Update: I was a day late and a dollar short with this post. If you want to see the full perspective, check out this story from the 2005 Washington Post.
Maybe you already knew about the suicide note that Hunter S. Thompson left behind. I did not. Seeing what it said in print today was pretty shocking. This is what Thompson chose as his final written legacy:
"No more walking, no more swimming, no more fun. Sixty-seven. That’s 17 years past 50, 17 more than I wanted or needed. I’m always grumpy, all the time. No fun for anybody. Relax. This won’t hurt much."
This hit the news today because Nick Nolte, who's going to narrate an upcoming Starz documentary about Thompson, quoted it from memory to a gathering of journalists here in Los Angeles for the Television Critics Association summer gathering. Nolte said he mostly knew Thompson from late-night telephone calls. He described that note as "powerful," saying that "it read like a poem."
I guess we shouldn't expect anything else from Thompson. Here's how Nolte described his friend's take on death itself.
"He was beyond me. It’s that capacity that I admired. He had no fear of it. He just went into it. And that’s what inspired me a lot about him."
I remember first reading "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" in college and wondering how anybody could write like that while being drunk and stoned at the same time. But as a journalism student at the University of Oregon, I have to tell you that we all thought he was damned interesting. Talk about a choice in role models: Bob Woodward on one hand and Hunter S. Thompson on the other.
The name of the documentary that Nolte's going to narrate is “Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride: Hunter S. Thompson on Film,” which grew out of the memorial for the founder of gonzo writing in which Thompson, who committed suicide, also got his wish to have his remains shot into the skies. The man definitely had a theatrical streak...
I really like artist Bob Staake's take on Hunter S. Thompson that you see above right. That's how we should probably remember Thompson. Not as the man in failing health who turned into a grump and shot himself, but as a journalistic icon who could turn a phrase and spoke with passion and conviction.
That's how I see it... for what it's worth... "Take the Ride" will air in November.
