The Rum Diary is an upcoming film based on the novel of the same name by Hunter S. Thompson. The film is directed by Bruce Robinson and stars Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Filming began in Puerto Rico in March 2009. It is currently set to be released on October 28, 2011.

Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) is an itinerant journalist who tires of New York and America under the Eisenhower administration and travels to Puerto Rico to write for The San Juan Star. Kemp begins the habit of drinking rum and becomes obsessed with the woman Chenault (Amber Heard).[3]

Hunter S. Thompson wrote the novel The Rum Diary in 1961, but the novel was not published until 1998.[5] The independent production companies Shooting Gallery and SPi Films sought to adapt the novel into a film in 2000, and actor Johnny Depp was signed to star and to serve as executive producer. Nick Nolte was also signed to star alongside Depp.[6] The project did not move past the development stage.[5] During this stage, Hunter S. Thompson became so frustrated as to fire off an obscenity-laden letter calling the process a "waterhead fuckaround".[7]
In 2002, a new producer sought the project, and Benicio del Toro and Josh Hartnett were signed to star in the film adaptation.[6] The second incarnation also did not move past the development stage.[5] In 2007, producer Graham King acquired all rights to the novel and sought to film the adaptation under Warner Independent Pictures.[6] Depp, who previously starred in the 1998 film adaptation of Thompson's novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, was cast as the freelance journalist Paul Kemp.[5] Amber Heard is reported to have won the role out over Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley. Bruce Robinson joined to write the screenplay and to direct The Rum Diary.[6] In 2009, Depp's production company Infinitum Nihil took on the project with the financial backing of King and his production company GK Films. Principal photography began in Puerto Rico on March 25, 2009.[3] Composer Christopher Young has signed on to compose the film's soundtrack.[8]
The alcoholic Robinson had been sober for six-and-a-half years before he started writing the screenplay for The Rum Diary.[9] The filmmaker found himself suffering from writer's block. He started drinking again, a bottle of alcohol a day until he finished the script and then he quit drinking again. He spent a year filming in Puerto Rico, Mexico and Hollywood and resisted drinking until they arrived in Fajardo. Robinson remembers, "It was 100 degrees at two in the morning and very humid. Everyone's drenched in sweat. One of the prop guys goes by with a barrow-load of ice and Coronas. I said: 'Johnny, this doesn't mean anything.' And reached for a Corona." ... Some savage drinking took place. When I was no longer in Johnny's environment I went back to sobriety.

Watch the Trailer .........,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am80hxPrnPE

Looks like it will be lot's of fun

... The King Is Dead, Long Live the King

“Without heroes, we are all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.” — Bernard Malamud

I heard the news in a bar. The story spread quickly and with the same brutally demoralizing effect of soldiers locked in battle learning that their beloved king had fallen. Loud boisterous drunks were struck dumb and silent, grown men wept and suddenly there wasn’t enough whiskey in the bar, there wasn’t enough in the whole goddamn world.

Soldiers usually break and run under those circumstances and we were no different. I personally crawled into a bottle of rum and tried get a handle on it. Our king was dead.

And like most kings, his demise carried a much more terrible weight and consequence than the mere passing of a great man. Hunter S. Thompson’s death also heralds the passing of an era.

He was the last of a long, distinguished line of drunkard heroes. His genus included Bukowski, Hemingway, Bogart, Gleason, Fields, Churchill and Twain, rugged iconoclasts who distinguished themselves not only as super-functional drunks who rose to the top of their respective fields, but also drunks who were entirely up front about their drinking.

Hunter was undoubtedly the wildest of the gang, and that’s saying something. A lightning rod for controversy, his antics were often portrayed by lesser men as mere self-aggrandizement, but they served a much grander purpose. He elevated an ideal, a towering lighthouse with a brilliant guiding flame for those who decided, like himself and his predecessors, to live their lives to the absolute fullest, consequences be damned.

There was always a powerful comfort in knowing he was out there somewhere in the night, roaring drunk, guzzling high-octane whiskey and railing against a world amok with complacency and hypocrisy. There was always a weird sense that he could pop up any where at any time to stick it to The Man and set things straight. Sometimes he appeared a force of nature, other times a Homeric hero capable of conjuring excitement and purpose from the most innocuous of circumstances. Hunter didn’t have to seek out adventure, he was adventure.

Which often meant dancing with death. Most men spend their entire lives avoiding that jig, but the good Doctor sought it out, he seemed to possess a keen understanding of the song’s deadly rhythm and he boogied down with the fucker.

And while he always managed to escape alive, if not unscathed, he knew that he — like us all — would eventually have to face the music of that last melancholy waltz that ends in a mortal embrace.

Hunter decided to cut that final dance short. It was probably the only deadline he ever beat.

Of course, the soft and sensitive crowd were quick to chime in, warbling that Hunter’s decision to take his own life was somehow a cowardly act, and if I could get my hands around all their necks at once I would soon be the biggest mass murderer in history. It’s akin to a gaggle of timid schoolboys without the guts to even step into a rowboat questioning the courage of an ancient sea captain who, for reasons that are entirely his own business, decided to sail directly into an approaching squall.

Making that sudden leap into the Great Unknown, especially by someone who had taken the most from life, is anything but cowardly. He lived his life on his own terms and that’s how he went out.

Others have chosen to blame mental illness for his decision, which is patently ridiculous. By their timorous standards, Hunter was insane his entire life. You ask me, he was saner than any of them. He understood we are put on this rock not to wait out death, but to live, and Hunter lived more in a week than those punks will their entire lives.

They also say he had a problem controlling his impulses, but this comes from a society that has a problem with suppressing its natural instincts. Hunter made such a splash when he appeared on the literary scene because no one had ever seen anything like it. His sharp, unforgiving prose surged across the page and he seemed strangely willing to insert himself into the story to the degree that he became the story. Instead of observing from the sidelines, he preferred to jump into the game and look for the truth from the midst of the action.

Of course, there are certain risks involved with that sort of behavior. He managed to make a host of enemies along the way, infuriating elements running the gamut from the Hells Angels to Richard Nixon. Not that he seemed to mind. He knew it came with the territory — that if you wanted the real story you had to take risks.

Nowadays the main rule is Play It Safe. Not only should you look before you leap, you should think very seriously about attending a Leapers Anonymous meeting and discussing the possibility that you have a leaping problem. We’re all told at one point to tone it down, to start behaving responsibly and settle into that grey lockstep toward the prison of death. Nearly everyone eventually bows to that pressure, which is what made Hunter such a rare creature. He never backed down, he never sold out the ideals of his youth; instead of toning it down he cranked it up.

He loped along like a crazy tiger and I think we all understood that that was how he was going to go out — at full stride in a sudden spasm of violence. We knew death wasn't going to finally catch up with him in a nursing home where he’d crawled to die.

People liked to say, and I was one of them, that Hunter had lost a step toward the end, that his tidal wave of talent had crested and broke decades before and was now quickly receding.

Which may be true, though it hardly matters. His ideals were already firmly planted in the firmament of society. The lighthouse still stands and the light still burns bright.

Long live the king. —Frank Kelly Rich

Well, how many guys you think that nick nolte is doing good films recently. I have heard about him that Nolte is about to join the cast of Luck, that David Milch-created HBO drama about the horse race world. Milch and Michael Mann are exec producers, and Mann is directing the pilot. The deal isn’t done yet, but I hear Nolte is already “mucking the stalls” at Santa Anita racetrack where the drama will unfold. What going to happen after this because now he signing with HBO for more gain.

http://www.ranker.com/list/nick-nolte-movies-and-films-and-filmography/reference