A History of Cinema in Puerto Rico: The Making of "The Rum Diary"

Behind the Scenes · Old San Juan · 2011

The Rum Diary in Old San Juan: Bringing Hunter S. Thompson Back to Life

How the cobblestone streets of Puerto Rico's historic capital — and one iconic record store — helped recreate the gonzo world of 1950s San Juan.

By Frankie Vintage · Cinema in Puerto Rico Series · Part 3

Hunter S. Thompson set his semi-autobiographical novel The Rum Diary in Old San Juan for a reason. The city's layered history — Spanish colonial walls, sun-bleached plazas, streets that seem to hold onto every era they've witnessed — gave his story of moral drift and journalistic awakening a setting that felt both timeless and specific. When Hollywood finally brought that novel to the screen decades later, they came back to the same streets. And when they needed the objects that would make those streets feel like the 1950s, they came to us: Downtown Records, at the corner of Calle O'Donnell and Calle San Francisco.

▶ The Rum Diary — Official Trailer

The Book Behind the Film

Old San Juan standing in for its own past — the city as it appeared in Thompson's era

Thompson's novel follows Paul Kemp, a young American journalist who arrives in San Juan to write for a struggling newspaper, and slowly loses himself to the island's beauty, corruption, and rum-soaked late nights. It's a story about finding a voice — and losing your bearings in the process. Thompson wrote it in his twenties, drawing directly from his own time spent in Puerto Rico, and the result is one of the most vivid portrayals of the island ever committed to the page.

What makes the book so cinematic — and so challenging to adapt — is how deeply its atmosphere depends on place. Old San Juan isn't just a backdrop in Thompson's telling; it's an active force, a character in its own right. The film had to honor that, which meant getting the physical world of 1950s San Juan exactly right: the furniture, the textures, the objects that would have populated those rooms and those lives half a century ago.

Thompson's Old San Juan isn't just a backdrop — it's an active force, a character in its own right. The film had to honor that, which meant getting the physical world exactly right.

Downtown Records as a Prop Supplier

Our store became a primary source for the production team as they worked to dress the film's sets. The props department made multiple visits to our inventory at the corner of Calle O'Donnell and Calle San Francisco, sourcing furniture, decorative objects, and period-appropriate pieces that could convincingly inhabit Thompson's world.

For us, it was a natural fit. Downtown Records had spent decades accumulating objects with real history — pieces that had lived through the mid-century era the film was trying to recreate. Not reproductions, not new furniture artificially aged, but the genuine article. That authenticity is exactly what a production like The Rum Diary needed, and it's what we were able to provide.

▶ Scenes from The Rum Diary Featuring Old San Juan

Old San Juan: A City That Remembers

The filming drew visitors and curious locals in equal measure. Tourists wandered the cobblestone streets hoping to spot the production in action; residents opened their doors to cast and crew, sharing coffee and conversation in the unhurried way that Old San Juan has always welcomed strangers. There's something about this city — its scale, its density of history, its particular quality of light — that makes it extraordinarily hospitable to storytelling.

Old San Juan has stood in for other times and other places in film before. It doubled for Havana in Assassins; it gave Bad Boys 2 its textured Caribbean backdrops. But in The Rum Diary, it didn't have to pretend to be anywhere else. It was simply itself — and itself, it turned out, was more than enough.

▶ The Streets of Old San Juan on Screen

Thompson's Legacy, On Location

Beyond the production logistics, there was something meaningful about bringing Thompson's story back to the city that inspired it. The film became a kind of homecoming — not just for the novel, but for the gonzo spirit Thompson embodied throughout his career. His writing has always been about confronting the gap between how things are supposed to be and how they actually are, and Old San Juan, with all its beauty and contradictions, captures that tension better than almost anywhere.

▶ The World of The Rum Diary

▶ Hunter S. Thompson's Legacy in Film

When the final scene wrapped and the crew packed up, what remained was something quieter than the film itself: the memory of a collaboration between a great writer's world and the city that shaped it, filtered through the objects and streets and people of Old San Juan. For Downtown Records, it was yet another reminder that the things we collect and preserve — the furniture, the artifacts, the pieces of daily life from other eras — carry more meaning than they might appear to at first glance.

▶ Final Scenes: The Rum Diary in Old San Juan

Visit Frankie Vintage in Bayamón

Downtown Records has a new name and a new home, but the same deep inventory of objects that carry real history. Find us at Frankie Vintage in Bayamón — where Puerto Rico's cinematic legacy lives on.

Visit Frankie Vintage →

Also in the Cinema in Puerto Rico Series

• How a Record Store in Old San Juan Became a Hollywood Film Set — Assassins (1995) →
• The Props of Bad Boys 2: How Frankie Vintage Helped Build a Hollywood Blockbuster (2003) →

A History of Cinema In Puerto Rico: The Story of How the 1995 Film "Assassins" Was Filmed In a Record Shop In Old San Juan

Behind the Scenes · Old San Juan · 1995

How a Record Store in Old San Juan Became a Hollywood Film Set

The untold story of Downtown Records and its unexpected starring role in the 1995 thriller Assassins.

