The Rum Diary

I approached my viewing of The Rum Diary (2011) with equal parts anticipation and trepidation. With the exception of Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), writer Hunter S. Thompson has not seen many of his books adapted into films and with good reason. His often crazed and surreal first person narratives are largely internalized with his trademark colorful descriptions of people and places not easy to replicate visually. Just watch Where the Buffalo Roam to see what I mean. Terry Gilliam, however, was able to pull it off with the cult classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which featured Johnny Depp uncannily channeling Thompson. The actor also became quite close to the legendary writer, even becoming an unofficial guardian of his legacy after Thompson died in 2005. This included seeing his novel The Rum Diary made into a film. However, the journey to get it made took 11 years with several actors signed on only to eventually drop out; mirroring the rocky journey Thompson himself took to get his book published.

Based on his experiences writing for a doomed sports newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1960, Thompson wrote the book in the early 1960s and tried to get several publishers interested until numerous rejection letters later left him so discouraged that he gave up and wrote about politics during the ‘60s and 1970s. Then, in the 1990s, he was motivated by nostalgia… and money to dust it off, finish and get it published in 1998. A film version was put into development as early as 2000 with Depp and Nick Nolte set to star. However, this didn’t pan out and another attempt was made in 2002 with Benicio del Toro and Josh Hartnett replacing Nolte. This incarnation also fizzled out during the development phase. Finally, in 2007, a new attempt gained some serious traction with Depp handpicking Bruce Robinson, the writer/director of the cult classic Withnail and I (1987), and coaxing him out of semi-self-imposed retirement to adapt the book. The final result was a commercial failure and a film that disappointed the Thompson faithful for being a sanitized take on the novel or for not being more like Gilliam’s film.

The latter complaint is a rather unfair one because The Rum Diary is a completely different book than Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in every way – setting, tone and, most importantly, style. Thompson wrote it before he had developed his trademark Gonzo journalism and was still finding his voice if you will. The tone of Fear and Loathing is more jaded, cynical and paranoid – hence the title, while The Rum Diary is more idealistic and romantic, written by a man who still had his whole life ahead of him.

Admittedly, the film starts off shakily as the opening credits play over postcard perfect shots of Puerto Rico while Dean Martin croons “Volare” on the soundtrack. What the hell? Is this going to be some half-assed tribute to the Rat Pack? Fortunately, we meet a bloodshot and disheveled Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) waking up in his hotel room after a night of heavy drinking. It is 1960 and he has just arrived from New York City to start work at the San Juan Star, a local newspaper on the verge of going under, if the angry mob gathered outside its front door is any indication. Kemp wisely goes in through the back way and soon meets Bob Sala (Michael Rispoli), staff photographer, and who proceeds to give him the lay of the land. Kemp has a meeting with Lotterman (Richard Jenkins), the editor-in-chief who admits to him that he doesn’t like reading his own paper! Lotterman is looking for some fresh blood, hence hiring Kemp, but warns him that he doesn’t want any heavy drinkers and puts him immediately to work writing horoscopes.

Sala takes Kemp on a brief tour of the building and, more importantly, the local bar where many of staff reporters hang out. When asked how long he’s been in Puerto Rico, Sala replies, “Too long,” and compares the place to “someone you fucked and they’re still under you.” Over drinks he points out one of the paper’s more notorious contributors – Moberg (Giovanni Ribisi), the crime and religious affairs correspondent and whose “entire sub-structure of his brain has been eaten away from rum,” according to Sala.

While on an assignment for the paper, Kemp meets Hal Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart), a former employee of the paper, now a slick public relations consultant who wears impeccably tailored, expensive suits and drives around in a flashy sports car. It’s all in an attempt to seduce Kemp and convince him to write copy promoting San Juan to Americans in the hopes they’ll buy land there. Kemp is only half-paying attention to his pitch as he is unable to take his eyes off of Sanderson’s gorgeous girlfriend Chenault (Amber Heard), whom he met briefly earlier one night while paddle boating in the ocean and she appeared to him like a mermaid in the water. Kemp is captivated by her beauty but must keep his distance because of his business relationship with Sanderson. At first, Kemp’s freelance gig with Sanderson is good but the writer can’t reconcile the exploitation of the land at the hands of greedy developers with the poverty conditions he sees much of its population living in.

