CHAPTER 11

Fear and Loathing in Hollywood

The Artlessness of the Deal

The notorious author Hunter S. Thompson rarely traveled, but he had agreed to fly into Los Angeles to meet with us at Rhino Films to discuss a project or two. It wasn’t much of a surprise that he was almost an hour late in meeting us in the lounge at the hotel where we had booked him a room. He was dressed exactly as a fan of his writing would expect: casual, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, holding a Bloody Mary cocktail. He was accompanied by his former girlfriend, Laila Nabulsi. He was in good spirits. The dinner party included Steve Nemeth, his sister (my wife) Stephanie, my partner in Rhino, Richard, and Laila. We sat at the large table in the dining room of the Westwood Marquis Hotel. Hunter placed an initial order from the waiter: “another Bloody Mary, three Heinekens, a triple Chivas—in a big, pretty glass with lots of ice—and a bottle of Schramsberg Blanc de Noirs Champagne.”

Not too long after the waiter left, Hunter swept his right hand in a grand flourish, scooped up what looked like a blob of butter from the top of a ramekin and zeroed in on his nose. Sitting across from him as he pretended to snort cocaine, I thought, “Hunter is a funny guy.” I soon realized that it wasn’t a butter dish from the table that Hunter was holding, but a similar-sized container filled with cocaine. It was an audacious and possibly provocative gesture in a public place, but fortunately there had been no other diners seated nearby and no waiters hovering. Such flagrant behavior was not something I was comfortable with. Hoping that he would control his impulses made for a tense dinner. Hunter came across more like a character than a real person. After we finished our entrees, he requested one of every dessert for our table to sample. At the end of our dinner, he mumbled about needing to get in touch with Jack Nicholson in order to get some adrenalin to avoid having to call 911. I’d had enough of Hunter for the night. Steve went to Hunter’s room and encountered actor Don Johnson coming out of the bathroom with a plate full of cocaine.

From whatever deranged behavior Hunter revealed in his autobiographical breakthrough Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, to that depicted in subsequent writings and at times reported in the news, the surprise was that producing the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas movie seemed to bring out the worst in peoples’ behavior, with very little of the misbehaving being attributed to Hunter. It was as if the talent and the dealmakers were the victims in a small town where everybody goes crazy, like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers—except the bad behavior on display here, I suspect, was not a freak occurrence.

I was a fairly new subscriber to Rolling Stone when, in the fall of 1971, I was galvanized by “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” a two-part article written by Hunter S. Thompson. It was presented as factual—Thompson had tape-recorded part of the journey and taken copious notes—but the descriptions were so outrageous, especially the consumption of drugs, I had to presume that the truth was heavily fictionalized. Most of all, it was funny.

I read everything he wrote, mostly in the pages of Rolling Stone, and took interest in his campaign to run for sheriff in Aspen. I bought Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when it was issued as a paperback and his other books as they were published. His first book, Hell’s Angels, was difficult to find in those pre-Internet days, so I ended up reading it over a number of afternoons in the UCLA Research Library.

Early in 1971 Hunter was assigned to write an article for Scanlan’s Monthly magazine about the mysterious death of Los Angeles newsman Ruben Salazar, following a Vietnam War protest march that turned into a riot in East Los Angeles on August 29, 1970. Salazar was taking a break from covering the event, having a beer in the Silver Dollar Café, when a deputy sheriff fired a tear gas projectile into the bar. It struck Salazar and killed him. Because Salazar had been critical of the police’s interactions with Mexican Americans in East Los Angeles, many thought the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had deliberately targeted him.

It was while working on his story that Hunter felt Oscar Acosta could be a good source for background information. Acosta was an activist Chicano lawyer who had been a friend of Hunter’s for a few years by that point. Hunter wanted to get at the root of the problem in the community and see if Acosta was aware of any police conspiracy. The problem was that Acosta was always in the presence of bodyguards from the militant Brown Berets. He was defending a number of Mexican Americans who were charged with setting a series of fires at the downtown Biltmore Hotel during Governor Reagan’s speech to four hundred Mexican American educators. Members of his retinue were suspicious of Hunter because he looked like a (non-Latino) member of the Establishment. In order to get Acosta to talk freely, to get him away from any surveillance or wiretaps, or worse yet, a bodyguard who might be a police informant, Hunter suggested during a meeting in the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel that the two of them drive to Las Vegas. Hunter could get their expenses covered by accepting an assignment from Sports Illustrated to cover the Mint 400 motorcycle race, starting March 21.

While holed up in a room at the Ramada Inn in Arcadia, California, across the street from the Santa Anita race track, Hunter found it emotionally grueling to write the Salazar article. After he was through with his day’s work, he wrote about his trip with Oscar to Las Vegas for relief. The natural humor of this composition contrasted with the seriousness of the Salazar piece. When Scanlan’s folded, “Strange Rumblings in Aztlan” found its way into Rolling Stone. Towards the end of April, Oscar and Hunter went back to Las Vegas to attend the National District Attorneys Association’s Conference on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, primarily as a means to get more material. Hunter has referred to the resulting article as “a vile epitaph for the Drug Culture of the Sixties.”

“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream” was published in two parts in Rolling Stone in November. Instead of using his real name, Hunter chose the pseudonym Raoul Duke. He did this because he didn’t want the depravity he reported to affect his ability to get clearance from the White House to cover the 1972 presidential campaign. Similarly, he attempted to protect Acosta by referring to him as Dr. Gonzo, a Samoan rather than a Mexican American, because the description of his behavior and drug taking might have impaired his status with the State Bar of California. Acosta relished the notoriety that came with the popularity of the piece. Random House was ready to publish the book version when their lawyers requested that Acosta sign a libel release, which he would only agree to if he were properly identified. He was also sensitive about being referred to as a “300-pound Samoan attorney,” rather than a 250-pound Chicano lawyer. It wasn’t feasible for Hunter to make changes to the text, so the two of them were properly identified in a photo on the book’s back cover, taken while they were in the lounge at Caesar’s Palace. The hardcover was published in July 1972, with Hunter using his real name as the author. Inspired by the attention, Acosta wrote two books. He was a paid-up member of the California Bar when he disappeared under mysterious circumstances in Mazatlan, Mexico, in 1974, in what some have speculated was a drug-deal gone bad.

