All language subtitles for For.No.Good.Reason.2012.720p....

I really thought what I would do

if I ever learned to draw properly

was I would try to
change the world.

Is this thing working?

Right now, Ralph, what
exactly are we doing here?

It's a very odd
idea to make a movie,

a film, a documentary,

about an artist, say me.

And in one way it's
rather a good idea,

and in another way you
wonder why one is doing it.

Except that it's become

far more personal as it's developed

into something which really
is about my work and about me.

And I think that makes
it more interesting

because it takes in
the good and the bad.

It takes in all
sides, all dimensions.

It's almost, when you
come down to see us,

we know what we're going to do, even
though we haven't planned anything.

We just simply carry on
and if something comes out,

something does, and
sometimes it doesn't.

And so that seems to me

the kind of thing that's
made this all worthwhile.

I haven't seen Ralph since the
signing of Hunter's memorial poster.

It's been a while, and I've
really been looking forward

to catching up with him in
his studio at Loose Court.

Right.

I'm gonna put a piece
of paper down here.

I don't know why. I think it's
because you're in the room.

If you weren't here,
I'd be having a lie-down now.

Are you ready for this?

'Cause it might not be very
good, but it might be great, too.

I love it.

When I don't know what to do,

I do that.

It's a kind of cheat, in a
way, because you don't know

whether you did it because

you can't do anything and
there is nothing in your mind,

or you did it because it
might just lead somewhere.

It's fantastic when that happens.

I can see a horse in there already.

I didn't know what it was

and then I suddenly
thought, "I know what it is."

It's an unloved pet,

and it's a shame that
I drew it, really,

because I don't like it.

It's a horrible-looking creature.

And if it walked into the
living room, I'd kick it out.

And it's a frame of mind.

All I've done is made something

that's part of a frame of mind
I might be in at the moment.

What a terrible thing.

It was 1969 when my
first book was published.

It was a collected works

of all my cartoons that I had done
since I had taken it seriously.

That's absolutely amazing.

This was the beginning,
really, the conducted tour,

and the whole idea of
it being The Pioneers,

it's like you're going, you know,
we're going off on a conducted tour

and everything's comfortable.

And they'd just get off the bus,
look around and get back on again.

And then I thought of this
when they brought Muzak in.

So I did the picture called
Down at the Old Bull and Bush.

And there's the old
boy with his pint

and then all this Muzak
coming out of the speaker.

Because it was really only just
getting going, all this stuff.

Part of my idea of humor

was it would be slightly maniacal.

But there was an arrogance missing.

There was a wildness missing.

There was a rawness missing.

It lacked that bite I needed,
that real ferocious bite,

the thing that would
make it noticeable.

Still as relevant
today as it was then.

Great. Amazing. Just incredible.

The reason I learned to draw

wasn't just to be able to draw
and people say, "That's pretty,"

but that I needed to apply
it as a weapon almost.

It was something quite savage.

People would see the work

and they would think about it.

In a way, it was a
wonderful calling card.

I took it with me to America.

And that was 1970.

Bus for New York City.

Hey, driver, hold up.
I'm trying to get on.

Hold up, man.

All right. Thanks a lot.

My idea was actually to do a
thousand pictures of New York.

Well...

What I was looking for
were things to draw.

New York, skyscrapers
and everything.

It's God's own city, man.

Hey, what's up, man?
Hey, you look fine.

What you trying to make
yourself five bucks for, bro?

Yeah. Hey, hey.

Just run across, man. Just run
across the street. Come on, man.

What it does for me,

it freezes a moment,

that when I look back on it,

I think, "Goodness me.
Did that really happen?"

You know, it's just something

that is frozen in time
and it's gonna change.

Nothing stays the same.

I found it upsetting seeing all these
vagrant people wandering the streets

and always staggering towards you

and grabbing you by the hand.

And saying, "Give us a dime, buddy.
This is a tough city to get started in."

It's hopeless. I could never do it.

Yeah.

And I wanted to capture
that sort of look, that face.

I was drawn towards skid row,
I was drawn towards it

as a sort of almost a museum
of misery and deprivation.

And I think this is
a picture of a bum,

and he's hanging
onto a fire hydrant,

and there's a woman saying, "Why don't
you get up and get yourself a job?"

You know, that sort of thing.

"You're lyin' about on the
pavement doin' nothin'."

"Leave me alone,
lady. Leave me alone."

I think my experience in New York

gave me the conviction
that I needed

to make this the work of my life.

I needed it to reassure myself
that I wasn't wasting my time.

Cartooning meant more to me
than just doing funny pictures.

It meant to change
things for the better.

While I was in New York,

I got a phone call.

Hello?

To go and meet an ex-Hells
Angel who just shaved his head,

Hunter S. Thompson.

