The Rum Diary
About the Film
At the tail end of the 1950s, hard-drinking American writer Paul Kemp takes a job at a struggling English-language newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rico, hoping to find both a story and himself. Amid the heat, corruption and cheap rum, he falls in with the paper’s ragged staff — chief among them the photographer Sala — and becomes dangerously fascinated by Chenault, the beautiful fiancée of a slick American businessman.
That businessman, Sanderson, tries to recruit Kemp into a crooked scheme to carve up the island for luxury development. Repulsed by the greed he sees corrupting paradise, Kemp resolves to use his pen as a weapon against the powerful — discovering, in the process, the angry, truth-telling voice that would define his writing. The film is drawn from Hunter S. Thompson’s early autobiographical novel.
Plot synopsis by johnny-depp.org.
Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp plays Paul Kemp, the young journalist who serves as Hunter S. Thompson’s alter ego before “gonzo” had a name. Depp — a close friend of Thompson who had already played the older, wilder version in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas — described Kemp as “Raoul Duke as he was learning to speak.” He plays him as a wry, rum-soaked idealist gradually finding his moral outrage and his literary voice, and championed the project for years as a tribute to his late friend.
Cast & Crew
Cast
Paul KempJohnny Depp
Hal SandersonAaron Eckhart
ChenaultAmber Heard
Bob SalaMichael Rispoli
Edward J. LottermanRichard Jenkins
MoburgGiovanni Ribisi
Crew
Director / WriterBruce Robinson
Based on the novel byHunter S. Thompson
MusicChristopher Young
CinematographyDariusz Wolski
ProducersJohnny Depp, Graham King, Robert Kravis
StudioFilmDistrict / GK Films
Filming Locations
- San Juan, Puerto Rico
- Various locations across Puerto Rico
More about this film
Trivia
- Johnny Depp, a close friend of Hunter S. Thompson, spent years developing the film as a tribute after Thompson’s death in 2005.
- It was Depp’s second time playing a Thompson alter ego, after Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998).
- Depp reportedly discovered Thompson’s unpublished manuscript years earlier while staying at the author’s home.
- Writer-director Bruce Robinson, of Withnail and I fame, came out of a long retirement to make the film at Depp’s urging.
Awards
- 2011 Detroit Film Critics Society — nominated
