VOCES

FEMALE NARRATOR

LA 's Chicano Movement was looking for a voice. Oscar "Zeta" Acosta was looking for meaning. He's smart as hell, truth. He was also a risk taker.

NARRATOR

A new documentary rescues his story from obscurity. There is such potential in that man. But people weren't ready for him. ( theme music playing )

FEMALE NARRATOR

Th is program was made possible ( theme music playing )

OSCAR ACOSTA

My name is Oscar "Zeta" Acosta. I was a countercultural legend known as Brown Buffalo, General Zeta and Dr. Gonzo. It was my goal to change the racial structure of this society.

FEMALE NARRATOR

Oscar Acosta was an unconventional civil rights leader. Soulful, complicated and volatile. As lawyer and spokesman for the Chicano Movement during the peak years of the civil right era, he challenged white supremacy in the courtroom and on the streets. Our representatives are not in the government, this is not our government, and the sooner we get that straight in our heads, the sooner we'll get together, or else they're gonna keep on killin' us! ( woman screaming ) I swear to God they're gonna keep on killing! They're gonna wipe us out! Oscar was a wild boy. He stomped on any terra he wandered into, and many people feared him. His birthday is not noted on any calendar, and his death was barely noticed, but the hole he left was a big one. Nobody even tried to sew it up. Oscar was essential to us. He was brilliant, courageous, big. I really don't know what we would've done without him. I don't think Oscar has gotten his due. There was such potential in that man. But people weren't ready for him. I've never met anybody like him. He was smart as hell, he was shrewd, and he was charismatic. He's also a risk taker. There was some self-destructive impulse in him that sometimes made his life difficult. The tale of Oscar's fall from grace is rife with bad blood and ugly paranoia. But he can describe it far better than I can. ( Dixie theme playing )

ACOSTA

Although I was born in El Paso, Texas, I'm actually a small town kid, a hick from the sticks, a Mexican boy from the other side of the tracks. I grew up in Riverbank, California, population 3,969.

MAN

Yee-hah!

ACOSTA

Riverbank was composed of Mexicans, Okies, and middle class Americans, and nobody else. No Jews, no blacks. Maybe if black people, righteous Negros, had lived in Riverbank, they would've been the niggers. But as things turned out, I grew up a fat, dark Mexican, a brown buffalo. ( theme music playing ) The buffalo, see, the animal ev erybody slaughters. Both the cowboys and Indians - ( gunshot ) are out to get 'em. - ( buffalo groans in pain ) In high school, I was no t like the average Chicano, who'd either drop out or go quietly off to the side. He was the one person I liked to talk to the most.

MOORE

Oscar was doing the things that he wanted to do. He was interested in becoming a writer. After I had been elected Junior Class President, I forgot about being a brown buffalo, and I quit hangin' around my buddies from the west side. So between the ages of 8 and 18 I didn't speak Spanish or hang out wi th other Chicanos. Was I ashamed of my own race? Oscar dated the most popular girl in school.

ACOSTA

She introduced herself as Alice, and I knew then she would be my Miss It.

DOWD

But her family didn't want him to. He would visit her anyway, and then they would call the police. Finally, he was arrested, and the judge said, "You can go to jail or you can join the Air Force." ( patriotic theme playing ) At 17, I joined the Air Force band. Albrook Air Force Base had the highest ve nereal disease rate of any base in the world. ( woman moaning ) I couldn't lose myself in the whorehouse with the others, so I started to read the Bible an d go to church every night, but there were no miracles. I joined the First Southern Baptist church. When they saw my exotic appearance, they gave me a truck, a portable pump organ and pointed me towards the jungle where the heathens lived. That's when I learned that he was a minister to the San Blas Indians.

ACOSTA

I became so successful converting natives in the jungle, they called me the Mexican Billy Graham. And for a while, he was very proud to be a missionary, and the lead clarinet man in a leper colony band. The Indians were suspicious of the stranger th at looked like them but couldn't speak Spanish. I had the mark of the white man, the one who I had tried so hard to become in school. When I became conscious of this, I passed into a state of embarrassment and shame. He was through with religion. "This crap is not for me." He actually wrote a letter of resignation to Jesus. "D ear Jesus, "it wasn't a natural relationship. "You'll have to admit to that. "And surely, it wasn't written in the book "that I should have been a preacher. I wasn't cut out to be one." ( thunder crashing ) "You can see that, can't you?" How did I get so carried away? I wasn't here to save nobody. I was just trying to save myself. He was always a missionary, and that was the governing instinct that ruined him for anything else. I was lost, so I tried to cram myself into the meaninglessness of domestic life.

DOWD

Af ter he returned from Panama, we decided to get married and have a child.

ACOSTA

If I was to be a man, I needed something to work for, some hope, some goal. He started writing his novel. He wanted to be remembered as a great writer. So I set off to write my life story. But it brought back the anxiety of my youth.

DOWD

Those were hurtful years, growing up. I think the experiences haunted him all his life.

ACOSTA

When I was eight years old, Uncle Sam drafted my old man into the Navy. Uncle Sam was as much my enemy as were the Japs. He's the one who made my mother cry for a whole month. My mother went crazy. She beat us and accused me of being an ugly and obese Indian. When my old man returned from the wars with all his ribbons, he rigged up the house to look like a ship. He printed up rules of command on little notes. We suspected he was suffering from shell shock. My father was an Indian fr om the mountains of Durango. He had a 3rd grade education. He was really hung up on book th ey'd given him in the Navy. It was the only book I ever saw him read. He used to tell us, "Now, if you boys memorize this book, you'll be able to do anything you want." But it didn't offer any advice on how to get rid of the burning in my stomach. Six different doctors showed me pictures of what they claimed were holes in my stomach. Who can say for sure what causes ulcers. Like everybody else, I ended up in psychiatry. Did anything unusual happen yesterday? I came here to find out who I was. Couldn't he understand that? ( school bell rings ) I could always see things that others wouldn't or couldn't see. At elementary school graduation, I remember watching all the Mexicans paired with their countrymen. Juan, why don't you trade with Floyd there. Jamison, I need you to switch with Oscar, okay? Oscar, you're a little tall. Quickly, Oscar. Thank you. I wasn't conscience of why we were being asked to change marching partners, but I sensed it. So I led my friends to the principal's office to address this injustice. I'll be honest with you boys. The school board told me not to let Mexicans march with Americans. I've been an outlaw ever since. No one was going to pay me to write about things that mattered, so instead, I decided to become a legal aid lawyer in the heart of Oakland's poverty program. I run the legal clinic here. We provide legal services to the indigent community. Divorces, TROs, wage attachments, ba nkruptcies, repossessed furniture and evictions. He was a good guy, and he'd been a lawyer for all of about 10 minutes. They never even taught me how to cross examine hostile witnesses in that sleazy night school I attended. He was a brand new lawyer, but he was effective. Because he was forthright and tough. Injustice really bothered Oscar. He wanted to go out and fix it.

FIKE

The whole system is heavily weighted against the poor. Judges were often times hostile to our kinds of clients though-- the poor, the indigent-- but Oscar was never intimidated by them.

ACOSTA

My clients carried that look of desperation in their eyes. Some even brought babies in their arms and pulled out th e tit for the kids while I called the creditors.

FIKE

Oscar came from that kind of underprivileged community, and I think he felt ve ry, very much a part of it.

ACOSTA

All the faces were brown-- tinged with brown, lightly brown, or the feeling of brown. Poor, downtrodden and lonely faces. My sisters, my cousins, my aunts. I think he felt that the job was bigger than he was, and he wasn't prepared to handle it. I had been trying to become one of the masses, but it was not a world I was suited for.

DOWD

Oscar had a breakdown. He froze up and couldn't function. It was not easy for Oscar.

