Hunter S. Thompson and Kurt Vonnegut were two of the people most responsible for me wanting to become a writer. I was a teenager, and couldn’t believe you could actually get paid to be so rude, irreverent, and just plain weird.
I used to love to turn people on to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It was especially fun to see their reactions to the arsenal of drugs Duke and his attorney kept in the trunk of the big Shark. Hilarious. The Back Door Beauty scene in that book is one of the funniest things ever written.
In later years, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Hunter was friends with Warren Zevon, another madman/genius who is sorely missed. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when those two hung out.
The Hot Scenes Connection
I’ve been thinking a lot about my Work-In-Progress Hot Scenes even when I’m not working on it, and last week I wrote about John Cleese. The Monty Python legend got himself in a bit of hot water when he made reference to the “sanctimoniousness and narcissistic posturing” of “the wokes,” and I commented that.
The reason this resonates with me goes back to my teen years listening to Frank Zappa, reading Vonnegut and HST, and hanging out with some other rude young fellows.
And it’s funny: although I agree in principle with about 99% of what “the wokes” want, I object to their methods probably as much as John Cleese. If you’re trying to affect social change, using guilt and shame as weapons is a pretty crappy method of going about it.
So, Buckle Up, People
In Hot Scenes, Hollywood movie director J. Edgar Schnatz decides to make a “classy” porn film using real actors performing real sexual acts. This leads him on a series of misadventures which could only happen in a novel like this, which is basically Blue Movie meets Gargantua and Pantagruel.
What does that mean in practical terms? It means the easily offended, and those with no sense of humor, had better either stay away or buckle up for a wild ride.
Just as my last novel was the most spiritual and autobiographical work I’ve ever done, this next book promises to be the funniest, and the most profane. I’ve laughed out loud while working on it already. Wokes, you’ve been warned.
