The story accounts for two trips to Las Vegas, Nevada, that Hunter S. Thompson and attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta took in March and April 1971. The first trip spawned from an exposé Thompson was writing for "Rolling Stone" magazine about the Mexican-American television journalist Ruben Salazar, whom officers of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office had shot and killed with a tear gas grenade fired at close range during the National Chicano Moratorium March against the Vietnam War in 1970. Thompson was using Acosta — a prominent Mexican-American political activist and attorney — as a central source for the story, and the two found it difficult for a brown-skinned Mexican to talk openly with a white reporter in the racially tense atmosphere of Los Angeles, California. The two needed a more comfortable place to discuss the story and decided to take advantage of a "Sports Illustrated" magazine offer to write photograph captions for the annual Mint 400 desert race being held in Las Vegas.
Weeks later, Thompson and Acosta returned to Las Vegas to report for "Rolling Stone" on the National District Attorneys Association's Conference on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs being held from the April 25 to 29, 1971, and to add material to the larger "Fear and Loathing" narrative. Besides attending the attorneys' conference, Thompson and Acosta looked for ways in Vegas to explore the theme of the American Dream, which was the basis for the novel's second half, which Thompson referred at the time as "Vegas II". On April 29, 1971, he began writing the full manuscript in a hotel room in Arcadia, California, in his spare time while completing "Strange Rumblings in Aztlan", the article chronicling the slain Chicano journalist Rubén Salazar.
In November 1971, "Rolling Stone" published the combined texts of the trips as "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream" as a two-part article illustrated by Ralph Steadman, who, two years before, had worked with Thompson on a "Scanlan's Monthly" article titled "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved".
The next year, Random House quickly published the hardcover edition, with additional Steadman illustrations; The "New York Times" said it is "by far the best book yet on the decade of dope", with Tom Wolfe describing it as a "scorching epochal sensation".
Graham Chapman
Graham Chapman (8 January 1941 – 4 October 1989) was a British actor, comedian and writer. He was most famous as a member of Monty Python. He was openly gay and was in a long-term relationship with writer David Sherlock. Chapman was born in Leicester. He studied medicine at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He died of oropharyngeal cancer in Maidstone, Kent.
Michael Palin
Sir Michael Edward Palin (born 5 May 1943) is an English actor, comedian and author.
Palin was born in Broomhill, Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire. He studied modern history at Brasenose College, Oxford.
He became famous as a member of Monty Python in the 1970s. Afterwards he had his own television series, "Ripping Yarns", and also appeared in many movies, such as "A Fish Called Wanda." Over the last 20 years, he has become very well known as a television travel broadcaster ("Around The World in 80 Days", etc.).
Terry Jones
Terry Jones (1 February 1942 – 21 January 2020) was a Welsh actor, writer, comedian, screenwriter, film director and historian. He was a member of Monty Python.
Jones was born on 1 February 1942 in Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire, Wales. He was married to Alison Telfer, and later to Anna Söderström.
In September 2016 it was announced that Jones had been diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia, a rare form of dementia that impairs the ability to speak and communicate, and that he was no longer able to give interviews. On 21 January 2020, Jones died from problems caused by the disease, at his home in North London, aged 77.
New York (state)
New York, officially the State of New York, is a state of the United States and was one of the original Thirteen Colonies, which were the first thirteen states to make up the US. New York is in the northeastern United States, bordered by Lake Ontario and Canada on the north, Lake Erie and Canada on the west, Pennsylvania on the west and south, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut on the east, and New Jersey on the south in the eastern parts of the state.
New York was originally New Netherland, started by the Dutch Empire in the early 17th century. Late in the century, it surrendered to an English fleet during the Anglo-Dutch Wars and became part of the British Empire. About half the Dutch colony was given to neighboring English colonies. The Battle of Long Island, Battle of Saratoga, and other important battles of the American Revolution were fought in New York and it joined the new United States. The slave trade brought many black people into the state, where they were forced to work for white colonists.
The United States Census Bureau says that, as of 2005, New York had the fourth most people (population) in the United States, after California, Texas, and Florida. New York's estimated population is 19,297,729.
Many famous people were born in New York, including politicians, scientists, soldiers, artists, writers, entertainers, and others.
New York has a large Italian, Albanian, Dominican and Puerto Rican population.
The biggest city in New York is also called New York, located in the south-eastern part of the state and built on the Hudson River; it is by far the biggest city in the U.S.. Part of New York City is on Long Island, a large island in the Atlantic Ocean, and another part of it is on Staten Island, which is to the southwest of Manhattan, the central business district. Most people living in New York state live in the New York metropolitan area, one of the world's biggest metropolitan areas, which also includes part of eastern New Jersey.
The larger part of New York, north and northwest of the metropolitan area, is called "Upstate New York". Cities in this part of New York include Buffalo, the state's second largest city, Rochester, Syracuse, and the state capital of Albany. These places became cities because of the Erie Canal. Between 1788 and 1797, the Legislature moved the state capital around between Albany, Kingston, Poughkeepsie, and New York City. Albany became the permanent capital from 1797.
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is an American popular culture magazine. It mainly features articles about music, as well as sports, movies, and celebrities. It also features movie and album reviews, "greatest of all time" lists, and political editorials and commentary.
It was founded in 1967 in San Francisco, California.
Some of the magazine's famous staffers include Hunter S. Thompson, Peter Travers, Ralph Steadman, PJ O'Rourke, Cameron Crowe (whose experience for the magazine lead him to create the movie, "Almost Famous"), and Annie Leibowitz.
Ralph Steadman
Ralph Steadman (born Wallasey, 15 May 1936) is a British cartoonist and illustrator. He is best known for his artwork for the books and articles of Hunter S. Thompson.
Steadman was born in Wallasey, Cheshire, and brought up in Towyn, North Wales. He went to Ysgol Emrys Ap Iwan (high school), Abergele, East Ham Technical College and the London College of Printing during the 1960s. There, he did freelance work for "Punch", "Private Eye", the "Daily Telegraph," "The New York Times" and "Rolling Stone".
Steadman lives with his wife in Kent, England.
Tunisia
Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in North Africa. Tunis is its capital.
Since history has been recorded, there were Berber tribes living in what is now Tunisia. Most of them built little towns and ports along the coastline so they could trade with different travellers from everywhere in the Mediterranean Sea.
Most of the travellers that used to pass by Tunisia were Phoenicians who started to settle on the Tunisian coast during the 10th Century BC.