Hunting for Hunter
This title will probably do more to raise the readership of my blog among my red friends than anything other than one denouncing Hillary for something obscure and yet serious, like the mishandling of top secret government document. But while the story has nothing to do with Hunter Biden and why right wing deflectors need a bane of their existence to distract them from all the very real, growing and harsh criticism of their man, Donald Trump, I feel it is always useful these days to start any conversation by reminding us of the peril we all face when people of conservative conviction feel threatened in their self-serving stance and need someone other than themselves to blame for the violent upheaval of the world. Now that my obligatory public service announcement is out of the way, allow me to get back to what I wanted to write about this morning, Hunter S. Thompson.
Hunter S. Thompson (the S. stands for Stockton and he always insisted on differentiating himself by including it) was the American journalist and author who is most famous for creating Gonzo Journalism, which is all about including the writer’s narrative in the midst of whatever he is reporting on. By almost any account, Hunter S. Thompson is not a meteoric force in the literary world, but for one brief moment or two in the period from 1967 to 1973 (more or less), he was a lit sparkler put right up to our faces, showing us the failure of the counterculture wars that had been so hard-fought in the 60s and that gave way to hedonistic discomania of the 70s. In a a strange way, Hunter S. Thomason is a perfect foil for Richard M. Nixon and all that he stood for in our memory. Stay with me, because this is serious stuff.
Nixon marked a transition from our post-war, serious, self-centered ways that ended our attempt at a Great Society initiative that grew out of the Camelot that was the brief shining light of John F. Kennedy. It is strange that a good old Texas boy like Lyndon B. Johnson (the guy who almost invented the pork in pork barrel politics) was the transitional carrier of that torch. But Nixon truly embraced his role as the man that dropped the torch and pissed on it by refusing to listen to the countercultural cries to end the Vietnam War and make the world a better place of love and happiness (Right on, brother!). Nixon will forever be defined not by his attempt to globalize our world through his outreach to China, but by those bumbling plumbers who put tape on a door lock in the Watergate office complex. He transitioned us from 1967 to 1973 and took us from a place of carefree hippie love to a place of settling into the realities of life and stagflation. As a self-righteous Quaker, it is strange that he would find himself to be so vilified for his trespasses.
Meanwhile, Hunter S. Thompson was coming off of spending a year with the Hell’s Angels and learning about life at the feet of Sonny Barger (who, by the way, just died this summer at age 83). Whatever counter-counterculture means, the Hell’s Angels epitomized that trend and kicked ass at the Rolling Stones’ Altamont Free Concert in late 1969. Meanwhile, Hunter S. Thompson joined the writing staff of Rolling Stone magazine and took himself in a very different, but no less decadent, direction by taking a strong anti-Nixon, anti-Vietnam stance while brandishing his personal pistols in public as much as Sonny Barger liked to do. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971) became Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 with the full assistance of the counter-cultural icon of Rolling Stone Magazine.
This all comes to mind because my lovely Kim got us tickets to a special workshop performance of what I think has a real shot at being the next Hamilton of the theater world. Last night we went to the La Jolla Playhouse, that great regional feeder theater for some of Broadway’s greatest hits (The Who’s Tommy, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Business Without Really Trying, Jersey Boys and Memphis to name a few). The show bears the working title of The Untitled Hunter S. Thompson Project and it was written (music and lyrics) by Joe Iconis (a cabaret acquaintance of Kim’s) and Gregory S. Moss, a young playwright who wrote the book for the show. Kim’s other cabaret friend, Lorinda, is one of the ensemble of characters who revolve around the dramatic and fascinating life of Hunter S. Thompson, as he becomes the bottle rocket of celebrities that have graced the times of American Baby Boomers. Everything about Hunter S. Thompson, including his portrayal by his pal and today’s version of himself, Johnny Depp, is a contradiction of terms and a red flag about the extremism of our current culture. But that’s not all.
What King George III in all his grandeur and madness is to Hamilton, Richard M. Nixon with his hands waiving in gestures of victory, is to The Untitled Hunter S. Thompson Project. It struck me that this foil of a character in both productions is an incredibly poignant reminder and deus ex machina of sorts to remind us of just how crazy times have gotten in figuring out what is mainstream, countercultural or counter-countercultural. If that sounds confusing, you should see how effective those two roles are in setting the stage for the main protagonists (Hamilton and Thompson) as they change the world we live in.
And there is the real point of all of this. Hamilton was not the central figure in our nation’s revolutionary evolution, but his behind-the-scenes role was more central to the birth of our nation than many of us realized until Lin-Manuel Miranda explained it to us. Hunter S. Thompson was just some kookie guy who shot himself, until this show reminded me of how central his role was in a movement and transition that I personally lived through and felt first-hand. And more than that, the words and music of the show are so very relevant to what we are going through today with Donald J. Trump (the Nixon and King George III character in our lives). I’m not sure who the Hamilton/Thompson character is in our real life moment (maybe Steve Bannon and maybe Pete Buttigieg), but that will likely reveal itself some day when we look back on the musical theater version of our times.
My recommendation is that we all need to stop hunting for Hunter and simply buy advance Broadway tickets in bulk to make our fortune on the next great expose of these crazy times we are living through. This show has set my mind spinning in so many directions, contemplating the entirety of the adult lives of my generation and how the world turns and what goes around comes around again and again and again.