For No Good Reason Page #2

---

"Excuse me.

"Uh, are you...

Are you Ralph Steadman?"

He said, uh,

"Would you like a drink?"

Anyway, we went on

this binge for a week.

I was making notes

and drawing.

Hunter said,

"It's a filthy habit

"you've got there,

scribbling dark pictures.

"And around these parts

that's an insult."

He said,

"I've got a horrible feeling

"we're gonna have

to get out of here."

From that point on,

the weekend

became a vicious

drunken nightmare.

We both went

completely to pieces,

and since poor Steadman had no choice

but to take what came his way,

he was subjected to

shock after shock.

We sort of went

along with whatever happened,

and we'd made

that agreement

with ourselves, you know,

between each other.

"That's what we do. We just

go and see what happens."

"I'll do the drawings,

you write," you know?

So that became

the beginning of Gonzo.

Now, looking down

from the press box,

I pointed to the huge grassy

meadow enclosed by the track.

"That whole thing," I said,

"will be jammed with people,

"50,000 or so, most of

them staggering drunk.

"It's a fantastic scene,

thousands of people fainting,

"crying, copulating,

trampling each other

"and fighting with

broken whiskey bottles."

I think what he saw,

in our connection, was

somebody that somehow

saw the thing in pictures as

he saw it in words, you know.

And that seemed to me to be part

of the whole chemistry of it,

that our chemistry there

made Gonzo possible.

"What I'm trying to find,"

he said, Hunter,

"is a certain kind

of Kentucky face,

"the face of

the Kentucky Derby."

And the point is that

by the end of the week,

the very face

we were looking for

was us looking back

at ourselves in the mirror.

I don't recognize

anyone anymore.

Yeah. Ah.

What I in fact had done,

without realizing it,

was scored

a bull's-eye first time...

Yeah.

...on my first

visit to America.

I mean, I met up

with the one man

I needed to meet

in all the world,

in the whole of America,

to work with.

Yeah.

I got very depressed when I got

back on the plane to England,

because I was going

to have to go back

to a completely conventional

cartoon job.

And that really didn't fill

me with much happiness.

Let's go, Beanie.

Now, take it easy.

A bit... Ever so free.

A phone call

came and it was Hunter.

"Ralph,

I've got this manuscript.

"Could you do us

a dozen drawings

"of something that

could go with it?"

"Well," I said, "I'll try."

And I just, uh,

set about it.

Got myself

some booze as well,

'cause I seemed to need to be a

bit drunk to do it, you know.

I did about

a dozen drawings,

rolled them up in a tube

and sent them off.

"We were somewhere around Barstow

on the edge of the desert

"when the drugs

began to take hold.

"I remember

saying something like,

"'I feel a bit light-headed.

Maybe you should drive.'

"And suddenly there was a

terrible roar all around us

"and the sky was full of

what looked like huge bats,

"all swooping and screeching

and diving around the car,

"which was going

about 100 miles an hour

"with the top down

to Las Vegas."

When Fear and

Loathing in Las Vegas came out,

I think people

were stunned by it.

I mean, nobody had really

seen anything like that.

It was

a full-out celebration of

the most outrageous

kind of behavior,

and then it was so...

Funny and dangerous

and eccentric and wild.

Looks like it's gonna be a classic

of 20th century literature.

So you're down on the

main floor playing blackjack

and the stakes

are getting high.

When suddenly

you chance to look up

and there,

right smack above your head,

is a half-naked

14-year-old girl

being chased through the air

by a snarling Wolverine,

which is suddenly

locked in a death battle

with two

silver-painted Polacks,

who come swinging down

from opposite balconies

and meet in mid-air

on the Wolverines neck.

And no one had seen

anything like this before,

certainly not in

American illustration.

And the pictures really

weren't about the story,

but they were

a reflection of the story,

of what was

in Hunter's mind.

The casino scene, with all

the lizards, the hitchhiker...

I mean, those things

just have a life of their own,

because they're accompanied

by all this literature with it

and whole stories that go

with each illustration,

or, uh, illustrations to

go with each story,

depending on which

point of view you take.

I wanted to get

it out of my system.

It was something that was just

lying there waiting to erupt.

So it was a bit

like being sick.

I threw the pictures down

and they worked because they

were about something specific,

but they allowed me

a complete freedom to do...

It was as though

I was there.

Are we marking?

Do you feel like your lack of

drug-taking ever affected,

had an effect on your

relationship with Hunter?

No, no, in fact,

it was better that way.

It was better that we were

like chalk and cheese.

I mean, the whole idea of me being

like him would have been ridiculous.

Hunter, it's me!

Because he was

someone entirely different.

We didn't necessarily

see eye to eye.

We had entirely different

experiences of life.

And to him I was weird,

and to me he was weird.

Nice to see you.

Can I get some water?

Right, you ready?

Okay.

Wow. I like that.

Did you get that?

Great.

Oh, dear.

I like that one.

Well, this is

cartridge paper.

It's a good-quality,

very thick cartridge paper.

And, uh, this is Indian ink.

Mmm-hmm.

I like a brush...

For that kind of a stroke,

I couldn't have done it with

this one, for instance,

which is less weight.

But it might do something,

and it's lovely.

I love it,

what it does.

And I might do

another one down there.

And the way I flick, you just

simply have a flick of the wrist,

which is a sort of a proper

semicircle, in a way.

And then I've got

this here, you know,

and I could take

some of this and go...

Then I could, for instance...

An eye in there.

And I like the idea

of an eye in there

and a sense of some face

that's happening there.

Hmm.

And I blow like so.

And things happen.

What are you

doing right now?

Well, I'm pulling away the gesso

from underneath the color.

I think perhaps, you know,

art is just tricks, really.

In a way, I don't know

what there is there.

I mean, it's only a...

It started out as a

blank sheet of paper

and it's become

more than that.

There's an event

going on in there.

Yeah.

That's rather nice.

Take Francis Bacon.

He always seemed to manage to make

his pictures look like an event,

even though they

were not necessarily

specifically of somebody.

But he brought

excitement into an area

that was apparently,

at first glance, nothing.

And I found that to be

pretty amazing, really.

Do you make any use of preliminary

studies or sketches of any sort?

Yes, I do.

But after that, chance and what

I call accident takes over,

when consciously I don't

know what I'm doing.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes