EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,002 words- 0:01 – 1:55
Setting the table: writing about Hunter S. Thompson without mimicking him
- JRJoe Rogan
... five. You get less enthusiastic with-
- NANarrator
I don't know, maybe.
- JRJoe Rogan
... after it's been a few times.
- TDTimothy Denevi
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
You're like, you're not really... We're live? Alright, we're live. What's up, man? How are you?
- TDTimothy Denevi
(laughs) Good.
- JRJoe Rogan
Thanks for doing this.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Thanks for having me.
- JRJoe Rogan
My pleasure. Uh, sorry for the false starts. We've been having issues with our equipment. Good to see you though, man. What's up?
- TDTimothy Denevi
Good to be here and talk Hunter Thompson.
- JRJoe Rogan
My, my pleasure. Um, so your book, Freak Kingdom.
- TDTimothy Denevi
You know, we live in, uh, interesting times right now. It's kind of a, kind of a shit show at every single moment.
- JRJoe Rogan
Keep this about a fist from your face. Pull that sucker-
- TDTimothy Denevi
Do I-
- JRJoe Rogan
There you go. Perfect.
- TDTimothy Denevi
What should I do with my hands? Should I put 'em up just like that?
- JRJoe Rogan
You can do whatever you want with your hands, man.
- TDTimothy Denevi
But I shoot with this one. (laughs) Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
What is, what is all this, uh, you got a lot of writing.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Well, when I... When I wrote the book, I wanted to make sure my sentences never sounded like Thompson's sentences.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, right, right.
- TDTimothy Denevi
But when... So I didn't write out a lot of his sentences, but this morning before coming on, I went and got some of my favorite quotes and just wrote 'em out longhand to get a sense of what his, uh, what his perspective was and rhythm was again.
- JRJoe Rogan
Didn't he do that with The Great Gatsby? He-
- TDTimothy Denevi
He did it like a few times.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
He did it by hand, he like typed it out.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. I love that idea that he was trying to find like the rhythm of the words. That's such a fascinating notion because comedians do that. In the early days of comedy, like a lot of guys, um, in, like before they ever start going on stage themselves, they'll imitate their favorite comedian's bits. Like they'll do a Richard Pryor bit, and they'll do it to their friends and they'll get, get a sense of the rhythm and the timing and get those laughs from doing a Richard Pryor bit to their friends, and then they get that bug. It's like part of what infects them.
- TDTimothy Denevi
I mean, that's the hardest thing to steal. We're not plagiarizing, but we're trying to understand what decisions they made-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... to create beautiful work.
- 1:55 – 4:26
Trump, Nixon, and the politics of plagiarism—and why Thompson still fits now
- TDTimothy Denevi
Or someone who doesn't, like our president, and decided-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- TDTimothy Denevi
... when he ran in 2016 to plagiarize Richard Nixon's 1968 convention speech in Miami-
- JRJoe Rogan
Did he do that?
- TDTimothy Denevi
... directly.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah, that was the headline in the fucking Times. It said, "Nixon's Inspiration." I'm sorry, uh, "Trump's Inspiration, Nixon is the One." So the lines about crime and, um, like barbarians at the gates, crime, law and order, those were all from Nixon's shitty but successful 1968, uh, Miami convention speech. And Thompson, you know, Thompson knew how effective that that was.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I wonder if he did that on purpose. Because he was so good... And one thing that Trump is so good at, he's so good at getting the media to talk about him.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
And like one of the best ways to get the media to talk about him was give them something to be angry about that no one else is gonna give a fuck about.
- TDTimothy Denevi
He was like, "Oh, Melania plagiarized, but I plagiarized-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, right. (laughs)
- TDTimothy Denevi
... much better from Nixon."
- JRJoe Rogan
That's right.
- TDTimothy Denevi
So, so Trumpse would've loved it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Melania took some lines from Michelle Obama's speech, right?
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Well, if you plagiarize Nixon, that's okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
All right.
- TDTimothy Denevi
I mean, so, well Freak Kingdom, the book about Hunter S. Thompson, I mean it's really about taking the fucking emotion of living in this present-
- JRJoe Rogan
What he-
- TDTimothy Denevi
... looking back at Thompson's career, and then trying to write, um, it like a novel to dramatize all of the, uh, experiences he went through that are today so applicable to us. And, and just show his perspective that's so applicable to us today.
- JRJoe Rogan
What do you got here, Jamie?
- TDTimothy Denevi
From New York Times.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- TDTimothy Denevi
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
It's "Donald Trump's Convention but the Inspiration, Nixon."
- TDTimothy Denevi
I was like, are you f... You're running on Nixon? That's what you're running on?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, there's some parallels, you know. I mean, do you remember when, um, when Hunter got together with, uh, Bill Murray and Bill's brother and they did that thing where they were trying to get people to, uh, "Nixon got a bad deal. We gotta bring him back."
- 4:26 – 6:44
If Hunter were here today: Taibbi, media manipulation, and the role of dramatization
- JRJoe Rogan
It would be really fascinating to see if Hunter was alive and in his prime now how he would... I think h- his take on it would be very similar to Matt Taibbi's. You know, like Matt Taibbi in, i- is, in my opinion, our more reasonable, more put together version of Hunter Thompson.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because he's more-
- TDTimothy Denevi
Sustained.