ACOSTA

My shrink ordered me to take Stelazine, one pill per day. Anxiety attacks come in strange places and unusual times. Within six months, I was hooked. I think therapy helped him some, but not to the extent that I wanted to stay married to him. He was just too difficult. Neither the doctors or the pills helped me one bit. So I dumped all my clients, fired my shrink... Go to hell. -...and said goodbye to Oakland. I hit the road and burned rubber. After a week of booze on the road, I stopped in a town called Aspen. Was Aspen the place where I could find my peace with society? I first met him in the summer of 1967. He came booming into a bar and announced that he was the trouble we'd all been waiting for. Hunter had just become famous with his book, "Hells Angels." He was the king of Aspen. Hunter was a real weirdo, a consummate pill-head, who was hiding from the Hell's Angels for having spoken the truth about them. Other than him, I found no one else to communicate with. Oscar and Hunter, they had a taste for excess. Both of us drank more and faster than we wanted or needed. It was a race be tween the hillbilly and me, a peach picker's son. My first week in Aspen, I scored on two broads. I believed that I found my place. The anxiety was gone. The brain began to function again. And soon, I became aware of their indifference to the world outside that ski resort. Oscar had different values than anyone else in town. He was socially conscious and we were not. Theirs was a world of white acid and middle class awareness. No one read newspapers. They would never catch themselves listening to anything music on the radio. And those were the years of the riots, when the cities were going up in flames. I called attention to their issues with race and class. They said I was crazy. I was simply in the wrong place. He didn't hang around long. He washed dishes for awhile, did a bit of construction work, bent the county judge out of shape a few times, and then took off to get serious. It was 1968. With the election of Nixon, there would be black days ah ead of us. It was time to make a stand. I went to LA looking for the revolution, but I didn't know what to do or who to talk to. I hadn't seen my sister in five years. She seemed happy to see me until I told her I had no intention of practicing law. What about politics? I could just see a bum like myself running for public office. No, no, no, no, not as a politician. I mean, you know, the civil rights thing. I've been there. Yeah, but that was with the blacks. Have you heard of the Chicano Militants? They're sort of like the Black Panthers and they're really kicking up dirt in LA. They even have a small newspaper. La Raza was an underground newspaper espousing an ideology that was completely new to me. To see my own anger, my personal feelings of hostility towards the white man, and my own assessment of a situation of a conquered people in print, it took the wind out of me. One day, we were having a meeting, and out of the blue, this older vato walks in, and he starts asking us questions about what we were doing. He wasn't like everybody else. We thought he was a plant, a police spy. He was this tall, imposing, confident man. Not from here. Only when I accidentally mention that I am a lawyer does anyone seem to thaw. Let's see your bar card, buffalo. This is what the movida needs, a brown-ass fighting lawyer. Jesus, it feels like the sign of the cross. You ain't never seen the power shake before, ese? Heh, this vato's a flower child! ( laughter ) I had been away from my people for so long that I had forgotten many of our tribal rights and customs. ( people clamoring ) They invited me to a demonstration. Ten or fifteen thousand kids walked out and protested against a discriminatory sy stem of education. ( all chanting ) ( lively chattering ) They had picketed before, they had been arrested before, but never on this magnitude.

PROTESTERS ( chanting )

Fight back! Fight back!

ACOSTA

I was struck with emotion. I remembered my own grammar school revolt, and I realized a bit of my life was catching up with me. ( all chanting ) The strike was very effective. It certainly captured the public imagination. This shocked the establishment. ( police siren blaring ) After the demonstration, the organizers were rousted from their offices and their homes and charged with felony conspiracy. It was a pretty serious charge with 45 years of their life riding on the outcome. A life sentence for speaking out against injustice? The Chicano movement needed Chicano attorneys, and there were damn few of them. Oscar saw that need. I took the case, then the eyes were all on me-- the lawyer without much experience. Oscar was essential to us. He was brilliant, courageous, big. I really don't know what we would've done without him. I never really fancied myself a lawyer, but as long as I was gonna do the job, it wasn't gonna be ordinary.

RAZO

In the courtroom, Oscar had hi s own way of doing things. ( gavel banging ) - ( crowd clamoring )

LYDIA LOPEZ

On e time for hi s closing argument, he recited a Dylan song, with tears in his eyes. Oscar always wanted to make a name for himself. He would walk around with a briefcase with "Zeta" printed on it, even though it was against the rules. He drew on the celebrity-attorney precedent. We loved him, juries loved him, not the judges. Oscar had these business cards printed up with the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli on them.

