They ruined Hunter's first novel. They did so after he died, he had no input in the creation and they took out major characters from the book. Not surprising they were critical of it.

[color=#551A8B said:

Danny Diggler[/color]]They ruined Hunter's first novel. They did so after he died, he had no input in the creation and they took out major characters from the book. Not surprising they were critical of it.

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yeah, that's what I've read too. I'll still probably go see it, but I'm not as enthusiastic as I was.

Kinda surprised Johnny Depp would let it go like that, since he seems like a pretty legit guy, and you'd think he'd fight to keep the script as close to the novel as possible.

Wasn't my favorite of his stuff, but it was pretty good, and entertaining. certainly not a rambling drug fueled joy ride like Fear and Loathing... which was okay, but maybe in the end they tried to duplicate that experience.

Johnny Depp paid for the giant cannon at Thompson's funeral (he wanted his ashes to be shot out of a cannon).

both he and Thompson were from Kentucky, so that was one thing.

Bob, you might want to check out some of Thompson's writing from the blog he did on ESPN.com. they tried to move his archive behind a pay wall after he died, but you can still find some of them online for free through creative googling... http://proxy.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?id=1996511

ESPN released a compilation of the column a couple years ago, but it's heavily edited, in some cases, it's baffling why they made the edits they did. Also, they omit some of his better weekly articles in the compilation, again, with no explanation or reason for it. better to find the originals.

Wasn't his first book, Hell's Angels?

that was a very good book and I liked HST for the most part, incl his ESPN contributions. I saw him "speak" in Boulder one time but he was clearly wasted and incoherent. When the crowd started to get restless and confrontational, he discharged a fire extinguisher on the audience.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/obit/2005/02/hunter_thompson.html

Stories from Aspen range from his wild parties to shooting at police helicopters with a rifle.

Haven't seen The Rum Diary yet, but plan to.

TheVictors03 said:

Wasn't his first book, Hell's Angels?

that was a very good book and I liked HST for the most part, incl his ESPN contributions. I saw him "speak" in Boulder one time but he was clearly wasted and incoherent. When the crowd started to get restless and confrontational, he discharged a fire extinguisher on the audience.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/obit/2005/02/hunter_thompson.html

Stories from Aspen range from his wild parties to shooting at police helicopters with a rifle.

Haven't seen The Rum Diary yet, but plan to.

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Hell's Angels was his first published book. He wrote Rum Diary prior to that, but it went unpublished until the late 90's or early 00's. I always wondered how crazy he really was. After he died, it seemed like a number of people tried to go out of their way to poke holes in his legend. you never know if someone just has an axe to grind, or if they were just kinda stupid and didn't "get" him.

I think his chronic use of cocaine, hallucinagenics and alcohol for decades probably eroded his faculties over the years until he sort of lost it. I had a girlfriend in Boulder a while ago who said her parents had been to some pretty wild parties at his place in the 80's in Aspen. She made him out to be a full-on eccentric partier and a bit wild, but not some nutjob. He didn't like police and he went out of his way to cause trouble in Pitkin County but was certainly a local celebrity.

Thanks for the clarification on Hell's Angels -- that was a great book, didn't know the chronological history

Thanks for input I will check some the stuff out..... I think the move is worth checking out.. Again I don't know how true to the book it was but you could tell Depp had a deep appreciation of Hunter and his work. I watch some of the special features and Hunter was sort of babbling a lot and was hard to understand at times. Deep and his staff made hunter a producer of the movie and had a chair made out for him.. At the start of each days shoot they would dab some of hunter's favorite whiskey I think on their necks.... i thought it was pretty cool..