- JRJoe Rogan
... disciplined.
- TDTimothy Denevi
More disciplined, long career version of Hunter Thompson.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) He's like rational and he's there all the time. Like, the... I'm sure you've heard the recently uncovered recording of Hunter calling in to some company that installed a DVD player and he's fucking screaming and yelling. It's like 15 minutes long. (laughs)
- TDTimothy Denevi
I know. And then he like gets lost and he goes, "What the fuck? And the f- and DVD player doesn't work."
- JRJoe Rogan
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. My fucking cords."
- TDTimothy Denevi
I mean that was... The 19- the 1980s were not the best. You know, I think what Taibbi does is what Thompson did very well. Hunter Thompson was really good at looking at Nixon and saying, "How are you manipulating the way we see you-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... to get a version of you out?" And Taibbi looks at the way the media gets played. He looks at the way that an administration manipulates the media. And he dramatizes that-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... while everybody else just gives us the information the administration's giving us. And that goes back to Thompson with Nixon. Thompson had space when he worked for Rolling Stone, and he could write about how Nixon made everybody watch his speeches, the press, on a closed circuit television. And they made the press just like Trump, off in the corner when the plane arrived, you know, being berated by everybody.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
It's very similar to what, uh, is going on now. And again, we see people giving hot takes or we see people doing op-eds. We don't see people dramatizing how manipulative these corrupt administrations are and were. And Thompson did that beautifully. Ni- um, Taibbi does that beautifully.
- JRJoe Rogan
Was, uh, Nixon being berated by the press? Is that why he chose to have the-
- TDTimothy Denevi
Well, he thought he was. I mean, he was a crook, so-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... he doesn't want the press to investigate him. Like he, you know, he was a crook with San Clemente, like his loans with Bebe Rebozo and all of that. He was a crook the way he used the IRS to investigate his...And it means he was a crook when he tried to break into the Brookings Institution (laughs) to destroy-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... and bomb evidence. Like, he didn't want the press around him because he had committed very serious crimes that I think that's similar to what we see now. I mean, as people have said on this show, no, no president wants the, a journalist, you know, digging into their lives specifically-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... because it's, you don't want chumminess with journalists. But I think Trump and Nixon both knew they had so much to hide that to actually have a journalist like Hunter Thompson, who was a good investigative journalist-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... to have journalists like Matt Taibbi around, that's dangerous (laughs) for them. They'll go to jail, which Nixon should have.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
And Trump perhaps should.
- 6:44 – 8:28
Denevi’s origin story with Thompson: Catholic school to ‘Strange Rumblings in Aztlan’
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, who knows what's going to happen? How did you, uh, how'd you get involved with, uh, writing this book?
- TDTimothy Denevi
Well, I mean, I've always loved Hunter S. Thompson, and I was reading-
- JRJoe Rogan
How'd you get exposed to him?
- TDTimothy Denevi
You know, in, in, in, uh, I was 17 years old in a Catholic high school at, uh, Bellarmine College Preparatory up in San Jose, and, um, we had a counterculture, uh, writing class. And so I read some of it in there, and then a friend had an audiobook of Fear and Loathing. And so I just remember the first time hearing that old audiobook of Fear and Loathing, um, or somewhere around Barstow on the Edge of the Desert. And then in my, um, 20s, I really got into, um, Strange Rumblings in Aztlan, which is about a conspiracy within the Los Angeles Police Department, um, regarding the death of Ruben Salazar, um, a prominent journalist. And I read that and I'm like, "Oh my God, dude. This isn't somebody that's just dancing on stage or, like, performing a rogue narrative. This is an investigative journalist who's going to the most powerful people, exposing things they don't want us to see, and in a sense, risking his life to do so." Because he says in Strange Rumblings in Aztlan, which is in Rolling Stone in 1970, he says, "If they were willing to kill Ruben Salazar," who was the most prominent journalist in Los Angeles, you could argue, at the time, "what the fuck is to stop them from killing me, Hunter Thompson-"
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- TDTimothy Denevi
"... for asking these questions?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I think that's what a lot of people are saying today with Jamal Khashoggi. You know, Jamal Khashoggi's death has got a lot of journalists really freaking out. Like, "What, you know, what am I doing if I'm criticizing world leaders and talking about international politics, if this could happen to me?"
