After years of rumors and false starts, Johnny Depp will finally begin filming on The Rum Diary March 30th. Depp has been spotted this week in Puerto Rico sporting a ’60’s haircut. Here’s the plot synopsis with casting inserted:
1960: Divorced alcoholic and struggling novelist PAUL KEMP [Johnny Depp] decides to kick around San Juan until his ship comes in, working as a journalist for a daily newspaper that’s on its last legs, drinking gallons of rum and experimenting with LSD. With his new friend BOB SALA [Michael Rispoli] by his side, he becomes entangled in a corrupt hotel development scheme with a slick PR consultant named SANDERSON [Aaron Eckhart], and falls in love with Sanderson’s unattainable girlfriend, CHENAULT [Amber Heard].
Richard Jenkins will play LOTTERMAN, the man who runs the run-down newspaper where KEMP works.
Directed by Bruce Robinson, resurrected after a long absence since Withnail & I, and How to Get Ahead in Advertising in the late ’80’s. Cinematography by Dariusz Wolski (Sweeney Todd, Dark City, The Pirates of the Caribbean…)
Want to read the novel? It’s online here.
“Happy,” I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don’t have much faith in them and I am no exception — especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they’re scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence.
— Paul Kemp, The Rum Diary
