From my movie review in Taki's Magazine:
Writers traditionally bemoan how the movie industry fails to appreciate them. Yet, there are more films about writers than there is demand from the paying public for motion pictures about individuals whose jobs involve sitting still and, every so often, scratching themselves. For instance, this week brought Anonymous, in which we learn that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare, and next week imports Young Goethe in Love.
Hunter S. Thompson isn’t in quite the same league as Shakespeare and Goethe, but he did write one epochally hilarious book. The Rum Diary—a quasi-autobiographical novel about Thompson’s 1960 misadventures as the astrology and bowling correspondent for an English-language newspaper in Puerto Rico—isn’t, unfortunately, it.
Johnny Depp, who stars as the 23-year-old Thompson, claims to have discovered The Rum Diary‘s moldering manuscript at Thompson’s fortified compound outside Aspen while prepping for the 1998 adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and then talked the reluctant author into allowing publication. Depp’s implication that Thompson—who loved spending money on firearms, drugs, motorcycles, room service, explosives, knives, valet parking, and vicious animals—had passed up getting paid for his juvenilia out of aesthetic modesty doesn’t jibe well with his long decline in which he sold every thought that flitted across his short-circuited brain. Among major American writers, Thompson was rivaled only by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mark Twain, and Tom Wolfe as a flaming materialist.
Read the whole thing there.
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33 comments:
Depp’s implication that Thompson—... had passed up getting paid for his juvenilia out of aesthetic modesty
It seems likely that Thompson was just sloppy, drunk, and stoned. Sloppy men can easily lose hundreds of manuscripts over a few decades of binge drinking.
OT DIVERSITY DEPRESSION CONFIRMED
Smoking-Gun Document Ties Policy To Housing Crisis
By PAUL SPERRY, FOR INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted 10/31/2011 08:05 AM ET
http://news.investors.com/Article.aspx?id=589858&p=1
Rewind to 1994. That year, the federal government declared war on an enemy — the racist lender — who officials claimed was to blame for differences in homeownership rate, and launched what would prove the costliest social crusade in U.S. history.
At President Clinton's direction, no fewer than 10 federal agencies issued a chilling ultimatum to banks and mortgage lenders to ease credit for lower-income minorities or face investigations for lending discrimination and suffer the related adverse publicity. They also were threatened with denial of access to the all-important secondary mortgage market and stiff fines, along with other penalties
The threat was codified in a 20-page "Policy Statement on Discrimination in Lending" and entered into the Federal Register on April 15, 1994, by the Interagency Task Force on Fair Lending. Clinton set up the little-known body to coordinate an unprecedented crackdown on alleged bank redlining.
The edict — completely overlooked by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and the mainstream media — was signed by then-HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, Attorney General Janet Reno, Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, along with the heads of six other financial regulatory agencies.
"The agencies will not tolerate lending discrimination in any form," the document warned financial institutions.
Ludwig at the time stated the ruling would be used by the agencies as a fair-lending enforcement "tool," and would apply to "all lenders" — including banks and thrifts, credit unions, mortgage brokers and finance companies.
The unusual full-court press was predicated on a Boston Fed study showing mortgage lenders rejecting blacks and Hispanics in greater proportion than whites. The author of the 1992 study, hired by the Clinton White House, claimed it was racial "discrimination." But it was simply good underwriting.
It took private analysts, as well as at least one FDIC economist, little time to determine the Boston Fed study was terminally flawed.
I think Sailer needs some punch (definitely spiked).
I thought you were joking about Young Goethe in Love, but no...
Hey, maybe English speakers will finally learn how to pronounce "Goethe!"
I'll cop to having bought a copy of "The Rum Diary". Thompson andd/or his publisher realized he had enough hard-core fans who would buy anything he wrote to make it profitable to publish it. My appraisal is that the '72 election sent him around the bend, and nothing after "Las Vegas" is worth reading.