ACOSTA

I did this to distinguish myself from Mexican-American professionals. Too many of them were just lackeys for the system. Mr. Acosta, some of the local attorneys aren't gonna appreciate your business card. I'm terribly sorry, Judge, I would never do anything to disrespect your courtroom with my tasteless business cards. Look, I don't have a problem with you calling yourself a Chicano lawyer. It could be a violation of the canon of ethics. Isn't it irregular for a judge to be talking to an attorney? Especially when there's a matter pending before him? I don't want to jeopardize a mistrial here. I come as a friend. I understand, Judge, but I'll use my name as I see fit. I took no case un less it was a Chicano case, and turned it into a platform to espouse the Chicano point of view. Oscar's dealings with the Chicano Militants was a complex matter. He wasn't accepted by them because he was bourgeois to some degree, ah, educated. They felt Oscar was a threat to their leadership or to their voice. I became TV's most popular kid.

MALE REPORTER

Is that church some kind of symbol to you, or...? Yes, it's very symbolic of the irrelevancy and the hypocrisy of the Church, of the Catholic Church, our church.

You have two personas with Oscar

one is the normal guy you could talk to, and the other one is a persona that he would put on for the camera and the judges. He would put on a show for them.

MALE REPORTER

Mr. Acosta, what usually happens in these cases? There is no precedent for these kind of cases. This is a new type of case, a political case against the Mexican-American, so therefore, there is no precedent, and we can't say what they usually do. So I don't know what the judge will do. The more he appeared on camera, the more he was able to attract women.

ACOSTA

Romantically, I enjoyed th e longing glances of women. Oscar was living with me at the time, when he came home one day and said, "Oh, man, I found this short, beautiful, great looking, "attractive 'this and that' li ttle Mexican woman, and I'm going to win her over." Oscar met Socorro in a community meeting. He made the first move an d walked up to her. Socorro's bright. She's a paralegal. In those days, she was well connected with the Chicano leaders. She was Mexican born. She was sophisticated. She was short, but man, she was tall the way she stood-- you know, held her head up real high. She's a dancer. She dances Mexican folklrico and Aztec dancing.

RODRIGUEZ

Sh e came from a proper Mexican family. She was looking for a bad boy. And Oscar fit the bill. What the ( bleep ) did she see in that lard-ass? Oscar had this romantic idea of her Mexican roots. He referred to her as his terraskin princess. I think it was his way of connecting to Mexico in the way that he wanted to, but couldn't.

ACOSTA

De ar Socorro, I have learned of life, of women and men, and most importantly, of our culture and people from you, none of which will leave me all the days of my life. Not since my first year of preaching has it been so good. I'm going to marry a dancer who digs my style. I had my lovely princess at my side as I became le ader of my people. Oscar gave of himself 100%. He never charged a penny or asked for any money from his clients. At community meetings, we used to pass a hat around to try to collect funds for him but it was never very much. Money, to Oscar, was something to get rid of as soon as you got it. Ah, he was scrambling for money. He was borrowing any cash that he could. He also borrowed a lot of it, which I ended up paying back. Oscar didn't have any interest in building a nest egg for himself. I remember one time he told me, "If we really want to bring the system down, "one of the best ways for us to do it "is for all of us to max our credit cards. "Since we won't be able to pay the bills, "the system will fail because it will be swamped with uncollectible debt." I thought it was a novel approach. A weird approach...

LOPEZ

I think it was hard on her. I mean, she wanted to have children and all of that an d that takes money. You know, she was a gal from upper-middle class, and I think it was an enormous strain on her. When he married Socorro, he gave her a Mustang. As soon as he gave it to her, he said, "We got to move, because I stole it." That's how he lived. By that time, Oscar was beginning to find his own track. But I couldn't really get into it. ( crowd chanting )