Through the years there have been many attempts to turn the book into a feature film. Max Palevsky made his fortune as a pioneer in computer technology. He stabilized an insolvent Rolling Stone magazine when he invested $200,000 in the company in early 1971 and became a director and board chairman. During this time he became friendly with Hunter. As a side-deal to a loan he made to Hunter, Palevsky optioned the rights to Fear and Loathing for Cinema X, the film production company he co-owned, with the contract written on a napkin in a bar. He slated Vernon Zimmerman to direct. Zimmerman’s recent film, American International Pictures’ The Unholy Rollers—which starred Playboy’s Playmate of the Year Claudia Jennings as a roller derby skater—had been released in November 1972. Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert had a lot of nice things to say about the film, especially its “tough, sleazy vulgar vitality.” Zimmerman, in turn, hired that film’s writer, Howard B. Cohen, to pen the Fear and Loathing screenplay that was completed in March 1973. Cohen was one-quarter of the Conception Corporation, an excellent comedy ensemble similar to the Firesign Theatre.

Three guys calling themselves Shark Productions—Shark being the nickname of the white Cadillac convertible Raoul Duke drove in the book—optioned the property in 1975. John Jergens, heir to the hand lotion fortune, joined Shark with additional capital. Through the years many scripts were written, including one by Larry McMurtry for which he was paid $15,000. McMurtry is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove, and for cowriting the screenplay for the Brokeback Mountain movie. At one point Jack Nicholson was considered for the role of Raoul Duke, teamed with Marlon Brando as Dr. Gonzo.

A few years later as the popularity of Saturday Night Live (SNL) increased, it was Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi who were offered the roles. (Murphy Dunne, also from the Conception Corporation, backed up Aykroyd and Belushi as keyboardist in the Blues Brothers Band.) The movie wasn’t made that time, either. Aykroyd and Belushi had Hunter come to New York to attend a taping of SNL. While there, he became enamored with Laila Nabulshi, who was an associate producer for the show. Laila had an exotic name and the alluring face of a woman of intrigue, but it was her sense of humor and mischievousness that drew them together. They became romantic. She moved in with Hunter in 1979 and helped him with his projects.

The book’s two main characters, essentially, were the focus of 1980’s Where the Buffalo Roam, which drew from Thompson’s expanded writings. The movie, which starred Bill Murray of SNL as Thompson, was poorly received, critically and commercially. Hunter pocketed $100,000 from the production.

The following year Hunter and Laila went to London to attend a performance of Fear and Loathing in a small, theatrical setting, upstairs at the Latchmere Pub. That gave Laila the impetus to try to realize a feature film from the book. For a time Jergens provided the funds to pay writers to have more scripts written.

Laila succeeded Shark and formalized a new agreement with Hunter in 1987 in which she had seven years to make the film. She hadn’t interested anybody when writer Bill Stadium introduced her to Steve Nemeth in 1992. As Richard and I were running our record company, we couldn’t devote that much time to the film business, so Steve became our in-house producer. He thought this would be the perfect movie with which to launch Rhino Films. Laila sent Hunter a fax telling him that we were good guys and that we wanted to make the movie. We subsequently spoke to Hunter on the phone.

In June a number of our family members went to London for the confirmation ceremony in Westminster Abbey of Stephanie and Steve’s Uncle Cyril’s year term as Lord Mayor of Westminster. Laila put us in contact with Ralph Steadman, who had complemented Hunter’s writing with his own outrageous illustrations. I first became aware of Steadman from his caricatures of the members of the Who on their “Happy Jack” single picture sleeve in 1967. Ralph took the train from Kent to meet Steve and me for afternoon tea at Fortnum & Mason.

In contrast to the perverse characters he realizes in his work, Ralph comes across avuncular, and with his bald head he reminded me of the actor Peter Boyle (who, incidentally, played Lazlo, a part similar to Dr. Gonzo, in Where the Buffalo Roam). Ralph was supportive, but despite our interest, didn’t think the book would ever be made into a movie. He was still angry with Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner for never having returned his original artwork. Ralph’s resign gave us more resolve to try to get the movie made. We didn’t want to waste everybody’s time (all over again). I reread the book on the flight back to Los Angeles.

Although we were charged with moving forward, Laila changed gears. Here, Steve and I were advancing toward the football to kick it like Charlie Brown in the Peanuts comic strip, and she, like Lucy, snatched it away. Our initial contracts had been generated, but before they were signed, Laila decided to try to make the film with Jake Scott, Ridley’s son, who had directed a number of music videos and had a desire to direct feature films. Laila thought they could produce the film through Ridley’s production company which had a deal with Paramount Pictures. The first step for them was to write a script together. I took note of the “Peri Picks” column in an October 1992 issue of Newsweek that listed Fear and Loathing as one of five “hottest” books being read on college campuses that fall, remarkable for a twenty-year-old book.

By November, Hunter and I had established a rapport. As a consolation of sorts, Laila gave Hunter her approval for us to generate another project together, for cable TV. I had taken note of the miniseries format, specifically Sydney Pollack’s Fallen Angels, John Landis’ Dream On, and Robert Zemeckis’ Tales From the Crypt. I wanted to do something similar with Hunter’s edgy writings. Hunter and I engaged in a series of faxes that we sent to each other. I think I matched him pretty well. An early one from him used the letterhead from our nation’s White House. I responded with one I had from a hotel in London, also called the White House.

