http://www.wa****ngtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/04/one-gonzo-star-is-enough/
GALUPO: One gonzo star is enough
Scott Galupo
On the campaign trail in 1972, Hunter S. Thompson, the pioneering
narrative journalist, spent 1 1/2 hours in a limousine with his bete
noire, President Nixon.
They talked football the entire time.
Decades later, Mr. Thompson met with John A. Walsh, a senior executive
at ESPN, to discuss the possibility of Mr. Thompson contributing to a
blog on the s****ts network's Web site.
They talked politics the entire time.
The late Mr. Thompson sized up his subjects by observing them inside
and outside their comfort zones. He also, more simply, liked to shoot
the breeze (literally, too, one hastens to add).
On a very basic level, "that's what made him a good re****ter," says
the Oscar-winning do***entary filmmaker Alex Gibney, whose "Gonzo: The
Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson" opens in select theaters
today.
Nearly everything else about Mr. Thompson - his mash-up of reality and
wild invention; his drug- and drink-fueled Kerouacian escapades; his
use of himself as a narrative-framing device - constitutes a theory
and practice of journalism so idiosyncratic as to defy imitation.
"His great talent was marrying this great re****ting ability with a
novelist's flair for writing," Mr. Gibney says.
Aspiring journalists: Don't try this at work.
William McKeen, who chairs the University of Florida's journalism
department, says many students "are intoxicated by" Mr. Thompson; they
wor****p him as journalism's equivalent of Bob Dylan.
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