Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

There's the good doctor.

We were somewhere around Charles Village, near the Maryland Film Festival office, when the drugs began to take hold.

The speedometer read "the edge," as the great white shark burned down St. Paul. We had two bags of grass, a salt shaker of coke and a quart of tequila, and the back seat rattled with warm Natty Bohs. My editor wanted to pull over, but there was no way we were stopping here. This was bat country.

The film fest office was a goddamn lizard zoo, and someone had obviously given the beasts booze. Surely, they'd kill us all. We grabbed a preview copy of "Gonzo," and got the hell out.

We closed the blinds in the office, turned out the lights and slid the film into the DVD player. The machine hummed and whirred, but nothing happened. My editor cursed the remote and swore at the S-Video cable. I washed down some mescaline with a slug of Wild Turkey, and reached for my .45.

Catch it: Thompson was a Hell's Angel, a "creative" journalist who ruined Ed Muskie's political career, a gun-toting maniac high on LSD, a cheating husband and an absent father, but his relentless search for the American Dream will be cherished forever.

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