I came up with a concept I thought would work. A Hunter-type freelance journalist lives in a remote cabin. Every show would start with him telling his recent adventure to his friend who would sketch as the story unfolded. This was similar to the way the Sherlock Holmes stories commenced, with Holmes recounting to his chronicler and friend Dr. Watson in the confines of their shared apartment. The artist was, of course, based on Steadman, with the expectation that he would provide the illustrations for the show. The Wild Wild West, a science fiction TV western from the late 1960s (made as a feature film starring Will Smith three decades later), was the first show that I remember that used illustrative art to define chapters—commercial breaks.

Then Came Bronson was a TV program that aired for one season, 1969-1970, starring Michael Parks as a disillusioned newspaper reporter who took off on his motorcycle every show for an adventure. In addition to appealing to the countercultural lifestyle, the show was unique as Bronson traveled to a different location every week and interacted with different characters. Similarly, the reporter in my idea would be assigned a different story every week and, like Thompson, would end up getting involved with the characters, participating in the event and changing the outcome. I thought I would be able to draw upon Hunter’s collected works for the episodes. In reading and in some cases rereading his compendiums, there was very little to draw upon. Hunter was open to my concept, but he was pushing for his idea.

Hunter was passionate for “Off-Duty Cops.” In one fax he wrote: “You will be at the mercy of a far more Sinister System, the Massive coast-to-coast Network of half-mad, brutal and frequently Psychotic Off-Duty Cops, WHO WILL DO ANYTHING FOR MONEY.” His lead detective character, F. X. Leach, had a wife who “suffers from terminal Tourette’s syndrome, and is also a Binge Drinker with a record of Public Violence.” Hunter had no ideas for stories, only to say that they would be true. I personally wasn’t interested in his concept, nor did I think it was a show that people would want to see, much less one that could be sold.

Prior to Hunter coming to Los Angeles to meet us, Laila got him to extend her start date on Fear and Loathing two additional years. The instructions Hunter gave us for the airline were: “Tell them I’m the Dalai Lama, traveling in disguise for spiritual reasons—and also that I need a wheel-chair, a large Lap Robe, and a Fat Young Boy for me to fondle and pray over during the flight to L.A., just kidding.” Hunter was able to hitch a ride with actor and neighbor Don Johnson on Johnson’s private jet.

When I saw Hunter in his room at the Westwood Marquis on December 1, the day after our dinner, it was apparent that he muttered, which meant that it was hard for me to hear everything he was saying even though we were the only ones in the room. It was a pleasant visit, getting comfortable with one another, but Hunter didn’t offer much in the way of ideas. During that visit and at other times he asked, “Are we going to have fun?” I thought there was something childlike about that verbalized request. The sole reason Fear and Loathing was written was because Hunter had fun with the process. I was naïve; I didn’t recognize the harbinger. I encouraged fun in the workplace as well as home, but for me there would be no fun because I was most responsible for the project. I tried to get him to visit Rhino, thinking he would be impressed with our organization and have more confidence in us. Even though the office was little more than a mile from the hotel, he didn’t make it. He flew out the next day, with Johnson.

Unlike most record (or film) companies, we were very conservative with expenses. For his two-night stay, Hunter had spent almost $300 on room service (remember, it didn’t include his first or last night’s dinners) and another $120 in mini bar charges. Hunter wasn’t totally insensitive to our economics. By getting a ride with Johnson, he saved us on the airfare from Aspen, so I didn’t carp on the room charges. Before coming into town, I asked him what kind of car he wanted me to rent for him. He requested a Bugatti. I didn’t know what that was, but I soon found out: an expensive French race car that was no longer in production. We rented him a Mercedes Benz. The day he checked out I got a call from Adele Baughn in our human resources department. It seemed that the previous night Hunter and Laila had consumed too much alcohol at a restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard to feel comfortable enough to drive back to the hotel in Westwood, so they took a cab. The next morning the car wasn’t in the restaurant’s parking lot. It seemed typical that Hunter lost a car. I don’t know if it was ever located.

Towards the end of February 1994 Hunter came into town, this time staying at the Sunset Marquis. We had finalized an agreement to work together to develop the TV show. He requested the option money be delivered in cash in a paper bag. I brought the agreement and a check in a brown paper bag. In exchange, as a symbol to seal the deal, “like the Indians would,” according to Hunter, he gave me a multifunction hand tool.

Laila’s collaboration with Jake Scott hadn’t advanced the project or even resulted in a screenplay she liked. She once again offered us the Fear and Loathing movie, and the TV show was put aside. We optioned the book in February 1995, with Laila getting Hunter to extend the start date through January 1997. Based on Steve’s strong desire that Fear and Loathing should be Rhino Films’ debut feature and his confidence that we could get a studio to fund the production, we paid Hunter $50,000 towards the purchase price. Using Pulp Fiction’s $8 million cost as a benchmark—because it also had an edgy tone—we thought we could produce our movie for $5 million. Within the next few weeks Steve had conversations with production executives at the studios. He thought that one would option the property from us and pay to have the script written. Only Fine Line made an offer, but the $15,000 option fee didn’t come close to what we had advanced to Hunter, so we declined.

Johnny Depp and John Cusack were friendly with Hunter and had the inside track to play the lead role. We’d also heard from the agents representing Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves, Sean Penn, Nicholas Cage, and Kevin Spacey, but they weren’t aware of our low budget. Depp met Hunter through a mutual friend at the Woody Creek Tavern, Christmastime 1995. Cusack had codirected his brother Bill and Jeremy Piven in the New Crime Production of the book in late 1991 at the Gallery Theater in Chicago. Cusack and Depp were fine actors who we would have been happy with, but they weren’t particularly hot at the time. I would have preferred Tim Hutton, who was one of Steve’s best friends, because he looked like Hunter. After winning an Academy Award for best supporting actor in Ordinary People, he had squandered his appeal by making poor career choices. Depp lobbied harder for the role with Hunter and got the job. He agreed to work within our budget for a fee of $500,000, well below his usual quote. In hindsight, Cusack might have been the better choice. His career took off the following year with starring roles in Grosse Pointe Blank and Con Air, and he might have given a more appropriate acting interpretation. In addition, at six foot three inches, he was closer in height to Hunter, which meant he was more physically imposing (like Hunter) than the shorter Depp.

