This past week saw what would have been Hunter S. Thompson’s 75th birthday. Born July 18, 1937, the writer committed suicide in 2005 after suffering from poor health.

Novelist, sports columnist, political commentator, drug addict: as far as writers go, he was quite rare, able to keep up with his writing as he lived a life that would have destroyed others. In fact, it was his rampant alcohol and drug use that gave him material for his writings, which have proven to be profoundly influential.

His most famous work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, is a “roman a clef” of him and his friend traveling to Las Vegas to compose a report on a car race that ultimately would not be written. The two instead take heavy drugs, ruminate on American culture, and go looking for the American dream. Nothing is taboo here: rape and kidnapping play a part in the story, and Thompson himself knows that he is not above the people he satirizes. Terry Gilliam adapted it into a film in 1998, starring Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro.

The novel is probably the most well-known example of gonzo journalism, a style of journalism that Thompson popularized and was itself a part of the New Journalism movement of the 70s. Other writers who took part in this movement include the acclaimed Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer and Truman Capote. While traditional journalism is more about simply the facts, gonzo journalism is about first-person narratives; more about telling a story than reporting something. Thompson frequently wrote for Rolling Stone, and many of his articles were in that style, including his first, entitled “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved,” which can be found here online.

Thompson also wrote about politics. Much of this stemmed from his own personal interests. In 1970, he ran for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado. In 1972, he followed the election campaigns of Richard Nixon and George McGovern and wrote a series of article which were later collected in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72. He also wrote a book, Kingdom of Fear, featuring detailed essays and stories about rebelling against authority in a post-9/11 world.

Although toward the end of his life Thompson’s work consisted mainly of potboilers and collections of material he had done in his prime, he remained a figure to be reckoned with. He is, in a sense, much like Henry Miller. Although Thompson did not face censorship issues like Miller did, both pushed the envelope of what was considered acceptable for publication. Miller wrote about sex, Thompson drugs and madness and politics, often blending them together to create works that had a political commentary. Most times, it would have been impossible to create the same effect through other means.

Last year his novel The Rum Diary, which he had written during his twenties but which was only published in the 90s, was made into a feature film starring Johnny Depp. Although it received a mixed reception and failed at the box office, it proves that Thompson is still remembered. And with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas still widely read, it seems we will be in the shadow of Hunter S. Thompson for some time yet.

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Hunter S. Thompson was born in Louisville, Kentucky and is best known as the godfather of Gonzo Journalism. Taking the New Journalism of the 60s one step further, Thompson went to the heart of the action by becoming the star of his own reporting — whether by cycling with America’s toughest motorcycle gang, the Hell’s Angels, or downing a frightening collection of psychedelics in the name of the American Dream.

He contributed articles to Rolling Stone for many years, and ran a weekly sports column for ESPN Online before eventually taking his own life in 2005. The Rum Diary had lain forgotten in Thompson’s basement for many years and if not for a fateful visit by Johnny Depp to Thompson’s house, the novel may have never been published.

“I came across The Rum Diary with Hunter, almost accidentally,” Depp relates.  “We were in his house in Woody Creek downstairs in what was called The War Room, and there were just these endless boxes of stuff. I didn’t know what they were, so I started just pulling things out.

I stumbled upon what was called ‘The Rum Diary’ and he goes, ‘Oh Jesus, yeah, I wrote that in 1959,’ and I said, ‘Jesus Christ, let’s read this, let’s see what it’s about.’ So we get it out, started reading it. He said, ‘Maybe I should finally publish it.’ I was like, ‘Yeah you should publish it, it’s great.’’’

By that time, however, Thompson’s style had considerably developed from his early writing and returning to his young voice was a challenge. Deborah Fuller, who was Thompson’s secretary for 23 years, recalls, “When it came time to publish The Rum Diary, an editor from Simon and Schuster worked with Hunter, but they really had to control him.

He had evolved into a whole new writer, and he was embarrassed about some of it and wanted to change it. We all told him that was crazy. He wrote it when he was about twenty. To change it and make this young man’s novel more like his later Gonzo-style would have ruined the flavor.”

Before Thompson had even begun prepping the book to finally see the light of day, a movie adaptation was already cooking in his and Depp’s minds. “From that [first] conversation,” Depp says, “within about 20 minutes we were already talking about the movie rights and how we should produce this film together.”

Thompson’s suicide in 2005 kept him from seeing The Rum Diary brought to the big screen. Producer Graham King wanted to make sure that his legacy would be preserved with the film. “The film is a tribute to Hunter. It was amazing to have the opportunity to get involved in one of his stories, and who better to work with than Johnny Depp?”

Depp had been a long-time fan of director Bruce Robinson and initially approached him to direct another Hunter S. Thompson adaptation. “I met Johnny Depp about twenty years ago because of my first film, Withnail and I,” recalls Robinson “We got together in London. He asked me if I would direct Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

At the time I had decided that I didn’t really want to direct again. However, if I did, it would only be from a script I had written. By that time, it was too late; the screenplay had already been written.” Depp was determined to have Robinson and Thompson’s creative spirits eventually cross. As he puts it, “Bruce was always somehow in the back of my mind, and when The Rum Diary came up I said, ‘what about Bruce Robinson?’ Hunter said, ‘That’s the ticket, man.’

