A Defiant Star

By David Giammarco/International Feature Agency
Translated by Mette

In his upcoming film "Blow", Johnny Depp plays the legendary drug dealer George Jung, who in the 1970s smuggled and sold horrific amounts of cocaine into the USA. But for Johnny Depp the film is also about a father-daughter relationship, something he could easily relate to during the shoot since he recently had a daughter with the French singer Vanessa Paradis.

Not since Brian De Palma’s "Scarface" has there been this much cocaine per take in a film. But "Blow" follows a different line than "Scarface" or the more recent "Traffic".
Directed by Ted Demme ( "The Ref", "Monument Ave" ) and starring Johnny Depp, "Blow" dramatizes the true story of how cocaine first became hip in the 1970s.
Depp plays the legendary drug dealer, George Jung, one of the biggest of the era. Based on Bruce Porter’s book by the same name, "Blow" spans five decades of one man’s journey from small-town America to the jungle of Medellin, Columbia.
Jung was the first American to partner with the Colombian cartel leader, Pablo Escobar, and began smuggling cocaine into the United States. At the peak, the former high school football star smuggled 85% of the cocaine that came into the United States. We’re talking an annual turnover of 280 billion kroner [ $35 billion ].
But it wasn’t just another film about excessive behavior that fascinated Depp. It was Jung himself who, in Depp’s eyes, was more than just a drug dealer:
"George Jung actually became a pirate, who lived in the periphery of society," Depp explains in his Manhattan hotel suite while lighting a home-made cigarette, "he didn’t believe in the system or politics or rules or authorities. He just wanted to live and ended up changing the course of an entire generation."
The story moves from the hippie innocence of the 1960s to the snow blind, money chasing fogs of the 1980s where Jung lived what he thought to be the American Dream. He first tried to live the good life, but instead of becoming a construction worker like his father ( played by Ray Liotta in the film ), Jung moves to California where he finds the sun, romance and the profitable pleasures of selling marijuana. In the beginning, the drug dealing is simply a means to maintaining his free and independent life style. Along the way he becomes more ambitious, but an arrest halts him temporarily.
In prison he meets a man from the inner circle controlling Columbia’s rising drug trade. When he is released, he is introduced to Pablo Escobar ( Cliff Curtis ), the billionaire godfather of international cocaine trade, who has plans to export tons of cocaine to the United States in order to give the growing disco world a far more expensive, addictive and hip kind of rush. Jung is also introduced to a beautiful, party-going girl by the name of Mirtha ( Penelope Cruz ) whom he soon marries. Later she gives birth to what will eventually be the greatest love of his life, his daughter Kristina Sunshine Jung.
Soon Jung is rolling in money. So much so that he is forced to buy a new house just for storing stacks of cash. But already while he and the Colombian cocaine suppliers are heralding new decadent times, Jung starts to falter and wish that he could be more than simply a criminal in his daughter’s eyes. But then, while he’s riding a wave, he takes a staggering fall and is thrown from the underworld into the arms of the FBI. Right now, the real George Jung sits in a prison cell in New York State without parole. He won’t be released until 1015.

But Depp sees "Blow" as more than a great tragedy where all dreams are abandoned for the satisfaction of greed. More than that, he sees it as a matter of heart-breaking love between a father and a daughter, something which really resonated with the new dad, Depp. The 37-year-old actor, who was once more famous for bad behavior and a string of broken engagements than his eclectic film work, admits that the parenting role has changed him forever.
"Now that I have a daughter I think about the consequences … and the future for the first time ever," he reflects. "I don’t understand what I did before. I felt like for 36 years there was a fog in front of my eyes. And the second she was born, this fog lifted. This is without a doubt the greatest thing I have done in my life."
Depp does seem truly happier now. He is not only "madly in love" with his French singer, Vanessa Paradis, and their 18-month-old daughter, Lily-Rose Melody Depp, but also claims that life is much better now that he lives in France. Depp and Paradis have an apartment in Paris, as well as, a 16 million kroner [ $2 million ] estate by the Mediterranean Sea. He left Los Angeles two years ago and says that he sometimes misses some things about America, "but mostly life is much more civilized in Paris."
"For example, you don’t get stalked by paparazzis. They respect your privacy and I certainly don’t miss turning on the TV and seeing kidnappings, murder and horrible disasters - natural disasters or not. America is simply out of control."
Depp even says that he won’t let his daughter go to school in the United States, but wants her to get a European education. When he talks about Lily-Rose, a longing smile crosses his face. It’s easy to tell that Depp adores her.
"I know that I probably sound like the cliché of a new dad," he says apologetically, "but I had never imagined that it was possible to feel such profound love and to have such fantastic contact with this amazing and beautiful little girl."
What has surprised Depp the most about becoming a father?
"Just the fact that it’s ME," he says and shakes his head in disbelief of this new chapter in his life. But it’s a role that he has submitted to with the same passion and intensity as his roles on the big screen.
Depp’s smile actually reveals his enthusiasm for the role in "Blow". He still has the gold teeth [ the interviewer seems to have confused the interviews here - the gold teeth were for The Man Who Cried, and as far as I know, he didn’t have them in Blow, so there are probably excerpts from several interviews here ]. But they are not your typical Hollywood prosthetics. Depp actually had the gold teeth specially made and attached to his own pearly whites.
"It’s a fairly violent process so have them removed," says Depp and shrugs, "so I might as well keep them for a while."

"Johnny isn’t vain", says Tim Burton, who directed Depp in "Edward Scissorhands", "Ed Wood" and "Sleepy Hollow".
"And that’s why I love him. He is willing to try anything. He is not afraid to be disgusting, dirty and be dragged trough the mud. He doesn’t care about how he looks, and in that way, an actor has a real freedom. He approaches any new role as a completely different person. He is a true chameleon."
Certainly. And Depp is probably one of the only Hollywood stars who has gained enormous respect and influence without the help of any real blockbuster. When his colleagues go right, he goes left. When they zig, he zags. He has chosen such unusual films as "What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?" and "Dead Man" and turned down leads in such commercial movies as "Titanic", "Interview With The Vampire" and "Speed".
"It’s tempting to get paid a huge salary, but I just can’t see any sense in doing something that’s been done better a thousand times," says Depp.
And while Depp continues to defy fame, he’s actually never been busier. In the past couple of years he has played the leads in "Sleepy Hollow", "The Astronaut’s Wife", "The Ninth Gate", "Chocolat", "Before Night Falls" ( dual roles ) and now "Blow".
And soon Depp will play Chuck Barris in a film about the bizarre life of the "Gong Show" host which even includes a short time with the CIA.
Depp laughs, somewhat perplexed at how he has managed to have a kind of A-list career all these years - despite his choice of movies.
"It seems I have built career on being a failure," he admits very candidly.
"My movies aren’t exactly box office bonanzas. It’s not like I planned it that way, but I still seem to be surprised when I get offers from the big studios. There is a certain Top 5 or Top 10 list of actors in Hollywood, and I don’t think anyone has been on and off of that list more than me. I simply don’t think Hollywood likes me very much," he says with a shrug.
"I don’t know…it’s a feeling I have. Maybe I’m just paranoid."
That’s what you get from too much "Blow".

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