ACOSTA

Th e Chicano Movement had begun to solidify. Things had gotten heavier, and Chicano consciousness was spreading. Chicanos were within our own mother country, yet the white man saw us as immigrants. This was wrong. We were here be fore the white man. They took our country aw ay from us. We needed to have our own government. Nothing less would save the Chicanos....in this country. This bull**** about color is for the sheep....in this country, which has led you to conclude that it's not really an issue at all. Quite a nice trick if you can pull it off. Oscar was really getting into being a leader. His skills as a Baptist preacher was starting to pay off. At last, I had returned to my origins. I found myself with my people, and felt the pangs of identification. It's always the brown man or the black man or the poor man that does the dirty work for the man. We are the janitors of the world. I believed that th e justice system perpetuated the racist society. I refuse to be civil to the court personnel, including the judges. I have no more questions for this so-called man. Mr. Acosta. I want you to be more lawyer-like with the witnesses. Even with those who perjure themselves? I want you to be more lawyer-like with the witnesses. Do you understand? I speak English very well, Your Honor. You are bordering on contempt at this very moment. Your Honor, I am contemptuous of liars. It's in my nature. And I am contemptuous of lawyers who fail to show this court its proper respect. Because I disagree with you, are you gonna throw me in jail? No, because you have a nasty way of speaking to me in front of the jury. Well, Your Honor, you haven't exactly been very nice to me either. I hold you in contempt of court. ( gavel strikes ) It wasn't easy to be a Chicano lawyer. I was drinking again, partly because I decided it was my personal heritage, and probably because nobody could learn Spanish sober. I was with him one night in LA when he decided the only way to meaningfully communicate with a judge was to set hi s whole front lawn on fire. Then Oscar stood in the street and howled one of his sermons

from Luke 11

46....without the Lord's word. But it is you who tried to pass judgment against me! Oscar, let's go!

THOMPSON

Oscar! I know he's seen me, but he'll never admit it. ( laughter ) The lawn of fire was Oscar's answer to the Klu Klux Klan's burning cross, and he derived the same demonic satisfaction from doing it. He did some many crazy things with Hunter Thompson. And they seemed to be opposites, but one was as unruly as the other. The thing I liked about Oscar was, he was always willing to go further than I was.

SUAREZ

Os car's searching for himself, but he still ha sn't found himself. He's found himself through drugs, which is the state of mind he feels most comfortable. I was an article of faith amongst us political attorneys that you didn't do drugs while you were working. I know there were times he showed up on acid or mescaline. Oscar would come into the courtroom obviously high, or he'd open up his attach case and there'd be drugs in side of it. I was very concerned. I mean, my life was in his hands.

ACOSTA

Psychedelic drugs have been important to the development of my consciousness. Most of the big ideas I've gotten have usually come when I'm stoned. One time he called me in the middle of the night, he said he was on acid, and he had an idea about our defense. I challenged the legitimacy of the grand jury that had indicted my clients. The judges were responsible for appointing the grand juries, and they never picked any Mexican-Americans. Over a ten-year period, 178 judges ne ver once nominated a Spanish-surnamed person. Zeta had this great idea to subpoena and cross-examine the judges themselves. Oscar wanted to cross-examine th em to expose them. The persons that make the laws, the persons th at enforce the law,

they fall into one pattern

They are white, they are rich, and they are old. It was a spectacular attempt to overturn the entire grand jury selection system. Do you know any Mexican-Americans? Well, yes I do. The man who cuts my lawn at home is a Mexican-American gentleman.

ACOSTA

No other lawyer had ever cross-examined 100 judges. There was no precedent, no one to show me how to do the job, so I went right for the throats of those dirty old men who sat over us in judgment.

THOMPSON

It was a retched affront to the whole court system, and Acosta wa s working overtime to make it as retched as possible.

ACOSTA

With the exception of one or two, the judges, under oath, testified that they had never nominated a Mexican because they knew none who were qualified. I realized that the justice system was just too big for me to reform or destroy. This room is polluted with perjury and you know it. ( clamoring ) Th e political climate changed. I had to change with it. We needed to talk about getting our own land. This is our land.

MAN 1

Right on!

MAN 2

Right on! This is our land! - ( crowd yells indistinctly ) Our representatives are not in the government, this is not our government, and the sooner we get that straight in our heads, the sooner we'll get together to get our land back, or else they're gonna keep on killin' us! I swear to God they're gonna keep on killing! They're gonna wipe us out!

ACOSTA

Th e men look at me strangely. Everyone is committed to death. But my commitment is different, larger than theirs. One common denominator I see with Oscar and others like him is that they're brilliant, they speak very well and they're charismatic. They get people to follow them but they have one or two major hang-ups. Like at one point, being in front of the media started to get in Oscar's head. He started believing some of his own press. He has an enormous ego, never-ending. You always had to feed that ego.

