For No Good Reason Page #6

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is very admirable to me,

'cause in an odd way it's what we're

thinking at the back of our heads

but aren't capable

of getting it out.

These guys have

the kind of minds that

that comes out of them.

I mean, look at Ralph

as a person.

You never met

a warmer, generous...

He is not his paintings.

I don't know.

Everything's here

except the guns.

Guns?

Everything's

here except the guns.

He can hardly walk.

Yeah.

They must be in the car.

We found a spot where he

does his shooting. He likes to shoot.

And that's where

we set up the target.

Six.

When it stays open,

it's empty, see?

Yeah. Right.

Understand?

Yes.

Okay.

Just about.

Wow.

So he comes forward

and he was quite trembly

by this time and...

Two, three, four,

five, six, seven.

Here I go.

And he goes...

Bam! Bam! Barn! Bam! Bam! Bam!

Empties six rounds,

you see, like that.

There,

you cut his head off.

I said, "Well, William,

you've missed," you know.

They all went through his neck, you see.

So he said...

He's dead, man.

One of the privileges

working with Hunter

and William Burroughs was

they were perverse

in many ways

and yet incredibly honest.

I think what

attracted me to them

was the fact that

they were honest writers,

writing about real things

that they

actually experienced.

So in some ways one would say

they were journalist-writers.

Hmm.

They wrote about

what happened to them.

Yeah.

Isn't it awful?

It's awful.

And look how I look, as though

I'm, you know, in control.

Exactly.

And I'm not.

How many copies

of this got out?

About four million.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

Christ, he always puts me

down in this terrible way.

I'm shutting this off for a

minute 'cause I'm pissed off.

So, Ralph, was that the last

time you saw Hunter, at Owl Farm?

Yes, that was the last time. That was...

That was October...

September, October, 2004.

I had one blowup

today in my pants, and this is

- another blowup!

- Stop it.

So you keep doing it...

Stop it.

Don't do that. STEADMAN:

Please don't shout about it.

Well, I don't come into your house

and copy all your f***ing drawings

and then take them out

and run away with me, do I?

I'm not doing that.

Go on! F***ing well do

something, for Christ's sake!

You miserable son of a b*tch. What

the hell are you trying to do?

Sitting here in

this goddamn place!

I think

Ralph loved Hunter

and was hoping that Hunter would

be something he couldn't be,

a little more responsible

and a little more careful

and a little more generous.

Day one. The English

artist Ralph Steadman

sets off with a BBC film

crew for Aspen, Colorado,

to meet an old friend.

The inner meaning of the

commentary was so great.

It was like, you know,

jealous brothers,

or partners like Keith and

Mick or something like that,

that just, you know,

was gonna blow apart.

What I had

presented myself as

was a ready answer

to all your problems.

And I took it quite readily, and

that's why you illustrated the book.

It wasn't the only reason,

Hunter. It wasn't the only reason.

No one would have noticed it had

it not been for my illustrations.

No one.

What you're saying,

Ralph, is that

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

would not have been a...

The success it was.

...a success if it hadn't

been illustrated by you?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, that's the story,

in fact.

The story that was never told

was the story of my resentment,

my burning

desperate resentment.

That explains a lot,

doesn't it?

Yeah.

I think in Hunter's

heart, he loved Ralph.

Ralph was

a brother to Hunter.

Uh, and they were two

wonderful characters

and they had a great

collaboration and friendship.

But sometimes those things

tend to break apart,

especially when you've got

irascible personalities

and particularly

when you have, you know,

Hunter's, you know, problem

with drink and drugs.

You don't care?

I do care, actually.

You know that, Hunter,

but it's been

a f***ing hard ride

for all sorts of reasons.

Who do you wanna beat on?

Oh, for f***'s sake.

Hang on. I'm gonna

stop this thing now,

'cause I can't

talk to you like this.

Yeah, you get out of here.

What?

I'm starting to feel queer.

Oh, Christ.

He just realized

this was the death of fun.

There was no more fun.

And the idea of going into

an old people's home,

Hunter S. Thompson in

an old people's home,

can you imagine?

And he said, "I can't bear

the idea, Ralph.

"I've got this awful

image in my mind of

"me sitting there

strapped into the wheelchair."

They'd

have to strap him in.

Couldn't keep

him in it.

They'd strap him

in the wheelchair.

And he couldn't move.

And he could see out of

the corner of his eye,

there was an old crone

and she was crawling

across the floor towards him,

and he knew, instinctively,

she was going to

fondle his balls.

His wife, Anita, went

off to the health club

and she rang and said,

"Hi, honey."

And then there was

a certain faraway sound,

as though she wasn't

necessarily up to the phone,

when he put the gun in his

mouth and pulled the trigger.

And that was it.

Now, his son thought

he heard a book drop.

'Cause it goes like that.

Quite ironic, really,

when you think.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, it was kind

of that. He sort of...

The way I... Same thing, the

way I came to terms with it

was that this was

a man who dictated

the way he was

gonna live his life.

He was most certainly gonna

dictate the way he left.

Yeah.

And he did, you know.

He did exactly

that, yeah.

So...

It's sad, really.

Very.

I did love Hunter

and I miss him quite a lot.

Uh...

Rather a lot, actually.

Because he took away, when he

did what he did to himself,

he took with him

the raison d'tre for the

kind of work we did together.

It wasn't gonna happen again.

It was the finality of it

that perhaps is the most

shocking part for me.

Because that's what

happens to everything.

It disappears eventually.

JOE PETROL A lot of people

want a piece of Ralph's art,

and Ralph holds onto

most of his originals,

because he just does

not want to let them go.

And this way somebody can get a

piece of Ralph's original artwork.

Yeah, they are original.

Each one is an original.

And each one's an original because

I sign each one separately

and number it

out of an edition.

So that becomes the edition,

and the edition can be worth

quite a lot of money.

I'm a printmaker

and we sell prints

to, you know, Ralph's

collectors all over the world.

It gives me

a feeling of hope that,

you know,

I can keep the original

and I can still make money.

But I don't think that

it's good for me, in a way.

Because it

represses my spirit,

my natural spirit,

to just do another drawing.

And I think there's

something about that

which perhaps I don't like,

the idea that I'm not only

gonna sign this once

and then maybe twice,

or do the same drawing twice,

I'm gonna sign 800 of them.

Gonzo will not die.

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