Finding a director who could convey the elements in the book and work within our proposed budget would prove to be a challenge. Jeff Stein wrote and directed the Who’s 1979 documentary The Kids are Alright. He had directed the most consistently imaginative videos aired on MTV in its formative years. His direction for the Cars’ “You Might Think” won the first MTV Video Music Award. Steve and I met with Jeff, but he was dealing with a personal issue at the time, and we didn’t feel we had enough of a support system, like at a studio, to take a chance in giving him his first (nondocumentary) feature film opportunity.

Laila suggested Lee Tamahori and Alex Cox. Lee, a native of New Zealand, made an impressive feature film debut as a director with Once Were Warriors. Laila flew out to Aspen with Lee and his projected writer, Pat Kelly, to meet with Hunter at his house on February 23, 1996. Lee and Hunter bonded over firing guns in Hunter’s backyard. I heard that his subsequent film Mulholland Falls, due to be released at the end of April, wasn’t very good, and I developed reservations. I wasn’t displeased when financial negotiations reached an impasse.

Initially I wasn’t interested in Alex Cox, either. I liked two movies he had directed, Repo Man and Sid and Nancy, but then he hit a creative slide. Laila, Steve, and I met with Cox, but nothing he said impressed me. Steve met with Leon Ichaso, who was familiar with drug culture, having directed Wesley Snipes in Sugar Hill and Don Johnson in a number of Miami Vice episodes. So, not counting Jeff Stein, under consideration for director of a movie that takes place in Las Vegas, with characters in part searching for the American Dream, we had a Cuban, a Brit, and a New Zealander. The Brit was chosen.

Steve’s oldest sister was married to Hy Zacks during this period. Zacks was an accountant and lawyer who wanted to help his brothers-in-law realize their ambitions to produce movies for the incipient Rhino Films imprint. He introduced Steve and me to one of his clients, Leslie Alexander, a very successful bond trader, originally from New Jersey and now living in Boca Raton, Florida. He reminded me of the character Dustin Hoffman played in the movie Rain Man: his anxiety manifested itself in a slight speech impediment and facial tics, and he was a wiz with numbers. He didn’t seem to be particularly interested in the film industry. It was more a gambler’s throw of the dice in a new area of business for him. Alexander was in the process of buying the Houston Rockets basketball team. He asked me if I wanted to invest, but I didn’t have a spare million lying around. It would have been a good investment.

When somebody is offering you money to make a film, you tend not to ask many questions. Given that he was a client of our brother-in-law’s, we didn’t ask. In September 1995 we contracted with Alexander to cofund with us our first feature production, Plump Fiction (a parody of Pulp Fiction) and possibly other films. In August the following year our film was completed, but unsold, when we sent Alexander a proposal offering him to fund the entire $5 million budget of Fear and Loathing. Alexander agreed. We started spending money. When we were confident that Johnny Depp wanted to star, we increased our budget to $6 million and Alexander agreed to that. We continued spending. Alexander then changed the deal. He wanted us to kick in a million dollars. We didn’t intend to do that, but since the clock was ticking, we reluctantly capitulated.

One issue in making a film is timing, a window where talent is available for the duration of the production. If there are too many delays, an actor might already have been committed to make a movie that would overlap on the now-delayed production, or an antsy actor might take another acting job rather than waiting for one that might disappear. During this time we were forwarding information on our proposed contracts and budgets to Alexander. On November 20 I faxed a draft of the revised deal points to Alexander and Zacks, and Zacks said he thought Alexander would agree to them.

Cox and his writing partner/girlfriend Tod Davies had finished the screenplay. Actually we found out later that Davies had written well over 90 percent. Steve thought Benicio Del Toro would make a good Dr. Gonzo because of his performance in The Usual Suspects. On the evening of November 21, there was a read-through of the screenplay in Rhino’s main conference room. In a read-through, you’re trying to get an idea of the rhythm of the dialogue, if any segments are too long, too boring, need clarification, etc.

It was a no smoking building, but Depp refused to comply. In the course of the evening he drank a six-pack of Rolling Rock Beer. I thought of sequestering the bottles to sell them on eBay, but it’s not something I would have done. They went into the recycling bin. Not realizing that Depp was imitating Hunter’s barely audible mumbling, which included displaying no emotion in his rendering, I was put off. Even worse was Del Toro’s stumbling. How could anybody get an idea if the dialogue was working? Only later did Steve inform me that Del Toro—an overall exemplary actor—suffered from dyslexia. I did not find the read-through reassuring or beneficial.

In December Alexander wanted to change the deal again. By the end of the year we had no signed agreement with Alexander, he had given us no money, and we had spent $450,000 (in preparing the movie for a late January start date) when we hadn’t intended to invest any of our own money at all. Actually the money was advanced from the record company, but Richard and I were on the hook for it. We tried into January to come to an agreement with Alexander, but we couldn’t. Our late January start date would be a problem if we didn’t have the financing in place. We were able to get Hunter to grant us an extension until March by advancing him $32,000.

On January 12, 1997, Cox and Davies visited Hunter at his home. Initially they were invited, and then discouraged from coming; they showed up anyway. It didn’t work. Cox wasn’t interested in joining Hunter in watching football on TV, and he spurned the sausage Hunter had specially cooked because he and Davies were vegetarians. More offensive to Hunter was Cox’s desire to animate a scene in the movie, the so-called wave speech. He was referring to the metaphorical crest of the wave that represented the fullest impact of the optimistic values of the 1960s, before it dissipated. It was an important passage for Hunter, and he was offended that Cox wanted to cheapen it by making it a “cartoon.”

Cox was on the outs with Hunter, but he claimed not to have sensed it. Soon thereafter, he attempted to get chummy with Johnny Depp and visited him at the club he co-owned, The Viper Room on the Sunset Strip. In support of Hunter’s feelings, Depp in essence told Cox that he would not work with him. In early February Cox invited me to dinner with Davies at a restaurant in Santa Monica. I responded to his friendliness. He seemed to appreciate my musical ideas—or was he just being solicitous in hopes of keeping the job?