Hunter, he always called you
in the middle of the night.

It was always 3:00, 4:00 in the
morning. You knew it was Hunter.

He said, "God damn it." He
always said, "God damn it."

"Gotta go to the Kentucky Derby." Well,
it was, like, Wednesday or Thursday.

Kentucky Derby was Saturday.

I was like, "Well, okay, you wanna
go to the Kentucky Derby, we'll go."

He says, "Well, a photographer?"
I said, "We'll find somebody."

So, it was short notice, so I
thought of this guy Ralph Steadman,

who was a British cartoonist
whose work I'd seen many times,

very evil-minded,
twisted kind of guy.

And so we dragged him to Kentucky

and they ended up going through this
haze of alcohol and drugs, madness,

and so they became part
of the story themselves.

The next day was heavy.

With 30 hours to post time,
I had no press credentials,

and according to the sports editor
of the Louisville Courier-Journal,

no hope at all of getting any.

Worse, I needed two sets.

One for myself and
another for Ralph Steadman,

the English illustrator who was
coming all the way from London

to do some derby drawings.

All I knew about him was that this was
his first visit to the United States,

and the more I pondered that
fact, the more it gave me fear.

Would he bear up under
the heinous culture shock

of being lifted out of London

and plunged into a drunken mob
scene at the Kentucky Derby?

We had to find each
other, as it were.

Oh, God. Where is he?

Eventually, I heard this
voice behind me saying,

"Excuse me.

"Are you... Are
you Ralph Steadman?"

He said, "Would you like a drink?"

Anyway, we went on
this binge for a week.

I was making notes and drawing.

Hunter said, "It's a filthy habit you've
got there, scribbling dark pictures.

"And around these
parts that's an insult."

He said, "I've got a horrible feeling
we're gonna have to get out of here."

From that point on, the weekend
became a vicious drunken nightmare.

We both went completely to pieces,

and since poor Steadman had no
choice but to take what came his way,

he was subjected to
shock after shock.

We sort of went along
with whatever happened,

and we'd made that agreement

with ourselves, you
know, between each other.

"That's what we do. We just
go and see what happens."

"I'll do the drawings,
you write," you know?

So that became the
beginning of Gonzo.

Now, looking down
from the press box,

I pointed to the huge grassy
meadow enclosed by the track.

"That whole thing," I said,
"will be jammed with people,

"50,000 or so, most of
them staggering drunk.

"It's a fantastic scene,
thousands of people fainting,

"crying, copulating, trampling each other
and fighting with broken whiskey bottles."

I think what he saw,

in our connection, was
somebody that somehow

saw the thing in pictures as
he saw it in words, you know.

And that seemed to me to be part
of the whole chemistry of it,

that our chemistry there
made Gonzo possible.

"What I'm trying to
find," he said, Hunter,

"is a certain kind of Kentucky face,
the face of the Kentucky Derby."

And the point is that
by the end of the week,

the very face we were looking for

was us looking back at
ourselves in the mirror.

- I don't recognize anyone anymore.
- Yeah.

What I in fact had done,
without realizing it,

- was scored a bull's-eye
first time... - Yeah.

on my first visit to America.

I mean, I met up with the one man
I needed to meet in all the world,

- in the whole of America, to work with.
- Yeah.

I got very depressed when I got
back on the plane to England,

because I was going
to have to go back

to a completely
conventional cartoon job.

And that really didn't
fill me with much happiness.

Let's go, Beanie.

Now, take it easy.

A bit... Ever so free.

A phone call came
and it was Hunter.

"Ralph, I've got this manuscript.

"Could you do us a dozen drawings
of something that could go with it?"

"Well," I said, "I'll try."

And I just set about it.

Got myself some booze as well,

'cause I seemed to need to be
a bit drunk to do it, you know.

I did about a dozen drawings,

rolled them up in a
tube and sent them off.

"We were somewhere around
Barstow on the edge of the desert

"when the drugs began to take hold.

"I remember saying something like,

"'I feel a bit light-headed.
Maybe you should drive.'

"And suddenly there was a
terrible roar all around us

"and the sky was full of
what looked like huge bats,

"all swooping and screeching
and diving around the car,

"which was going about
100 miles an hour

"with the top down to Las Vegas."

When Fear and Loathing
in Las Vegas came out,

I think people were stunned by it.

I mean, nobody had really
seen anything like that.

It was a full-out celebration of
the most outrageous kind of behavior,

and then it was so...

Funny and dangerous
and eccentric and wild.

Looks like it's gonna be a
classic of 20th century literature.

So you're down on the main
floor playing blackjack

and the stakes are getting high.

When suddenly you chance to look up

and there, right
smack above your head,

is a half-naked 14-year-old girl

being chased through the
air by a snarling Wolverine,

which is suddenly locked in a death
battle with two silver-painted Polacks,

who come swinging down
from opposite balconies

and meet in mid-air on
the wolverine's neck.

