It was some­thing of a Christ­mas rit­u­al at Hunter S. Thomp­son’s Col­orado cab­in, Owl Farm. Every year, his sec­re­tary Deb­o­rah Fuller would take down the Christ­mas tree and leave it on the front porch rather than dis­pose of it entire­ly. That’s because Hunter, more often than not, want­ed to set it on fire. In 1990, Sam Allis, a writer for the then for­mi­da­ble TIME mag­a­zine, vis­it­ed Thomp­son’s home and watched the fiery tra­di­tion unfold. He wrote:

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 smashed a Polaroid cam­era on the floor.

Hunter had decid­ed to video­tape the Christ­mas tree burn­ing, and we lat­er heard on the replay the ter­ri­fied voic­es of Deb­o­rah Fuller, his long­time sec­re­tary-baby sit­ter, and me off-cam­era plead­ing with him, “NO, HUNTER, NO! PLEASE, HUNTER, DON’T DO IT!” The orig­i­nal man­u­script of Hell’s Angels was on the table, and there were the bul­lets. Noth­ing doing. Thomp­son was a man pos­sessed by now, full of the Chivas Regal he had been slurp­ing straight from the bot­tle and the gin he had been mix­ing with pink lemon­ade for hours.

The wood­en man­tel above the fire­place appar­ent­ly still has burn marks on it today.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

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Relat­ed Con­tent

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Filled Dai­ly Rou­tine

Free: Read the Orig­i­nal 23,000-Word Essay That Became Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Future, Telling Studs Terkel About the Com­ing Revenge of the Eco­nom­i­cal­ly & Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly “Obso­lete” (1967)

Hunter S. Thomp­son, Exis­ten­tial­ist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Find­ing Mean­ing in Life

Hunter S. Thompson’s Ball­sy & Hilar­i­ous Job Appli­ca­tion Let­ter (1958)

Are your idle moments spent invent­ing imag­i­nary con­ver­sa­tions between strange bed­fel­lows? The sort of con­ver­sa­tion that might tran­spire in a pick­up truck belong­ing to Samuel Beck­ett, say, were the Irish play­wright to chauf­feur the child André Rene Rous­si­moff—aka pro wrestler André the Giant—to school?

Too sil­ly, you say? Non­sense. This isn’t some wack­adoo ran­dom pair­ing, but an actu­al his­toric meet­ing of the minds, as André’s Princess Bride co-star and soon-to-be-pub­lished film his­to­ri­an, Cary Elwes, attests above.

In 1958, when 12-year-old André’s acromegaly pre­vent­ed him from tak­ing the school bus, the author of Wait­ing for Godot, whom he knew as his dad’s card bud­dy and neigh­bor in rur­al Moulien, France, vol­un­teered for trans­port duty. André recalled that they most­ly talked about crick­et, but sure­ly they dis­cussed oth­er top­ics, too, right? Right!?

Even if they did­n’t, it’s deli­cious­ly fun to spec­u­late.

In the  bare­bones entry above, Bing­ham­ton, New York’s Därk­horse Drä­ma­tists play­wright Ron Burch has Beck­ett dis­pens­ing roman­tic advice in much the same way that he wrote dia­logue, to cre­ate a dialec­tic.  (“So I should embrace the nega­tion of the act in order to get the oppo­site reac­tion?” André asks, re: a girl he’s eager to kiss.)

Burch is not the only drama­tist to tack­le these mys­tery rides. Chica­go play­wright Rory Job­st was inspired to write Samuel Beck­ett, Andre the Giant, and the Crick­ets after lis­ten­ing to They Might Be Giants’ John Flans­burgh and John Lin­nell par­tic­i­pat­ing in a 3‑question André the Giant triv­ia quiz on NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me.

Car­toon­ist Box Brown is anoth­er to take a stab at the unlike­ly car­pool bud­dies’ chit chat, with his graph­ic biog­ra­phy, Andre the Giant. In his ver­sion, Beck­ett asks André why he’s so big, André asks Beck­ett if he plays foot­ball, and Beck­ett gives him his first cig­a­rette. (“Well, y’know, they stunt your growth so,” Beck­ett hes­i­tates, “…eh, okay.”)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol’s One Minute of Pro­fes­sion­al Wrestling Fame (1985)

The Books That Samuel Beck­ett Read and Real­ly Liked (1941–1956)

Neil deGrasse Tyson, High School Wrestling Team Cap­tain, Once Invent­ed a Physics-Based Wrestling Move

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Samuel Beck­ett, Absur­dist Play­wright, Nov­el­ist & Poet

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is inter­est­ed in hear­ing about unortho­dox pro­duc­tions of Wait­ing for Godot @AyunHalliday.