The Rum Diary (2011)
Directed by Bruce Robinson
Tired of the noise and madness of New York and the crushing conventions of late Eisenhower-era America, itinerant journalist Paul Kemp travels to the pristine island of Puerto Rico to write for a local San Juan newspaper run by the downtrodden editor Lotterman. Adopting the rum-soaked lifestyle of the late ‘50s version of Hemingway’s 'The Lost Generation', Paul soon becomes entangled with a very attractive American woman and her fiancée, a businessman involved in shady property development deals. It is within this world that Kemp ultimately discovers his true voice as a writer and integrity as a man.
3 connections found
View:
3 films that influenced The Rum Diary
What critics say influenced The Rum Diary
Bruce Robinson, still best known for making the lovely, cult comedy “Withnail & I,” was brought out of retirement by Depp to write the script and direct the film.
"Withnail & I" director Bruce Robinson was coaxed out of retirement to adapt this project and he created a lot of hilarious dialogue and yet, despite the looney situations Kemp gets into, the film never soars.
Then there's writer/director Bruce Robinson , whose "Withnail & I" is one of the greatest films of the '80s, and one of my very favorite British films of all time.
Having launched his career with his own counterculture manifesto, exposing the drug- and flea-infested British Bohemian underbelly in 1987's "Withnail & I," Robinson was something of a kindred spirit to the authority-bashing Thompson.
Did he owe director Bruce Robinson a favor, or want to work with the director of “Withnail & I”?
Writer/director Bruce Robinson, who created the sublime alcoholism tragicomedy "Withnail & I," and wrote the screenplay for "The Killing Fields," captures vivid contrasts between the island's lush scenery and grinding poverty.
Depp shows again that he truly understands Thompson by delivering a nuanced performance that is remarkably different, but subliminally similar, from the wonderfully outrageous turn he provided in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."
This is especially true in the casting of Johnny Depp, who played Thompson in “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas” (1998) and also became friends with the writer.
Even if Thompson’s novel — which he began in 1959 but which wasn’t published until the late ’90s — contains some obvious biographical elements, Depp doesn’t play Kemp as a rehash of Raoul Duke, the Thompson stand-in he played in Terry Gilliam’s 1998 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Terry Gilliam managed to capture Thompson’s spirit in his adaptation of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (starring one Mr. Johnny Depp in the lead).
It's certainly more user-friendly than Johnny Depp's earlier foray into the world of Hunter S. Thompson, the Terry Gilliam-directed Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998).
It's neat seeing Depp, more than a decade after his balding Raoul Duke in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, as the younger Hunter S. Thompson, softening mannerisms later made brittle with cocaine, even if the performance is all surface.
Kemp arrives for his interview with the Star's E.J. Lotterman (Richard Jenkins, "The Visitor," "Step Brothers") masked in aviator shades, confirming the editor's suspicion that he has another drinker on his hands.