- TDTimothy Denevi
Political violence is effective because it's used to silence-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... either opposition or journalists. And so for me, writing this book, and I tried to dramatize it like a novel. It's quick. It's, like, only 220, 210 pages, and then there's, like, 100 pages of notes. So I, like, cited every sight, smell, or sound so that somebody that knows Thompson really well can be like, "Where the fuck did you get this information?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- 8:28 – 12:00
1968 Chicago: police violence, press suppression, and Thompson’s breaking point
- TDTimothy Denevi
And somebody else can, if they have questions, just go back and look. But long story short, for me, the crux of the book, um, was in Chicago in 1968, where Hunter Thompson had a press pass. He went to the, uh, Democratic National Convention. On Wednesday night, Mayor Daley gave this order to clear the intersection of Balboa and Michigan because there was a, um, protest going on, five, 10,000 people. Thompson was standing next to the Haymarket Inn, which was on the ground floor level. It was a plate glass window. He was standing with delegates from the, um, Democratic National Convention, standing with their wives, and the cops charged. They did, like, a double pincher formation, like Hannibal and like, um, Kuma in, like, fucking 100 BC. And they split the protesters in half, beat everybody, hit Thompson over the head. He got his motorcycle helmet on just in time, so he's not concussed. He can see everything that's going on. And the entire plate glass window behind him shatters. Everybody falls in. Cops jump in, are beating everybody. And he's looking around, and he's sure that snipers on the roof are gonna open fire at any moment. So he runs to the Blackstone where he's staying across the way, shows his room key, gets beat up by the cops as he's trying to get in. He goes, "I live here, goddamn it. I'm paying $100 a day. Let me in my fucking room." And he barely gets in. And he just sits on his bed afterwards and he says, "They knew I was press. They saw my press pass. They hit me because I was press." And if that's where we're at right now with journalists, you know, if political opponents and journalists are being clubbed to keep silent and to not respond, then this is not the democracy we know.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, his ex-wife talked about that as being, like, one of the only moments where she saw him cry.
- TDTimothy Denevi
For two weeks.
- JRJoe Rogan
When he talked about-
- TDTimothy Denevi
He just cried afterwards for two weeks.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
He couldn't stop. It's crazy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow, uh, it was a, it was a crazy time, right? I mean, that, that time is very similar in a lot of ways to what's going on today. It's just today, there's just so much more information and so much more s- so people have so much more of an ability to communicate.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah, and I think it's almost easier to coordinate violence. I was just talking to the, um, head of the Proud Boys, you know, Gavin McInnes's, uh, group-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... um, Enrique Tarrio. And he's like, you know, he's ad- he's saying, he's using the language of the left. He's like, "I'm a victim. I can't buy groceries. They've taken my bank accounts, my platforms." When he talks about violence, he's like, "Who the fuck are you, ANTIFA? Like, I'm, you know, you're 120 pounds and wet. Like, if we have civil war, you're gonna lose." And I was sitting next to him during the podcast and basically what I said was, "If we have a civil war, you're going to be hit by sniper fire from the fucking roof. You're not gonna be in a fistfight-"
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- TDTimothy Denevi
"... with ANTIFA across the way." And I think there's this idea on the right that we can push towards violence and we can get very close to it with our rhetoric or with our, um, actions, but that it won't spread, like the conflagration won't keep going.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I don't know if that's isolated to the right.
- TDTimothy Denevi
I mean, uh, with ANTIFA on the left, too. And that's what I love. Thompson was as hard on the left as he was on the right when he wrote.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
And that was so important for his intelligence as a writer.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I think just even the left and the right in general for a lot of these people is just an identity and a gang that they belong to. And I don't think they really understand violence. You know, you wanna talk about violence, talk to a military guy.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, talk to someone who really understands what violence actually is. And they don't have this empty rhetoric like these fools do.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's a lot of these people that are calling for violence. Like, no, you should be calling for camaraderie.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You should be calling for communication. We should be calling for some way we could all work this out where the civilians, the c- the civilization that we live in, that we all, we all can get along together. And most people don't wanna impede you from living your life and doing what you wanna do. Most people-
- TDTimothy Denevi
I mean-
- JRJoe Rogan
... the vast majority.
- 12:00 – 17:06
From national chaos to local power: Aspen campaigns and ‘Freak Power’ politics
- TDTimothy Denevi
... Hunter Thompson believed in working within the system. You know, he believed, like, it might be a fucked up system, but you can still run for sheriff in Aspen. And he believed once you resort to violence, that means the conversation has stopped.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
And it disfigures you. So he cried for two weeks. That was the most surprising thing for me researching this book and writing it, was to see how much the violence affected him that he experienced at Chicago. And you can speak to someone who's done MMA fighting, who's been punched in the face as hard as somebody can punch you. Most Americans haven't had that, and that changes your ability to articulate something back in that moment. It means you, if, if that's political, if it's a police officer or a political opponent that uses violence instead of an argument to respond to you-We, we've left the realm that we recognize, and we're not going to be able to communicate even in a limited way that we're communicating right now. And Thompson knew that. So that's why after Chicago, I love that he went back to Aspen.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
And he's like, "I'm gonna run for fucking sheriff."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
"I'm gonna run. I'm gonna do a mayoral campaign in Aspen." And that was brilliant because it was his way to control his environment, knowing that Mayor Daley's not listening to his nonviolent protest. Richard Nixon's not listening to his nonviolent protest. Thompson needed to find another avenue to try to work within the American system to make things happen. And a great contrast is his good friend, um, Oscar Zeta Acosta. There's a wonderful PBS documentary, Rise and Fall of the Brown Buffalo, by, um, Phillip Rodriguez, a great director, and it's Acosta's life. That's who Dr. Gonzo is based on. And, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm. Sure.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... in Fear and Loathing, you know, Thompson had more advantages than Acosta. And Acosta was being pursued by the LAPD, was eventually set up by them. And for him, working within the system, he ran for sheriff, wasn't an option.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
The cops set him up for a high-speed bust. You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Hm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Like the cops had, the cops had undercover agents from something called the Special Operations for Conspiracy, which was a fucking department in the LAPD at the time. And they were trying to use those provocateurs to incite violence against the, um, plainclothes police, so that... Or the normal clothes police, so that lethal violence could be used to silence the, uh, civil rights movement and the, um, Brown Berets.