Giovanni Ribisi pops up occasionally as scene-stealer Moberg, a dirty and debauched excuse for a human being reminiscent of the wild, rampaging Dr. Gonzo in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The actor immerses himself completely in the role, adopting a reedy, weasely voice and unhinged demeanor that is introduced in a memorable scene where Moberg confronts Lotterman over money owed, threatening to “come through the roof and turn this place into an insurance claim,” only to then rip off the editor’s badly applied hair piece. Moberg is so vividly portrayed by Ribisi that he belongs in the less is more category because threatens to throw off the balance of the film. Fortunately, Robinson gets just the right mix with this character.

While Ribisi gleefully chews up the scenery, Michael Rispoli delivers a wonderfully understated performance as Sala. The actor first came onto my radar with his way too brief role on The Sopranos but when he’s given a chance to take center stage, like the little seen independent film Two Family House (2000), he demonstrates some solid skills. So, it’s great to see The Rum Diary give Rispoli substantial screen-time and he makes the most of it as the grizzled, seen-it-all photographer biding his time until he can get enough money to take off to Mexico. The actor delivers the most naturalistic performance of anybody in the film as he seamlessly inhabits his character. Perhaps a more interesting film would’ve been one that focused on Sala and this is due in large part to Rispoli’s excellent work.

Johnny Depp does a fine job reprising a younger, more romantic incarnation of Hunter S. Thompson. He wisely dials down the author’s trademark mannerisms, only hinting at the persona that would make him famous later in life. The Thompson of The Rum Diary era has yet to be disillusioned by life – that happens over the course of the film. Depp understands that this film is an origins story of sorts and that by its conclusion, Kemp has started the process of transforming into the man who will one day write Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It is nice to see Depp not playing a pirate or starring in some forgettable Tim Burton film and portraying a recognizable human being.

Much like with Fear and Loathing, The Rum Diary openly criticizes the exploitation and corruption of the American Dream. Lotterman lays it all out for Kemp over drinks late one night. The paper’s readers don’t want to read about what’s really going on in Puerto Rico. They want the romantic dream of blue skies and sandy beaches. It’s Kemp’s job to sell that idealized image to the masses. “You’re paying to be in the dream,” he tells Kemp at one point. It is with this scene that the film gets down to brass tacks and really pulls back the romantic façade to explain how things really work. Once Kemp is privy to that, he can’t go back to being a hired gun, some hack writing puff pieces. He sets out on a path to be someone who is unafraid to report the truth no matter how ugly.

It’s been awhile since I’ve read the book but the film manages to capture its spirit rather well. With the minor quibble of Depp being too old for the role, the cast looks very close to the way I imagined the characters in my head when I read the novel. Thankfully, the filmmakers didn’t go the safe route and cast popular actors but rather got the right people for the roles, which probably hurt its chances with mainstream audiences – that, and the whole exploitation of Puerto Rico thing, which I imagine turned off people expecting some low brow comedy a la The Hangover (2009). No, The Rum Diary has much more on its mind and for that it should be applauded.

Can I say how great it is to see Bruce Robinson directing a film again? It has been too long since the underrated atmospheric crime thriller Jennifer 8 (1992), a debacle production-wise that prompted him to swear off directing and burned what few bridges he had in Hollywood. While it is not as brilliant as Withnail and I, The Rum Diary is a solid piece of work. Robinson manages to translate the core elements of the novel and is unafraid to risk alienating viewers with the subplot of Kemp’s dealings with Sanderson. He could have made a safe, entertaining romp but opted instead to depict the story of a man who develops scruples and becomes someone who is proactive instead of a follower who touts the party line. Robinson wraps this all up in an attractive package with some absolutely stunning cinematography courtesy of Dariusz Wolski (Prometheus) and that showcases the beauty of Puerto Rico’s considerable natural resources. In retrospect, Robinson was an inspired choice to write and direct this film. As he proved with Withnail and I, he knows how to effortlessly mix comedy and drama. He also has a fantastic ear for memorable dialogue – for witty banter and truth-telling monologues. It is these elements that also exist in The Rum Diary. However, the film marred somewhat by a clumsily inserted drug hallucination scene with some badly rendered CGI that awkwardly attempts to bridge The Rum Diary with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The film would’ve been better if this scene had been omitted entirely as it is completely unnecessary.