RAZO

Sometimes, he'd ge t angry in meetings because he'd want his way. He was the boss. That's why he calls himself "El General." The General.

ACOSTA

I lifted General Zeta from an old movie classic, "La Cucaracha." He was a combination of Zapata and Villa with Maria Flix as the femme fatale. It suited me just fine. ( man on TV speaks Spanish ) My goal was to gather one million brown buffalos on my side, and then I would present th e demands for a new nation to both the US government and the United Nations. ( crowd chanting ) So me Chicanos thought that revolution was a game for a spring day. They didn't realize that when the fires started up, the pigs would come and take us all. Only the Vatos Locos were in tune with this. ( yelling indistinctly ) Oscar used to like to hang out with his Vatos Locos. You know, we used to get a little out of hand. You have to understand, the man was never comfortable unless he was in the company of people who were crazier than he was.

LUNA

A Vato Loco's a rebel.

ACOSTA

Th ose children of the slums, offspring of drugs an d wine and welfare had gone to jail and come out to find a new revolution just waiting for them. ( crowd clamoring ) We fight the sheriff 'cause the sheriff ( bleep ) s'up, man. As far as I was concerned, this isn't just a one-sided thing. We're armed. Yeah, we're always armed. ( police siren blaring ) The sheriff was sending out 15 or 20 helicopters to scan the barrio with huge, sweeping search lights that drove Oscar and his people into fits of blind rage. De puties come out of th e East LA Sheriff's station in teams of two, to protect and serve, always with 36-inch clubs and.357 Magnums in their holsters. They are the eternal enemies of the people. Several people had died at the hands of the cops at the East LA Sheriff's station. And Oscar just exploded. He wasn't going to let it go. I do not see any other man who was willing to take on the responsibility of telling the people the facts, and to propose to them the radical solutions to their problems. I hereby declare my candidacy for the office of Sheriff of Los Angeles County. Sheriff's run was a way of raising awareness for the repression and brutality inside LA County's Sheriff's Department. It is the police department and the sheriff's department that produce a lot of this crime that we hear of. They are not a policing agency any longer. They are a militia. They are there, not to protect people from injury, but basically to keep people in line. I hereby pledge myself to the ultimate dissolution of the Sheriff's Department.

MALE REPORTER

You think the general public is ready to accept this rather startling revolutionary plan, Mr. Acosta? As a whole, no, I don't, no sir.

REPORTER

How do you expect to win? It's gonna be difficult. ( laughter ) The campaign was exciting. He was like, "( bleep ) the sheriff! We're gonna challenge 'em."

THOMPSON

His surprisingly popular campaign for Sheriff of Los Angeles County made him a minor hero among the politically hip Chicanos all over the city.

ACOSTA

Of all the crazy things I had done, this one beat them all.

MAN

iViva Zeta! Help me change the system and vote for Oscar.

ACOSTA

My campaign was of broad appeal. No longer was I limited to my own people. Hey, Zeta. Hey, man, come here. Hey, this is Liberace. Mr. Acosta? This man tells me you're running for sheriff. Yes, I am. - Give me a hug. Oh! Congratulations. I hope you win. Ah, thanks, man. He lost the election by a million or so votes. I think we got a hundred thousand votes. We only lost by a million. He knew he wasn't gonna win, but it was an excellent vehicle for brining attention to the public issues. ( crowd chanting ) The biggest demonstration in the history of the Chicano Movement came in August of 1970.

THOMPSON

It was a peaceful rally, when the cops suddenly dispersed the crowd with tear gas and billy clubs. It was there that a Chicano journalist was killed by the LA County Sheriff. Ruben Salazar was th e only influential Chicano journalist in Los Angeles. I was up in Portland, and I came back to my room to find an urgent message to call Mr. Acosta in Los Angeles. I expected him to take the message to the national media that Ruben was killed by the cops. If this was true, it meant the ante was being upped drastically. When cops declare open season on journalists that will be a very ugly day. And not just for journalists.