- JRJoe Rogan
So they used agent provocateurs to make it look like they're a part of the protest?
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yes. Yeah, there was a-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. That is an age-old tactic.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Right? That's how you destroy a civil rights movement. 'Cause the most effective weapon in silencing civil rights is the lethal force.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
And you can do that in another country, as the US has done, but the US can't use tactics like My Lai, like Thompson writes about this, in the US unless you have a pro- provocative reason.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Unless somebody that's undercover attacks a cop. And so the cops then, like what happened on August 29th, 1970, during the moratorium riots, can just flood East LA-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... and kill whoever they want.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- TDTimothy Denevi
They killed... They blew Ruben Salazar's head off with a tear gas gun.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow. Yeah. Those were darker days when you couldn't communicate as well. And I think that's one of the reasons why Hunter decided to run for sheriff in Aspen, is that he felt like he could control that area. Like, e- it would have a direct impact on his life. The local politics have a real impact on your day-to-day existence. Whereas what's going on in Washington, for the most part, it's not affecting you if you're living in Woody Creek.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah. I mean, there were people that had Nixon's point of view in Aspen, who were like, "Let's develop this valley beyond what it can hold in terms of its environment."
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
"Let's, um, imprison hippies because they are going to take away from our tourist, um, you know, economy." You know, "Let's, um, you know, not have or not adhere to normal, like, civil rights laws." And so Thompson, you know, in a participatory democracy, almost a Jeffersonian democracy, um, way, ran for sheriff by emphasizing personal agency and, most of all, trying to get out the youth vote, like people who had left the political system but were living in Aspen, a lot of people wh- like hippies, who had fled the cities in the late 1960s and were living, you know, in the, in the West. And he got them involved, and they should have won the mayor- mayoral campaign with, uh, Joe Edwards then.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- 17:06 – 20:39
Aspen then vs. now: gentrification, legacy sites, and Juan Thompson’s perspective
- JRJoe Rogan
... like, that if these guys could do that... And what's interesting now is, um, you know, back in the '70s, they really did have a freak community in Aspen. That shit's gone now. I don't know what happened.
- TDTimothy Denevi
The billionaires have replaced the millionaires, is what I was told-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- TDTimothy Denevi
... when I went out to do research.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's a weird place, man. You go to Aspen, you see these, like, $20 million houses, and people, like... It's one of the rare places where people still wear fur coats, you know? (laughs)
- TDTimothy Denevi
(laughs) Not ironically or fake, but real fur coats.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, if you wear a fur coat in LA, first of all, it's never cold enough for a fur coat.
- TDTimothy Denevi
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
But if you did, you might get fucked up. Like-
- TDTimothy Denevi
You're getting blood thrown on you. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... could... some shit could go down. You know, like you, you... Most likely nothing's gonna happen, but there's a possible chance, which is really weird 'cause if you wear a leather jacket, you have no problem.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's weird, you know?
- TDTimothy Denevi
It is weird. I mean, Aspen's weird because a lot of the Thompsons' friends, like Loren Jenkins, a great journalist, um, they've moved down to Basalt. They'd say Down Valley.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
So I was out there with his, um, his son. Juan Thompson is a fantastic writer. He wrote a book called, um, um, Stories I Tell Myself about his relationship with his father. And so-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I've been in contact with Juan through email.
- TDTimothy Denevi
He's a really good writer, and he's a really honest and brilliant writer.
- JRJoe Rogan
He seems like a good dude, and he seemed like a really good dude in the Gonzo documentary as well, you know?
- TDTimothy Denevi
Gibney's, that was a great documentary.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes. Yeah, I'm a big fan of Gibney. He, he always kills it. I, um, I went to the, uh, the tavern in Woody Creek when I was in t- Uh, felt like, "If I'm here-"
- TDTimothy Denevi
We gotta go.
- JRJoe Rogan
"... I gotta go there." You know, it's weird. It's weird being there, man, you know?
- TDTimothy Denevi
When did you go? How long ago was that?
- JRJoe Rogan
I guess it was a year ago, year and a half ago.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Did, were people on bicycles just dr- w- uh, riding their bikes by the whole time? It's on this huge bike route now.
- JRJoe Rogan
No, it was cold as fuck.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It was the winter.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Okay.
- 20:39 – 23:55
Work ethic beneath the myth: Dexedrine, deadlines, and the making of a serious journalist
- TDTimothy Denevi
I mean, I just don't think he gets enough credit for his effort. You know, one thing I found when writing the book, I interviewed, um, I interviewed Bob Geiger, um, who Fear and Loathing is dedicated to, and who was a doctor that was a friend of his in Sonoma. And Geiger initially, um, was the one who prescribed him Dexedrine. And so people think Thomson was just doing acid and writing or, um, whatever. And maybe later as a caricature of whoever he became, that might've been part of his persona, but when he was writing from, the book is from Kennedy's assassination to Nixon's resignation, he was working so fucking hard. Like, he was working harder than we can ever imagine. Douglas Brinkley is, um, the presidential historian who does his, um, literary estate, talks about Thompson wasn't as fun as he seemed during that time. He took Dexedrine to write and he had a, a drinking problem, you know, that I was trying to measure in-
- JRJoe Rogan
Is dex- Dexedrine some sort of an amphetamine?
