More Rum and Hunter S. Thompson for Depp
It was reported some time ago that Johnny Depp would star in the movie based on the Hunter S. Thompson novel the Rum Diary, but now there is news on some of the other cast members. Here is a note from the Hollywood Reporter via a post on Cinematical. Here is the link to the post.
Amber Heard is slowly becoming the next up-and-coming starlet, beating out ladies like Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley for the leading lady role opposite Johnny Depp in Rum Diary, based on the Hunter S. Thompson novel.
Additional news from comingsoon.net reports that Aaron Eckhart and Richard Jenkins will be joining the cast. Recent Academy Award nominee Jenkins will play the head of the newspaper where Depp’s character worked. The report is either slightly erroneous or they have changed the story for the big screen as they state that Eckhart plays Sanderson the wealthy land owner and is involved in the love triangle with Chenault (Heard’s character) and Paul Kemp (Depp’s character). Having read the book I know that Chenault was Yeamon’s girlfriend initially not Sanderson’s girl. My guess is it was an error on the part of the website as Depp who is also a producer on the film, was a close friend of Thompson’s and he realizes Thompson would return from the grave and savagely beat him if he changed a major part of the script like that.
So far this is a great cast. Thompson would no doubt have been glad this was being made into a movie as he struggled for years to get this published, it was his first novel. As much as I like Johansson and Knightley, and admire their beauty, they do not really fit the description of Chenault from the novel. Heard is about as close as I can imagine to Cheanault, a blond goddess who spent a good deal of time lying in the sun. You may remember Heard as the teenage girlfriend of Seth Rogan in Pineapple Express. She is actually in her mid-twenties in real life.
This is early Thompson work before Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas so his persona is much different than in Vegas or any of his later works. Although the title character’s name is Paul Kemp, it is clearly heavily influenced by his days writing for a newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Thompson as always managed to get himself involved in and somehow extricated from some crazy situations. Also as in all Thompson’s stories it is difficult to know how much of the work is fiction or how much actually happened although that is part of the allure of the great doctor of journalism.
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