ACOSTA

When the article appeared in Rolling Stone magazine, the people I was working with in East LA claimed that I had aligned myself with the enemy gabacho and could no longer be trusted. Six heavy militant street crazies showed up at Oscar's apartment, and said it time for him to go out to the desert and die because he'd said too much to the gringo writer. Those idiots actually stuck guns in my face, all the time shouting, "Viva La Raza!" I wasn't gonna take orders fr om anybody but the will of the people. I had been in the fight long before I even heard of the Chicano Militants. Somebody had to answer fo r the death of Ruben Salazar. The bombs had to fall before we would get justice. ( police sirens blaring ) - I wanted to see arson, fire bombing and rioting. Hunter, you dumb ( bleep ). I'm trying to build a society, a country, a land where we can live in peace, without having to pay taxes or be jailed by those petty little men.

THOMPSON

He would stay up all night, very night, eating acid and throwing Molotov cocktails.

ACOSTA

Hu nter, I know you'll ac cuse me of being paranoid. My telephone is bugged and the D.A. is out to get me. And it wouldn't surprise me on e damn bit if they were tailing me. There was a group within the LAPD, and their job was to follow wh oever they thought were key activists. ( camera shutter clicking ) Oscar was on his way home from a demonstration or something, he was driving, and I think he became aware that he as being followed. I assumed it was an undercover officer because I had been stopped numerous times in the past. ( police siren blaring ) I was tired of being followed, so I stopped. All the sudden, a whole bunch of cars swoop down on him. LA City, County Sheriff, Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, and probably the FBI. ( police radio chatter ) Within two minutes, I was handcuffed and told I was under arrest. They knew who he was. They intended to bust him for something. I've just been handed a complaint, a felony complaint, issued by the district attorney's office, charging me with possession of amphetamines. It's a long story. He was too stunned to fight back. He was also broke and depressed, and deep in public disgrace. Th e jury went out for an hour. Not guilty. When they read the verdict, I cried. Not because of being set free, but because the courtroom was empty. Nobody came to my two-week trial. My very own people had deserted me.

LOPEZ

Things had changed. The trials had ended, Oscar wasn't in front of the television cameras as much, and the Chicano Movement dissipated. People got busy with their own lives. And little by little, people tired of Oscar. In a word, and his dream of one million brown buffaloes were finished in East LA and everywhere else it counted. He was suddenly confronted with the stark possibility that he'd really never been chosen to speak for anybody. Except for maybe himself. And even that beginning to look like a halfway impossible task. in the short amount of time he felt he had left.

ACOSTA

The Feds didn't catch me for any of the ( bleep ) I had pulled, but they knew exactly what I had done. That's why I had to leave. I packed my bag and headed underground to plan my next battle.

DOWD

Wh en he would be really down, he'd come to see us for a little bit of R&R.

ACOSTA

I needed a long rest from the front lines. I wasn't planning on getting in to any more battles for a hell of a long time. Just wanted to see the sinful life.

MAN 1

Here. Smoke it. Evidence, that's evidence.

Big deal. - MAN 1

Here. He'd go away and get into drinking binges. His trips to Vegas were examples of that. Hunter had been assigned by a magazine to cover a car race, or...something, and he took Oscar with him. While they were there, Hu nter had this idea to write a whole another story about the drug culture. And Hunter was very excited about this new manuscript. He started reading the first words to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and he knew he was onto something.

THOMPSON

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. We published Fear and Loathing. It's been a big hit for us, and we love it. The whole story is based on their actual experience-- the drug-induced search for the American dream.

HENRY

There was so much going on wi th that Fear and Loathing-- Oscar was mad at Rolling Stone he was mad at Rinzler. He was especially pissed at Hunter. The only thing that bothered him, bothered him very badly, was that I'd repeatedly described him as a 300-pound Samoan. I don't know whose idea that was, but he was pissed off. He wasn't even Chicano in the story. He's a Samoan named Dr. Gonzo. Oscar was crazy. But he wasn't stupid. That Dr. Gonzo character was a fool! ( theme music playing ) Hunter, I want you to quit playing the role that I'm some ( bleep ) native, a noble savage you discovered in the woods. Do you even ask if I minded you writing and printing the Vegas piece? Oscar felt betrayed as a creative partner. Well, he called Hunter and he told him, "You can't use my persona this way unless you give me credit or money." So he was going to sue Hunter and Rolling Stone. Oscar, you stupid ( bleep ), I assume you had some long stewing reason for doing this cheap ( bleep ) around. This is going to cost me at least a year's worth of income. Jann Wenner, publisher of Rolling Stone magazine, called me and said, "You gotta deal with this guy and get him off my back." So Oscar half-negotiated a contract with the publishing arm of Rolling Stone magazine. I had to release all my rights and interests in Fear and Loathing in exchange for my own book. We kind of worked out this book that he would write about his evolution. It worked out very well. I'm-- I'm serious. Like, I don't know, I really... I finally became a writer. Surely the height of madness is writing your life story. But as I got into it, I realized I was working on something important. What I considered to be the Chicano novel of the century. About this time, Socorro got pregnant. She stayed at home to type th e manuscript for his novel. It was the happiest of times for them.