- TDTimothy Denevi
It's Adderall.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is it Adderall?
- TDTimothy Denevi
It's Adderall that's cut differently with salt.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
So it's a little bit like you go a little higher and when it comes down it's a little harder. While Adderall was Obetrol, which was an old diet drug-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... that was repurposed in like '96, that is a little bit smoother in that sense. But it's very similar to what, uh, to what Thomson took. He had a great editor named Margret Harrell, who was his editor on Hells Angels. And he didn't know she was 27 when he was 29. He thought she was like 55 'cause they would talk on the phone every day to edit the book. And, um, he sent her, she still has the letter, I've done some events with her, she still has the actual letter. He sent her a five milligram Dexedrine. He's like, "Hey, it's gonna be hard the last 10 pages to edit. Take this and focus." (laughing)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughing)
- TDTimothy Denevi
So she still has it, this orange, little five milligram Dexedrine.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
For 40, 50 years she's had it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow. That's crazy. Yeah, um, the, that Gibney documentary is, uh, really fantastic. It's probably one of the best introductions that anybody could have to try to get a grip on why, after all these years, Hunter resonates with so many people.
- TDTimothy Denevi
I mean, I think that the Gibney documentary is brilliantly and perfectly done. I think that Thompson means something different with Donald Trump as president of the United States.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
To me. Uh, you, people could see it before Gibney saw it, before other like, um, brilliant writers saw it before Taibbi did. But when Donald Trump became president of the United States, it was a lens onto the past, I felt like. And-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... I was a, I mean, I'm a bitch ass liberal. Like, I was fucking upset. And so one of the ways I dealt with it was to just remove myself to 1968, 1967, 1969. And I took the emotion I had in the present, and I realized that Thompson is, is such a voice right now for people that maybe don't know him, only know him through Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Terry Gilliam's film.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
I would like for it to kind of be a lens that now if they read that, they could then read his work and perhaps, you know, w- what his timelessness will come through. It was, uh, more, it was an attempt to focus that timelessness. And that, what helped was the fucking terror of our present.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. You can see th- you definitely see the parallels in, in his work. You know, who also, uh, rings true like that is a lot of Bill Hicks stuff on the first Gulf War, you know, and, and Bush as a president and, you know, which obviously people today would probably be dying to have Bush as president.
- TDTimothy Denevi
(laughs) That's-
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, the original Bush.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... he's so smart. He carried his book around for two weeks, at least he carried a book.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, Herbert Walker, the main, the older Bush-
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... who was, uh, you know, much more of a, a reasonable gentleman, you know?
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah. Well, that's our discourse today too where there couldn't be anything said reasonably about him when he passed away.
- 23:55 – 27:19
Mailer, Chicago, and the politics of narration: power, gender, and craft limits
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Or even about his wife. I mean, I think, uh, it's not, he's not very favorable right now, but one of Hunter Thompson's main influences was Norman Mailer.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
And I don't think Norman Mailer writes well about women. And, you know, I think that's, I think Thompson wrote better about women. Thompson didn't just often write about w-
- JRJoe Rogan
What's the criticism that I'm not familiar with
- NANarrator
... the criticism by Mailer?
- TDTimothy Denevi
Well, Mailer, whenever he writes about a woman, it's like he's watching the Nixonettes get off the Nixon airplane and he's like, "There were 33 redheads, like, five had long legs like this." Like, it's like, Mailer, you didn't need to write that fucking passage. You're writing about power and people more extreme than you. So I think Mailer writes beautifully about men that have more power than him.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
And so he writes about 1968 in Chicago, where Thompson didn't, because Thompson was beat up. And he writes about that moment of, um, where Thompson's being beat up.
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm confu- but what is the criticism of the way he's writing about women? Just, he's describing them physically?
- TDTimothy Denevi
Uh, the male gaze is that he, well, he stabbed his wife in the-
- JRJoe Rogan
The male gaze?
- TDTimothy Denevi
He, he, he stabbed his wife in the heart.
- JRJoe Rogan
Did he really?
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah, with a penknife.
- JRJoe Rogan
What? With a knife?
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah, he went to Bellevue, he went to Bellevue for 14 days. It was in 1960.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's it?
- TDTimothy Denevi
He missed it. Yeah, no he went to, he did a psychiat- psychiatric evaluation instead of going to jail.
- JRJoe Rogan
What?
- TDTimothy Denevi
I think they stayed married.
- JRJoe Rogan
What?
- TDTimothy Denevi
They, yeah. (laughing)
- JRJoe Rogan
Boy, what a reasonable lady.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah. (laughing) . Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, so listen, shit happens.
