Nov. 17, 1987
They should have rioted. But all the crowd of 1,348 could do was stand like stunned sheep for slaughter when Hunter S. Thompson’s scheduled lunacy died before takeoff at Tawes Theatre last night.
When SEE Productions officials reluctantly said the bald bastion of Gonzo journalism had been inescapably delayed before he even left Denver, someone should have detected a plot. And 20 minutes after the cancellation announcement, accusations started flying.
“This isn’t just one of his stunts, is it?” yelled a longhaired federal undercover agent who may have known a little more than the rest of the crowd. But he wasn’t letting on to anything because of privacy regulations.
Maybe it was one of Thompson’s twisted plans to piss off an audience duped into paying for the right to ask him questions. Maybe he really was back at his ranch, counting his $5,000 non-appearance fee while snickering as he took a long pull on a cigarette.
Or it could have been a vicious plot by ever-paranoid presidential candidates to keep Thompson out of the Washington area and away from the impressionable minds of campus beer hippies. Thompson’s column for the San Francisco Examiner, in which he relentlessly bashes all the campaigners, was syndicated only a few months ago, giving him precious little opportunity to reveal the sadistic plots that make up political reality.
The announcement that Thompson wouldn’t grace the campus came about 8 p.m.
According to SEE Productions program adviser Paul Kurth, Thompson’s first flight out of Denver was cancelled because of a horrendous snowstorm.
The 48-year-old Thompson, showing he’s still crazy after spending all those years ripping Richard Nixon to shreds (and surviving all those self-reported bouts with hallucinogens), typically and inexplicably missed his second flight. But Kurth said he made the next one.
It would have been a patented Thompson finish, blowing into town at 7:30 p.m., just in time to bend his mind before facing the crazed masses somewhat later than expected.
But the straw that broke the buffalo’s back came when the plane’s arrival was delayed again until 9:40 p.m.
“At that point we decided to cancel the event,” Kurth said. “There was no guarantee he was going to arrive.”
SEE Productions president Mike Humphrey, grabbing a megaphone from a nearby man in blue, took control of the situation and crushed the dreams of hundreds of Hunter-heads milling about the theater in mindlock.
Many fans who floated around the front of Tawes didn’t believe, or, more exactly, didn’t want to believe that Thompson wasn’t going to make it.
“Is it canceled?” asked mindless scum, refusing to leave the theater steps 15 minutes after the announcement was made but also declining to do the only sensible thing — get violent and tear the place apart.
“Are you going to reschedule it?” they whined, abandoned by their substance-abusing herdsman.
“We’re going to try and reschedule it … we can’t guarantee it. He’s a busy man,” Humphrey explained.
A college lecture can cramp a writer’s style when he’d rather sit in the backyard of his Colorado ranch, drinking Chivas Regal and shooting his .44 magnum at assorted targets.
“I kind of expected it,” said Holly Pearl, a May university graduate who drove down from Baltimore for the lecture. “I’m disappointed. I think Hunter had one mushroom too many.”
But SEE Productions staffer Troy Collins quickly killed that theory when he noted Thompson had evidently been at the Denver airport since 9 a.m.
Thompson fans, who were told they could get refunds on their $3 and $5 tickets at their place of purchase, shouldn’t be completely discouraged. Kurth said Thompson will eventually answer questions here in the future.