And no one had seen
anything like this before,

certainly not in
American illustration.

And the pictures really
weren't about the story,

but they were a
reflection of the story,

of what was in Hunter's mind.

The casino scene, with all
the lizards, the hitchhiker...

I mean, those things just
have a life of their own,

because they're accompanied
by all this literature with it

and whole stories that
go with each illustration,

or illustrations to
go with each story,

depending on which
point of view you take.

I wanted to get it
out of my system.

It was something that was just
lying there waiting to erupt.

So it was a bit like being sick.

I threw the pictures down

and they worked because they
were about something specific,

but they allowed me a
complete freedom to do...

it was as though I was there.

Are we marking?

Do you feel like your lack
of drug-taking ever affected,

had an effect on your
relationship with Hunter?

No, no, in fact, it
was better that way.

It was better that we
were like chalk and cheese.

I mean, the whole idea of me being
like him would have been ridiculous.

Hunter, it's me!

Because he was someone
entirely different.

We didn't necessarily
see eye to eye.

We had entirely different
experiences of life.

And to him I was weird,
and to me he was weird.

Nice to see you.

Can I get some water?

- Right, you ready?
- Okay.

I like that.

- Did you get that?
- Great.

Oh, dear. I like that one.

Well, this is cartridge paper.

It's a good-quality, very
thick cartridge paper.

And this is Indian ink.

I like a brush...

For that kind of a stroke,

I couldn't have done it
with this one, for instance,

which is less weight.

But it might do
something, and it's lovely.

I love it, what it does.

And I might do
another one down there.

And the way I flick, you just
simply have a flick of the wrist,

which is a sort of a
proper semicircle, in a way.

And then I've got
this here, you know,

and I could take
some of this and go...

Then I could, for instance...

An eye in there.

And I like the idea
of an eye in there

and a sense of some face
that's happening there.

And I blow like so.

And things happen.

What are you doing right now?

Well, I'm pulling away the
gesso from underneath the color.

I think perhaps, you know,
art is just tricks, really.

In a way, I don't know
what there is there.

I mean, it's only a...

it started out as a blank sheet of
paper and it's become more than that.

- There's an event going on in there.
- Yeah.

That's rather nice.

Take Francis Bacon.

He always seemed to manage to make
his pictures look like an event,

even though they
were not necessarily

specifically of somebody.

But he brought excitement into an area that
was apparently, at first glance, nothing.

And I found that to be
pretty amazing, really.

Do you make any use of preliminary
studies or sketches of any sort?

Yes, I do.

But after that, chance and
what I call accident takes over,

when consciously I don't
know what I'm doing.

At that moment,
I'm thinking of nothing

but how hopeless and impossible
this thing is to achieve.

Suddenly there comes something
which your instinct seizes on

as being for a moment the thing
by which it could begin to develop.

What that is, in fact, is stop-out.

If I blow more color
over that, then I rub it,

and it pulls this stuff off with the color
and leaves the paper still where it was.

So I'll just do this.

But also I'm worried about
going too far with that

and completely losing it, you know.

- Sure.
- I'd like to leave it for a bit, I think.

The most enigmatic
and inquiring artist

that ever lived would be Rembrandt,

who took it upon himself to do

self-portrait after self-portrait

in the process of getting older.

It was the most undecorative idea,

taking yourself

and watching yourself grow old,

and give us an
animation of his aging

in beautiful paintings,
great self-portraits.

It was the most scintillating
intellectual exercise

that one could imagine.

Now what I'm gonna do is,

'cause on there, there's all
this lovely masking fluid,

and this is the only thing
that will take it off,

which is masking fluid gone solid.

What's underneath there?

And this coming out now.
You're watching this?

Some sort of substantial sort of

place exists beyond the skyline.

I find this funny, because even
amongst all the great details,

there's precision in your work,
but you're still very, very playful.

Well, it's 'cause I'm
not very professional.

I don't go out of my
way to be professional.

I go out of my way to
try and make something

that is as unexpected to me as
it is to anyone else, you know?

That's perfect.

I think, most importantly, Picasso
has been the biggest influence of all,

because of his continuing
persistent creative daily life.

The way he made his life into the
reason for his living every day.

And it gave me a purpose,
too, in a strange kind of way,

and a sense of, "God, is there
anything on that piece of paper?"

"Anything can be there."

And Picasso proved it day
after day after day after day.

He convinced me that
the thing I can do is

simply start a drawing

and it will come out
the other end somehow.

And I won't know how it's
going to come out completely,

but that's the fascination.

That makes it a worthwhile pursuit.

If I knew what was going
to happen before I started,

what would be the
point of doing it?

If you surprise yourself still,
you really could have a good trip.