- TDTimothy Denevi
We'll, we can dialogue on gender politics later. But I, I would say that Thompson wrote well, better about women because he understood that writing about people with more power than you is really important.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
And when Mailer writes about people with more power than him, when he writes about Mayor Daley, beating the shit out of everybody, he writes really beautifully. And that's somebody that's resonating right now with, um, what Trump's doing and with the violence that we're seeing on the right and on the left. Where Mailer was sitting with, uh, Pat Buchanan, who was Nixon's, um, main aide, um, in, uh, during that moment in Chicago when the, um, Haymarket Inn shattered and everybody was beat up. And they were looking down from the 17th floor, and Mailer's thinking like, "Well, this is what happens if police take over society." And he writes beautifully about how the police came and split the protestors 'cause he's so high up writing it-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- 27:19 – 39:13
Rehabilitating Hunter’s image: beyond ‘Uncle Duke’ and the late-life deterioration
- JRJoe Rogan
Now, what was your idea behind writing this book? Like, what, what compelled you?
- TDTimothy Denevi
I think we've mistaken Thompson. I think that we see him more as like a Doonesbury character. I-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
People who know him really well don't, but I think that most people through whatever cultural forces that we've had-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well can you explain that?
- TDTimothy Denevi
... don't, don't realize he's a voice.
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause a lot of people don't know the comparison, what the Doonesbury character-
- TDTimothy Denevi
So I think in the '80s or, um, '70s, '80s, and '90s, um, the cartoon Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau, it became, um, there was a character on it called Uncle Duke, and Uncle Duke was based on Hunter Thompson. And he was kind of an exaggerated version of Hunter Thompson. He was a cartoonish version of Hunter S. Thompson. And I think Terry Gilliam did a wonderful and kind of auteur-ish job on, um, a, like, a brilliant job on Fear and Loathing in, in Las Vegas but that's also an exaggerated version-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... of Hunter Thompson. And we forget today the amount of work Hunter Thompson did, the effort he put out. We forget that he was a straight journalist, where he did the freelance assignments, he wrote the straight articles for years to make money for his family. And it wasn't until he had his breakthrough with Hells Angels that he could develop the style that, um, we identify with today. And so it kills me that we identify him more as a clown or like a, you know, more as a, a cartoonish figure as opposed to a very serious political thinker and political activist and serious writer who can give us insight into the fucking shit show we experience every moment today.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I think the, the perception of him is fairly nuanced. I don't think that everybody thinks of him as a cartoon character. Although particularly later on in his life, he was relegated to that because he really didn't speak well. You know, later on in his life when he was, just the drugs had taken over.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Alcohol, and the alco-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
His, his son writes about the alcohol. Juan-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... writes so beautifully about the toll alcoholism took on Hunter S. Thompson.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, he couldn't talk anymore.
- TDTimothy Denevi
That's true.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, when he was deep into-
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... his 60s, his heart and voice was ƒ%$#&. It was so hard to even understand him.
- TDTimothy Denevi
It was awful.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's a awful piece that he did with Conan O'Brien where Conan went to, uh, Woody Creek and shot guns-
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... uh, off the back porch with him, and y- you could barely understand a fucking word Hunter's saying.
- TDTimothy Denevi
That's why I tried to end it with Nixon leaving, because it was really sad when Nixon resigned, Hunter Thompson was at the Connecticut Hilton, which is a hotel right by the White House. Annie Leibovitz, um, the photographer with Rolling Stone, was calling him and saying, "We need to get to the White House. Nixon is leaving, like he's gonna get on the helicopter." And Thompson just laid in the grass, and he didn't go. You know? And that was heartbreaking. And he didn't end up writing the eight page spread that he needed to. Instead, it became Annie Leibovitz's photography, which was a famous and, um, in retrospect, like, huge move for her career. But I think at that point right there, of thinking that he'd spent 10 years... I mean, he'd hated Nixon since the Checkers speech, you know, when, um, Nixon was VP for Eisenhower. He'd hated Nixon since 1962 when Nixon lost the, um, California, um, uh, uh, governor, um, ship and said, "You and the press, you've been giving me the shaft for so long, like, you won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore."
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Like, Thompson had seen that Nixon was somebody who said, "I'm just the poor son of a butcher. I'm just this, like, very hardworking, you know, d- American that represents all of us." Where behind that, like, he was a politically, um, you know, ravenous monster who was anti-communist, who would go to any extent to win. And Thompson saw that, and Thompson knew that other people saw it. And in 1964 at the Barry Goldwater Convention in San Francisco, my favoritely named arena of all time-... the Cow Palace. Um, Barry Goldwater was gonna speak to accept the nomination and what happened was Nixon was introducing him. It was Nixon's way back from the wilderness. Thompson was a few rows back. It was the first time Thompson, I think, was that close to see him live. And Nixon's like, "You know, I'm a poor son of a butcher. Don't think about me. Just think about Barry Goldwater, Mr. Conservative, who will become Mr. President." And Thompson was like, "Fuck. Everybody here knows he's lying, but they think that that act of lying is a skill." In the way a used car salesman who lies-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... but can make a lot of money off it-
- 39:13 – 45:09
Gonzo ethics: invention, cues, and the Muskie ‘Ibogaine’ episode
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. His voice was very unique too, in that he decided to combine fiction with non-fiction-
- TDTimothy Denevi
He did a great job.
- JRJoe Rogan
... in a very weird, blurry way.