A real eye-opener- or maybe not so much, given the man's character- is a memoir written by the sheriff (I can't recall the title or author's name) about their friendship. Thompson used his friendship with the sheriff to get away with a lot of bad behavior.
Johnny Depp, who stars as the 23-year-old Thompson
just because 23 year old women still like him doesn't mean he can play a 23 year old.
The first volume of Thompson's letters (THE PROUD HIGHWAY) deals with this period of his life and is often extremely funny.
I haven't seen the Shakespeare movie but there has been lots of informed speculation that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was the actual author of the plays and sonnets, with Shakespeare as the frontman. The sonnets portray their author as an older man, crippled, in disgrace, bi-sexual. Such a description fits de Vere but not Shakespeare. A skillful scriptwriter could make an interesting movie out of such material and the Hollywood bigshots would love it - a bisexual nobleman as the greatest writer in the English language.
A new type of laser eye surgery will turn brown eyes blue. It will be available in the US within 3 years:
http://discussions.ktla.com/20/ktla2/ktla-brown-eyes-blue/10
I saw it. It was one of the most vapid and boring movies I have ever seen. A really, really bad film.
I know its off-topic, but why doesn't the USA just give Puerto Rico its independence? The island was never converted to English. There is no oil or precious resource there. It is a small, poor, backward, Spanish-speaking place. I cannot think of ONE single thing America has ever gained by owning Peurto Rico. Anyone?
'but why doesn't the USA just give Puerto Rico its independence?"
Because, as Admiral Mahan, explained in the 1890s, a naval base at Porto Rico would guard the future Isthmusian Canal from Queen Victoria's dreadnoughts.
Thompson's friendships with the various Sheriffs of Woody Creek didn't help him when he faced prosecution in the early '90s on sex assault charges brought by a woman who had stayed at his home. Very much the flavour of the era and as we can see with Herman Cain it lingers still in the air. Thompson wrote an amusing piece about going on the run with Clarence Thomas (I think it appears in SONGS OF THE DOOMED).
How can Depp possibly portray a 23 year old?
"I know its off-topic, but why doesn't the USA just give Puerto Rico its independence?"
Well, lately it's been looked down upon to force independence on those who don't want it. France, for example, would love to set Martinique and Guadeloupe free. The metropolitan French keep voting in favor of getting rid of the useless islands in the polls, and the Caribbean French citizens keep voting overwhelmingly against precious freedom. From what I've read, the vast majority of Puerto Ricans don't want independence nor do they want statehood. They are happy with the way things are, apart from a small group.
Oxford obviously was Shakespeare and everyone who studies the issue and doesn't have an "expert" status at stakes comes to that conclusion.
Concerning Thompson's failure to publish THE RUM DIARY: he treated his novels differently from his journalism which he regarded as pretty much a money spinning sideline to support him while he endeavored to write the Great American Novel of his time. Hunter failed but found success writing pseudo-fictionalized pieces of journalism. He didn't consider any of his efforts at novels good enough for publication (neither did the editors) and remained embarrassed by it.
Puerto Rico is a very good place to grow coffee and chocolate. Far better it be grown there, than in Africa.
Thomas Mann wrote a wry novel, “Lotte in Weimar,” based on an imagined meeting between the aging Goethe and the equally aged woman he had once fallen in love with and who inspired “The Sorrows Of Young Werther.” The encounter is about as romantic as German food.
For my money, "The Hell's Angels" is the best long piece (is it a novel? No, it masquerades as journalism, although it clearly has some "stretchers" in it, as Twain would say) that Thompson ever wrote.Tart and funny, and with the very first attack I ever saw against the dishonesty of the MSM (in this case, Time Magazine's false and lurid coverage of the Angels.
It also has interesting events and characters throughout, and unlike those in "Fear and Loathing", at least some of these exist in the real world, not just inside Thompson's head.
"Oxford obviously was Shakespeare and everyone who studies the issue and doesn't have an 'expert' status at stakes comes to that conclusion."
Completely the opposite, but conspiracy theories are fun and make the dimwitted feel smart.
