Depp's homage to Hunter

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LIKE everyone who knew him, Johnny Depp collected Hunter S. Thompson stories.

The first one is how the already-famous actor first met his fellow Kentuckian, the notorious hell-raiser, gadfly and popular author, in the Woody Creek Tavern near Thompson's adopted hometown of Aspen, Colorado, in December 1994.

"I was sitting in the back of the place, and I saw the door burst open. I saw sparks! Literally!" Depp recalls. "Then I saw people leaping left and right, getting out of the way. He 'parted the sea' with a three-foot cattle prod in his left hand and some sort of Taser in his right! That was the beginning of the romance."

Depp's tales of Thompson include the occasional near-death experience - usually involving firearms or explosives - all the way through to the funeral Depp ensured Thompson got after his death in 2005.

"At a cost of $2.5 million, Depp gave Hunter the send-off he wanted," Thompson biographer William McKeen wrote of that (literal) final blast: Thompson's ashes, blown up in a shower of fireworks.

"Hunter was never the guy who was going to slump down in his soup," Depp says of his friend, who committed suicide with a pistol at 67 as his body began to break down.

Yet even after having played a screen version of Thompson in 1998's Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, and even after the funeral, Depp says he felt a need "for closure" which comes in the form of a film based on Thompson's novel, The Rum Diary.

The movie was inspired by Thompson's early stint as a brilliant but boozy journalist in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Depp, who stars as a fictionalised version of the author, chose British director Bruce Robinson as his partner in crime to bring the tale to the big sc! reen.

The Rum Diary puts the journalist in the centre of the action, surrounded by colourful characters. "I promise you, none of these people were made up," Depp chuckles.

But now that The Rum Diary has finished its "long, strange trip" to cinemas, does Depp finally have his closure? Is he finally done with the man? "I don't think so," he says.

"The one thing that I know is that he's never going to leave me alone."