Well, the phone rang.

"Ralph, this is Hunter."

"So they seem to have liked
the Kentucky Derby piece

"and they want us to do
something else, you know.

"They want us to go to Zaire

"and cover the Ali/Foreman fight,

"the Rumble in the Jungle."

So I said, "Yes, Hunter,
I think that would be very nice."

I flew from London
and I arrived in Zaire,

and the first thing I noticed
when I got off the plane

was the blanket of heat.

The first thing Hunter did

was to go out and buy himself

a massive bag of grass.

And I thought to myself,
"I'm not gonna enjoy this."

The phone rang and it was Hunter.

"Ralph, got a great story.

"Cover the America's
Cup in Rhode island."

And I said, "Well,
I don't really like boats."

So when we got there,

the weather was so
bad, the race was off.

I got a call from him.
"Ralph, this is Hunter here."

"How do you feel about
doing another story?"

Sorry. "Dr. Hunter S. Thompson,

"care of General Delivery,
Woody Creek, Colorado,

"It was May 23, 1980."

"Dear Hunter,

"we would like you to cover
the Honolulu Marathon."

"We will pay all expenses
and an excellent fee."

"Think about it. This is a
good chance for a vacation."

Feels nice.

And the idea was

Hunter and I would
come out of the chocks,

"shoulder to shoulder,"
as he put it, you know,

and run as fast as hell,
obviously leaving people behind.

And a truck would pick us up and
take us the rest of the way, you see.

George Foreman,
I will bruise him up.

If I don't knock him out,
I will cut him all up.

Nicks and cuts all over his face.

On the eighth floor of
the Intercontinental,

George Foreman would
go walking with the dog.

I came up with another idea.

Why don't we go in
amongst the two boats,

the Gretel and the Intrepid,

and I write something, with a spray
can, on the side of one of the boats?

He said, "What are you
gonna write, Ralph?"

I said, "Well, I thought
of writing 'Fuck the Pope.'"

And we waited for the people
who were by this time knackered.

Then we'd be there to jeer.

"Run, you bastard,
run!" we would shout.

They went, "You filthy buggers!
No sportsmanship in you."

We'd gone there to
screw the race up.

It's an awful thing to do.

I mean, this is the
mean face of Gonzo.

Hunter said, "Are you ready
for this?" I said, "Yes."

And you know when you take a
spray can, you have to shake it.

And there's a little
ball, so you've got this,

"Click, click, click..."

I heard somebody say, "What
are you guys doing down there?"

And Hunter said, "God, pigs."

"We've failed. We must flee."

And he brought out Leary flares,

which you only use in times of
distress in the middle of an ocean,

which he set off in the harbor,

and some of them fell onto
boats and that caused mayhem.

I said to Hunter, "When
are we going to the fight?"

"We're not, Ralph.
I sold the tickets." "What?"

He went down to the pool,
threw the grass into the pool

and dived straight into it.

We couldn't go and see the fight.

The only way I could go and
see it was on television,

which I did in the bar.

The moment the fight was over,

everybody just wanted
to get out of Zaire.

"We must get out of
here. We must flee."

It's a good way to do
stuff, for no good reason.

Another of Hunter's phrases.

"Why are we doing this, Hunter?"
"For no good reason, Ralph."

What I seem to have become

is a kind of visual
chronicler of a part of Hunter.

I had personified him.

That was like a comic character.

He'd got a cigarette holder. Had to
have it. It was part of the outfit.

And he had all those things
and I gave them all to him.

'Cause he didn't like the idea

that anyone was going
to outwit him in any way,

you know, that he would...

He's in charge. He's the
writer. I'm just an artist.

I'm Edward.

He has a bird called Edward,
such a marvelous character...

I think Hunter tormented it,

but I think there was a
kind of two-way affection

or something going on.

Edward, talk to me. No?

Hunter would use it, I think,
to bounce off, you know.

He'd use it as a kind
of victim, you know,

something to bring into the story
and how he was feeling about it,

who was the bird.

I suppose at some point I, in a
way, became the bird, you know.

Now.

Now we're going to talk,
Edward. Speak to me. Yes.

I feel like Edward
sometimes, in a situation,

I feel absolutely taken apart,

as though he's had a whole
session of talking to me, you know,

holding me like a bird and I'm
trying to bite my way out of it.

And that was our
relationship, actually.

It was ill-treatment,
you know, that he gave me.

Speak up, Edward, speak
up. Speak up! Talk to me!

He could be an absolute
son of a bitch, you know,

and left me sometimes
in a right state.

The basis of Ralph
and Hunter's friendship

was that they saw kindred
spirits in each other.

I think that the
difference was that

Hunter realized that
Ralph was crazier than him.