In 1960, a 22-year-old Hunter S. Thompson moved from New York City to Puerto Rico with the intention of working as a journalist and writing a Hemingway-esque novel about the experience in his spare time. However, Thompson didn’t adapt well to the lifestyle there and left after a few months for further misadventures in South America. By 1962, he had finished a 1,000 page manuscript entitled The Rum Diary and returned to the United States in 1963 to shop it around to various publishers with no success. He made several revisions including making it more controversial in the hopes it would be sellable. For example, inspired by the emerging civil rights debates that were raging at the time, he added an “interracial sex scene.” Deep down, Thompson may have realized that it wasn’t a very good book and put it aside for several decades. In 1998, Depp found the manuscript while staying with Thompson and doing research for the film version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He thought The Rum Diary had cinematic possibilities and would provide the writer with some much-needed income. Some 600 pages were cut out and the book was published to mixed reviews.

Bruce Robinson first met Johnny Depp when the actor approached him about directing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The actor was a huge fan of both Withnail and I and How to Get Ahead in Advertising: “These two films destroyed me. I knew I had to work with him one way or another, by hook or by crook. So I hooked him.” However, the director was so fed up with the business that he declined the offer. Then, a few years later, the actor contacted him again about writing a screenplay adaptation of The Rum Diary only Robinson wasn’t a fan of the book. “The story is great … It has a lot of faults in the narrative and drive and some of it is very vulgar, which I didn’t like.” However, he agreed to do it. After Depp read it, he asked Robinson to direct and he declined again. The actor was persistent and Robinson was flattered that a movie star of Depp’s caliber wanted him and he finally accepted the job.

In preparation for adapting the book, Robinson read it twice and made extensive notes. He felt that the adaptation had to be written in his voice, but “I’m writing in what I hope would be the same vernacular as him.” Robinson, a prolific alcoholic for years, had stopped drinking heavily in 2003. At the height of his problem, he drank four or five bottle of wine a day. He began writing The Rum Diary script and for a few weeks, “I let the sober side win.” He struggled and realized that to get into the mindset of a character like Moberg he needed to start drinking again. “I wrote the script pretty quickly after that, but I stuck to wine as a medicine. I drank a bottle a day.” Once he finished writing the script, he stopped drinking. To prepare for the film, Robinson found a 1960s tourist guidebook of Puerto Rico and also poured over years of feature articles in back issues of National Geographic in order to give him a sense of place.

The Rum Diary received mostly negative reviews from mainstream critics. Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “We have the feeling that Kemp/Thompson saw much of life through the bottom of a dirty glass and did not experience it with any precision. The film duplicates this sensation, not with much success.” In his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote, “Mr. Depp, drawing in his mouth and lowering the register of his voice, is reliably unpredictable and predictably cool, but as is so often the case lately, he seems to be acting from behind the mask of his own charisma.” Entertainment Weekly gave it a “C” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “We're supposed to be witnessing the birth of a great journalist, but Hunter S. Thompson, as his career went on, got swallowed up by his mystique as an outlaw of excess. In The Rum Diary, that myth becomes an excuse for a movie to go slumming.” The Village Voice’s J. Hoberman wrote, “Robinson is good on sweaty, sodden mise-en-scène and elaborately grubby tropical torpor, but he never quite gets the giddy velocity of a what-the-fuck bender. Truth to tell, The Rum Diary is actually more of a light morning-after hangover—it won’t leave you with a headache.” Time magazine’s Richard Corliss felt that the film was “defiantly tiny, an agreeable time-waster for the onlookers and its star. The Rum Diary isn’t a corrective to Johnny Depp’s kid-centric career, more like a vacation from it, in a resort where the visitors are strange, the natives are restless and the flow of alcohol endless.”

I can only imagine how disappointed Depp must’ve been about the film’s commercial failure. Clearly, he saw this film as a cinematic love letter to his departed friend. It was a passion project that he stuck with for 11 years, never giving up on it despite numerous setbacks. He should be proud of the fact that he got another Hunter S. Thompson book made into a film and right or wrong he did it his way, independently and not through some Hollywood studio that would’ve watered it down to nothing, much like how Kemp in the film bucks the system. However, the fate of the film once it was released also mirrors what happens to Kemp and Sala when they try to resurrect the newspaper for one last issue in an unfortunate example of life imitating art. Hopefully, The Rum Diary will be rediscovered over the years and appreciated more than it was upon its initial release.

