probably so Rowley I can compare to Conrad I'm you know I just know what never impaired to your potential floozies level potential this is you know this is about thirty five years too late Charlie if you were journalists now what if you had a choice between here you're an assignment you have to write a book about the Hells Angels right and yours that it dirty or novel while he's been rejected seven times my seven regular public urgent your best friend Kennedy told you well really that sucks yeah right and then suddenly uh somebody comes along with an offer off with hills there's a war on yeah you know and then there was a a the sixties it was a war right and I was paid and all these fences I needed to everywhere on the front it really was like a war and I didn't the end of the time uh you know to uh attend or work okay then why now why do you have the time now I had to make to it ah sir as you know exist not self contradictory no no we had to make time you could have made time in the eighty no but I could have this overhead to even you had to well the book was gonna go be published oh I see I had to finish hey I was prepared to like anything you know what let them publish anything after I've been yeah but I'm really glad I didn't do that did you think this was gonna be the great American novel when you were writing it I had that hubris I guess yeah but it as you read PO tarika in the whole world the great part Reagan yeah yeah it's a yeah I didn't sense it was gonna be yeah I hadn't said that sense about everything I was doing well sis what do you think of the movie uh about you that's funny Johnny Depp asked me that question less on the telephone by the way I liked him along honey - man he's livin yeah yeah he's gonna do so he's gonna work in this weird make a movie of this one it's the melancholy book this is a book it's good no he's got your plate it'll play dr. T - huh look like okay there's this room for uh for movement here this is this isn't the rigid kind of a interior monologue yeah the cell that the Vegas book was like you know what what what's happening is what you're thinking that what's going on so many things much here you know they do know that's not a lot of thinking it's like you know did you how did you answer Johnny Depp's question what do you think of the movie oh I like that really has it experience fail you have to you have to go through the fire and I would have maybe done it differently but I'm not a movie I'm uh yeah I'm look I'm good at books so I liked it yeah but I wouldn't know I would recommend that I wouldn't have my mail my children to see it every night since that I don't know I don't know how that could happen that buck was structured but it's not going to really be had a fight yeah there's no way to make that the hero story yeah but people of all kinds of for no reasons and different Heritage's and criminal backgrounds go into a scum ridden place like Las Vegas and behave works to the the people they're viewing yeah so that's not it that's not one of those uplifting books but I that was a beauty was a work of work yeah did I read the way that your British publisher asked you not to come up and promote it don't matter where they've been try to get me over there oh they are so that's not true surely I just don't you mentioned that I'm sorry but I've run what are you trying to do - I it's really flimsy oak table the Senate on a test - LD I would like this what no this is a great table there's one of those things like the wall you can hit yeah exactly yeah you better war Wesley I don't lose to you a lot more likely lose your hand than you are to damage at all I hit a wall last night you have to know the difference you know living this way hey I shot him popped oh oh white wall look that's the same was it he was told country so why were you doing it what what what precipitate about having everyone is having fun yeah I've been reading this remedies book about differently or anything on Mohammed Ali yeah that's a great book everyone's mention him here I'm like boxing I liked it when holly was our you know the Bucs are the real thing Everly uh-oh there's no one to like now like wrestling I believe that uh all of Italy hey Boxey and wrestle here about to it kind of word oh god really oh I hope not oh yeah well it's meaning no words what they doing is it promoting all these older guys who it's all about show and not about skill you have use all these thugs being thrown out of the NFL and you know people who slip you know roommate sports in college and right still run for a thousand yards I think they're all going to be in some kind of weird wrestling league that's gonna have nobody like with 92 years and that's a pepper Tennessee yeah but babe it somebody will pick it up hey up using their 2000 you're gonna see Bill and Monica in Paris together reunited that's what do you think about Bill and money and what do you think the president you admire no I don't we don't mind no no I did endorse him yeah he had a war once though I think he's a letter destroyed the standard for what's fun in politics for good people I think once I said that Nixon was great when he brought the best people into politics and Clinton is going to be famous for driving all but the worst ones out and I think that's what's happening you know the this is a democracy if you don't participate somebody else is going to for you and that's what's happening here lesson four and every ten voters or they go to the polls and then we have this subsequent mess where it's all left in the hands of Nazis like star and I believe all fascist yeah star Jesse Helms these people should all be a on whether heels like new zeleny and maybe Clinton along with them that's we don't go that far oh well it is a you know decadence the last 10 years the century weird things would happen where do you think you'll be when that the clock ticks forward for the year 2000 that's a tricky one I don't really expect a beer but you know I have come on you mean you don't expect to be here we're talking about a year off yeah it was different them you know years ago Charlie I go every time I get an airplane every worse my nice thought damnit these people show you how temporal life is I don't have my tools dirty annulled yeah uh yeah in any second you know it really is it's a think about that whenever you get on a plane this thing could be over here in a minute yeah yeah oh and what's gonna be your last thought well tea I don't have to go back around it silent get little rest between trips you know I am a road man really for the for the Lords of chroma we've been through this I guess together it's we have all right let me let me let me say one more thing because I got to get out of here the next novel polo is my life hotdog on her so that with me no word is innocent stuff yeah what's polo is my life oh it's uh how I got how I joined the the polo crowd by accident yeah well these situations were I remember this what we the title comes from it talking to this woman that I'd developed a bond it's for who it for me a bolo person and uh I would say well you know if you know violet husband and cops all over me hates me and that's a what let's go to Australia get on the train cross Australia head deep that you don't understand polo was my life I can't run away with you who would take care of my opponents below violation that's it yeah who would take a woman with her priority right yeah all right Donna Thompson this is the long-lost novel The Rum Diary thank you my friend for coming Lou always a pleasure my up and then uh what are you doing later on you uh regular and Doug Brinkley is reading oh is it a night yeah the art club yeah couldn't see at Bradley a country a convocation of all the well as little fun yeah yeah what were the girl L I don't know what you're you're wandering around let me say goodbye to this audience thank you very much for joining us Hunter s Thompson the ROM dari thank you

Channel: Manufacturing Intellect

Views: 512,657

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Id: LKJbua_ltOo

Length: 22min 53sec (1373 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 28 2016