Who is rum diary based on

In Hunter Thompson's legendary pantheon of villainous scum, magazine editors placed somewhere between his creditors and Richard Nixon.

Even in , a few years before he first reached literary and journalistic fame with his book, Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs , few least of all this publication, which had rejected some of his early short stories out of hand escaped his censure:.

If you would care to deal with it, by all means let me know. At any rate, please let me hear from you. This, he wrote in a letter to Sterling Lord, then the "dean" of New York literary agents. His next correspondence with Lord, after he refused to take Thompson on as a client, was somewhat less cordial:.

Here's the 20 cents it cost you to send the damn [short stories] back. I don't want to feel that I owe you anything, because when I see you I intend to cave in your face and scatter your teeth all over Fifth Avenue. These instances illuminate for us two things that even die-hard Thompson fans either may not know, or would rather ignore: first, that the young Hunter wanted, more than anything else, to be a fiction writer in the manner of Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

Secondly, he was not a very good one. After much failure in getting his short stories and a largely unknown first novel, Prince Jellyfish , deemed forgettable by his own admission published, The Rum Diary —first "finished" in —was meant to be his The Sun Also Rises.

It would not be published until Why the delay? And why publish it in the late '90s, so far from the Fear and Loathing days of the late '60s and s, when the Thompson character was so transcendent and his viewpoint so vital? The short, uninteresting answer to the second question is that he needed money. Thompson always "needed" money—or at least, made an entertaining meal of pretending to.

Terry Gilliam's adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas starring Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro, along with a paperback re-release of the book, were released that same year, so the proverbial iron was hot for striking.

Billed as "the long lost novel" upon its release, The Rum Diary is narrated by a young journalist named Paul Kemp who leaves New York for Puerto Rico and a job with the fictional San Juan Daily News , an English-language publication staffed by jocular degenerates, talented schemers, and other writers that he finds, upon arrival, is not long for this world.

His letter to publisher William Dorvillier is "instructive" of the kind of writer he fancied himself:. I hear you need a sports editor. If true, perhaps we can work something out. The job interests me for two reasons: the Caribbean location, and the fact that it's a new paper. Salary would be entirely secondary, as it definitely would not be here in our great rotarian democracy However, the work was demeaning.

They were introducing bowling to Puerto Rico. I had to go out and cover bowling every night in San Juan. Bowling was going big. Bowling alleys were popping up everywhere. What could you say about bowling?

To keep himself interested, Thompson was writing mediocre travel pieces for newspapers across America, and wrote a few pieces for bigger publications. In between, he earned work as a male model. Semonin landed a job at the Star , and rented a better place with Thompson, outside the city.

During this period, Thompson published another piece, this time for his hometown newspaper, which had for the duration of his stay listed him as Caribbean correspondent. The article was about Semonin, describing him as a wandering Louisville son in the Caribbean, honing his skills as a painter. However, the article was completed fabricated, in no way endorsed by the subject, and contained quotes from Semonin that had never been uttered. Semonin was enraged.

Soon after this, Semonin and Thompson were arrested after a dine-and-dash attempt, and spent part of a night in jail, before being rescued by Kennedy. By the time that Thompson escaped Puerto Rico through an attempt to get to Europe, but only making it as far as Barbados he had the idea of a novel in his head.

The idea resulted in The Rum Diary. This novel drew heavily from his experiences in Puerto Rico, but was not entirely autobiographical. He wrote the novel between California and Colorado in the years following his departure from the island, but it was only following the success of his collections of letters that Thompson thought to look back at his old works, at his fiction.

When he did, he found The Rum Diary as a thousand-page manuscript. He cut six hundred pages and the result was a pleasant surprise for him and for the critics, who were expecting an embarrassment. But how much of The Rum Diary was truth, and how much fiction? Richard Jenkins Lotterman as Lotterman. Amaury Nolasco Segurra as Segurra. Marshall Bell Donovan as Donovan. Bill Smitrovich Mr.

Zimburger as Mr. Julian Holloway Wolsley as Wolsley. Bruno Irizarry Lazar as Lazar. Enzo Cilenti Digby as Digby. Aaron Lustig Monk as Monk. Karen Austin Mrs. Zimburger as Mrs. Bruce Robinson. More like this.

Watch options. Storyline Edit. His volatile editor, Lotterman, assigns him to tourist pieces and horoscopes, but promises more. Paul rooms with Sala, an aging and equally alcoholic reporter, in a rundown flat. Sanderson, a wealthy entrepreneur, hires Paul to flack for a group of investors who plan to buy an island near the capital and build a resort. Sanderson's girl-friend, the beguiling Chenault, bats her eyes at Paul. His loyalties face challenges when he and Sala get in trouble with locals, when a Carnival dance enrages Sanderson, and when the paper hits the skids.

Is the solution always alcohol? One part outrage. One part justice. Three parts rum. Mix well. Rated R for language, brief drug use and sexuality.

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