The Rum Diary: A Screenplay

Book excerpt: WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOHNNY DEPP A screenplay based on the novel by Hunter S. Thompson It's 1960. In a highrise hotel not far from the beaches of San Juan, a man is recovering from an animal of a hangover. Paul Kemp is an alcoholic journalist who's barely seen better days, arriving at the only job he can get: writing horoscopes for failing rag The Daily Star. His fellow hacks are mostly crazy drunks on the verge of quitting, so Kemp fits in perfectly. But when he meets the impossibly gorgeous Chenault and her flashy boyfriend Sanderson, Kemp finds himself in way over his head - party to shady business deals, in hair-raising car chases with enraged Puerto Ricans, experimenting with a hitherto unknown hallucinogen - and finally discovers a mad, desperate devotion to the truth. Bruce Robinson brings Hunter S. Thompson's novel to the big screen with all the brilliance, wild humour and fierce energy associated with the acclaimed writer and director of Withnail & I and The Killing Fields.