Facing your Heroes - A reflection on Hunter S. Thompson

There are three sides to every story: Your perception of the truth, others perception of the truth, and the actual truth. Hunter S. Thompson had a rare gift for dancing between all three—often at once

I was sitting on the couch the other night watching videos on Youtube. This clip came up of Hunter S. Thompson interviewing on Late Night with Conan O’Brien back in 2003. I’m sure I’ve seen it before, but I thought it would be nice to revisit. It’s been awhile since I gave Hunter some undivided attention. So I put it on, and was pretty saddened by what I saw.

Hunter S. Thompson on Conan - Youtube

Hunter fumbled onto the stage after passing his mixed drink to an escort. His interview with Conan was… curt? I’m no stranger to Hunter’s drawl, but It was kind of difficult to make out what he was saying. He was mumbling in a register that I couldn’t quite make out. Conan did his best to move it along, but not to much avail. The outcome just felt jumbled and superficial, like most TV tends to be. I mean, here’s a popular late night personality hosting an antithesis of pop-culture. I can only imagine how daunting that could’ve been.

It felt like the true intention of the interview was to revisit a video clip of Conan hanging out with Hunter back in ‘97. The clip opens with Conan taking a shot of whiskey and then proceeding to fire heavy artillery at various cutouts scattered about the range. Anyone who’s read up on Hunter knows that this was pretty routine for him. In the end, Conan had his big camera moment, posing with an M16 in front of the flaming gorilla. The clip was significantly shortened from its original length, and tended to highlight some of Hunter’s more sporadic moments.

Conan proceeds to question Hunter about a recent shooting incident. Where Hunter explained how he was trying to scare off a bear from his assistants fromt door, and accidentally grazed her with shome shotgun pellets in the process. You can tell the conversation made Hunter a little uncomfortable, but he remained pretty nonchalant about the whole thing. As the interview came to a close, they never really got to talking about Hunter’s new book, or any of his work really. I feel like Conan was more so chasing the shock value instead of the philosophy. As if Hunter was another feather in Conan’s cap so to speak. I can see how the segment turned some heads back in 2003. Meanwhile, behind all the cameras, Hunter was on the cusp of ending his own life… It’s sad really.

I continued to venture through some videos, and landed on this recent interview with Johnny Knoxville. Boy… it gets pretty dark towards the end.

Johnny Knoxville on meeting Hunter S. Thompson - Youtube

Johnny had the pleasure of befriending Hunter in the last few years of his life, and talked about their encounter. He met up with him at a bar in New Orleans and could already feel that Hunter was at a low point. At the time, Johnny was also going through some struggles of his own. Feel free to give the video a watch for more info, because it’s really his story to tell and not mine.

The real takeaway from the interview is when Johnny says to “be careful how you choose your heroes”. This is a sentiment that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. More often than not what you see on the screen, or on the page, isn’t really what you get in the flesh. If anyone is an exception to that, I think Hunter is high up on the list. Although his methods were unorthodox, there’s no denying that he remained true to himself. For better or for worse.