Well, it seemed like four grueling hours, whatever it was. The other Johnny Depp movie where he played Hunter Thompson was at least a little entertaining, if you like watching people puke a lot. But this!! When I'm on my deathbed I'll seeth with the regret of wasting even three seconds of my life watching this movie yesterday.
I've never read any Hunter Thompson, but when they make movies based on him or his writings they just seem to go overboard being overly and purposely "cool" and avant garde or whatever. It's like they take joy making a mess then sit back laughing while people pretend to appreciate the supposed artistry of it all. I would read his book on the Hell's Angels sometime, maybe. I don't blame this on Thompson even though maybe I should.

Hunter Thompson does NOT translate over into film. Period! The books are entertaining screeds. I highly recomend Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972 and the Hells Angels book. The rest of his books are mostly compilations of articles written for Rolling Stone and Playboy and can be a bit disjointed at best. Thompson was a political junkie of the first sort and the book about Nixon was a pretty good take from the other side.

__________________
Forum consigliere

To truely understand Hunter Thompson, you probably should break several laws concerning public behavior, be heavily armed, drive fast cars, and consume mass quanities of alcohol and controlled substances. Hunter wasn't the kind of guy to get along with most folks, but he sure knew how to party. In the comic Doonesbury, the character Uncle Duke is somewhat based on Hunter S. Thompson, especially his appetite for excess.

__________________
Wayne
Torn & Frayed

I enjoyed "Fear and Loathing in LV" but I was 14 when I read it. Hunter liked his handguns and was known for firing them off an upstairs patio or roof when he had a good buzz on. If you ride a motorcycle there is no better treatis on speed than "The song of the Sausage Creature". No desire to watch any film built on one of his stories.

__________________
Front sight and squeeze

When I was in college he was one of the speakers I went and saw. He came out, sat down at a table on which was a bottle of Wild Turkey, a glass and a bucket of ice, poured himself a drink, lit a cigarette, and asked if there were any questions. I don't remember much else, but it was different and highly entertaining. He was a unique personality for sure...

I was pretty let down as well. I've read several of his books and liked the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, so I felt I oughta at least set through it all.

But it did have couple funny lines like when they took the fightin rooster to the witch doctor and he asked her to "bless this fowl!" Maybe you need a twisted sense of humor to like HST.

__________________
What would Josey Wales do?

I've never been accused of being normal and like off the wall stuff, but self indulgence for the sake of self indulgence doesn't make it for me. Except the Billy Jack movies that take themselves so seriously that they are so bad they are great, in a demented sort of way. But thanks for the input. BTW, Arch. There's a lot of gold buried right there next door to you.

The Rum Diary was a short novel written by Thompson when he was in his early 20s and just getting the notion that he wanted to seriously write. He was working as a sportswriter for a local rag in San Juan PR and thought he'd fictionalize his time there as a plot line.

After numerous submissions and an equal amount of swift rejections, for all the right reasons, the manuscript for the novel went into a box. The book was, and is, terrible. Thompson always regarded it as a failed and miserable attempt at a first novel.

Of course, Thompson went on to become one of America's most celebrated journalists. Hell's Angels and F&L on the Campaign Trail are both recognized as distinctly important hallmarks of the American literary canon, and keenly accurate historical accounts of the times.

In the mid-1990s, Depp was living in the basement of Thompson's Owl Farm so he could research Thompson's quirky behavior in prep for playing the character in F&L in LV. One night he came across the box that held the 30+ year old manuscript.

Depp dragged it upstairs and Thompson confirmed again that, though he thought it lost and had sincerely hoped it would stay that way, it was a truly terrible piece of writing that deserved to be burned.

Depp must have made this movie as a pure vanity project, knowing full well that the material would not hold up. The movie is as terrible as the book. Thompson is probably mortified at the thought of it even being made, wherever his soul may be.

If any readers here are so inclined, I highly recommend the first two volumes of Thompson's collected letters. Over the course of his life, his correspondence output was astonishing in its volume and scope. Thompson made a carbon copy of every letter he ever wrote, around 30,000 pieces total. As declarations and observations on America during the course of his life, they are fascinating reads. His letters re The Rum Diary rejections are hilarious, as was much of his stuff.

*edit: typo

That's the problem, they're trying to capture how "over the top" HST was, and still fall short.
It's not fiction, it was his life.

__________________
Hold my beer and watch this!

All I ever read of the Rum Diaries was an excerpt that centered on the episode where they leave his friend's wife at the juke joint, dancing naked with the locals. I always thought it was one of his edgiest pieces of writing. I was interested to see how the movie would portray this scene; they didn't begin to capture the sense of menace, racial and sexual tension in the original. beyond that, the movie was a bunch of nothin'

I had the, ahem, perspicacity, to avoid The Rum Diaries, not because of any prior knowledge, but because I wasn't interested in a Hollywood version of his fiction. Who needs his fiction? His real-life, devil-may-care accounts are titillating and exhilarating enough. The collections, in several volumes, of his articles, many crossing the line from journalism to editorializing, are well worth reading, if for no other reason than to see what casting off the chains of conventional journalism looked like in his day... I kinda miss him...