Hunter was truly into it, especially the fact that we had to get Bruce out of retirement!” “Then later, Johnny sent me a copy of ‘The Rum Diary’ and asked if I would be interested in adapting it into a screenplay,” says Robinson. “It was a nightmare at first. I couldn’t see how it could be adapted as a film as it has two lead characters, Yeamon and Kemp.

It was a long time before I realized what Hunter had actually done, which was to split himself down the middle into two characters. When I realized Yeamon was just a facet of Kemp, one of them had to go. Once I had solved that problem, I could see a way to write it, and decided to have a go.”

Depp recalls Robinson’s epiphany with equal enthusiasm. “Finally it came to him, which none of us ever recognized. Weirdly, Hunter said something to me years before that I hadn’t remembered. Early on, Hunter had said, ‘I should have you know I should have made these guys one, I should have made them me—but I made them both me.’ That’s what Bruce did. He had the instinct to make that happen.”

“The way I approached the adaptation of ‘The Rum Diary’ was to absorb what the book was, and then rewrite it,” Robinson says. “There are only three lines that Hunter wrote in the whole script. I wasn’t trying to copy him. You can’t because he was so unique, but hopefully, I was writing in his vernacular.”

Depp says that is exactly what Thompson wanted all along. “Bruce definitely went off page in terms of the book, but Hunter wanted to. He always wanted to. Hunter even talked to me about maybe taking this story to Cuba!” In addition to combining the characters of Kemp and Yeamon into one, the screenplay departs from the book in the way it deals with the representation of Puerto Rico.

“That’s a fundamental change in the movie, because the whole film is in support of the underdog side of Puerto Rico,” says Robinson. “It’s critical of the people who have come there to make a fast buck. Sanderson’s approach is almost like the old-time British imperialists, who pillaged a country for what they could get and then moved on.”

It took Robinson about five to six months to write the screenplay. “When I got the word back that they were going to make it, I was thrilled,” says Robinson. “However, when they asked me to direct it, I wasn’t, because I didn’t want to,” he laughs. “After the last unmentionable film I directed, I was really determined that I would never do it again.

I don’t like being in the public eye. I much prefer being locked in a room with a typewriter doing what I do, which is to write. So it wouldn’t have been difficult to say no, but because I liked the script myself, and because it was for Johnny, whom I like enormously, I thought I would give it a shot.”

King couldn’t have been more pleased with Robinson’s return to the director’s chair. “He’s got such an easygoing, come-what-may attitude behind the monitor. The DP was actually saying, ‘Maybe you should try this,’ and Bruce said ‘No, I’ve got it. I’ve got what I need. The movie’s in my head, so I know in the edit room I’m not going to be using this scene; why are we going to shoot it?’

That’s music to a producer’s ears! He commanded that crew so well. He’s such a soft spoken, gentle guy. Everyone loved and respected him.”

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Cinema-goers can soon enjoy the screen adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s Caribbean  adventure The Rum Diary. But before Johnny Depp stepped into the shoes of Paul Kemp, writer and director Bruce Robinson stepped into those of Thompson. Robinson first became a fan of Hunter S. Thompson’s work in the early seventies.

“My flat-mate flung a book at me and told me to read it,” recalls Robinson. “It was Fear and Loathing. I am not making comparisons, but I thought, ‘Jesus Christ, this guy is the kind of writer I want to be.’ I became an enormous fan because he spoke to my generation. He had managed to break out of the sterility of political coverage that had become so used to deference and innuendo, rather than the truth.”

“Hunter went in there roaring and raging,” Robinson says. “He always seemed like a hip Orwell to me. He spoke those same truths that I perceived in Orwell. He would always go for the jugular. I write quite a lot of political stuff myself and it’s an area that fascinates me. Hunter was a past master of the performance of the political and that’s what I always loved about him.”

“The thing that I initially connected with in regard to Hunter’s work was his honesty,” Depp says. “You read about these amazing experiences and you think, ‘That’s bullshit, it’s his imagination,’ but when you’ve lived with him, really spent time with him as I have, you realize that it’s all really true and more.”

For both Depp and Robinson, the core of The Rum Diary was the film serving as an origin story for Thompson. “It’s before Hunter became Hunter, or rather, it’s before Hunter Thompson became Dr. Hunter S. Thompson,” says Depp. “You start to see and feel and understand the elements that lead him to become Raoul Duke in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”

“There is a line in the movie where [Paul Kemp] says, ‘I’ve got no voice, I don’t know how to write like myself,’” says Robinson. “Although he is a writer, we never see him hitting the keys of a typewriter until the last fifteen minutes of the movie. That’s when he has found his voice. Found his inimitable rage.”

Graham King, producer on the final movie, found the humor and adventurousness to be among the most enticing aspects of the story. “People talk to me about it and they say, ‘This is going to be a dark story.’ It’s very Hunter and they go back to Fear and Loathing, but that’s not what this story is. It’s a lot of fun, it’s a fantastic ride!”

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