A Forsley Feuilleton: Buy the ticket, take the ride. . . and crack open a bottle of rum

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The Rum Diary comes out on DVD tomorrow, and I haven’t been this terrified since the Halloween night it opened in theaters. I took the 14 Muni Bus to its midnight-showing and a limbless hobo offered to tuck me into bed later if I poured some of my Puerto Rican rum into his mouth.  I denied the hobo’s offer because I doubted his ability to tuck me in and because I was saving the rum to wash down the popcorn I planned on eating.  But I changed my plans when I got to the theater and in line behind a fat middle-aged white guy with a Kentucky accent who, like me, had a Hawaiian shirt, a bucket hat, and sunglasses on.  We were both smoking cigarettes out of holders, humming Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and swatting non-existent flies. . . and I decided I didn’t need popcorn.  I needed to share my bottle of rum with my comrade, the only other member of the Gonzo Guild in a line filled with Johnny Depp fanatics.  So back and forth that rum went, and swig by swig we drank it.

With an hour left before the doors opened and half the bottle of rum already gone, I told my fellow Hunter S Thompson fan-boy how The Rum Diary inspired me to dropout of film school, bang my best friend’s girl, start drinking rum, and focus on writing news stories.  I told him how it made me realize that if I was to ever hold down a job that that job would have to be as a fictional journalist on a fictional newspaper – a newspaper like the San Juan Daily News in which Paul Kemp, the rum-soaked protagonist of The Rum Diary, writes for before banging his best friend’s girl.  “All manner of men came to work for the News,” I read aloud from Thompson’s novel. “They ran the whole gamut from genuine talents and honest men, to degenerates and hopeless losers who could barely write a postcard – loons and fugitives and dangerous drunks. . . pimps and pederasts and human chancres of every description, most of them working just long enough to make the price of a few drinks and a plane ticket.”

With a half hour left before show-time and the bottle near empty, I told my new friend how my focus on writing news stories has since become – possibly from the rum – a blur, fading right along with every major newspaper in this country. . . but how despite my employment status – or rather, my unemployment status – I still consider myself a fictional newspaperman, one of the “ill-tempered wandering rabble,” that move erratically, “on the winds of rumor and opportunity. . . looking always for the big break, the crucial assignment, the rich heiress or the fat job at the far end of the next plane ticket.”  And I admitted how terrified I was of the Hollywood Circus turning The Rum Diary and my carefully crafted vision of myself into a flick – a flick that could just be another cheap thrill ride made to shit money out by tickling the assholes of all these Johnny Depp fanatics.

Then, as the clock struck midnight and the ushers ushered us into the theater, my friend, finally drunk enough to say something, said something: “I don’t know this Thompson fellow you’re yapping about, but I do know Johnny – been buddies since MySpace – and I paid a lot of buckaroos to see this here movie. . . so it damn well better give me a ass-ticklin’ on par with the epic ass-ticklin’ that Las Vegas movie gave me.”  I puked and passed out, and it wasn’t the rum’s fault.

I woke hung-over the next morning without seeing The Rum Diary or sleeping in a tucked-in bed.  And in the months that followed I never gathered the courage, no matter how many bottles of rum I drank, to make another trip to the theater to see The Rum Diary or even to get out of my un-tucked bed.  I knew if I had, I would again have to wait in line with nothing but Depp obsessed swine – the same breed of swine that have taken over America and turned it into a Disneyland where innocent children and honest adults are bagged and butchered at the end of every ride.

The most popular attraction in this New American Theme Park is the Hollywood Circus.  It’s made up of ass-tickling, money-shitting thrill rides fueled on deceit and greed.  And the swine-feeders and swine-breeders in charge of the New American Theme Park have now added Hunter S Thompson’s The Rum Diary to the lineup of rides in the Hollywood Circus.  Buy the ticket, take the ride – that’s what they want us to do.  But I don’t think I want to.  Even though I can now – starting tomorrow – buy a reasonably priced DVD instead of an overpriced ticket and take the ride in the safety of my home instead of the swine invested theater, I’m still terrified.  The Hollywood Circus is too unpredictable and dangerous.  These rides often crash and burn, killing every passenger on them.  And when the ride is adapted from a novel, the chances of it killing you are even higher. . . especially if it’s adapted from a novel like The Rum Diary which probably – if you’re anything like me – had a major influence on your life.

And even if you are nothing like me and Thomposn’s novel didn’t influence you to dropout of film school, bang your best friend’s girl, start drinking rum, and focus on writing news stories – you should still be terrified to buy the ticket and take the ride because of Johnny-Fucking-Depp.  Don’t mistake me for a hater.  I actually enjoy some of his flicks – in a strictly non-asshole-tickling way – but we must remember that like everyone working at the New American Theme Park he is a delusional bastard.  His money has gone to his head, killing more brain-cells than all the Eight-Balls he did with River Phoenix back in the Viper Room days ever did, and he’ll now do anything and everything necessary to cultivate his delusions.  He’s already bought a Caribbean island so he can continue playing the pirate, and now he’s starring in The Rum Diary so he can continue telling people he was a close friend of the late Hunter S Thompson.

Thompson was a journalist, a professional.  He knew how to earn peoples’ trust. . . and how to use their trust to get a news story.  He did it to the Hells Angles and they beat him for it.  But Depp never caught on.  And now that Thompson has blown his brains out, Captain Jack Sparrow can continue his little fantasy without fear of this mythical friendship ever getting debunked by the truth.  He can make up stories about him living in Thompson’s basement and about finding the unpublished manuscript of The Rum Diary down there and championing its publication.  He can take all the credit, and – as we have seen – he can even get the swine-feeders and swine-breeders that run the New American Theme Park to add it as a ride in the Hollywood Circus and even let him star, as lead engineer, in it.

But I’m hoping for the best.   I’m hoping that the flick, The Rum Diary, inspires me just as much as Thompson’s first novel, The Rum Diary, did.  Maybe it won’t inspire me in the same ways – I already dropped out of film school, my best friend has since become my worst enemy, drinking rum now gives me kidney infections, and I can’t focus on writing news stories anymore because there are no newspapers to write them for – but I expect it to inspire me in different ways.

Bruce Robinson, after all, is operating the ride and directing the flick.  And if he, through Withnail and I, inspired me to drink lighter fluid, then I expect him, through The Rum Diary, to inspire me to take after the late Hunter S Thompson and blow my brains out so I no longer have to put up with the atrocities of the 21st century – the lobbyists in government, the corruption of corporations, the warming of the earth, the violence of religion, the steroids in baseball, the death of hip-hop, the skate-stoppers, and the shitty fucking flicks.  But even if The Rum Diary is one these shitty fucking flicks and doesn’t inspire me to blow my brains out, it should at least inspire me to guzzle rum, despite the kidney infections.  I’ll guzzle so much rum that the flaws of the flick won’t be apparent.  They’ll be masked with the sweet aroma of rum, and my fear of The Rum Diary becoming just another cheap thrill ride will fade just as fast as my journalism aspirations.   I’ll buy the ticket, take the ride. . . and crack open a bottle of rum.