It's like No Child Left Behind for Spergy weirdos!
Please don't judge the book by the movie.
The movie uses the same characters and setting, but takes the plot in a completely different direction and uses dialogue, scenes, and events that were not in the book.
Some of the best parts of the book, especially the opening scene in the airplane, are unfortunately not included in the film.
Why is 40 something Depp playing a 23 year old Thompson?
I'm looking forward to Sailer's review of the (hopefully violent) upcoming Jedgar movie. I must say I've detected a grudging pro-Clint sentiment in past dispatches... even w/ "Flags of Our Fathers" which was undeniably boring
The Commonwealthers: on balance, they get more out of staying vs. going.
(Sort of like Alaska, which is only a state because of HI statehood)
Now that they've stopped doing things like trying to assassinate Truman, PR is welcomed into the fold for no good reason in particular.
"John Lennon quickly abandoned peace-protesting for UFO-hunting"
A rather bizarre statement. The link says that Lennon claimed to have seen a UFO once, not that he subsequently started "hunting" them or that he gave up peace protesting in response.
The American Conservative had an interesting piece on how John Lennon's views changed near the end of his life, but I can't find it online.
"Well, lately it's been looked down upon to force independence on those who don't want it."
The colonizers have become the colonized. Reminds me of the law passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom granting the right to citizens of British Overseas Territories to move to the UK but denying British citizens a reciprocal right. Our governments look after the interests of foreigners more than they look after ours.
Seriously - has anyone seen Anonymous?
It's the first movie I've wanted to see in forever.
Is it any good?
Does it do justice to Prince Tudor Theory?
"Anonymous said...
It is a small, poor, backward, Spanish-speaking place. I cannot think of ONE single thing America has ever gained by owning Peurto Rico. Anyone?"
West Side Story.
"Henry Canaday said...
Thomas Mann wrote a wry novel, “Lotte in Weimar,” based on an imagined meeting between the aging Goethe and the equally aged woman he had once fallen in love with and who inspired “The Sorrows Of Young Werther.” The encounter is about as romantic as German food."
England's greatest author is Shakespeare. Germany's is Goethe. Well, at least they make better cars.
"Maya said...
How can Depp possibly portray a 23 year old?"
That's at least not as ridiculous as the now ancient Harrison Ford playing 50 year old cops.
Keep in mind Depp is playing a 23-year-old Hunter S. Thompson.
"That's at least not as ridiculous as the now ancient Harrison Ford playing 50 year old cops."
Or a 58-year old Roger Moore playing James Bond...
I read the book a few years ago and have not seen the movie.
Steve nails it describing HST as a
materialist, and the diluted HST (inFLILV) by Johnny Depp. The FLILV movie was a failure
in my view, it lacked menace, the essential HST component. The director
confessed he had never taken LSD, and it comes off as a dull failed comedy. He also directed the paean to PC solutions movie, Brazil. Why a master of convention to direct FLILV? There is important action in the Rum Diary novel. It
is all directed toward the final scene, which is the only thing that makes it
worthwhile. The body of the book has a few funny moments,
rather dull really, then this very shocking ending, the brutal truth of human
id exposed. The twist, the bland, so American, and contrasting deep courageous insight is HST's wizardry. The white men lose their grip on the charming middle class girl and she goes completely
wild, atavistic, and is absorbed into the group of menacing black men, whom she seems to have more in common with, and their
intoxicating, rhythmic dance, certainly implying a gang bang to come, simultaneously emasculating
the white protagonists. This foreshadows the coming fate of cultural and aspirational collapse in the US in the 1960's. HST would
say things when others were afraid or lost in their own drunken or utopian
reverie. He was more than just a drunk stoner, his ability to tear off the veil while under the influence, seemingly impossible, is his genius.
HST is a prophet, an analogue to the USA, the American dream he often referred to. In the early letters he is a talented young man excited about life, then the decline into intoxication, misplaced values, silly sex, leftist politics, entropy and finally suicide, just what happened to our country.
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