Fear and Loathing in DC: Gonzo Illustrator Ralph Steadman’s Life and Work

The task of creating the film’s poster fell to British artist Ralph Steadman, whose jagged, hallucinatory illustrations had been integral to both Rolling Stone’s aesthetic and the Fear and Loathing books. (Unlike Thompson’s recreational—some would say Olympian—drug use, Steadman chose not to partake.) In the years since, the Thompson-Steadman partnership had become the stuff of legend, like a fire-breathing Butch and Sundance storming through the latter half of the American century, shattering every establishment rule with fearless, hilarious gall.

And so, just as Steadman had been the inevitable choice for marketing Linson’s film, he became the inevitable choice of wingman after Thompson got his first, horrified look at the screenplay draft by John Kaye, with whom Thompson would share screenwriting credit. “Call me at once,” Thompson wrote to Steadman via emergency cable. (Yes, in those days, Thompson often preferred to communicate by telegram, Telex, or fax.) In typically paranoid fashion, Thompson warned: “Cancel all repeat all art and publish contracts in re: Buffalo film until we talk. The buggers are worse than we thought. Brutal dealings with Linson tonite confirms our worst repeat worst fears.… The ravens have come home to roost. Like we always knew they would.… The film is doomed.” Hardly. Bill Murray’s portrayal of Thompson was praised by critics, and even though the movie received mixed reviews, it became something of a cult favorite.

In the half-century since Thompson’s greatest successes and failures, his image and style have inspired a lot of ink from generations of imitators, but Steadman’s role is sometimes lost or underappreciated in all that gonzo wordslaying. The fact is, his illustrations and Thompson’s words formed one of the most powerful and symbiotic art partnerships in American letters (think Walker Evans and James Agee), with Steadman’s art acting as a kinetic delivery vehicle for the mise-en-scène of Thompson’s purposeful anarchy.