Ralph was willing to go to extremes
that Hunter was not willing to,

and you'd think Hunter would be
the one who was the, you know,

more outrageous and reckless

and the one who would go
out on a limb on something.

But Ralph was the one
who'd actually go there.

I'm not talking
about physical safety.

But I'm talking about
sort of, you know,

mental, moral, philosophical,

take a chance with your own work.

I think America is where

all that was going wrong in
the world was being nurtured.

Blast the hell out
of North Vietnam...

- Do you agree?
- Absolutely.

If anything, before the election,
we're gonna bomb more, believe me.

It seemed to me they
needed attacking.

It was something that
absolutely had to be done.

So it had fallen to me to do this.

It was my duty to change the world.

I'd always thought I
wanted to change the world.

Now was the moment.

Ralph was willing to say
anything about anybody.

I mean, his moral
sensibility was affronted

and he would just say
so, he wouldn't stop.

And thus in a certain sense insane,

willing to, you know, go to the
limits of what was appropriate,

beyond the limits of what was
appropriate and what was sanity,

and dangerous in that way.

Because people have gotta know whether
or not their president's a crook.

Well, I'm not a crook.

I had found my voice and I
wasn't at all afraid anymore.

I was going to use it as a weapon.

One continually lives in hope

and that you are coming along as
a sort of knight in shining armor

and you're going to do your best.

In a way, you're being
rather self-righteous.

But be proud of the fact that
you are attempting to put right

what really is wrong.

Since then Steadman
has gone back and forth,

contributing regularly to the
pages of Rolling Stone magazine,

recording some of the
significant political events

and personalities of American life.

His output is prolific.

He even writes Rolling Stone's
occasional gardening column.

Yeah, I wanted to write.

Really?

And having Hunter saying
to me, "Don't write, Ralph.

"You'll bring shame
on your family."

That spurred me on and I
thought, "No, bugger you."

She's my love

She's my life

It's really such a pity that
she's someone else's wife

She's my love...

Thank you for ringing.
I'm not here at the moment.

I'm busy writing a book and
I'll ring you later. Thanks.

I need a couple of drinks, actually,
to start on this, really do.

What is the time now, by the way?

- 12:00.
- Right.

The task I set myself was
filled with such challenge

that I feared the very
touching of the wall.

At times I was overcome
with desperate fear

and dared not mar the
whiteness there before me.

And I began to paint upon the
wall itself on 6th June, 1505,

at the stroke of the 13th hour.

At the moment of putting
the brush upon the wall,

the skies darkened and
the bells started to toll.

Leonardo da Vinci was a genius.

In fact, Sigmund Freud said

he was the man who
woke up in the dark.

I thought, "Am I knowledgeable
enough to know anything

"about such a man as
Leonardo da Vinci?"

There must be loads
of people around

who have done books
about Leonardo da Vinci.

And I found there were more than most
people have ever been written about.

So how can I possibly write
a book that was different?

How many books have
you read about Leonardo?

I suppose I've been
through about 50,

and I'm none the wiser.
I don't know a damn thing.

About halfway through
I suddenly thought,

"What if I call
myself 'I, Leonardo'?"

And so I became Leonardo.

It was 16th of December, 1982.

The angle for my book
on Leonardo da Vinci.

I would write it
in the first person.

I would look through his eyes.

Only I will know what it felt like.

No experts can tell me.

This allows me artistic license

and affords me the luxury
of telling my life story

without all the doubt that
accompanies most biographies about me.

The reason I chose
Leonardo as a subject

was because of something he said,

that genius was the
capacity for taking pains.

In a way I recognized
something of me in him,

that I was trying hard to
be something rather special.

And that's not swanky-ing about it.

It's just trying to do something
as definitively as I possibly could

that served the purpose
it was intended to serve.

He was fascinated
by why things worked

and how interrelated they all were.

Everything that he
designed and invented

were the result of
thinking about life itself.

I think the most significant
thing that Leonardo did,

that makes him so special,

was that he came out with something that
probably other people had dreamed of,

and that was how to fly.

I devised a simple flying harness

whereby myself, or someone who
might fit the harness willingly,

would soar out from some eminence.

The parachute invented by Leonardo

would have been, you know, a
triangular... Like a pyramid.

But then he came out with a
cleverer idea, which was the glider.

It flies,

but I don't.

You know, I learned a lot from
him. I learned a lot from...

This is how I got an education.

I didn't have an education
before I started doing stuff.

And, you know, I mean,
I left school with zilch.

Yeah.

I went to Abergele Grammar School.

The headmaster's
name was D.B. Jones.

He was such a sweet, gentle man.

After D.B. Jones retired,
we got a new headmaster,

Dr. Hubert Hughes.

He took over and authority
became very important for him,

and caning boys.

My head is down because,
in a peculiar way,

I felt that school was in some ways

a rather authoritative process.

