Hunter Thompson’s film biographer brings the gonzo journalist’s final crusade to this weekend’s Vail Film Festival

Randy Wyrick
March 28, 2007

So you’re watching Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan fall for each other again, but you’re tired of watching him get the girl.

You’d like to change the ending, maybe to something with a car chase or a hang glider off the top of the Empire State Building. Or maybe have less of Tom and more Meg Ryan.

Maybe you can.

Filmmaker Wayne Ewing is working on a project that allows visitors to his Web site to create their own short films with bits and pieces of a documentary he’s using to chronicle the 2008 presidential campaign.

The best of the lot will be included in his film, “If Elected 2008 ...”

Populist filmmaking
In 1972, Ewing made first film, “If Elected ...” when he was 24 years old,. It’s about a state senate race in West Virginia. He sold it to Bill Moyers, which led to 30 more shows public television shows for Moyers over the years and lots of other work.

His Web-based project, “If Elected 2008 ...” is populist filmmaking at its finest, and it works like this.

Ewing and his crews will cover the 2008 presidential race, the Democrats’ road to Denver, the Republicans’ road to redemption, and everyone else’s roads to nowhere.
The rough cuts are posted on the Web site, hunterthompsonfilms.com, along with all kinds of visitor-generated film. You can pull together pieces they like, leave out the pieces you don’t. You put together their own documentaries, which are also posted on the Web site, side by side in direct competition.

Visitors vote on them and like videos on YouTube. The winners rise to the top of the standings.

The best visitor-generated pieces will be included in Ewing’s full-length documentary on the presidential race, “If Elected 2008 ...”

“It allows people to recut the material and do what they want to,” Ewing said.

It’s called crowd sourcing and it’s one of the directions media is headed. It’s growing so popular that the New York Times deigned to do a story on it last week.

A journalism professor is operating a project based on crowd sourcing. Learn about it “All the World’s A Story” at newassignment.net.

“If you use enough people you’ll come up with something that has more intelligence than if you try to create something in isolation,” Ewing said. “‘If Elected’ was my breakthrough film when I was 24. Maybe this can be some other 24 year old’s breakthrough.”

Jump and cut
If you’ve ever watched a police drama, you’ve seen Ewing’s work, or the work of those influenced by him.

The jump cut is his calling card.

The jump cut is a style of shooting and editing that makes films look like rougher documentaries. Most cop shows now have that documentary-like style.

Ewing didn’t invent the jump cut any more than Bode Miller invented skiing and drinking. But they both perfected their specialties.

Ewing’s “Homicide: Life On the Street” changed the look of television police shows in the 1990s. He adapted the style from Godard, the French filmmaker who introduced it in the film “Breathless” during the 1960s.

Free Lisl: The Doctor is in
Which brings us to Ewing’s film, “Free Lisl: Fear & Loathing in Denver,” which makes its Vail premiere at this weekend’s Vail Film Festival.

The movie explores the most significant achievement of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s last years – the freeing of Lisl Auman who was sentenced to life without parole at the age of 21. Auman was supposed to have been part of the murder of a Denver police officer. Someone she had just met actually committed the murder while Auman was handcuffed in the back of a police car.

After receiving a letter from Lisl in 2001, Thompson enlisted the support of the nation’s top criminal defense lawyers, held a rally on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol, and co-wrote an article for Vanity Fair subtitled “Lynching in Denver” – all in an attempt to free Lisl from life in prison.

His efforts helped free Auman, but he didn’t live long enough to see it.

In March 2005, two weeks after Thompson committed suicide, the Colorado Supreme Court effectively set her free by reversing her conviction and ordering a retrial. A plea bargain leaves her on parole for many years to come, but Auman is no longer behind bars.

“It was Hunter’s last hurrah,” Ewing said of the “Free Lisl” film. “I think Hunter knew it was to be one of his final crusades.”

Bill Ritter, now Colorado’s governor, was prosecuting the case as Denver’s district attorney.

“He became like an ape in chains over Hunter’s Vanity Fair article,” Ewing said.
Ritter devoted pages and pages of the DA office’s Web site to disputing Thompson’s claims.

Ewing quickly became one of Thompson’s foot soldiers in the fight to free Lisl.

You don’t say “no” when the doctor asks for your help.

Ewing showed up at Thompson’s for a Super Bowl party, camera in hand, to shoot for another film he was working on.

The place was packed with some of the most high-powered lawyers in the country – defense lawyers, corporate lawyers, every conceivable kind of lawyer.

Thompson was working the room like a politician, charming some, strong-arming others, soliciting all to help free Lisl.

Ewing and others helped coordinate a rally on the steps of the state Capitol, and the tide began to turn at that point, especially in the Denver media, which had been portraying Lisl as the girlfriend of skinhead who killed the police officer.

“The police had been caught changing their story,” Ewing said, hence the phrase, lying like a cop on a witness stand. “When we brought that out, the case began to change.”

Neighbors and friends
Thompson and Ewing go back to the early 1980s together when they were neighbors in Woody Creek. Ewing chronicled much of Thompson’s life.

He worked as Thompson’s road manager. His job was to make sure Thompson traveled from Point A to Point B when he was supposed to, rarely an easy task for Ewing, but “a lot of fun.”

Ewing was in New Orleans shooting for a film when Thompson killed himself. He had just asked an old woman what she thought about death and filmed her answer. When he returned to his hotel room, the message light on his phone was blinking. The message was direct. Gonzo was gone. Dr. Hunter S. Thompson was dead by his own hand.

Thompson believed in reincarnation and said it had been 1,000 since he hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it.

The Doctor also once said we come back as what we deserve, telling a crowd some would come back as a three-legged dog on a Navajo Indian reservation.

Then he paused and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be prejudiced against any Indian reservation.”

“He was my best friend for many years. I miss him,” Ewing said.