Film Review Magazine
June 2001
by Ian Spelling
(Transcript by Meeps)

Itīs a controversial subject, and there was only one man for the job, discovers Ian Spelling.

Blown Away

"Look, I have nothing to hide," says the actor. "Iīm not a great pothead or anything like that. I might socially have a couple of drinks here and there, but weed is much, much less dangerous than alcohol. Alcohol can have a tendency to make people aggressive, alcohol is a big killer. Itīs pretty rare that you hear of a car accident happening because a guy is stoned. Or a guy went out and started a huge fight because he had one too many puffs on a joint. So what happens with marijuana is like what happened back when Prohibition was put into effect. Say there were 100 bars in the city. The following week there were 2000 bars and people who had never taken a sip of alcohol were all of a sudden guzzling bathtub gin. And it is like that (now) for kids. The minute you say, 'Donīt ever do this, stay away from this,' they are going to go, 'Youīre right. I wonīt.' They are going to walk right out the door and try to score a nickel bag."

Deppīs being asked lots of questions about marijuana and cocaine these days, given that heīs the star of the film Blow, directed by Ted Demme, whoīd previously called the shots on The Ref, Beautiful Girls and Life with Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence. Blow is a drug drama that casts Depp as George Jung, an American who, in the l970s, served as a connection between the Colombian drug cartels and a public just waiting, itching, and screaming for a new drug. And that drug was cocaine, which the entrepreneurial Jung imported and got into the hands of all the right people. In the process, Jung lived the high life, rolling in money, sleeping with gorgeous women, flying on jets and driving in the fastest of fast cars. By the time Jung got busted - heīs in jail and will be until heīs 72 years old - he had wrecked his life, alienated his daughter and helped make the war on drugs a subject of heated national and international debate.

"I hope the audience is able to understand to some degree what George went through, why he made the decisions he made and why he became what he became," says Depp, who shares the screen with Penelope Cruz as Jungīs party-loving wife, Ray Liotta and Rachel Griffiths as Jungīs parents, Paul Reubens as a popular Californian drug dealer, and Franka Potente as Jungīs free-spirited first love. "A lot of it has to do with conditioning he went through as a kid. He became everything he didnīt want to become; He became his parents. And I hope that people will be able to watch and learn from it. I hope kids will. Weīve all gone through the whole thing of thinking that drugs are just party time. Weīre trying to hide from something, trying to numb ourselves. Really getting loaded to that extent is just postponing the inevitable, which is that you are going to have to face the demon someday. Youīre going to have to look him in the eye and go 'O.K. letīs get through this.'"

Has Depp faced the demon?

"Oh, yes," he responds, "Iīve seen the demon here and there."

Depp also faced Jung, meeting with the man several times in prison, as part of his preparation and research for the film. "He was a lot of things," the actor comments. "Heīs a complicated guy. But first and foremost, what I was really happy to find out was that he's just as human as can be. There is no evil. There is no malice in him. Heīs not greedy. Heīs just a good man who recognized his mistakes and has to live with his sort of devastation every day. I saw a strong guy when I met him. Heīs a very strong, kind of ironic, funny, broken man."

The other drug film of the moment, Traffic, is a different story. Itīs almost a docudrama and itīs far broader in scope, following many more storylines and many more characters. "I havenīt seen Traffic, but I think Blow is just a look at this one manīs life," Depp notes. "What he went through and why he went through it. Drug smuggling was his business. He earned a lot of money and thought that that was going to be the answer to all his prayers. Along the way, he lost it all. He lost it all because he won."

Blow is just the latest in a string of recent and upcoming films featuring Depp. The Kentucky-born actor rose to fame on the slick TV action series 21 Jump Street, then jumped to the big screen in the likes of Platoon, Cry-Baby, Whatīs Eating Gilbert Grape, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Donnie Brasco and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, often gaining as much exposure for his off-screen activities - his relationships with Winona Ryder and Kate Moss, his tattoos, his ownership of the Viper Room music club in Los Angeles, his hotel-trashing episodes, his musical pursuit and so on - as for his often superb, nuanced on-screen performances. He recently starred in Roman Polanskiīs quick-fade supernatural thriller The Ninth Gate, tormented Charlize Theron in the sci-fi misfire The Astronautīs Wife, took on two small but distinctly different roles in Julian Schnabelīs acclaimed drama Before Night Falls and romanced Juliette Binoche in Lasse Hallströmīs Chocolat, which earned an Oscar nomination for Best Picture of 2000.

Next up is From Hell, a horror thriller about Jack the Ripper (with Depp as Inspector Frederick Abberline) being helmed by the Hughes Brothers, Albert and Allen, with a cast that includes Heather Graham, Ian Holm and Robbie Coltrane. Lastly, just before the impending writers' and actors' strikes, Depp will join Jude Law and director Johnny Maybury for the period drama Marlowe. Marlowe apparently fills the slot left open by the abrupt pause in the filming of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which was six weeks into filming with Depp, Vanessa Paradis, Miranda Richardson, Christopher Eccleston and Jean Rochefort as its lead when Rochefort, playing the title character, suffered a double disc hernia. Whether or not Don Quixote, the dream project of former Monty Python member and Deppīs Fear and Loathing director Terry Gilliam, will ever be completed remains to be seen.

Depp reasons that as much as he used to have to love a project to commit to it, he must feel even more strongly now, given that he wants to spend as much time as possible with his two-year-old-daughter, Lily-Rose Melody Depp, and his lady, aforementioned French actress Vanessa Paradis, the star of Girl on The Bridge (who is reportedly pregnant again and due in September). "It makes it difficult to leave home, especially when youīre surrounded by all that beauty, with my girls," says the actor, who will turn 38 years old on June 9, and lives in Paris with Paradis and Lily-Rose. "But first you got to bring home the bacon. You know, the paychecks keep coming. It just depends on the project. When the Hughes Brothers came to me with the idea of doing From Hell, there was no way to avoid it. It was just such a golden opportunity. It was the same thing with Blow. These were once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. A lot of it has to with timing it out properly so there is never too long of a time away from my daughter or away from my family. The most we have ever gone is like 17 days. And after 17 days I was ready to chew my hands off. You just go crazy. So now itīs got to be a great thing with great film-makers and I have to be able to work out the timing so that I can be with my family as well."

END OF ARTICLE

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