By Frankie Vintage · Cinema in Puerto Rico Series · View on IMDB

On the busy corner of Calle O'Donnell and Calle San Francisco in Old San Juan, something extraordinary happened in 1995. What had long been one of the neighborhood's most beloved record shops — Downtown Records — was about to be transformed, floor by floor, into a gritty Cuban hideout for a major Hollywood production. The film was Assassins, directed by Richard Donner. And nobody who witnessed the transformation would ever quite forget it.

The storefront, dressed for film — Old San Juan standing in for Havana

Though Assassins was shot primarily in Washington State, the production team needed a location that could convincingly double as Havana, Cuba for the film's pivotal final scenes. Old San Juan — with its centuries-old Spanish colonial architecture, crumbling pastel facades, and cobblestone streets — offered exactly the right atmosphere. Director Richard Donner made an unconventional choice: instead of scouting a purpose-built set, he chose an actual working record store in the heart of the old city.

Downtown Records wasn't just any shop. Its history in New York City's music scene stretched back decades before it landed in Puerto Rico, and by 1995 it had become a fixture of Old San Juan street life — packed floor to ceiling with vinyl records, vintage finds, and antiques that told stories of their own. That layered, lived-in quality was precisely what made it perfect for the screen.

Emptying the Building, Scene by Scene

The crew worked through multiple floors, removing thousands of records and vintage items

The transformation was a logistical undertaking unlike anything the store had seen. The production crew descended on the building and methodically emptied the top two floors — an enormous task given the sheer volume of records, antiques, and vintage merchandise that had accumulated over the years. Everything was carefully moved out to make way for the cinematic vision: a decaying, abandoned building in Cuba where one of the film's assassins, played by Antonio Banderas, would take refuge with a sniper rifle.

The exterior received an equally dramatic makeover — weathered, aged, and stripped of anything that might suggest a thriving Caribbean record shop. By the time the crew finished, Downtown Records bore almost no resemblance to its former self. It had become a set.

"Having these famous iconic movie stars perform their roles inside Downtown Records during that time was something truly magical."

— Frankie Ramos, owner of Downtown Records (now Frankie Vintage)

The Fight Scene: Watch It Here

▶ Fight Scene Filmed Inside Frankie Vintage

With the space transformed, cameras began to roll. The cast that walked through those doors was something few small businesses ever get to witness: Antonio Banderas, Sylvester Stallone, and Julianne Moore, all performing in the space where, just weeks earlier, customers had been flipping through crates of vinyl.

The transformed exterior — Old San Juan as old Havana

Store owner Frankie Ramos and his cousin Hector Fort, who co-owned the space, played an active role in helping the production team realize their vision. Their deep familiarity with the building — every room, every corner, every creaking floorboard — made them invaluable partners in the process. Their expertise and enthusiasm helped create an atmosphere that went far beyond what any purpose-built set could have offered.

As the cameras rolled, the noise and energy of Calle O'Donnell faded into the background. In its place: the focused intensity of a Hollywood production, and the strange, electric feeling of fiction becoming real inside a place that had always been very much alive.

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A Place That Became a Character

Frankie Ramos and Hector Fort — the men behind the store, and the shoot

What made the filming of Assassins at Downtown Records so memorable wasn't just the star power. It was the way the building itself contributed to the film's atmosphere. The worn wooden floors, the high ceilings, the quality of light coming through those old colonial windows — none of that could be faked on a soundstage. The space had soul, and the camera found it.

Downtown Records didn't just serve as a backdrop. It became a character in the story — one with decades of history embedded in its walls, giving Antonio Banderas's scenes a gravity and authenticity that a conventional set simply couldn't have delivered.

▶ Additional Footage from the Filming

▶ More Scenes from the Old San Juan Location

When the final scene wrapped and the crew packed up, Old San Juan returned to its familiar rhythm. But something had shifted. For everyone who had been part of it — from Frankie and Hector to every crew member who hauled a crate of records down those stairs — the memory of those weeks was sealed into the walls of that corner building.

Downtown Records is no longer at its original location on Calle O'Donnell. But its spirit lives on. The magic of storytelling, of transformation, of Puerto Rico as a stage for world-class cinema — that legacy continues.

Visit Frankie Vintage in Bayamón

Downtown Records may have moved, but the story keeps going. Find us at our new home — Frankie Vintage in Bayamón — where the love of music, vintage culture, and Puerto Rican cinema history thrives.

Visit Frankie Vintage → Assassins on IMDB →

Next in the Cinema in Puerto Rico Series

Cinema In Puerto Rico: The Filming of Bad Boys 2 with Will Smith & Martin Lawrence →