SOURCE: "An Evening (Gasp!) with Hunter Thompson," in Time, Vol. 135, No. 4, January 22, 1990, p. 64.

In the following interview, Allis describes his attempt to interview Thompson.

Boston correspondent Sam Allis went to Colorado last week to interview Hunter S. Thompson, the inventor of gonzo journalism, author (Hell's Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) and defiant eccentric, at his home in Woody Creek. This is what happened:

I gave up on the interview and started worrying about my life when Hunter Thompson squirted two cans of fire starter on the Christmas tree he was going to burn in his living-room fireplace, a few feet away from an unopened wooden crate of 9-mm bullets. That the tree was far too large to fit into the fireplace mattered not a whit to Hunter, who was sporting a dime-store wig at the time and resembled Tony Perkins in Psycho. Minutes earlier, he had...