Two years before Hunter S. Thompson took his own life in 2005 his Woody Creek, Colorado neighbor Wayne Ewing edited together years of video and film footage into a days-in-the-life-style documentary that captured HST drunk, drunk on stage, drugged, in trouble with the cops, visiting his home state of Kentucky, and trying to get Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas made into a film. Here’s Swampland with the word…

Breakfast With Hunter contains classic footage from Thompson’s Woody Creek, Colorado, ranch he calls Owl Farm. Guest appearances include Johnny Depp, Benecio Del Toro, Harry Dean Stanton, Terry Gilliam, Laila Nabulsi, John Cusack, and the late Warren Zevon.
Scenes with English artist Ralph Steadman whose paintings accompany many of Thompson’s writings prove interesting. Another scene details Thompson ambushing Rolling Stone mogul Jann Wenner with a fire extinguisher in his posh New York City office. Other footage features HST day in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky (also Depp’s hometown), as well as a stage appearance at Depp’s Viper Room.

The film chronicles the 25th Anniversary of Thompson’s classic book, Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, including early stages for production, filming, and the premiere of the 1998 movie. A confrontation in Thompson’s kitchen erupts with a British writer over the Fear & Loathing script, which personifies Thompson’s spirit.

Here’s Breakfast with Hunter…

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When we were recording the latest episode of the Coincidence Control Network podcast, we got off on so many tangents that we only got through about half of the topics we’d planned to touch on. It was a lively episode so no foul, but there was one bit of news that I felt we should be timely about. Also, it’s an obituary and you know how I can’t let a week slide by without a few of those capturing my attention.

While directors as diverse as Michael Moore, Werner Herzog and Jean-Luc Godard have made films balanced between documented facts and manufactured fictions, it was French director Chris Marker who invented the film essay. A writer of novels, poems and criticism, Marker fought with the French Resistance during World War II and made his mark after the war creating social interest documentaries. Here’s what Ronald Bergan at The Guardian had to say about Marker’s most remarkable film, the poetic La Jetée:

Marker’s La Jetée (The Pier, 1962), a roughly 30-minute post-third world war story, is made up entirely of stills, except for one brief moving shot of a woman opening her eyes. This futuristic photo-novel film, semi-remade by Terry Gilliam as 12 Monkeys in 1995, abstracts cinema almost to its essence in bringing to life the story of a post-apocalyptic man obsessed with an image from his past.

Read Bergan’s full Marker obituary online.

Watch the New York Times’ A.O. Scott’s ruminations on La Jetée here:

Stay awake!

Watch this performance of my OccupySong at Occupy Congress in DC!