Steve made a deal with Patrick Wachsberger for his company, Summit Entertainment, to finance the film and represent the foreign sales. With Cox on shaky ground as director, Wachsberger engaged Jack Rapke at the Creative Artists Agency, who suggested Terry Gilliam. Wachsberger also thought he could get more money for the foreign rights with Terry as the director, which meant a budget closer to what Terry had been accustomed. We all liked the idea of Gilliam, primarily because he was so visually imaginative. At the end of the month it was clear we would need more time. Steve negotiated an extension on the start date through May for an additional $15,000.

As a rock movie in spirit, there would be enough music used in the film to make an enticing soundtrack album. Even though it was a Rhino Film, I thought it would be too risky for Rhino to expend the big advance for the soundtrack rights, but other labels were interested. Jolene Cherry, whom I met when she started out in the business as record producer Mike Chapman’s assistant—later his girlfriend—alerted her boss, Doug Morris, the head of the Universal Music Group, about the film. He called me to inquire about the soundtrack rights. Richard and I had previously reported to Morris, but in a move that proved to be disastrous, he was fired from his position as US head of the Warner Music Group two years prior to this. He then was hired by Universal and built that company into the industry’s leader as Warner’s business declined. We had a good relationship with Morris, but I hadn’t spoken to him since he left Warner. Morris wasn’t a film buff and wasn’t hip enough to have been familiar with Fear and Loathing when I let him know of our interest in 1992.

I told Morris I would consider a Universal label if he could interest the film company (they were owned by the same corporation) in distributing our movie. It wasn’t an easy request. Morris called Casey Silver, the head of Universal Pictures, who was interested primarily because Terry’s last film, Twelve Monkeys, had made money for Universal. I set a deal in motion with Silver for Universal to take over the financing, distribution, and ownership of the film in the United States, and in the foreign territories in which Summit hadn’t already entered into contracts. Jolene thought the deal we were looking for was too rich for her division, so Morris had me set up meetings with Universal’s DreamWorks and Geffen. Both were cold at the time and in need of a hit—neither had an album in the top fifty. Doug Mark, one of Steve’s best friends from childhood and now a music attorney, negotiated a deal with Eddie Rosenblatt at Geffen for an advance against royalties of $1,250,000.

In mid-March we received notice that Les Alexander was suing us. He felt that he should have half of Rhino’s profits, even though he reneged on his verbal agreement to finance the film. The law firm representing us in the litigation conducted a LexisNexis search on him. Most revealing was a lengthy article, “Greed Head,” from February’s Houston Press, the city’s alternative newspaper. It was subtitled: “There’s darkness at the edge of Clutch City, but one thing is clear, Les Alexander will get his. And maybe yours, too.” The article is best summarized by this passage: “But since Alexander bought the NBA franchise in August 1993, his organization has left behind a lengthy trail of fired employees, stiffed vendors and angry sponsors. And their stories are remarkably consistent—a litany of broken agreements, unpaid bills and a mean-spirited cheapness that borders on pure greed.” In essence, it seemed that Alexander used his deep pockets to bully people, and this seemed like what he was doing to us. Bob Bustman, the writer from the Houston Press, surmised that Alexander had difficulty relating to and empathizing with people. Alexander and his (then) wife were supporters of PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. But it seemed that ethics, when it came to people, were of lesser consideration. He appeared to weigh transactions with a legal or liability perspective, rather than to consider the moral or humane impact. Given this insight, I wasn’t going to let Alexander bully me, even if it cost me—and it did. If I gave into him, it would only perpetuate his bad behavior with others.

Alexander was shortsighted in attempting to sue us. His first and biggest mistake was initiating action prior to the movie coming out. He was banking on a big movie, with a settlement awarding him a portion of the profits. The movie tanked, so there were no profits. He should have waited until after the movie was released to see how it performed. Zacks told me that a primary reason why Alexander made the deal with Rhino Films was because of my integrity. I’m guessing that he forgot about that, and that he didn’t realize how staunchly I would defend that integrity. I spoke to Zacks to appeal to Alexander, but he wasn’t able to deter him. We spent money on mediation, but the mediator wasn’t effective.

On March 25 we received a letter from Alex Cox’s representative, stating, “fire Laila Nabulsi or Alex Cox will not direct the movie.” For various reasons, that wasn’t going to happen. Sensing that he was out anyway, it might have been a matter of saving face. Reluctantly, because of Directors Guild stipulations, we later settled with Cox. Two checks were sent to his company, Commies from Mars, for $62,500 (half from Rhino, half from Universal). Cox and Davies also made $46,800 for the screenplay that wasn’t used. In addition, we had to settle with three people he had hired to work on the preproduction, and that cost us $5,000.

At this point we were in a precarious state. We didn’t have signed agreements from the talent, we spent our own money without intending to, and we needed to get an extension from Hunter. We also got the feeling that if Hunter refused to extend, Laila could take the elements we had put together and go somewhere else, cutting us out of the action and the money we had spent. From here on out Laila claimed that she was acting in our interests, but we sensed that she was being duplicitous.

In order to protect our position, Steve threw down his trump card. If Hunter didn’t extend and if everyone didn’t formalize the deals their agents had verbally agreed to, Steve would commence a production by the contracted start-by date with the original low budget and with Alex Cox directing. If Depp bailed, we would get John Cusack (or another actor) to replace him. Depp’s agent at International Creative Management, Tracey Jacobs, reacted most vehemently. Her profane-infused tirades would have made her a natural candidate to play the wife with Tourette’s syndrome in Hunter’s “Off-Duty Cops.” She was a serial harasser. She would call Steve much earlier than normal business hours, at six or seven in the morning, awakening him with a typical opening like “You’re no Scott Rudin and I’m a cunt.” Johnny Depp called Steve at the office to inform him, “I’m in a tree outside your window, looking at you, jerking off.” Steve was shocked. When he first met Johnny he thought he was a nice guy. He hung out at his house and drank draft beers with him. Steve managed a comeback: “I didn’t know you found me that attractive.”

