A Boricua Film Club Review:
By Angelo Falcón
As I saw the promotional trailers for Johnny Depp’s “The Rum Diary,” I thought, hey, why not “Law & Order: Puerto Rico” or “CSI: Puerto Rico”? I mean, Puerto Rico has all the elements for a successful crime drama series, and in spades. Lots of murders, drugs, political and police corruption, tostones at McDonald’s, pale American tourists, rum wars, colonialism, neocolonialism, post-colonialism. and on and on. And then there are the 40 percent tax credit to Island Residents and additional 20 percent tax credit to Non-Resident Talent to support an Island film industry that, according to the Oscars’ people, is domestic in a foreign sense. After all, it ain’t Puerto Rico without them tax breaks for them there North Americans! (I have no idea why I went here with a Southern accent!)
But I digress. The always engaging and eternally moody gonzo culture critic, Ed Morales, found “The Rum Diary” unsatisfying on most counts in his recent and erudite review. He points out how indigenous talent was marginalized and the people stereotyped and eroticized. But as I sat in the theater munching on my $3.50 hot dog (which always gets me to wondering what the hell is in those tubular delights) along with the fellow members of the notorious Boricua Film Club, I got a different take on this film. To be honest, while we are all great admirers of Mr. Depp, we went in search of what we thought would be the inevitable assaults on Puerto Rican sensibilities that such a film would commit. We were pleasantly disappointed.
Puerto Rico had been granted the right to elect its own Governor in 1948, half a century after the US takeover of the place, and the film is set in 1960, the beginning of Luis Muñoz Marin’s fourth and final term in office (he was the first elected Governor of the Island). That was also the year that John F. Kennedy was elected President to replace Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex with a spanking new but possibly even more lethal Camelot version.
The story line of “The Rum Diary” is pretty straightforward. A failed boozed-up American novelist arrives in San Juan to work at a failing and corrupt local English-language newspaper. He encounters a bunch of odd and very corrupted and corruptible American characters as co-workers and businessmen set on ravaging the Puerto Rican culture and economy for profit and debauchery. The American writer is assigned to write horoscopes but in the process encounters and is deeply touched by the extreme poverty of the natives as he observes cockfights and a frightening-looking hermaphrodite Santera, all under the influence of at least 167 liquor miniatures, 400-plus proof rum, LSD, and the chirping of coquis.
He almost moonlights as a writer for a slimy Puerto Rican developer and his crew of a gringo publicist, retired military guy, a banker and other shady types. He also encounters and quickly lusts after a American girlfriend of the corrupt and wealthy publicist, which kills his moonlighting deal and results in he and his apartment mate, the newspaper’s grungy photographer, being pursued by local law enforcement for being falsely charged with not paying a restaurant bill and correctly charged for using his mouth as a flame-thrower on the head of a local police officer.
Meanwhile, the newspaper goes under and he inexplicable becomes the leader of the now out of work employees to, Mickey Rooney-like, put out one last issue of the paper based on real journalism, an action to be financed by the winnings from a Santera-rigged cockfight against the champion El Monstro cock. The newspaper rebellion fails, he screws the American girl, she flies to New York and we are informed that he also later winds up in New York and becomes a successful journalist as a result of “finding his voice” in Puerto Rico. Now, did I say that the story was straightforward? I lied.
The style of this film is kind of zig-zaggy (or, as one reviewer put, it, disjointed). This, however, is not necessarily a bad thing, but some people like a more conventional plot arc. Given the backdrop of Puerto Rico in 1960, I enjoyed all the detours and all the gratuitous antics of the characters. The LSD scene with the mystically elongated tongue, the mirror inspection of a diseased penis, and the male-to-male humping car drive were hilarious; and all contributed, I guess, to the beginnings of the gonzo journalist philosophy this film purports to fictionally document.
This film, as its publicity has made widely known, is based on Hunter Thompson’s 1961 novel, but only very loosely so. It was surprising to see that the newspaper in the book, called The Daily News, was named The San Juan Star in the movie. The Star, which was started in 1959, went belly-up a couple of years ago (and was reincarnated the “Puerto Rico Daily Sun”). The problem with using the name of this real newspaper is that, while depicted in the film as awful and cheap rag, the real San Juan Star had, in fact, won a Pulitzer the year after the movie was set.
“The Rum Diary” utterly fails in convincingly portraying the development of the main character’s raised social consciousness. He ultimately doesn’t work with the corrupt developer, not because of his conscience, but because he wants to lay this free-spirited (read: slutty) gorgeous woman. This is like saying that all those people out there in the street in the Occupy Wall Street movement are there only to see the topless female demonstrators.
One criticism of the film is that, ironically, there really are not significant Puerto Rican characters in a film based in Puerto Rico. The one exception of the unethical developer, but he has a small role where every time he appears, he has to leave early. But one could argue that since this story is told from the point of view of largely ugly Americans, it is probably appropriate that the Puerto Ricans (and St. Thomasans in their short trip there) are depicted as marginal and threatening backdrops, as objects and not subjects.
Despite all of these issues, two-thirds of the Boricua Film Club members (including me) actually liked the film. It could be bias from liking Johnny Depp’s performances in general, or the fact that it was set in Puerto Rico, but according to box office reports, it didn’t do too well. And, to be honest, the one-third of the Boricua Film Club members that didn’t like the film, well, they aren’t the brightest members of the group.
By the way, when I finished writing this review today, I realized that this coincided with the complete digestion of that hot dog I ate at the theater on Friday. What a relief!
Angelo Falcón sometimes fancies himself a movie reviewer, but he is really President of the National Institute for Latino Policy (NiLP). He likes to write movie reviews because, according to him, “they’re meaningless.”