Depp to finance memorial

2005-05-30 10:25

Denver - The ashes of legendary "gonzo journalist" Hunter S Thompson will be fired from a cannon housed in a giant fist-shaped monument paid for by movie star Johnny Depp, a friend told AFP.

Depp, who played the counter-culture icon in the 1998 film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, is financing the 45m steel monument that will be the centrepiece of Thompson's August 20 memorial service.

The service, to be held in the Colorado hamlet where the 67-year-old Thompson shot himself on February 20, will also be attended by Hollywood luminaries Sean Penn and Jack Nicholson, said Thompson's friend Troy Hooper.

"Johnny got involved with this project shortly after Hunter's suicide," said Hooper, who is also associate editor of Thompson's local newspaper, the Aspen Daily News.

"Hunter had discussed this idea of having his remains fired out of a cannon on film and in the interviews and Johnny has the means and the wherewithal to make this happen," Hooper said.

The monument

The monument that will house the cannon is already being erected near Thompson's fortified compound in Woody Creek, near the ski town of Aspen, ahead of the sunset ceremony to be held exactly six months after the author's death.

The monument, which is shrouded in black cloth to deter tourists, will be 2.4m wide take the form of the "gonzo" fist that came to symbolise the movement and adorned many of Thompson's books.

Plans to fire the remains of the hard-living Thompson surfaced immediately after his death after the adventurer repeatedly expressed his wish to exit this world in a style befitting his extraordinary life.

The larger-than-life Hunter was the father of "gonzo" journalism, a literary style which he pioneered in which the writer inserts himself and his personal views into the story.

His work, written in the first person and exemplified by his 1972 book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, hit a chord with America's youth at the height of the unpopular Vietnam and the social rebellion of the 1960s and 70s.

The stories of Thompson's heady experiences earned him a popular reputation as a wild-living, hard-drinking, LSD-crazed writer bent on self-destruction.

- AFP