It was all a bluff. Where would we have gotten the money? But the other side didn’t know that. It worked. It got everybody focused, and Hunter granted us an extension—for more money, of course. As a consequence, Steve alienated Laila, Terry, and Johnny. He was excluded from having anything to do with the production, and he was the target of vitriolic verbal and written assaults.

In May, Terry and his writing partner Tony Grisoni got to work on the screenplay. With their initial draft and two subsequent drafts—that were then budgeted—they failed to comply with Universal’s approved budget of $17,500,000. This caused more crucial delays, which contributed more stress.

On the morning of June 18, I met with Terry to give him my ideas on the music. One approach, which I don’t believe anybody had done, was to use only songs that were played on the radio in the two-month span of the two trips. Four of the six songs mentioned in the book were from the period. The other was to draw from more obscure songs from that date and before. For example, I wanted to use “1970” by (Iggy and) the Stooges to establish the time. For a scene when we hear and then see the Shark as it comes into view, I wanted the audience to hear the banshee-styled wails of Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.” Led Zeppelin had not granted a film license for one of their records since Fast Times at Ridgemont High in 1982. I thought it would be a coup to get Led Zeppelin. The song was from the period and it would work with the scene. I thought we had a chance with the otherwise reluctant group because the request wasn’t for “Whole Lotta Love” or their other more popular songs. In addition, a couple members had invested in the Monty Python film The Holy Grail and had made money, so they might have been positively disposed toward ex-Python Gilliam as director. He didn’t seem receptive to any of my suggestions. For that scene he used a song from 1968, Big Brother and the Holding Company’s “Combination of the Two.”

Another idea I had was to have the Doors provide the score. In 1978, seven years after Jim Morrison died, the three surviving members reunited in the studio to create the musical backing for a number of poems Morrison had recorded in the year before his death. I found the result, released as An American Prayer, inspired. Because their sound naturally conveyed an ominous feeling, I thought their soundtrack would complement the story.

There was a party given by one of Hunter’s friends at a home in the Hollywood Hills prior to production. Hunter welcomed my wife and me to sit with him on lounges in the patio. Singer Warren Zevon and actor Harry Dean Stanton hovered nearby. Hunter was gracious and mannered in a way that made him seem to us like a Southern gentleman. Stephanie continued to chat while I wandered off and broke the ice with Johnny Depp by asking him about his rock band days in Florida. He seemed shy, and his manner was low-key. We talked about amplifiers, and I asked him what his favorite group was. I was surprised and pleased when he mentioned the 1960s band the Zombies, as they were also among my favorites.

Benicio Del Toro asked me my vision for the movie. It was the only time anybody in the production asked me that question. I said hello to Jesse Dylan, who was directing rock videos and short films. Mostly I chatted with director Bob Rafelson, who had been Hunter’s neighbor for thirty years.

On July 1 Steve received an insulting voice mail message from Terry, who expressed his anger that the production needed more money, and that some of his crew had threatened to quit: “What the fuck are you doing? … We’re getting in deeper and deeper shit and you guys are playing your stupid games with money … stop pissing around … You’ll want to talk to somebody to learn to make movies, and then you can talk to people {meaning him}. Until then, pay the money and then maybe one day you’ll learn how to make movies!” Steve was shaken up. He played the message for a few people, including his girlfriend at the time, actress/writer Carrie Fisher. The following day she left a message on Steve’s voice mail, deadpanning, “Where’s my goddamn money?”

At this point, Terry still hadn’t submitted a shooting script with an approved budget. By midmonth Universal had taken over the financing of the movie. As late as July 30, Universal’s business affairs vice president Jeffrey Korchek wrote a letter to Terry’s designated producer, Patrick Cassavetti, telling him that the proposed budget was “way in excess” at nearly $19 million. Finally, Terry came in with a script that was approved. When Steve questioned it, Terry said that they wrote that one only so they could get it approved, not that they thought it would work within the budget. Korchek was displeased when Gilliam later went over budget by more than $2 million, as that meant that Universal couldn’t benefit from taking over Summit’s foreign positions, and using the commission to reduce their cost.

The movie commenced production on July 26. On July 30 attorney Thomas F. Hunter wrote a four-and-a-half-page, single-spaced letter to Randy Paul, our production lawyer, on behalf of his clients regarding the “backend splits” (profit participation): “… you were about to show us your appreciation by trying to fuck us with some tortured, misdirected and ill-advised technical argument on behalf of your client.” He threatened that Terry would buy the rights from Hunter, make the movie with Universal, and “fire Rhino.” His postscript indicated that he had hired feared litigator Bert Fields to represent Terry on this issue. Although it was soon resolved, we still had to hire a litigating attorney to respond, which meant more money spent on lawyers.

In an attempt to patch things up, Steve splurged on three Fear and Loathing first edition books and sent one each to Johnny, Benicio, and Terry. I told him not to do it, that it wouldn’t be appreciated, that it was a waste of his money. Depp sent his back, with a curt note that was unsigned. Steve didn’t receive any response from Terry or Benicio. Later, in appreciation, Terry sent a first edition book to Jeffrey Korchek, signed by him and Hunter. I wondered if it was the book that Steve had bought for him.

After the film had been in production for a couple of weeks, the head of music for Universal, Harry Garfield, had a conversation with Cassavetti regarding Terry’s interest in hiring a music supervisor. He told him, “I know twice as much as those guys (the three Terry was considering), and Harold Bronson knows twice as much as me.” Terry never got back to me on the tape of songs I left with him, nor did he respond to my two faxes. In one, I cautioned him against using the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil.” Hunter referred to it in the book because he played the Beggars Banquet album, from which it came, continuously while he wrote the piece. Allan Klein, the head of ABKCO, was notorious for charging exorbitant fees and for refusing to license the masters he owned for other companies’ product, in this case the soundtrack album. I was relieved when I heard that it wasn’t in the film, only to learn later that Terry paid $150,000 to use the Rolling Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” over the end credits. The song didn’t appear on the soundtrack album. No music supervisor was hired. Garfield saved the production money by providing those services. Terry overspent on the music, nearly $1.7 million. I thought I could come up with equally effective songs for about a third of the amount. I spoke to Casey Silver about it, but he seemed more deferential to giving Terry what he wanted than saving the over-budgeted production money.