- TDTimothy Denevi
I think it was... So one thing I think of is, he usually gives you a cue, where what he did was-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- TDTimothy Denevi
... he dramatized. People didn't dramatize. And so like the-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, wait a minute.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... the Ibogaine-
- JRJoe Rogan
He made shit up. He didn't just dramatize-
- TDTimothy Denevi
Well, there's been talk about, there was a rumor-
- JRJoe Rogan
... about the, the witch doctor.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah. Hey, I didn't say that there, he did Ibogaine. I said there was a... This is about Ed Muskie's campaign. Um, I said there was a rumor in Milwaukee that he did Ibogaine. I started that rumor.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
I mean, that's what he says, but what if he-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, he said that on The Dick Cavett Show, remember?
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah, later. And I think Matt Taibbi on this show talked about it well, where one thing is that, um, Muskie was already out of the campaign when that came out. Muskie had already lost. And so Muskie had been a fucking monster and a terrible person on that campaign. And so Thomson used that version of Muskie and wrote, as Taibbi said, in a very straight way, the Ibogaine story.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
And so if you had a sense of irony, you kind of knew, like you're not really thinking that this is a guy who did Ibogaine. So I think there's cues in there for a listening audience. But what I think is even more, uh, you know... But I, I think he dramatized the way other people didn't. He would say, "I look left, I look up, I see." He came down to me and then he said, "People didn't write like that in journalism." They didn't go step by step. And he did.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
And that was really important. What I think is more important than the Ibogaine story... So the Ibogaine story in the background is Ed Muskie was the front runner for the, um, Democratic primary in, uh, 1972. He fucked up his campaign. Afterwards, Thomson, um, talked about how he had heard that there, or there was a rumor that this candidate was doing Ibogaine, which is like ayahuasca, or-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, there, the... He said that they brought... No, it's not like ayahuasca.
- TDTimothy Denevi
It's not?
- JRJoe Rogan
No, it's very different. It's not hallucinatory, it's a self-examinatory drug.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Oh, it's the one you get off-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's very good.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah, it's, yeah, it's to get off. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, but he said they brought in a Brazilian witch doctor.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Which it's... Ibogaine is not even a Brazilian drug.
- TDTimothy Denevi
It's-
- 45:09 – 53:15
Hells Angels reporting: accuracy, retaliation, and ‘the edge’ of danger
- JRJoe Rogan
Now, he, when he wrote Hell's Angels, he hadn't really totally formulated that sort of gonzo style of journalism, but he did have a little bit of fiction mixed in with that, and that sort of ran him afoul of the Hel- Hells Angels. They were very upset by that, right? Like he, he did write some things in there that they claim were not accurate.
- TDTimothy Denevi
I think that when it came to Hells Angels, um, what Thompson did really well is what Joan Didion did really well. He took the way the media was portraying somebody and he stripped that off and said, "This is who they actually are. This is what they're actually doing." Joan Didion, when she writes about Jim Morrison in The White Album, she's like, "Jim Morrison was like sex and death in his leather pants. It was the best thing ever. Everybody loves Jim Morrison." And then in the scene in The White Album, Joan Didion writes about how they sit at a recording studio for two hours and nobody says anything and they eat eggs out of a paper bag and it's a fucking nightmare. Thompson knew that the media was sensationalizing the Hells Angels. He went to them, um, on a cold night in San Francisco, um, down by the, um, waterfront, and he said, "Hey, here's a Newsweek article, here's a Time article. Here's how everybody's writing about you. All I wanna do is write the truth about who you are." And he did, and he ended up writing with them, um, and he ended up spending time with them. I don't think they got as mad at him about the way he portrayed them. I think they got mad that he began to make money or that he became famous. Hells Angels sold 500,000 paperback copies. That is almost impossible to imagine today. 500,000 paperback copies of a literary book, and the Angels were pissed off about that. They felt Thompson owed him more money or owed him something for that. When it came to the truth of it all-
- JRJoe Rogan
Did he pay them at all? Did he give them any money?
- TDTimothy Denevi
Well, Sonny Barger, Sonny Barger's so ridiculous. Sonny Barger said he owed us a keg and he didn't give us a keg.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's it?
- TDTimothy Denevi
You know, and the, the famous story at the end of it is that, that i- I mean, really, like when they go through it, it w- He said that, he said that Thompson was doing a subjective version of us-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... but it was at least closer than the shitty Newsweek and Time versions.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- TDTimothy Denevi
And so Thompson, at the end of, he'd finished the book, barely made the deadline. Had to go down to a hotel in Monterey, lock himself in, stay up for 100, um, hours straight and write it in March of, uh, '67 to finish it. So he turns it in, makes his, um, advance deadline. In September, they're like, "Here's our author photo." And it's shitty. And he's like, "Fuck this." So he goes to a Hells Angels rally. He doesn't know anybody 'cause he hasn't been with them for six or seven months. He's taking pictures. That's when he got beat up-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... for writing about the Hells Angels. And he, Tiny, his friend, who later committed suicide after Altamont, after being involved in the Altamont security situation, Ti-
- JRJoe Rogan
That's the Rolling Stone one where the guy got stabbed?
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yes, yes. Where Meredith Hunter was stabbed. But Tiny-
- JRJoe Rogan
Ma- It was a woman that got stabbed?
- TDTimothy Denevi
Man. Meredith Hunter.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Um (laughs) , it was a man named Meredith. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
That was back in the day when you can name your kids Meredith, right? Like-
- TDTimothy Denevi
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... Marian. Marian's another one.
