For No Good Reason

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