In early August Steve ruffled more feathers when he innocently fielded a call from a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper who wanted to confirm locations for the filming in Las Vegas. Terry’s angry voice message over the published story closed with: “We offer you our condolences, and say, never come to the set. You will not be welcome. Don’t even think about it, Steve. Now fuck off and keep your mouth shut. Goodbye.” Cassevetti showed that he could rise above his “Money-money-money-money-we-need-more-money!” phone rants, with real flair in his writing. It’s the only time I’ve seen “missive” and “bons mots” used in a letter. Steve responded, and Cassevetti countered with disdain: “I would appreciate not having to engage in further tedious correspondence on matters I would deem to be common sense.” He closed with “Best Wishes.”

Steve spoke to one of the lead actresses whom Gilliam directed in the movie Brazil. She told him that Terry needed an adversary in mounting his productions, which usually meant the studio, but in this case was us. Monty Python member Michael Palin affirmed, “He needs to feel that there’s a battle he’s engaging in.” Fellow Python Terry Jones put it this way: “He has to have an enemy to get his juices going.”

In anticipation of the movie coming out the following year, and with hopes that it would be a hit, I thought it would be opportune to publish a luxurious edition of the book. I talked to Hunter about it and he was game. It would sell for $100, and be limited to 1,000 or 1,500 copies. Hunter, and maybe Ralph, would sign them. The contents would include bonus material, including an original chapter involving coconuts broken open on the hood of a car that had been excised from the original.

In mid-October Hunter came to town to make a cameo appearance in the film. He called me to have lunch. Knowing his natural inclination to wake late in the day, I offered a later time. He insisted that he would be up, and that I should come to suite 59 at the Chateau Marmont at one o’clock. I came. I banged on the door. No response. I thought he might be in the restaurant or nearby. He wasn’t. I called the room to no response. I came back to the room, and banged some more. After a while Hunter answered the door. It took him a while to fully wake. We didn’t have lunch. Typically, there were filled room service trays scattered about. Some of the drinks hadn’t been touched. There was food that had barely been eaten. It occurred to me that Hunter’s excessive room service orders might be less about consumption than the psychological comfort derived from the clutter.

Hunter invited me to see his scene being filmed, but I told him that I was excluded from visiting the set. He was surprised and offered to rectify the situation, but I didn’t feel I needed to be in a place where I wasn’t wanted. We talked about his limited edition book and about the film. He wanted to have Keith Richards sing, “Home, Home on the Range” over the end credits. I thought it was a bad idea, and didn’t fit the story. Interestingly enough, Neil Young performed the same song on the Where the Buffalo Roam soundtrack.

According to Hunter the original hard cover didn’t sell that well, about 10,000 books. Random House printed many more, so he and Jann Wenner bought a large quantity of the excess copies and put them in storage, but neither could recall where. The fact that there could be pristine 1972 books hitting the collectors market concerned me a little. My proposed edition never happened, even though our basic deal was worked out. Those original hard covers never materialized if they, indeed, existed.

Laila was nice enough to invite me to the wrap party on October 22. It was an opportunity to check out the Planet Hollywood restaurant in Beverly Hills, but I barely knew anybody. The main stars, like Johnny Depp, didn’t show, and I didn’t know members of the production crew. On my way out I saw Terry. We had a nice, brief chat, and I felt good that our last encounter had been a positive one.

From the film’s budget, Gilliam and Depp each made $500,000, Cassevetti $350,000, Nabulsi $250,000, and Del Toro $200,000. For the rights to the book and for consultation—although he didn’t really do any—Hunter received $300,000. John Jergens, on behalf of Shark, received $175,000, which was the amount he said he and his partners had expended for optioning the book and hiring writers.

In February 1998 Steve received a letter from Laila who was upset that he was taking a credit as a producer. (Richard and I were the Executive Producers.) She felt that her many years trying to get the movie made justified her in having the only producer credit. Patrick Cassavetti also took a producer credit. For his early involvement John Jergens was given an associate producer credit. Those were the only feature film credits Laila and Jergens were to have.

Terry had another fight on his hands as the Writer’s Guild of America wanted to deny him and Tony Grisoni credit for writing the screenplay. He appealed and they were given first position in a shared credit with Cox and Davies. I empathized with him and believed him when he said that he didn’t use anything in the Cox/Davies script. As an adapted work, with both scripts drawing material from the book, I don’t see how the WGA could make a determining evaluation.

The film was shown as a sneak preview at Universal City Walk’s AMC Theaters. Steve and I weren’t invited to attend. The evaluation cards the audience members filled out and the discussion with the focus group afterwards resulted in a poor response. It discouraged the executives from Universal, specifically the marketing department. The film was not well received when it premiered on May 15, 1998, at the Cannes Film Festival, nor when it was released to general audiences in over a thousand theaters in the States a week later.

Many people like the film, but I didn’t. I thought Terry missed the mark. First of all, the primary appeal of the book is that it’s funny, which the movie mostly wasn’t. Terry threw in a number of elements that weren’t in the book and that didn’t enhance the story, such as the casting of little people in various roles. Because the behavior of the two lead characters was so deviant, the movie needed to show more that they cared about each other and that they were supportive. The characters, primarily Johnny Depp’s, should have drawn their interpretation from the depiction in the book. Rather than Depp—with Terry’s guidance—conjuring up Raoul Duke from the pages of the book, he impersonated the Hunter of twenty-five years later. He spent weeks hanging out with Hunter at his home in Woody Creek to get the mannerisms down. The dedication was admirable, but I thought the affect was misguided, resulting in cartoonish, jerking movements and a low-key, unemotional speaking delivery. In real life Hunter muttered, but it wasn’t part of Raoul Duke’s character in the book.