- TDTimothy Denevi
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Right?
- TDTimothy Denevi
Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Lindsey.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Lindsey?
- JRJoe Rogan
Some guys are Lindsey. I got no one to speak. Give me one. Jamie. Oh, yeah. (laughs) But Jamie's normal.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
Like there's a lot of Jamies (overlapping)
- TDTimothy Denevi
... that, that future man scene where it's like, uh, what's his name is like, "My name's Susan." In the future, men are named Susan. I know it's a girl's name in your time. (laughs)
- 53:15 – 1:04:08
Research as endurance sport: interviews, Owl Farm’s future, and building a cited narrative
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you talk to Anita?
- TDTimothy Denevi
Um, Anita's been great. I had talked to Anita later, but the book ended so early that I, um... There's a beautiful arch-
- JRJoe Rogan
Anita's the second wife of Hope Thompson.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah, and Anita Thompson is, um, she runs Owl Farm. She runs kind of his legacy. She does the Facebook page. She does a wonderful job. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
What is Owl Farm today? Does she still live up there?
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah, she's gonna make it into a, like a writer's retreat.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, nice.
- TDTimothy Denevi
And a, and a, um... She's doing a wonderful job. Make it into a writer's retreat and also a, um, like a museum.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
And it's taken a while but to- to honor his legacy as-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
... a great political, like thinker and writer, like a great literary light. But since she didn't meet him until the '90s, I wanted to focus on the time that I was in. Um, and so I- I- I think talking to Bob Geiger, you know, his friend then was, was, I was really lucky. Bob Geiger's in his late 80s.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
And he was able to go through like... Because I had... I believe if you interview somebody, you need to read everything that exists already.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
You need to read everything they've already said. You don't want to ask them questions that, when- when I do interview for research, that they've already supplied answers to.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
So with Bob Geiger, I could see the holes or things I didn't know, and I was able to sit with him, talk about throwing a football with Thompson.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
You know, talk about taking the dog to the beach, like all these other things.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's... The football thing is an interesting thing because he was, he was obsessed with football and that's one thing that he shared in common with Nixon, and so when they went... One time they were going to the airport and he hitched a ride with Nixon and Nixon wanted to talk to him about football. And he said, "Let's just not talk about politics, we'll only talk about football." And so he talked-
- TDTimothy Denevi
One of my favorite scenes.
- JRJoe Rogan
... for the whole ride.
- TDTimothy Denevi
It was, it was in 1968. Pat Buchanan had helped set it up.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TDTimothy Denevi
They'd worked it out that week, they'd become friends. And so they come to Thompson and they're like, "All right, the boss is gonna take a plane to Florida. You can come and talk to him."
- JRJoe Rogan
That is so crazy.
- TDTimothy Denevi
And Thompson's a freelancer. And so later Thomson said... Later it was like, "They told me not to talk about anything but football." But earlier Thomson said like, "I was just really awkward." Like this fucking guy, they're both in the back bench of a Mercury and so it's before Secret Service so it's just a cop driving and it's like Pat Buchanan in the front and it's Thomson and Nixon and they're right here next to each other. And Thompson's like, "Well, you know, earlier in the night you said that, you know, the Oakland Raiders had a good shot to beat the Packers in Super Bowl II. Can you talk about that?" And he was like, Nixon's like, "My good friend Vince Lombardi had told me to watch out for the AFL because they pass and they can be very effective." And so Thompson then, like remembers, that guy, um, um, Bob Geiger had been a professional quarterback. He had taken Thompson to his first football game and Thompson said, "NFL is better than the AFL." And Geiger's like, "Shut the fuck up. Let's go to a Raiders game." And they went in '65 and the Raiders won on this beautiful pass, Tom, uh, Tom Flores. Like beautiful goal line pass. And Nixon was saying the same thing. And so then at that moment, at that moment, Thompson's like, "Oh yeah, it was the Miami guy, uh, Mueller, Miller, who'd caught the pass." And Nixon goes, taps him on the knee and goes, "You're right." And he goes, "Oh, what a beautiful moment." And Thompson's just like, "What the fuck is going on?"
- JRJoe Rogan
So Nixon, apparently, they, they, they were talking about, like, college draft picks and all kinds of crazy shit. Like, Nixon was deep into it.
- TDTimothy Denevi
It was the only moment Thompson said that he knew Nixon wasn't lying.
- 1:04:08 – 1:16:56
Adderall, ADHD, and ‘wagering time later for time now’—the cost of chemical speed
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a weird tradition in journalism, right? To destroy your body while creating your art. And, um, I think there's a, a- according to my friends who are journalists, there's a big problem with Adderall today.
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And there's a lot of people that are using it to write and, um, it's fucking speed and y- you know, you get addicted.
- TDTimothy Denevi
I mean, Adderall makes everything in front of you closer.
- JRJoe Rogan
Have you done it?
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah. So my first book was called Hyper: Um, A Personal History of ADHD.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- TDTimothy Denevi
So it was about being medicated as a child.
- JRJoe Rogan
You were medicated as a child?
- TDTimothy Denevi
Yeah, like having pills forced down my throat, like also-
- JRJoe Rogan
How old were you?
Episode duration: 1:28:13
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