http://www.eitb24.com/noticia_en.php?id=83712
Friends and Hollywood stars fire into the sky Thompson´s ashes
The private celebration included actors Bill Murray and Johnny Depp, rock bands, blowup dolls and plenty of liquor to honour Thompson.
With a deafening boom, the ashes of Hunter S. Thompson were blown into the sky amid fireworks late on Saturday evening as relatives and a star-studded crowd bid an irreverent farewell to the founder of gonzo journalism.
As the ashes erupted from a tower, red, white, blue and green fireworks lit up the sky over Thompson's home near Aspen.
The 15-story tower was modelled after Thompson's logo: a clenched fist, made symmetrical with two thumbs, rising from the hilt of a dagger. It was built between his home and a tree-covered canyon wall, not far from a tent filled with merrymakers.
His wife, Anita Thompson said he loved explosions.
The private celebration included actors Bill Murray and Johnny Depp, rock bands, blowup dolls and plenty of liquor to honour Thompson, who killed himself six months ago at the age of 67.
Security guards kept reporters and the public away from the compound as the 250 invited guests arrived, but Thompson's fans scouted the surrounding hills for the best view of the celebration.
Thompson fatally shot himself in his kitchen on February 20, apparently despondent over his declining health. The memorial, however, was planned as a party, with readings and scheduled performances by both Lyle Lovett and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.
The author's longtime illustrator, Ralph Steadman, and actor Sean Penn were on the invitation list, along with Depp, who portrayed Thompson in the 1998 movie version of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream," perhaps the writer's best-known work.
Anita Thompson said Depp funded much of the celebration.
Thompson is credited along with Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese with helping pioneer New Journalism - he dubbed his version "gonzo journalism" - in which the writer was an essential component of the story.
He often portrayed himself as wildly intoxicated as he reported on figures such as Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.
At the height of the Watergate era, he said Richard Nixon represented "that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character."
The Night He Painted the Sky: Hunter S. Thompson
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The Night He Painted the Sky: Hunter S. Thompson
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There was madness in any direction, at any hour... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right. And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that, our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vagas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
Sail on Hunter S.
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vagas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
Sail on Hunter S.