LOPEZ

I think Oscar had the ability to be a good husband because he wanted to be helpful. They were very close at the time, and they reminded me of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo because she was tiny and he was big and round.

ACOSTA

Then I got a contract to write The Revolt of the Cockroach People... the story of the Chicano Movement. It was my personal message to La Raza. You learn about life from the toughest guy in the neighborhood. You smoke... I wrote about how I was recruited into the fight for freedom of the cockroaches. It was important for th e salvation of the nation. Cockroach is a big word. I expected the book to be a best seller. They haven't sold that many copies. I don't have the exact numbers, but it's not a lot. It's been kind of a disappointment. My book received fantastic reviews, but it did not sell big. On the other hand, Fear and Loathing is a massive cultural phenomenon. It's defining th e whole generation. Hunter's become like a god to the counterculture. The people weren't ready to accept me, but I was in no great hurry. One day, my books will serve as a call to action for future buffaloes, and I don't want to live in a world without brown buffaloes. My money was running low, and I was sorely in need of a job. My earnings for my book did not suffice, and I couldn't find work anywhere. I couldn't even buy Socorro a hamburger. I didn't care that much for America anymore. Socorro had agreed th at we would live in Mexico, the land of my heart. Next we knew, she lost the pregnancy. The child was stillborn. And I think it was a huge loss for Oscar. Oscar took the fetus and kept it in a jar. And created an altar for it on top of the fireplace. He painted a portrait of the fetus as an Aztec god, I think in some respects... he was that deformed, ugly fetus, and now he was gonna enshrine it. It finally hit home to Socorro that Oscar was a lost cause, and that's when she decided to leave him.

RINZLER

"D ear Oscar, just got a most peculiar telephone call "from Socorro. "To

wit

she is turning over "all your recent correspondence "to her to the FBI. Wants to be left alone."

ACOSTA

We finally hurt one another too deeply for reconciliation. All our dreams have gone haywire. When Oscar went into a depression, he'd stay away from people. There were very few that he allowed to be next to him in that state. I always thought of Oscar as being sad. In between the laughter and the joy, he's sad. Well, he was in a dark place. And he went to Mexico with that darkness. Oscar wanted me to go to Mexico with him, but I told him, "I'm not going to Mexico with you. You're gonna get killed down there." The fireball Chicano lawyer was on his way to becoming a cult figure of sorts. And then a fugitive, a freak, and finally, either a permanently missing person or an undiscovered corpse. Before he left, Oscar wrote a will. I'm not saying he had his disappearance in mind, I just think he knew he was gonna put himself in harm's way. There was all this talk that he was going to strike a revolution, you know, he was gonna run guns, and... The last we heard of him he was on a boatload of marijuana and traveling north on the Mexican coast. ( waves crashing ) ( seagulls squawking ) What is clear to me is that I'm neither a Mexican nor an American. I am a Chicano by ancestry, and a brown buffalo by choice. And I suspect the gods of war are not yet through with me. Well, I don't have the exact knowledge of how he died. I don't even know if he died. No, he probably still out there somewhere. Nobody knows how Oscar "Zeta" Acosta died. You can have your thoughts about it, but you don't know. He would like that. The weird grapevine will not whither for lack of bulletins, warnings, and other twisted rumors of the latest brown buffalo sightings. He will be seen, at least once in Calcutta, and also in Houston, tending bar. It might even come to pass that he may suddenly appear on my porch in Woody Creek. And that is one ghost who will always be welcome in this house. ( buffalo snorting ) ( theme music playing )