By Kyle Penn
The Rum Diary is a 2011 movie based off the novel of the same name by Hunter S. Thompson. Johnny Depp returns to play another character displaying Thompson’s real life booze-ridden and drug-crazed experiences as a journalist. Set in the 1950s, Depp plays author Paul Kemp, who is directly based off Thompson. The film revolves around a mixed up love story that includes jealousy, betrayal and most of all, major alcohol use.
The movie opens in San Juan, Puerto Rico where Kemp has taken a newspaper job at the San Juan Star after being an unsuccessful author in New York. He immediately meets staff photographer Bob Sala. (Michael Rispoli), who becomes Kemp’s drinking partner and eventual roommate with fellow reporter Moberg (Giovanni Ribisi), who is a drunk. His relations with the editor of the paper, E.J. Lotterman (Richard Jenkins), is quickly strained when Lotterman finds out Kemp is a heavy drinker. Through Sala and Lotterman he finds out the paper is struggling to survive and may go under soon.
He also meets Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart), a shady freelance realtor and later, Chenault (Amber Heard), Sanderson’s fiancé. After their meeting Kemp is instantly love-struck by her.
Through his adventures in San Juan, Kemp is exposed to the extreme poverty that people are living in, and he even gets arrested with Sala after a confrontation with locals. He also gets involved in a real estate scam involving Sanderson and the U.S. military. He drags Sala into the business arrangement to the disapproval of Sanderson. In agreeing to help with the scam he spends more time with Chenault and the love interest between the two grows. Eventually she leaves Sanderson and he blames Kemp for it, ending their business arrangement.
As his drunken escapades through San Juan continue, he learns that Lotterman has left and closed the paper. After taking hallucinogenics sold to him by Moberg, Kemp has an epiphany to write an exposé on Sanderson’s shady real estate deals and the truth about the business relations between Lotterman and Sanderson. Lotterman later returns but won’t publish any of Kemp’s stories and Kemp and Sala later find that the printing presses in the office have been confiscated.
Kemp, persistent on carrying out his reports, steals Sanderson’s boat. We learn in the end credits as the boat goes off in the distance that Kemp makes it back to New York, marries Chenault, and finally becomes a successful journalist.
Hunter S. Thompson is most notably known for his novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which was also made into a film adaptation starring Johnny Depp in the role of Thompson. This movie, which came out 13 years before The Rum Diary, shows us Thompson’s drug-filled experiences in Las Vegas covering a motorcycle race.
Depp was a long-time fan and friend of Thompson and even traveled with him as his road manager during one of his last book tours. After Thompson took his own life in 2005 in his home in Colorado, Depp paid for most of Thompson’s memorial event, which took place in Aspen, Colorado. Thompson’s memorial included fireworks and the shooting of Thompson’s ashes out of a cannon.
