The city that took great joy in Johnny Depp’s misery: “It wasn’t a very entertaining movie”
2011’s The Rum Diary is an adaptation of Hunter S Thompson’s novel of the same name, written in the early 1960s but only published decades later—thanks to Johnny Depp. Depp discovered the manuscript buried in Thompson’s likely chaotic archives, a fitting reflection of the writer’s wild, disordered lifestyle. The film itself only came to life because Depp was determined to make it. After all, he has a habit of playing his heroes.
There’s an amusing anecdote in Norman Mailer’s The Fight about ‘The Rumble in the Jungle’ boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. Mailer recalls meeting a skinny Rolling Stone journalist who wore sunglasses indoors and “always seemed to be on something”. That was Hunter S Thompson, and that’s Paul Kemp, Thompson’s self insert character in the book–and in the film.
The Rum Diary is a prequel of sorts to the cult classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but it didn’t enjoy that film’s cult success. Although both were met with box office failure and very mixed critical reviews, no one seems to care about The Rum Diary anymore.
This reportedly amused many in Kansas, as Depp went on record saying, “I believe that this film, regardless of what it makes in, you know, Wichita, Kansas, this week – which is probably about $13 – it doesn’t make any difference … I think it’s an intelligent film … And a lot of times, outside the big cities in the States, they don’t want that.” which irked the good people of Wichita.
A blog on the Wichita Eagle website by the paper’s business columnist, Carrie Rengers, quotes numerous locals involved in the film industry expressing their disapproval. Cinema owner Bill Warren, who operates a string of theatres in Kansas and neighbouring Oklahoma, said: “That’s just sour grapes. Last time I heard, it didn’t do well in New York, either … It wasn’t a very entertaining movie, period.”
The film in question was directed by Bruce Robinson, who is most famous for Withnail and I. He also believes that he’s solved the Jack the Ripper murders and has published a book about it called They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper. Robinson is another of Depp’s heroes, describing Withnail and I as “a perfect film”. Robinson has said that he read the The Rum Diary, scrapped it and then rewrote the script from memory. Whether he was successful in capturing Thompson’s tone and style on screen is up for debate.
The writer’s reception in his own time–and ours–is just as divisive as the films adapting his books. Thompson’s work recounts the misadventures of a drug-addled alcoholic mess disguised as a journalist, whose stories are ostensibly about politics, culture and the decline of the American empire. But every work that’s supposed to be nonfiction but is probably better described as a novel (or slightly unhinged memoir) is suffused between anecdotes of himself and his friends getting into trouble. Whether you like it or find it immature and irresponsible, that’s what we get with the films, too.
