Posted: November 29, 2024 08:04.
Last updated: November 27, 2024 12:03h.
Editor's note: Vegas Myths Busted publishes new entries every Monday, with a bonus flashback edition on Fridays. Today's entry in our ongoing series was originally published on March 3, 2023.
Hunter S. Thompson, who died by suicide 18 years ago Monday, was famous for being a gonzo journalist. As a result, many of his fans consider his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to be a record of real events.
Hunter S. Thompson (left) and Oscar Acosta pose in the Baccarat Lounge at Caesars Palace in April 1971. (Image: Cover of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”)
Actually, it's not so much their fault, since Random House published the author's 1972 masterpiece in the general nonfiction category. However, Thompson never claimed that any of the events described in it were true.
The first clue should have been the fact that neither of his main characters were real people. This story is told by Duke Raoul, whose traveling companion and lawyer is Dr. Gonzo.
In real life, Thompson was also quoted by Rolling Stone as the man who “accidentally” shot and killed Ruben Salazar, the civil rights activist and Los Angeles Times columnist, who was “accidentally” shot and killed by an L.A. County sheriff during the Vietnam War when he fired a tear gas canister at point-blank range. I was asked to write an exposé about. 1970 war protests. After a week of tough questioning around L.A., Thompson was horrified.
Thinking he might be next, he took the story's main source, lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta, to Las Vegas and interviewed him there. Sports Illustrated hired Thompson to cover the Mint 400, an off-road vehicle race that raced through undeveloped areas of North Las Vegas from March 21 to 23, 1971.
Sports Illustrated “aggressively rejected” what he submitted as race coverage (in Thompson's words). What was supposed to be a 250-word caption became a 2,500-word screed about the end of the American Dream. Thompson instead provided the article to Rolling Stone, whose editor, Jann Wenner, planned to publish it in two parts in a future issue.
More than a month later, Thompson and Acosta returned to Las Vegas. They were there for the second half of their assignment for Rolling Stone, covering the National Association of District Attorneys' Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs conference. With only minor revisions and the addition of Ralph Steadman's grotesque, hallucinogenic illustrations, this magazine series became the book that forever linked Thompson's name to Las Vegas. He wrote most of it in a hotel room in Arcadia, California, completing Salazar's article for Rolling Stone, “Strange Rumors of Aztlan.”
So what actually happened in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream? Based on interviews with witnesses and participants, about 25% is.
Since the release of Terry Gilliam's visionary film adaptation Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in 1998, paperback covers have further blurred the lines between fact and fiction. The face of actor Johnny Depp, who played Raoul Duke in the movie, is depicted in a large size. (Image: eBay)
75% didn't happen
Let's start with the legendary contents of Thompson and Acosta's rental car trunk. The book contained “75 pellets of mescaline, five strips of strong vaping acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and an entire galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers… in one pint. “Raw Ether and Two Dozen Amirs” all came together during one frenzied night in LA
This was probably the driving force behind all the misfortunes in this book.
However, in a letter to the editors of Random House published in his 1997 book Fear and Loathing in America, Thompson admitted that there was no actual drug use. The novel “was a very conscious attempt to simulate drug addiction,” he writes, but “at times I brought situations and emotions I remembered from other scenes into the reality at hand.” . He later wrote to the same editor: “I've never had much respect or love for journalism.”
Most of the book's action took place in Room 1850 of the Mint Tower (one of 365 rooms that the new owners, Binion's Horseshoe, permanently closed in 2009). According to Duke's narration, he and Dr. Gonzo ran through an unpaid room service bill of $29 to $36 an hour for 48 straight hours, then trashed the room and blew out 600 bars of Neutrogena soap.
“That should have been known right away, but I never heard of it,” KJ Howe, then the Mint's communications executive, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2010. “That never happened,” Howe said. Even with Mr. Heem and other hotel executives looking for Thompson, Acosta was unable to order a package from room service without paying, and no soap theft was reported.
“His concept of what was going on and what was actually going on were two different things,” Howe said.
However, Thompson did figure out the exact brand of soap that was allegedly stolen. (Dell Webb, the billionaire real estate developer who owned the Mint, was also on the board of directors of the company that created Neutrogena.) Thompson's eye for detail lends credence to even the most obvious fantasies. You will be able to infuse it.
Another event that never happened, at least in the way Thompson reported it, was Debbie Reynolds' show at the Desert Inn. In the book, Duke and Dr. Gonzo witness the opening number (a cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) before being turned away for trespassing.
Reynolds performed at the Desert Inn in March 1971, but Reynolds said he was not aware of any similar incidents. However, she was sure of one detail that cast doubt on this entire account. pepper.
Other embellishments do not require the witness to be identified. For example, the district attorney meeting that Rolling Stone assigned Thompson to cover was held in late April, more than a month after the Mint 400 election. But in this book, the events are separated by a week, with meetings converging through an interrupted trip to Los Angeles. A traffic stop in which the author allegedly led Thompson on an off-road chase at 160 mph with a Budweiser in hand, before California Highway Patrol troopers let him flee.
“I feel like I could take a nap,” Thompson said, quoting the officer.
Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting invented by Hunter S. Thompson, is based in part on fellow author William Faulkner's premise that “the best fiction is truer than any journalism.” (Image: Rolling Stone Magazine)
25% that actually happened
In the 2008 documentary, Gonzo, Thompson, and Acosta can be heard actually living Chapter 9 when they stop at a taco stand in Boulder City, Nevada, during their second trip to Las Vegas.
“We're looking for the American dream, and we were told it was somewhere in this area,” Acosta told the waitress.
The waitress turned to the cook, thinking he had just been asked for directions to the nightclub.
“Hey Lou, do you know where the American dream is?” she says.
“That whole chapter was transcribed from that audiotape,” Gonzo director Alex Gibney told RJ in 2010. “So you're led to believe that some of this content is real.”
Go to the horse's mouth for the final say. Below is Thompson's blurb that appeared on the book's original jacket…
“My idea was to buy a thick notebook, record everything that happened as it happened, and then send the notebook for publication without editing,” Thompson wrote. “But this was difficult, and at the end of the day we realized that we were essentially imposing a fictional framework on what started out as a piece of straight, crazy journalism.”
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