NOTE: My friend over at The Film Connoisseur blog wrote an excellent review of this film. Check it out.

SOURCES

Chalmers, Robert. “Bruce Robinson: ‘I started drinking again because of The Rum Diary.’” The Independent. February 20, 2011.

Harris, Dana. “The Rum Diary Director Bruce Robinson is Grateful for Johnny Depp, Hunter and Withnail.” indieWIRE. October 26, 2011.

Melnick, Meredith. “After 17 Years Away, Director Bruce Robinson Returns with The Rum Diary.” Time. October 27, 2011.

Olsen, Mark. “The Rum Diary Pours Fourth Anew.” Los Angeles Times. October 23, 2011.

Turner, Gustavo. “The Rum Diary: Johnny Depp’s Hunter S. Thompson.” L.A. Weekly. October 27, 2011.

Pump Up the Volume

Allan Moyle and John Hughes both make escapist teen movies that feature fantasy stories populated by easily relatable characters that exist in an idealized world. The teenagers that inhabit their respective films are ones that are beautiful, funny and smart – in other words, what teens would like to be and not always what they really are. The crucial difference between the two filmmakers is that the characters in Moyle’s films are more flawed and fucked-up. There’s Nicky and Pamela – two runaways from a mental hospital in Times Square (1980); there’s the socially awkward and painfully shy Mark in Pump Up the Volume (1990); and finally, the suicidal Deb in Empire Records (1995). It is these last two films that are Moyle’s most well-known thanks to the casts of young, soon-to-be-successful actors and soundtracks featuring amazing collections of alternative rock music that was popular at the time.

Pump Up the Volume is Moyle’s best film to date. It is a freedom of speech tract subversively disguised as a teen movie. With this film, he goes after the shady practices of schools that will stop at nothing to maintain high SAT scores and champions kids having the rights to talk to each other openly and honestly about things that affect them on a daily basis. The film is also Moyle’s most uncompromising effort, concluding with a rather bittersweet ending that leaves the protagonist’s fate in question.

“You ever get the feeling that everything in America is completely fucked up? You know that feeling that the whole country is like one inch away from saying, ‘That’s it! Forget it!’” - Mark

By day, Mark Hunter (Christian Slater) is a shy, socially awkward teenager who goes to school in a sterile Phoenix, Arizona suburb. By night, he is a witty and profane provocateur who vents his frustrations via an FM pirate radio station under the colorful moniker “Happy Harry Hard-On.” He broadcasts from his bedroom transmitter located in the basement of his parents’ house in the middle of anonymous suburb. Inspired by the subversive comedy of free speech martyr Lenny Bruce, Mark sounds off against all kinds of things (“Everything’s polluted – the environment, the government, the schools.”), talks about masturbating frequently and playing a diverse collection of music that includes Soundgarden, the Descedents, Beastie Boys and Pixies among others. Most interestingly, is his use of Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows,” with its jaded, cynical lyrics (“Everybody knows the good guys lost … the poor stay poor, the rich get rich.”), as the show’s theme song. It’s a real masterstroke by Moyle as the lyrics and downbeat music reflect the moodiness of teenagers who feel like the world is against them.

Mark’s broadcasts are full of rude humor (“Tonight we have #12 of 100 things to do to your body when you’re all alone.”) and he delights in exposing the hypocrisy of the system by calling up the school’s guidance counselor at one point (Robert Schenkkan) and confronting him about his participation in expelling a student because she was pregnant. He answers fan mail that ranges from the ridiculous to the genuinely troubling, like a teen contemplating suicide, that helps give the initially irreverent film some much needed gravitas. Mark’s show provides the kids in white bread suburbia something subversive to check out in-between family dinners and homework. He is trying to provoke his listeners to think critically and to think for themselves. The pirate radio station is also a conduit for Mark to voice his own dissatisfaction with the state of things. As he puts it, “There’s nothing to do anymore, everything decent’s been done, all the great themes have been used up, turned into theme parks.” He finds himself “living in the middle of a totally exhausted decade where there’s nothing to look forward to and no one to look up to.”