And that's when I coined
a phrase which was,

"Authority is the
mask of violence."

I can't stand bullies,

and there have been so many of them

and they've been always
in positions of power.

I'm afraid I find that
frankly unforgivable.

The desire to shock is also a
way of getting back at authority.

That idea that,
"Righto, you owe me."

You scared the living
daylights out of me as a kid

with your awful way of dealing
with children and school.

I was trying to hurt the thing
that hurt me, if you like.

It's the key to opening the
door into my dark spirit inside

and out comes

the drawing that some
people call vicious

and all sorts of other
names, or perceptive even.

Sure.

It's like a filter
somewhere inside me

that lets it through
and onto paper,

and the anger is expressed.

It doesn't matter that
I'm pleasant one minute

and then I'm suddenly
vitriolic the next.

They go together. It's perfect.

Well, this is a little
booklet I put together

to celebrate the 50th anniversary

of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.

And so it's introduced
and illustrated by me.

Article 1.

All human beings are born free
and equal in dignity and rights.

They are endowed with
reason and conscience

and should act towards one
another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2.

Everyone is entitled to
all the rights and freedoms

set forth in this declaration.

Article 3.

Everyone has the right to life,
liberty and security of person.

Article 4. No one shall be
held in slavery or servitude.

Article 5. No one shall be
subject to torture or cruel...

Article 6. Everyone has the
right to recognition everywhere

as a person before the law.

Article 7.

All are equal before the law

and are entitled without
any discrimination...

Nothing in this declaration may be
interpreted as implying for any state,

any right to engage in any
activity or to perform any act

aimed at the destruction...

People actually had the
balls, had the foresight,

had the understanding
of human nature,

to say, "We don't just talk
about it. We write it down."

Then we remind ourselves
of what human rights are.

What I'll try to do is draw things

because I'm angry at these people
who are cheated and swindled.

That's who my enemy
is. That's my object,

the object of my protest.

I just wanted to be taken seriously

as an artist who was
doing serious cartoons.

The age of miracles.

A pocket-sized, folding,
electronically controlled,

motor-driven,
single-lens reflex camera

that quite simply
does the impossible.

Come a bit closer.

Focus. Train.

Touch the electric button...

And the impossible happens.

In minutes, you have a finished
photograph of dazzling beauty.

That is the Polaroid
SX-70 experience.

Yeah, that's better.

- Ready?
- Yeah.

- It worked.
- There's no film in it.

I wanna do it again.

In 1996, I published With Nails,

which was a compilation
of film diaries,

and I wanted

the fly covers on the inside of
the book, the back and the front.

I thought it'd be a good idea as
Ralph was so emblematic to Withnail.

I asked Ralph if he could come
up with a drawing or some idea.

And he said, "Come down
and we'll do paranoids."

He took pictures of
well-known people,

or characters like Bela
Lugosi or John Travolta,

and then would stick
them on my face.

- That one worked.
- Yeah.

Okay, we're onto something now.

Now, let me play with
these ones for a minute.

And then work on the Polaroid
when it was still warm

and fiddle around so that the
two images melded together.

They're directly on the...

- Done onto the film.
- Onto the film.

While it's still...
While it's still...

I was after getting the real person
and then doing something to it.

I was actually trying to get
a good picture of somebody,

then distorting it,

to look like one of my drawings.

It was the essence of my work

to distort and yet
maintain the likeness.

I thought, this is great, so I
just fiddled with each one I did,

and made that happen, made
them move in an expressive way.

And I thought, "Well, that speaks
to me as my kind of drawing."

That's what I like, you know.

So I started doing them of
the Queen and Princess Di.

And that was Fergie, which I
thought, "That's coming out well."

And I thought, "I've
got a book here."

So I did a book of it.

Anyway, they all
came out like that,

and there was one,
and it's this one.

We were at the
Jerome Hotel in Aspen,

and there was a sort of reception

and David Hockney had
been invited as well.

And then I saw David in the bar.

So I went up behind him,

had the camera ready,
and I said, "David."

And he turned round like
that and I went "Click, bash!"

And the thing hit him, you see.

And he said, "It won't
come out, you know."

Goddamn know-all.

It came out as one
of the best, actually.

Can I pick it up?

Does this sound distorted to you?

Okeydoke.

The war file...

One more time. Sorry, Ralph.

The war file, 1963, 2003.

I protest, I protest, I protest,
I protest vehemently against the war.

I protest vehemently
against the war.

I'm seeking out every drawing
I've done since the '60s,

which in one way or another displays
the irony of our crass stupidity.

I will miss some things.
There are so many.

I know nothing will be solved,

but I do it for my
sanity and world peace.

Our leaders are mindless,
arrogant and insane.

