How Hunter S. Thompson Gave Birth to Gonzo Journalism: Short Film Revisits Thompson’s Seminal 1970 Piece on the Kentucky Derby

“In 1970, Hunter S. Thomp­son went to the Ken­tucky Der­by, and he changed sports jour­nal­ism and broad­cast­ing for­ev­er.” Or so claims his­to­ri­an Dou­glas Brink­ley, the oft-imi­tat­ed but nev­er repli­cat­ed writer’s lit­er­ary execu­tor, in the short Gonzo @ the Der­by. Direct­ed by Michael G. Rat­ner and first com­mis­sioned by ESP­N’s 30 for 30, the thir­teen-minute doc­u­men­tary tells the sto­ry of how, hav­ing made his name with a book on the Hel­l’s Angels, the 33-year-old, Louisville-born Thomp­son took a gig with the rebel­lious and short-lived Scan­lan’s Month­ly to go back to his home­town and report on its famous horse race — and how he almost inad­ver­tent­ly defined a whole new kind of jour­nal­ism as a result.

As the 1960s turned into the 1970s, the Unit­ed States looked like a coun­try in seri­ous tur­moil: “Every­thing seemed to be com­ing unglued in Amer­i­ca,” says Brink­ley. “Kent State and the Black Pan­thers and the rebel­lion that’s going on around the nation, and yet here is this old-fash­ioned Ken­tucky Der­by fes­ti­val going on.” The late War­ren Hinck­le III, who edit­ed Scan­lan’s, had one ques­tion: “Who went to these damn things?” And so Thomp­son, described here by for­mer Rolling Stone man­ag­ing edi­tor John Walsh as “the quin­tes­sen­tial out­sider who likes to make him­self the quin­tes­sen­tial insid­er,” went — with nei­ther press cre­den­tials nor reser­va­tions — to find out the answer.

Thomp­son did not, as every fan knows, find out alone. Scan­lan’s also flew in, all the way from Eng­land, an illus­tra­tor by the name of Ralph Stead­man. When Thomp­son and Stead­man man­aged to meet amid the gre­gar­i­ous chaos of Der­by-time Louisville, nei­ther man could have known how inex­tri­ca­bly the cul­ture would soon asso­ciate their work, the for­mer’s fever­ish, impres­sion­is­tic yet hyper­sen­si­tive prose and the lat­ter’s untamed-look­ing, dis­tinc­tive­ly mon­strous art­work. Both of them found their voic­es in pre­sent­ing real­i­ty not as it was, but as grim­ly height­ened as it could feel to them, and both, giv­en the era, occa­sion­al­ly did so with the aid of mind-alter­ing sub­stances.

At the Ken­tucky Der­by, how­ev­er, they stuck to alco­hol — as did, if you believe Thomp­son’s report­ing, all the rest of the atten­dees, and in an at once hel­la­cious­ly debauch­er­ous and sin­is­ter­ly gen­teel way at that. “Unlike most of the oth­ers in the press box, we did­n’t give a hoot in hell what was hap­pen­ing on the track,” he writes in the final prod­uct of he and Stead­man’s trip, “The Ken­tucky Der­by Is Deca­dent and Depraved.” (Find it in the col­lec­tion, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time.) “We had come there to watch the real beasts per­form.” Yet even as they gazed, backs to the hors­es, upon the sheer grotes­querie of what Brink­ley calls “the white South­ern pow­er elite,” they real­ized that they, too, amid their blus­ter­ing fak­ery, half-remem­bered alter­ca­tions, and near-con­stant bing­ing, had become beast­ly them­selves.

After all that, Thomp­son, back in New York to write up the sto­ry, feared that he did­n’t have a sto­ry at all. In des­per­a­tion, he told not of what hap­pened at the 1970 Ken­tucky Der­by but of how he and Stead­man expe­ri­enced the 1970 Ken­tucky Der­by, leav­ing plen­ty of room for spec­u­la­tion, remem­brance, artis­tic license, and unver­i­fi­able mad­ness that even­tu­al­ly devolves into the raw notes he scrib­bled amid the storm of high-soci­ety South­ern squalor. Could he have pos­si­bly sus­pect­ed what a potent com­bi­na­tion that and Stead­man’s illus­tra­tions (described as “sketched with eye­brow pen­cil and lip­stick”) would make? Bill Car­doso, then edi­tor of the Boston Globe, under­stood its pow­er when he first read the arti­cle, even coin­ing a word to describe it: “This is it, this is pure Gonzo. If this is a start, keep rolling.”

The short doc­u­men­tary, “Gonzo @ the Der­by,” will be added to our list of Free Online Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Hunter S. Thomp­son — and Psilo­cy­bin — Influ­enced the Art of Ralph Stead­man, Cre­at­ing the “Gonzo” Style

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets in a Gun­fight with His Neigh­bor & Dis­pens­es Polit­i­cal Wis­dom: “In a Democ­ra­cy, You Have to Be a Play­er”

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by The Hell’s Angels: Where’s Our Two Kegs of Beer? (1967)

Play­ing Golf on LSD With Hunter S. Thomp­son: Esquire Edi­tor Remem­bers the Odd­est Game of Golf

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Filled Dai­ly Rou­tine

Hunter S. Thomp­son, Exis­ten­tial­ist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Find­ing Mean­ing in Life

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.