The Rum Diary to Big Screen

When Harry Potter hit the big screen, fans noticed that there were some differences in the movie. Some drastic, some were minor details that were left out. But when I watched The Rum Diary after reading the book. Wow. To leave out one of the books most major characters was a huge mistake in this one.

The Rum Diary 2011 Trailer

Yeamon, the aggressive “monster” from the book, was completely gone! They took him out of the movie completely! And the movie very, much resembled The Great Gatsby even more than the book! An outsider who gets thrown into this scandalous, chaotic group of people in a crazy, corrupt town. One reason I think there were so many changes in the movie is because it came out in 2011 and was a tribute to Hunter Thompson. And long time, close friend, Johnny Depp, who portrays main character, Paul Kemp, might have had a major influence on the film.

For example, Hunter Thompson was a major advocate of drugs and violence. Johnny Depp, loved this about Thompson. Depp added an interesting, yet very awesome aspect to the car fight scene after the Kemp and Sala don’t pay at the café. (In the book it was Kemp, Sala and Segarra.) In the movie, Kemp and Sala get arrested because Kemp drinks alcohol, then sprays it into a lighter and onto a cops face, burning half the cops face off. In the book, they simply got arrested.

The courtroom scene and jail scene are probably the two scenes that resemble the book the most. Everything is the same, except no Segarra. Kemp and Sala go into the courtroom and Sala spots Moberg. Moberg went and got Sanderson and Sanderson bails them out. However, the significance of Kemp’s bail being a lot less than Sala’s bail in the book is not in the movie. Kemp and Sala are portrayed as similar characters in the movie, unlike in the book where Kemp is portrayed as a little bit of a better person.

The two major characteristics that made the movie so different from the book were the ending and the missing character of Yeamon.

The book ends with Lotterman selling out and disappearing. He doesn’t pay any of the writers their last check and they meet at Al’s discuss a plan to find Lotterman and get their money out of him. Kemp is not very into the idea and decides to stay at Al’s. Here he has his revelation and decides to leave Puerto Rico as soon as possible. Sala and Yeamon show up and tell Kemp that they found Lotterman at a party and Yeamon had gotten in Lotterman’s face and Lotterman had a heart attack and died. Sala flees to the airport and Kemp takes Yeamon 45 miles down the coast where Yeamon gets on a boat and leaves. The movie ends completely opposite!

Kemp, the one who is against the newspaper employees’ idea to get Lotterman, suggests at a meeting at Al’s that they run one more issue of the paper that ruins Lotterman. No one else is on board except Sala and Moberg. They go back to the paper to find that Lotterman has cleared the building out, locked it up and disappeared. The trio then travels down the coast and Kemp gets on a boat and flees leaving in a rather emotional fashion. Subheadings appear telling us that he made it to New York, married Chenault and became one of America’s most famous and successful journalists.

These subheadings are extremely significant. With them, you get every answer and you know everything that happens and the story is complete and over. The book is rather unclear. You can assume where Kemp will go because, unlike the movie, you know what Chenault’s note said to Kemp—“Come to New York and marry me.” The book leaves more to be assumed and inferred. The movie spells it out. Which is frustrating cause what’s the fun and mystery in that?

           For that reason and because they took a major character out of the movie, the book wins for this story. Besides Johnny Depp playing the role of Paul Kemp very, very well, the film adaptation of The Rum Diary will disappoint, and maybe even frustrate the reader.