The thing about Ralph's work is
it was just the energy, the anger,

the venom that was just spewed out,

and that's what I loved.

I wish I'd had that kind of
ability to explode like Ralph does

and still control
it at the same time.

The problem with protest
is we were the protesters

and we got old and we got tired.

We screamed and shouted and we did
change the world to some degree,

but not as much as we'd like.

And that leads to depression and
a sort of sense of semi-impotence,

which I think after a while
begins to just wear you down.

You realize that you
did make these changes

and you see a new generation
of people coming up

who are the beneficiaries of
a lot of the noise we made,

and they don't give a damn,
they don't give a toss.

They're into shopping.

So it gets very hard to
know what to do with this.

Ralph can't stop.
I don't think I can stop.

We'll go to our graves shouting
and screaming and making noise

and nobody will listen.

To John Dillinger and I
hope he is still alive.

Thanksgiving Day,
November 28th, 1986.

Thanks for the wild turkey
and the passenger pigeons

destined to be shit out

through wholesome American guts.

Thanks for a continent
to despoil and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and danger.

Thanks for vast herds of
bison to kill and skin,

leaving the carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties
on wolves and coyotes.

Thanks for the American Dream
to vulgarize and falsify.

Like 1987, '88, around then,

I was asked to do these
records with William Burroughs,

and that was so connected to
the world of Hunter and Ralph.

And, of course, Ralph
adored this when he heard it.

He liked the beginning
and the montage.

You know, it was all
these worlds meeting.

Thanks for "Kill a Queer
for Christ" stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for prohibition
and the war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where nobody
is allowed to mind his own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the memories.

All right, let's see your arms.

You always were a headache

and you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last
and greatest betrayal

of the last and
greatest of human dreams.

'Cause that type of writing,
that type of drawing,

is very admirable to me,

'cause in an odd way it's what we're
thinking at the back of our heads

but aren't capable
of getting it out.

These guys have the
kind of minds that

that comes out of them.

I mean, look at Ralph as a person.

You never met a warmer, generous...

He is not his paintings.

I don't know.

- Everything's here except the guns.
- Guns?

Everything's here except the guns.

- He can hardly walk.
- Yeah.

They must be in the car.

We found a spot where he does
his shooting. He likes to shoot.

And that's where we
set up the target.

Six.

When it stays open,
it's empty, see?

Yeah. Right.

- Understand?
- Yes.

- Okay.
- Just about.

So he comes forward

and he was quite trembly
by this time and...

Two, three, four,

five, six, seven.

Here I go.

And he goes...

Empties six rounds,
you see, like that.

There, you cut his head off.

I said, "Well, William,
you've missed," you know.

They all went through his
neck, you see. So he said...

He's dead, man.

One of the privileges

working with Hunter and
William Burroughs was

they were perverse in many ways

and yet incredibly honest.

I think what attracted me to them

was the fact that they
were honest writers,

writing about real things

that they actually experienced.

So in some ways one would say
they were journalist-writers.

- They wrote about what happened to them.
- Yeah.

Isn't it awful? It's awful.

And look how I look, as though
I'm, you know, in control.

- Exactly.
- And I'm not.

How many copies of this got out?

About four million.

No, no, no, no, no.

Christ, he always puts me
down in this terrible way.

I'm shutting this off for a
minute 'cause I'm pissed off.

So, Ralph, was that the last
time you saw Hunter, at Owl Farm?

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

September, October, 2004.

I had one blowup today
in my pants, and this is

- another blowup!
- Stop it. Stop it.

- So you keep doing it...
- Stop it!

- Don't do that.
- Please don't shout about it.

I don't come into your house and
copy all your fucking drawings

and then take them out
and run away with me, do I?

I'm not doing that.

Go on! Fucking well do
something, for Christ's sake!

You miserable son of a bitch.
What the hell are you trying to do?

Sitting here in this goddamn place!

I think Ralph loved Hunter

and was hoping that Hunter would
be something he couldn't be,

a little more responsible
and a little more careful

and a little more generous.

Day one. The English
artist Ralph Steadman

sets off with a BBC film
crew for Aspen, Colorado,

to meet an old friend.

The intermingling of the
commentary was so great.

It was like, you
know, jealous brothers,

or partners like Keith and
Mick or something like that,

that just, you know,
was gonna blow apart.

What I had presented myself as

was a ready answer
to all your problems.

And I took it quite readily, and
that's why you illustrated the book.

It wasn't the only reason,
Hunter. It wasn't the only reason.

No one would have noticed it had
it not been for my illustrations.

No one.

What you're saying, Ralph, is that

Fear and Loathing in Las
Vegas would not have been a...

The success it was.

a success if it hadn't
been illustrated by you?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, that's the story, in fact.

The story that was never told
was the story of my resentment,

- my burning desperate resentment.
- That explains a lot, doesn't it?

