The Long Highway

Saturday, February 26, 2005

Rocky Mountain News on HST

Great article on Hunter Thompson's last hours:Rocky Mountain News: State

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Aspen Times News for Aspen Colorado - News

The family is looking into whether Thompson's cremated remains can be blasted out of a cannon, a wish the gun-loving writer often expressed, Brinkley said.

"The optimal, best-case scenario is the ashes will be shot out of a cannon," he said.

Qnother quick one

... before i expire. Wow, what a week. Started cutting my movie on Saturday at 8am after a week. On Monday G & I had another ultrasound of the baby. I have a pic but I haven't managed to scan it yet. It is very dark. However, the baby is doing well indeed. He is massive. As the GYN said, "consider the genetics." He is active almost all the time. G constantly is either giggling at his gyrations or chastising him for whacking her insides around. We're both very excited about the baby.

I managed to shape my school schedule around baby time, and that's part of the reason I'm doing a sort of a marathon right now -- three ten-day projects full of 15 hour days one on top of the other. But I'm not complaining -- this will allow me to go on the very last project of the year, which is like 10 days after the baby should be home, and a month prior with no large editing projects.

We had a power outage at school this week, due to the huge rainstorms that lashed Southern California last week, but sat around half the day waiting for the power to come back on and lost a lot of valuable time as a result. It is a presure situation for sure. I really do enjoy it but I really really miss being able to hang out and see my poor pregnant wife who's all by herself. A hero.

On Saturday, our editing is interrupted by George Lucas, for whom there will be a reception and everyhting, private thing, AFI only. Say what you like about his more recent choices, but you have to agree he's had a hand in some of the most entertaining films of my lifetime. It will be a pleasure to meet him. I'll leave the Jar-Jar mask at home.

OK, more dispatches from the dark side of the moon the next time fate lets me get home before 11.

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Ralph Steadman on HST

The Independent Online Edition > Enjoyment

Monday, February 21, 2005

RollingStone.com: Hunter S. Thompson Dies : News

It only took the Stone -- the very symbol of the sort of perversion of an ideal Thompson raged against, his home for his best years as a writer -- a whole day to get something up on this.

RollingStone.com: Hunter S. Thompson Dies : News

CNN.com - Hunter S. Thompson dead at 67 - Feb 21, 2005

Sad news today that despite having no time I cannot let pass without mention. Hunter Thompson, one of my idols, maniac, patriot, writer, shot himself overnight in Woody Creek, Colorado. Those who saw Hunter only as the kind of caricature he presented of himself miss a lot. He was, at his core, an American idealist, a mad chamion of liberty, and though his best days were behind him as an author, he could still startle with some mind-bogglingly astute and funny tuen of phrase.

But he was at his most poignant in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," musing on the death of the hopeful ideals of the '60's:

"There was no point in fighting -- on our side or theirs," he wrote. "We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

It's such a very touching line and betrays the deep sense of sadness and rage at the perversion of the American Dream that was the essence of Hunter's writing.

I can scarcely imagine a weapons expert like him accidentally shooting himself; the first thought is that he must have been crazy on drugs, but HST has done more drugs that hald of Berekeley and would be unlikely to lose it under such circumstances; there are no details, but I can only imagine him pulling his own plug if he had become horribly ill or something. In any case -- it's a great loss.

I'll write more on my next night off -- the next time I will get home before 11 pm -- which wil be March 1st or so.
CNN.com - Hunter S. Thompson dead at 67 - Feb 21, 2005

Thursday, February 17, 2005


Overture! hit the lights . . . this is it, the night of nights . . . (see below)

A quick one

Well. Today was my first day off from editing in two weeks, which means just about every day I am up at dawn, off to school and don't come home until around midnight. I really, really love what I do, and the intensive/immersive nature of the program at AFI is an incredible learning experience, but it does mean that I go literally weeks without seeing my wife (awake at least) or really, anyone outside of school for most of the time. Not time for phone calls, emails, anything excpet brief communications. Numerous things have been going on in the extended family front to which I have not been able to pay the appropriate attention, one sister getting deathly ill and recovering and the other getting engaged! I have these little 5 minute windows of opportunity to contact people during the day and with the time zone we're in etc. it is very difficult to raise anyone. It's like being on the moon, where you have these little windows of time to blurt a message back to Earth.

So today, I had to miss class to catch up on stuff that had been piling up at home for two weeks: unreturned emails, phone calls, a massively messed up server at home for our music files, to do items that I hadn't even got on my list yet, etc. A big partof my learning experience is how to balance the work/life issues in a pressure cooker, and so far I seem to be really good at one or the other, but only if the one I am not being good in suffers as a result. Big eye-opening learning experience from this round. I also made a game effort to eat more healthy food and take better care of myself physically during this last session. I did a little better than I had heretofor, but I have some ideas of how to improve the whole thing. (Like, forcing myself to take a walk in Griffith park for half an hour every day, getting to bed earlier and rising earlier to do some catch-up at home.) I will have the Happy Editor's Guide to High Pressure Living complete by the end of this term.

I grossly miscalculated my schedule, I noticed last week. I thought I would have a week off from cutting before my next project, but due to a strangeness in the schedule I am, in fact, editing pretty much straight through (except for spring break, bless it) until about 10 days before the baby is due. (Please don't be early, li'l baby!). That means I will pretty much be off the radar screen until mid-March, right after St. Patty's. My last project doesn't start until May 7, so I will have plenty of "baby time" in between regular classes but oh, man, it is total insanity! I have never worked so hard for such a sustained period in my life. I used to think those 20 hour days for two weeks at WAMC were bad during fund drives but they are nothing compared to this. And I was 15 years younger then!

Not a lot to report besides the odd movie G and I get to sneak off to when I have an evening free, which is hardly ever. There was othing good out a few weeks ago so we went to see Diamonds Are Forever, probably the worst of the Connery Bonds, at the Egyptian. Fun to see even if it is the cheesiest and most dated of the series. We haven't really been able to do much else of note. I did go to a Grammy party for a big record label on Grammy night. My friend Joey O runs a restaurant that was hosting the event. It was incredibly extravagant. You could almost smell the money in the place. I guess the guys from Green Day were there; I think I saw one of them, although I definitely saw Jimmy Page and Kid Rock hanging out. Mostly I saw incredibly rich people hobnobbing. There was a crisis at one point in the party -- right after the Grammy show ended the crowd swarmed in and due to the layout the party designers had made, it was really hard to keep the flow of booze and glassware to the bars. It was the Delmar Boys to the resuce as Joe left me in charge of organizing the barbacking and making sure the bars were stocked for an hour or two. Between a few hard-working Mexican cats and myself we got everyone sorted out and the guests did not go thirsty even for a second. Anyway, it was a lavish Hollywood affair that I was too tired to attend but I am glad I went. I got to help out a friend, have some laughs, and revel in the fact that here I was with an old high school friend of 25 years or so, in Hollywood making pictures and he's running diamond-studded events for some of the biggest big shots in the music biz. We had a few beers late night and revelled in it. My observatiopn was, did you ever think, 15 years ago when we were sipping beers at dawn on Prince Edward Island, that we'd both be doing the same thing at a Grammy party in Hollywood 15 years later? Joe said, "I like to think about that too, but even more I like to think about what we'll be doing 15 years from now." Good point, Joe.

OK, time to cross one more thing off the to-do list before I hit the sack. Screening my project tomorrow for class -- have to be up mighty early. Hope to update again before Saturday when the whole dang thing starts up again.