He certainly can’t look up to his parents, former hippies that fought against the system during the 1960s and have now sold out and become part of it. His mom (Mimi Kennedy) even says to her husband (Scott Paulin) at one point, “The man I married loved his work not power and money,” to which he replies, “Well, that’s alright. I still love my work and I love power and money.” In this brief exchange, we get Moyle’s stinging indictment of the Baby Boomers and what’s wrong with them – they wanted to change the system and instead became absorbed by it.

Bootleg tapes of Mark’s broadcasts circulate among the students of his school with speculation rife about the true identity of “Hard Harry.” Chief among them is Nora Diniro (Samantha Mathis), a Goth chick that submits her sexy poetry to Harry under her own provocative moniker, the “Eat Me Beat Me Lady.” They’re attracted to each other’s fictional personas and she begins to suspect that Mark is Harry and eventually confronts him. As his audience increases, so do the risks of being caught and soon he gets the attention of Principal Creswood (Annie Ross), a disciplinarian who runs the school with an iron fist, spouting platitudes like, “The lesson of modern education is nothing comes easy; no pain, no gain.” It’s amazing that she is able to believe her own bullshit and Moyle makes her a simple, one-note villain whose only purpose is to give Mark someone he is determined to take down, a target at which to vent his angst.

Still fresh from his turn as an unhinged psychopath in Heathers (1989), Christian Slater is perfectly cast as a disillusioned teenager looking for a new voice to emerge and shake things up only to eventually realize (with Nora’s helps) that he’s that voice. Still sporting that Jack Nicholson-esque drawl, he puts a wonderfully dry, sarcastic spin on retorts to his father who warns him that, “One of these days you’re gonna outsmart yourself, young man,” with, “I love it when you call me young man.” Pump Up the Volume is definitely one of Slater’s strongest performances, if not his best as he gets to bounce back and forth between shy, introvert and lewd, crude purveyor of the truth. Not only does he get to spout classic one-liners but also deliver impassioned monologues, like when Mark addresses the suicide of a student and segues into an angry rant advocating living and bucking the system, inviting his audience to stage their own personal revolutions. The smartass nature of Hard Harry was ideally suited for Slater but we really hadn’t seen much vulnerability from him. He got a chance to expose that side a bit with Mark. The actor pulls it off and even anticipates his role in Untamed Heart (1993) where he really stripped away most of his acting tics, playing an extremely introverted character. However, he started to test the waters with Pump Up the Volume, showing a range that he hadn’t in previous films.

Samantha Mathis, in her feature film debut, is good as the alterna-girl that gradually brings Mark out of his shell. She has excellent chemistry with Slater (they were an item at the time of filming) and the sexual tension is almost tangible, especially during the scene where Mark and Nora finally kiss as Ivan Neville’s seductive “Why Can’t I Fall in Love?” plays on the soundtrack. Nora is the cool girl I always wished I knew in high school that was artistic and had great taste in music. I feel that this was probably large part of the appeal of Mathis’ character.

After his second directorial effort, the New Wave music comedy Times Square, was taken away from him and re-edited, resulting in a critical and commercial failure, Allan Moyle quit directing to focus on writing screenplays. One of them was about a teenager who runs his own pirate radio station for other people his age. When creating the character of Mark, Moyle wanted a fusion of his two favorite outsiders – Lenny Bruce and Holden Caulfield. Hubert Humphrey High, the school Mark goes to in the film, was inspired by a Montreal high school where Moyle’s sister used to teach. According to the director, the principal “had a pact with the staff to enhance the credibility of the school scholastically at the expense of the students who were immigrants or culturally disabled in some way or another.” With Pump Up the Volume, he wanted to make a film with an edge to it, one that was tougher than John Hughes’ films.

