Name: Hunter S. Thompson Wants To Settle The Score | Letterman
Uploaded: 2022-06-30T22:00:58.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Hunter S. Thompson Wants To Settle The Score | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-06-30. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Hunter S. Thompson Wants To Settle The Score | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-06-30. Transcript available.

My next guest is one of the most controversial writers in America and the
inventor of gonzo journalism
We're delighted that he could be with us tonight. Welcome, please. Dr. Hunter
Thompson
How are you? Oh, I'm terrible. What's the matter? You don't I've been going to
court every morning for
Two weeks at seven o'clock. Yeah, and uh for me to go anywhere at seven o'clock
is real hard
So I uh, I tend to stay up all night. Yeah, so I've never stayed up all night
for two weeks
That makes sure you don't sleep at all. That's about the hundred and eighty-eighth
hour. Yeah, so I want to prove something
You know, yeah, I'm not sure what
But you feel like you're now in the middle of a mission and you will have
proven something
Uh, I probably will have yeah before this is over. Yeah. All right. Well, that's
good. That wasn't why I came here, but
Yeah, all right. I couldn't I couldn't talk this morning at all. My voice was
gone
When I called to say I can't make it. I couldn't say anything. Uh-huh
Also originally you called you called you called here to cancel. Yeah
Do I have a microphone on or is this something on a sandbag trip where you have
a microphone and I don't? That's right
I'm the only one in the building with a mic on nobody hears anything. That's a
whole Chicago oops, uh, Chicago politics
Uh now when you I'm not mic'd at all, right?
No, no, you really you've taken everything under this thing. Oh, I see. Okay.
You're hearing every word you say paranoia. Yeah
So you're uh
Dr. Hunter Thompson. Can I ask you what that what the the we I thought we
agreed not to discuss these
You don't want to discuss the doctor? I could discuss your childhood and you
know your teeth and stuff like that, but uh
Really, I I think it's really we're not into a uh an academic uh credential
thing. Well, no, I didn't I I just assumed that if
I insist on the use of the term doctor. Yeah at certain times, but uh, in fact,
I'm a doctor of chemotherapy of journalism and of uh
It comes to make
Divinity yes divinity divinity sure well, I would have guessed that
Let me ask you about uh, it's embarrassing to have many doctorates. It's like
being rich
Yeah, well, no, I mean if you went to school and earned it you shouldn't be
embarrassed by it
I've worked all my life for these things. Yeah wealth and doctorates. Uh-huh
Why shouldn't I be a little sensitive about
Displaying them in some kind of sleazy you know a tv
Now I just want to have a little fun. I know I know and you just that's what we're
doing here trying to have a little fun
Uh now tell me about the the goings-on in palm beach. Let's talk about
something else for a second here
What you brought to your uh, you brought is this a gift hunter or is this
innocence? Yeah, that's a gift
Uh-huh. That's a bomb. Uh-huh
We have here, uh, two or three thousand firecrackers, huh? Well, no, uh, not
that many
Really? It's a it's a light thing. I really I brought it out to set it off
No, you're not going to be setting these off in here, would you?
Well, no, no, we'll just maybe let's do the same thing. Maybe later at the
buffet upstairs. Well, we'll set those off
I'll put it back over here. No, no, you get it
You'll get it close to that cigarette. I knew that would happen. I said, don't
worry. Let's go out there and put it down in front of him
Tell me about you your correspondence with the american express company about
what did you have in mind for those folks?
I got offended frankly that uh
an american express was offering the uh the gold card
uh to the rebel
And what I considered a
fairly uh a loose-minded sort of
greedy kind of way and you have a gold card no, I know see that's what I mean
That's the uh
But uh it's being offered in a way that I consider degraded the gold card. Do
you have one?
Yeah, yeah. Now what is that what is that supposed to represent?
If you have one of those, what does that mean?
It tells me that I can go anywhere I want and get money
Yeah, I can well and there are limits of this and there are certain dark
aspects of that uh that contract
But basically if I uh like I I left the red chrysler convertibles all over palm
beach and hotels and beach houses
I can just you know, it's like for you the card
I had it. I didn't even have to register in a hotel
Just wave the card. They call me doctor
They tell you whatever you want really with the gold card, but I didn't feel it
should be offered
Uh to uh do the masses. Yeah, this is the palm beach. I've been trying to look
I've been educating myself to think
like the palm beach life
And uh, I've come to some prizes and surprising life stances in this
I've taken a drive me up and down the beach and a red chrysler convertible with
lesbians at night
and
Uh, you know naked people and uh drugs. This is the power of the gold card.
That's what you have to do
But I I thought that I uh, palm beach. I mean, uh
The american express image was kind of sullied by the idea that anyone could uh
Wander around like this rent convertibles
Buy lesbians all that trumpets with a gold card
So, uh, I wrote him a letter saying that look I think I have a better idea
And uh, you know what that is is if I should do your ads from now on for the
gold cards, not the green cards
I don't want any part of them
I put it down in a very uh forceful and I think persuasive style
And it was uh rejected by the swine that I wrote it to his name was johnson
Uh, there was a drug shop somewhere. It would be an effective campaign. I think
you for the american express card, yeah
Yeah, whatever uh, yeah, that's for this
I'm sure you have people here who can work on that. Yeah, sure we do
We have a full staff of folks who are looking to get you commercial work. That's
all they do
I really work in the courthouses and stuff. Yeah, I'm a reporter. Yeah, let me
uh
Now speaking of reporters, is it true that you one time were a bowling reporter
for a puerto rican newspaper?
Oh, that's a low blow. Yeah
All the things I've done to bring that is that the truth though? It is true,
yeah
Uh, how does how does one get that position?
Well, I was writing a novel uh at the time about san juan
And I decided that uh no actually reverse it. I went to san juan and decided to
write a novel about it
And uh, what I wanted to do was work on this uh
New english language paper to send one star
And uh, I presented my credentials and got immediately just horribly rejected
all my several friends of mine were hired
So I wrote the editor a letter saying uh
You're a swine a fool and a uh
And a doomed man pretty much the same letter you wrote to the american express
guy. No, it was worse
And I said, I'm gonna find somebody to come in here and get you for this
And lo and behold and the uh, like in way back in the personals they had uh,
you know columns of the new york times on a sunday
was a like a three line ad that said uh
uh famous international puerto rican sports magazine seeks uh
Uh chic editor, you know something like that. I thought well i'll call that and
it was some uh swine really that's what it comes down to
Who was starting a uh, what he called the the
Sports Illustrated of the caribbean. It sounded real good and plus he gave me a
i'm into vengeance
I like to i like to settle these scores uh to the best of my ability
When you live this this life, you know, you want to settle the scores. Yeah
people get sloppy otherwise
So I went down there uh
To work in this magazine, which I really thought was gonna be a slick
Sports magazine and it turned out to be a bowling sheet a horrible thing
where uh
I had to hang around bowling alleys at night
And report the scores of the you know, the federal league and yeah, you know,
uh harold's uh real estate sales and uh
hernandez uh construction. How long did you was that fun for you? No, I sued
the man sued him good good
As long as you got the vengeance. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, uh, it's still going on
listen
I want to ask you if you can come back and see us again
I'm sorry that we're running short on time. I'd like to continue this
discussion and it's no, I don't think you don't think you'll be back
Well, that saves us making phone calls tomorrow. Uh, all right. Uh, thank you
very much, Hunter. It's a pleasure meeting you
Dr. Hunter Thompson. We'll be right back with Marjorie Gross