After writing and directing the 1987 cult classic Withnail & I, Bruce Robinson directed only two other films before being brought out of semi-retirement by Johnny Depp (pictured above, with Robinson) to write and direct The Rum Diary, based on Hunter S Thompson’s novel. He talks Tom Seymour through his process...
The Rum Diary is an adaption of a Hunter S Thompson novel and a passion project for Johnny Depp. How did you make your mark on it?
I have terrific respect for Hunter and I’ve read all of his stuff, but even if it was Émile Zola or Charles Dickens I still would have used the same writing process.
I read the book twice, made a few notes and threw it away. I’m not Hunter S Thompson and I can’t write like Hunter S Thompson. I can only write like me, so there are only two lines from [the book] that survived in the entire spectrum of the film’s dialogue – “Have some fun with a f***ing Luger” and “We’ll be lucky to find an oil spot.”
That’s not to say I don’t think Hunter’s dialogue isn’t fantastic; it is. But it isn’t me, and I don’t want to sit there like a secretary copying out what the boss has written. I threw it out and started asking myself – how am I going to write in this vernacular?
You spent six months writing the screenplay. Do you sweat over every word or do the lines come to you?
A bit of both really. I have a large writing room and I lock myself in there and start walking up and down and bullshitting the dialogue. I assume the characters and wait until they say something to me. I remember working on The Killing Fields and I would speak in Cambodian all day until I heard something – even though it sounded meaningless to me. It’s like trying to tune in an old-fashioned radio set.
After a while, you start hearing the voices. I say to my wife when it’s going badly: “I can’t hear the voices.” If I wasn’t a writer, they’d lock me up.
There’s been a reasonable gap between this film and the last film you directed (Jennifer Eight, 1992). Has your directing style changed or developed?
I think it’s pretty much the same. I love working with actors, but I’m not particularly au fait with cameras. I like to act the scene with the actors, and then when it’s time to shoot I get out.
I don’t know whether I have a style of directing. My only criteria is that I don’t want the camera to be a protagonist. In so many movies these days the camera is actually part of the storytelling – it’s all cut, cut, cut. I like the camera to be a privileged observer of a story going on, but to have no ego itself.
How much do you direct your cinematographer?
The DP [Director of Photography] Dariusz Wolski is fantastic. He’s so fast. When I did Withnail & I we had all sorts of old-fashioned lighting kit, but he has a piece of plywood with six light bulbs on it which all can be turned on and off, and all we’d use is that and a few reflectors. He’s a very, very clever cameraman. So the beauty of the film, if that’s the right word, is all him. I would just say, “I want to shoot the scene there against that hillside,” and he’d say, “Give me five minutes.”
What’s your advice to young filmmakers trying to get into the game?
Christ, I don’t know. Don’t do what I did.
The Rum Diary is out in cinemas nationwide today.