Yeah.

I think in Hunter's
heart, he loved Ralph.

Ralph was a brother to Hunter.

And they were two
wonderful characters

and they had a great
collaboration and friendship.

But sometimes those
things tend to break apart,

especially when you've
got irascible personalities

and particularly when
you have, you know,

Hunter's, you know, problem
with drink and drugs.

- You don't care?
- I do care, actually.

You know that, Hunter, but it's been a
fucking hard ride for all sorts of reasons.

- Who do you wanna beat on?
- For fuck's sake.

Hang on. I'm gonna stop this thing now,
'cause I can't talk to you like this.

- Yeah, you get out of here.
- What?

- I'm starting to feel queer.
- Christ.

He just realized this
was the death of fun.

There was no more fun.

And the idea of going
into an old people's home,

Hunter S. Thompson in
an old people's home,

can you imagine?

And he said, "I can't
bear the idea, Ralph.

"I've got this awful
image in my mind of

"me sitting there strapped
into the wheelchair."

They'd have to strap him
in. Couldn't keep him in it.

They'd strap him in the wheelchair.

And he couldn't move.

And he could see out of
the corner of his eye,

there was an old crone

and she was crawling across
the floor towards him,

and he knew, instinctively,

she was going to fondle his balls.

His wife, Anita, went
off to the health club

and she rang and said, "Hi, honey."

And then there was a
certain faraway sound,

as though she wasn't
necessarily up to the phone,

when he put the gun in his
mouth and pulled the trigger.

And that was it.

Now, his son thought
he heard a book drop.

'Cause it goes like that.

- Quite ironic, really, when you think.
- Yeah.

Yeah, well, it was kind
of that. He sort of...

The way I... Same thing, the
way I came to terms with it

was that this was a man who dictated
the way he was gonna live his life.

He was most certainly gonna
dictate the way he left.

- Yeah.
- And he did, you know.

- He did exactly that, yeah.
- So...

- It's sad, really.
- Very.

I did love Hunter

and I miss him quite a lot.

Rather a lot, actually.

Because he took away, when
he did what he did to himself,

he took with him

the raison d'etre for the
kind of work we did together.

It wasn't gonna happen again.

It was the finality of it

that perhaps is the most
shocking part for me.

Because that's what
happens to everything.

It disappears eventually.

A lot of people want
a piece of Ralph's art,

and Ralph holds onto
most of his originals,

because he just does
not want to let them go.

And this way somebody can get a
piece of Ralph's original artwork.

Yeah, they are original.
Each one is an original.

And each one's an original
because I sign each one separately

and number it out of an edition.

So that becomes the edition,

and the edition can be
worth quite a lot of money.

I'm a printmaker and we sell prints

to, you know, Ralph's
collectors all over the world.

It gives me a feeling of hope that,

you know, I can keep the original

and I can still make money.

But I don't think that
it's good for me, in a way.

Because it represses my spirit,

my natural spirit, to
just do another drawing.

And I think there's
something about that

which perhaps I don't like,

the idea that I'm not
only gonna sign this once

and then maybe twice,

or do the same drawing twice,

I'm gonna sign 800 of them.

Gonzo will not die.

Ralph continues to
keep Hunter alive

and Hunter keeps Ralph alive.

- You know, the two together.
- Yeah.

There's the sunshine coming in.

Right. It's coming through?

Testing, testing.

One, two, three, four.

So, Ralph, how you doing?

I don't know. I'm feeling a bit
down, I think, really, somehow. Yeah.

Apprehensive, anxious.

And I just don't know what...

It's partly to do with
getting older, you know.

You don't know how...
How long it goes on.

And, I don't know, I woke
up in the middle of the night

and needed to go to the loo

and felt...

I don't know, I think I
felt slightly meaningless.

That's the problem, I find,

that things are a little
bit on the meaningless side.

And why was I ever bothered

- to do anything about it?
- Sure.

Why did I ever try
to change the world?

But it was...

it was something to do,
you know, change the world.

I left Ralph's with
my mind reeling from

the sheer volume of a
lifetime's ideas and images,

uplifted and inspired by an
artist's efforts to change the world.

Look, you know, you've come here

asking me this and asking me
that, asking me everything else.

And as I go through
things, I suddenly realize

I've done too much in my life.

Really, what was the
point of all that?

There is no need to do any more

and yet I probably
may do some more,

and I don't really
think it's a good idea

because you become a polluter,
you know, a visual polluter.

How about that?

And I still haven't
proved that I'm an artist.

Somehow I'm a cartoonist
to some, and that's...

The cartoonist.

It's amazing to see an artist
as they jump into the unknown,

commit to the impossible.

Make no mistake, Ralph.

You are an inspiration.

For no good reason.

Is that all right?

Perfect, yes.