A Toronto-based company called SC Entertainment bought the script and put it into development where it was eventually was made by New Line Cinema. Moyle originally wanted to call his film, Talk Hard, but was overruled by producer Bob Shaye who changed it to Pump Up the Volume, after the hit song of the same name, much to the director’s chagrin. Even after Moyle wrote the script, he had to be persuaded to direct again and stipulated in his contract that he would only make the film if the right actor to play Mark were found. He had to be “ineffably sweet and at the same time demonic,” Moyle said in an interview. The director reasoned that he didn’t want to spend nine weeks making a film with a young actor he couldn’t stand being around. He met with Christian Slater over lunch and knew that he was the right person for the role. The young actor was drawn to the project because of the authenticity of the writing, which he found to be “so real.” At the time he was making Pump Up the Volume, Slater’s personal life was a mess. He was drinking heavily and had run-ins with the law. Moyle remembers that the actor drank every night but never on set and was not a problem.

Pump Up the Volume received mixed reviews from critics. In his review for the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, “It might be argued that writer-director Allan Moyle and his collaborators have simply concocted an intoxicating fantasy, and certainly the power of fantasy isn’t irrelevant to what gives the movie its lift. But the fantasy happens to be believable.” The New York Times’ Stephen Holden wrote, “Working within the confines of the teen-age genre film, however, Pump Up the Volume still succeeds in sounding a surprising number of honest, heartfelt notes.” USA Today praised the film’s ending, despite it being, “in part, contrived, doesn’t cop out.” The Washington Post’s Rita Kempley wrote, “It's a howl from the heart, a relentlessly involving movie that gives a kid every reason to believe that he or she can come of age. It appreciates the pimples and pitfalls of this frightening passage, the transit commonly known as adolescence.”

 

However, Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “C-“ rating and Owen Gleiberman compared Slater to that of “a ratty, self-involved Michael J. Fox, works hard to give his on-the-air rants a nihilistic charge, but most of them sound like bad Beat poetry; all that's missing is the bongos.” Rolling Stone magazine’s Peter Travers wrote, “You can admire Moyle's ambitions — he's out to fashion a metaphor for these troubled times the way Eric Bogosian did in Talk Radio — but Moyle doesn't have a trace of Bogosian's keen intelligence or abrasive wit. What he does have is Slater. It's almost enough.”

Moyle uses the film to address serious issues like suicide, bullying, pregnancy and homosexuality in an honest and heartfelt way that so many other teen movies at the time either refused to address, or, if they did, in a superficial way. His well-written screenplay doesn’t talk down to his target audience and in a refreshing notion assumes that they are smart enough to absorb the many ideas that the film explores. At times, it may seem a bit heavy-handed, especially with the cardboard cut-out authority figures compromised of clueless parents, an evil principal and a hack politician cum FCC representative, but I feel that this is done on purpose because at that age teens tend to see authority figures on those terms and not as real people. Moyle wants to wake up a teen audience weaned on safe, predictable teen movies – something that Pump Up the Volume is definitely not.

Pump Up the Volume was an important film for me growing up. Like Mark, I was raised in white suburbia and was taught not to question authority. By the time I saw Moyle’s film I was just starting to get into alternative rock music and so its eclectic soundtrack was a welcome addition to my musical education and one I embraced fully. The film’s premise was also an enticing bit of wish fulfillment and a lot my enjoyment came out of living vicariously through Mark’s exploits. It was also a gateway into a wonderful world of subversive culture, like Lenny Bruce. Pump Up the Volume still holds up with only the pirate radio aspect coming off as dated, technology-wise. The ideas and themes that it explores are still relevant, maybe more now than ever before as people are deeply unhappy with our school systems and our government. Our pop culture landscape is also a wasteland thanks to the glut of reality shows starring people who have become famous (or rather infamous) for doing nothing. Now, more than ever, we need someone like Hard Harry – or, with the proliferation of the Internet, a bunch of Hard Harries to wake people up, like the film’s optimistic conclusion with Mark’s ideas spreading like a virus through not just his city but the entire country.

NOTE: Some of my fave writers on the blogosphere have also written about this film. Check out Ferdy on Films, House of Self-Indulgence and Junta Juleil's Culture Shock for excellent musings on it.

SOURCES

Goldstein, Patrick. “He’s Up, He’s Down, He’s Up Again.” Los Angeles Times. August 19, 1990.

Portman, Jamie. “Movie Views Cruel World of Today’s Teenage Angst.” Toronto Star. August 22, 1990.

Scott, Jay. “Festival of Festivals in Person.” Globe and Mail. September 12, 1990.