I felt bad for Ralph Steadman, as his artwork was important to the book. I was disappointed that the non-Rhino producers relegated his illustrations to a sole image unimpressively displayed on the t-shirt of the hitchhiker in the movie. They marginally dispersed poorly reproduced images through the closing credits. If it were up to me, I would have used his illustrations over the opening credits, similar to that of the Pink Panther films. It would have been distinct and immediately link the film to the book.

Aside from all the craziness that emanated from Hunter S. Thompson, he did have an appreciation for the craft of writing and a respect for journalism. It was important for him to “get the story.” The lengthy articles generated about the movie after it went into production focused on Johnny and Hunter. Not one writer asked to interview Steve or me, so nobody got the real story of how this movie got made over twenty-five years after the piece had been published. Had the movie been a hit or been the beneficiary of good reviews, there might have been more interest. The best-selling Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide rated it a “BOMB.” Because the movie didn’t do well, the timing wasn’t right to pitch a Hunter S. Thompson inspired TV show, and we never revisited that idea.

Despite Terry Gilliam’s boast that “the film is the bargain of the century,” it only grossed $10.5 million in US theaters (with $4.6 million filtering back to Universal). Because of the depictions of the consumption of drugs, the movie was deprived of the revenue that would have been generated from a sale to network TV. It did prove to be a consistent seller in the home video market, but has still lost millions according to Universal Pictures’ accounting department. I felt bad for Eddie Rosenblatt. He had made such a generous offer, but with sales of 125,000 copies, Geffen Records lost a lot of money on the soundtrack. Steve and I both felt the movie would have been better at our original low budget. Hunter made even more money when a reissued edition with the movie’s key art on the cover sold well enough to top the best-selling paperback lists.

It took over two years to settle with Alexander. Our concessions were few, and he received no money. The impact on Rhino Films was severe. Even though our deal with Alexander to finance additional films was still in place, he failed to respond to any of the new properties we were contractually obligated to offer him. His suit cost us $200,000 in legal fees, an amount that otherwise would have funded our overhead and development for the next two years. We felt we had momentum, with three feature films released theatrically in 1998, only to be derailed by his action. Rather than his being in a position to help build our film company and participate financially if our films were successful, he essentially abandoned his position. In additional to the money expended, it wasted my time, but it wasn’t merely time; it also took an emotional toll. One criticism of lawsuits is that the money spent on lawyers doesn’t create anything, like a product (or in this case, a film) that can be sold. It’s money being spent to extract (usually) money that already exists with another entity. His investment in Plump Fiction was paid back and, as of this writing, he has received royalties from the film for the past fourteen years. In recent years, Forbes magazine has ranked him among the four hundred richest people in the United States, with a net worth of over $1 billion.

Rhino received a producer’s fee of $250,000, but after our expenses we were left with very little: $200,000 defending Alexander’s suit; $32,000 for our portion of the Cox settlement; $5,000 more when we shut down that production; thousands more hiring additional lawyers to negotiate the Cox settlement and respond to the nasty letters we received from Thomas F. Hunter and Laila Nabulsi. From a nonmonetary standpoint we were equally unsatisfied: we were excluded from feeling like part of something, from the camaraderie of being part of a team, from making a contribution, and from seeing something we started through to completion.

Richard and I commiserated. As tarnished an image as the music business had, from what we witnessed the film industry was much worse. We were not used to this. We strived to run our record company with a high level of integrity. In 1996 the Clinton administration acknowledged us by having Secretary of Labor Robert Reich present us with a Corporate Citizen Award. It was the only one awarded to an entertainment company.

I enjoyed getting to know Hunter and Ralph, but dealing with Alexander’s lawsuit and experiencing the anger and mean spirit unleashed at Steve resulted in the worst enduring experience of my life. People can express their positions with civility. Universal’s Jeff Korchek was always civil and professional even when we disagreed. In Hollywood talent is indulged and so are their representatives. If Tracy Jacobs didn’t represent an actor on the level of Johnny Depp, she wouldn’t be able to get away with being a fire-breather. No one would want to deal with her. The same goes for the other agents who acted similarly. Terry Gilliam can be affable and charming. Given the commercial disasters he’s been responsible for, one would think he would be more appreciative of his opportunities.

I liked Hunter, but he was well past his creative peak. I asked him questions about the story, for clarification, but he didn’t contribute anything to the production while I was involved, nor do I think he did to Terry’s. It seemed to me that Hunter didn’t understand why, with all the drugs he had consumed and with his aberrant behavior, he hadn’t died twenty years ago. It seemed like he was fumbling in his agenda on what he should be doing. He still wrote, but it wasn’t inspired. I hadn’t talked to him in years when I heard a voice mail from his assistant, about a year before he committed suicide in 2005, checking that my contact numbers were still the same. It was comforting to know that he thought enough of me to keep me in his phone book.

We heard that Terry Gilliam had a good rapport with his actors, particularly Johnny Depp, who agreed to star in his twist on Cervantes’ seventeenth century novel Don Quixote. The film, budgeted at $32 million, started filming in October 2000, but then suffered irreversible setbacks of a flash flood and the actor playing Don Quixote being debilitated by a double-herniated disc. The production was terminated, with the insurance company eating the losses. Depp’s connection with Hunter went further. Depp starred in 2011’s The Rum Diary, based on a novel Hunter wrote in 1959 but had not published until 1998. The $45 million film only grossed $13 million in US theaters, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in losses.

While Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was poorly received, it did win one accolade, The Governor’s Motion Picture Award. As Executive Producers, Richard and I flew to Las Vegas on May 27, 1998, to accept a plaque from Nevada Governor Bob Miller at a large ceremony at the Las Vegas Hilton, solely because the production had spent so much money in the state. We wondered if he, or anyone else in the presentation, had even seen the film.