During his appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, which dropped on Saturday, the Caddyshack star cried while watching a scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In the 1998 film, Johnny Depp starred as famous journalist Hunter S. Thompson under the pseudonym Raoul Duke. Depp had been a fan of Thompson’s prior to his role, and the pair became close friends.
Podcast producer Jamie Vernon pulled up the clip of Depp at a typewriter discussing what Rogan described as the “wave of change” in the 1960s.
“It’s a beautiful piece. It glistens your eyes to see it. Not just—,” Murray said before appearing to collect himself. “Thinking of Hunter and the words he said, but seeing Johnny and how close Johnny and Hunter became and how much they loved each other and how much they shared with each other. It’s a really beautiful piece, thank you.”Yeah it is a beautiful piece,” Rogan said, noting that scene was “an amazing piece of writing that so perfectly captured that very strange moment in time where the anti-war, the peace-love movement just got drowned out by the Nixon administration.”
Thompson pioneered gonzo journalism. According to Merriam Webster, “gonzo journalism” is defined as “journalism that treats a subject in a very personal, unusual, and often shocking way.”
“Thank God there was a guy like him around to document it from that perspective, to give you this like insight,” Rogan said of Thompson. “The way he did it with gonzo journalism, where he just would have real facts mixed in with fiction. You couldn’t tell what was what and you had to be in on it to understand what he was doing.”
Later on in the podcast, Rogan and Murray discussed the current political climate in the United States.
“Part of our problem in this country is that we’re in competition every two years,” Rogan said. “Every two years you have midterms and elections every four years.”
“No, we don’t get a break,” Rogan agreed. “We don’t get a break from division, we don’t get a break from propaganda, we don’t get a break from new threats. We don’t get a break. It’s like every day is a new thing, and it keeps us completely in this constant state of stress and anxiety and also this fear of being overcome—like your side’s going to lose.”
Rogan continued: “It’s very stressful, and it’s not healthy for human beings to be constantly in this state of competition and stress. And then on top of that, most people are addicted to social media, so you’re constantly getting inundated with the worst f***ing things in the world all day long. You’re freaking out. It’s terrible for you.”
Murray laughed before chiming in, “I mean that footage made me cry, now you’re gonna make me cry.”