More than just “Gonzo Journalism”

I was 15 and, like I am today, a movie junkie. Perusing the shelves at Blockbuster Video, I… I was 15 and, like I am today, a movie junkie. Perusing the shelves at Blockbuster Video, I stumbled across a movie with an intriguingly blurred cover photo. I grabbed “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” off the shelf, read the back cover and decided to give it a try.

At the time, the name of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson meant nothing to me. I was drawn in by the cast and the director, Terry Gilliam (aka the American from Monty Python).

After watching the movie — part comic farce, part depraved, drug-fueled rant, part social commentary — I was hooked. I looked to find more about Thompson and his work and turned to a place where few people of high-school age dare tread: the library.

Of course, the school library was useless to me, in part, because I was in the conservative South, where young minds are too often sheltered, not shaped.

But mostly, it was useless because the state of Virginia, under the borderline-theocratic rule of then-governor George Allen, was too busy finding loopholes to fund parochial schools with tax dollars and undermine the public school system by paying for fewer books and more standardized tests.

So Thompson’s work, despite its cultural significance, was nowhere to be found. But I digress. Or do I? Perhaps the doctor’s influence is coming through.

Finally, I got a hold of his books after a drive to the public library, and, as I read more, I found the writing, ranting and raving of a man with interests much like my own: sports, politics and people.

Perhaps that’s why the film, for which he personally served as an advisor — to the point where he shaved Johnny Depp’s head himself — drew me to his work.

And as I read Better than Sex, The Rum Diary, The Proud Highway, and Kingdom of Fear, I just became more enthralled with the concept, if not the practice, of “Gonzo Journalism.”

Reportedly, it was the result of a near-missed deadline, when Thompson simply sent pages of his notebook to his editor. The result was first-person, stream-of-consciousness reporting, with the writer becoming part of the story — something the old guard of journalism would view as utterly unethical — yet it became a revolution to the news world.

I can’t begin to understand how Thompson accomplished what he did, given the lifestyle he lived. I have a hard enough time writing columns after a night of heavy drinking — being productive with a head full of acid and amphetamines is simply unfathomable to me.

But my admiration for the man was endless. When he appeared on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” last year, I made sure to watch, and I never missed one of his columns on ESPN.com’s Page 2, which he wrote for from its inception in 2000 to his passing.

His passing on Sunday, the reason for this column, struck a chord with me. The amount of coverage on all the major media outlets surprised me a little, but I was glad, because the man more than deserved it.

Even Fox News ran a short obituary feature on Thompson — admirable but ironic in my mind, given that the man routinely preceded the name Bush with the title of “the idiot-child president” and usually followed the name Nixon with either “crook” or “swine.”

But that recognition also solidified in my mind that Thompson was not a “cult favorite” or “subversive,” as he was often labeled. He was the genuine article, an American who valued his country and influenced so many, including myself.

On ESPN.com, he predicted guerilla warfare on a global scale after Sept. 11, 2001 — a prediction that he would be glad to not be around to see come to fruition. He leaves it to the next generation to watch in horror as the red, white and blue stampede into Tehran, providing flimsy justification on the way, saying fundamental Islam is our equivalent to the Communist threat.

But he would follow such an ominous prediction with a story about something as comparatively insignificant as the rapid decline of his beloved Oakland Raiders or of being fool enough to bet on the Colts over the Patriots in the playoffs.

And therein lies the constant. What never changed was that he wrote with his view of theAmerican dream in mind — the people who live it, the people who seek it and the “greed-heads” in power who destroy it. And he was one of the ones who lived it.

The loss of Hunter S. Thompson is felt by everyone in the sports world, the news business, the political realm and by anyone who he ever came in contact with, in person or through his work. I would like to thank him for everything he has done and I hope others join me in trying to keep his legacy alive.

Mahalo, Hunter.

Matt Grubba is a senior staff writer for The Pitt News. E-mail him at Grubba@comcast.net.