"Flying in IBM Selectric typewriters with the right typeface; booze and drugs (usually he had this part already done); arranging for a handler-assistant at his end." (Image by MDCarchives.)

As Johnny Depp’s The Rum Diary is about to be released, Jann Wenner recalls working with Hunter S. Thompson, on the Huffington Post. No surprises, really. An excerpt:

“After Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, everything else he wrote was a full-on siege. Setting up the assignment was easy–Hunter was pretty much welcome everywhere and had the skills and instincts to run a presidential campaign if he had wanted. But then came the travel arrangements: hotels, tickets, researchers, rental cars.

Later in the process, finding a place for him to hunker down and write–The Seal Rock Inn, Key West, Owl Farm, preferably isolated and with a good bar. Flying in IBM Selectric typewriters with the right typeface; booze and drugs (usually he had this part already done); arranging for a handler-assistant at his end. Back at Rolling Stone, I had to be available to read and edit copy as it came in eight-to-ten-page bursts via the Xerox telecopier (the Mojo Wire), a primitive fax using telephone lines that had a stylus that printed onto treated, smelly paper (at a rate of seven minutes per page).

I had to talk to Hunter for hours, then track and organize the various scenes and sections. He would usually begin writing in the middle, then back up or skip around to write what he felt good about at the moment, report¬ing scenes that might fit somewhere later, or spinning out total fantasies (‘Insert ZZ’ or ‘midnight screed’) that would also find a place–parts that were flights of genius. Generally the lede was easy, describing the invariably dramatic weather wherever he was writing from. Then a flurry of headlines and chapter headings and the transitions he had to produce on demand to create the flow and logic, and always, sooner or later, the conclusion, which we always called ‘the Wisdom.'”

More Hunter S. Thompson posts:

• Gonzo goes to the “depraved” Kentucky Derby. (1970)

• Thompson thinks President Carter is a badass. (1977)

• Sonny Barger intimidates Thompson on Canadian TV.

• Thompson reports from Hashbury for the New York Times. (1967)

• Thompson analyzes the Hippie movement. (1968)

• Thompson misbehaving in Vegas and Los Angeles. (1978)

• Thompson reports about the vanishing American dream in Los Angeles. (1965)

• The good Doctor expounds on the ego-expanding properties of the Internet. (1997)

• Hunter S. Thompson political ad. (1970)

• Thompson on a campus tour during the Reagan years.