The result is, inevitably, a strange mélange: a glossy Puerto Rico tourism infomercial mashed up with some Mad Men fashions, a couple of anachronistic "psychedelic" scenes tipping the (Panama) hat to Gilliam's Vegas phantasmagoria, and confused ranting against "bastards" and The Man — a little ridiculous coming out of the mouth of a man who profit-participates with Disney and owns a freaking island. True to the novel and to Thompson's real-life attitude during his late-1950s sojourn, Puerto Ricans are either inscrutable or comedic foils; when the Depp/Thompson character sets one local's face on fire, it's played for laughs. And yes, they did include the "interracial gangbang" (though offscreen — the film, and Depp, are strangely chaste). Inserted for intentional offensiveness 50 years ago, in 2011 it feels shockingly bad, not in a racist, exploitative way but rather in a Lambada: The Forbidden Dance–reminiscent way. "Hunter was a genius," Depp wrote in 2007 for the introduction to the Gonzo oral bio, "who revolutionized writing in the same way that Marlon Brando did with acting, as significant, essential and valuable as Dylan, Kerouac and the Stones."
Depp is sincere in his adolescent worship for Thompson's myth, going all the way to justifying the writer's suicide as a heroic act. The image of an old guy shooting himself in a bleak Colorado ranch shortly after the bitter disappointment of George W. Bush's second, incontestable re-election, unable to cope with the horror of aging or to complete a second great work, is rewritten at the end of Depp's Rum Diary into an allegorical Viking funeral.
But Depp's passion-project homage, which has him reciting invectives against squares in stoned, poetry-slam tones over footage of sunny locales, is less a tribute to Thompson than to the actor's own bohemian billionaire sense of cool. In contrast, Bill Murray's Gonzo avatar in 1980's Where the Buffalo Roam got to the core of the writer's sad neuroses, with a kind of sympathy that is antithetical to the Hollywood rebel continuum — Brando, Hopper, Nicholson, Penn and, of course, Depp — a coterie of cool that Thompson himself always sought for his alt version of the Rat Pack.
The cold truth is that, while Thompson might have been touched by Depp's reverence, he also knew deep down that the closest he'd ever come to genius was "the Vegas book." Everything else, and particularly this piece of literary juvenilia that so impressed his latest Hollywood buddy, was just a lot of work, and often a lot of disappointment.
"I had always been an observer," Thompson wrote in The Rum Diary. "One who arrived on the scene and got a small amount of money for writing what he saw and whatever he could find out by asking a few hurried questions. Now I felt for the first time in my life that I might get a chance to affect the course of things instead of merely observing them. I might even get rich; God knows, it seemed easy enough."
It wasn't. Still isn't.
Excellent piece of writing by Gustavo Turner. But even so, and not knowing all that in advance, I enjoyed the movie far more than he did. The ending fizzled, but the rest is more fun and far more invigorating than a lot of what's out there. Bravo to Bruce Robinson and Johnny D.
I enjoyed this film but, unfortunately, squeezing 1,000 pages into a two-hour movie means a lot of scenes have to be abbreviated or eliminated.
I would like to have seen Amber Heard's Chenault character included more and developed further. Especially helpful would have been including a few graphic minutes of Chenault's interracial gangbang/orgy, as it would have made her scrubbed, repentant and apologetic look (when she knocks on Kemp/Depp's door) more understandable.
Overall, though, the film had a convincing 1960's "look and feel," and it was a fitting tribute to Hunter S. Thompson, to whom the film is dedicated.
While Hunter S. Thompson may have been a narcissist, he was able to change the gray look of journalism and freed up journalists to color their stories with their own observations and vignettes. For a young reporter in the 70s, it was Thompson who bit through the chains that bound us to the regimented writing of newspapers. Those of us who knew Thompson are in his debt.
I’m very anxious to see Depp embody the good doctor again! Thompson influenced the past few generations with his invention of Gonzo Journalism. His work and antics will live on to influence even more generations to come. I paid tribute to Hunter S Thompson and his work with my portrait and article on my artist's blog at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot...
WORD! This article is as long as the freakin Rum Diaries. I did get Depp picked a director I never heard of but he has a hard on for Thompson like the rest of us so it's gotta b sick.
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