Was That Hunter S. Thompson?

The avaitor sunglasses remind me of him, but i don't think "the oven dude" is a reference to Hunter S. Thompson- remember, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" first got published in 1971 and just after that HST became REALLY popular in the public for his journalistic Gonzo writing, but then again he was still popular for some of his articles in the sixties (among fans and hippies). At first i thought the same thing, but only because of the sunglasses.

It's not Thompson (I don't think he would have been caught dead in this film), nor is it a portrayal of him in any way, even though he was already well known by then. By this time he had already written about the shallowness of characters such as those in this film. Here's an except from his bio discussing events around that time:

"Thompson was able to publish articles in a number of well-known magazines during the late 1960s, including The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Pageant, and Harper's. In the Times Magazine article, published in 1967, shortly before the "Summer of Love", and titled "The Hashbury is the Capital of the Hippies", Thompson wrote in-depth about the Hippies of San Francisco, deriding a culture that began to lack the political convictions of the New Left and the artistic core of the Beats, instead becoming overrun with newcomers lacking any purpose other than obtaining drugs."

It is better to be kind than to be clever or good looking. -- Derek