Hot Dog Magazine, June 2001
by Paul Cullum
(transcript by Meeps)

Coke Is It

Jung in Blow, the GoodFellas-Boogie Nights speedball. Hotdog took statements from the main players. Small-town boy George Jung moved to the beach, discovered cannabis, introduced cocaine to America and made $100m. Now he´s broke, ill and in prison until 2014. But it´s not all bad - he´s soon to be immortalized in the form of Johnny Depp. Pee-Wee Herman as a bisexual drug dealer? Check. Penelope Cruz on the edge of sanity? Check. Multiple wigs? Check. Ted Demme´s scorching rise-and-fall biopic has it all, with enough guns, girls and substance abuse to have Tony Montana reaching for his rocket launcher.

JOHNNY DEPP. George Jung.

"If anyone went in and met George, after five minutes with that guy you´d be hard pressed to call him a criminal. I never saw him as a criminal. I´d say 75 per cent of all people, given a similar opportunity, would absolutely do it. Let´s say you´re 18 years old. A guy from around the block says, "I got this little package here. Take it from 8th Street up to 14th for me. If you do that, I´ll give you $100,000." Most people would do that. That´s the kind of thing that happened to George. He was handed the ball and he ran with it. That´s the kind of cockeyedness of the American Dream. It´s the American Dream, it´s what we´re taught. And it wasn´t a difficult decision to choose to play George. It was the only one that was the right decision to make for me."

"When I started out in this business, one thing led to another and I got involved with the TV series (21 Jump Street). As great as it was me for me, ultimately it was difficult to deal with shooting nine months out of a year, just constantly working on material that wasn´t really stuff that I like. It wasn´t what I wanted to be doing, but I was contractually bound and I was in there and that was it. Once I got out of it, once I got away from being a product, the victim in a sense, they had made me into this product, I swore to myself that I would just do the things that I wanted to do and try not to compromise too much. That´s why I choose films such as Blow."

"Acting and this busines have been very, very good to me. It´s afforded me a lot of luxuries in life and a lot of freedom. It´s a real privileged position to be in, I make no mistake about that. But just because you are successful and make money, it could end at any time ... just like what happened to George."

"I´m not totally sure that in 10 or 15 years I´ll still be acting. Maybe I´d rather sit at home and be daddy, and make paintings with my daughter. I have a family now and I´ll do anything to make my family´s life good. If this all evaporates and I gotta go back to work pumping gas, I´ll do it, I´ll be o.k."

RAY LIOTTA. George´s father.

"My dad is a great guy and he´s not judgmental. I wasn´t the kind of guy who´d get into trouble a lot, but there´s always something that you do that your parents won´t agree with. He let me make my own mistakes, the same way that this character did, and he made me feel like it was an unconditional love from my parents."

"That´s definitely something my charcater feels towards Depp´s character. He doesn´t like what he´s doing but couldn´t change it, even if he wanted to. There´s that scene where we´re walking around his house, outside by the cars, and I say, 'I know what you´re doing, I know, what you´re up to. But as long as you´re happy ...'"

"I know there was a danger in reading Blow, with the structure of it, that it could be very GoodFellas-ish. The way I think Boogie Nights was ripped off from GoodFellas, but done in a good way. This was wall-to-wall music, it´s got a certain look, there´s the voiceover. So I was very concerned and cautious about it."

"As you get older, you kind of get rid of the leading man thing, I think. I have been in-between - leading mannish, but always with a character kind of edge. My ego has settled down where it doesn´t matter so much. I think I´ve been fortunate enough to play characters with layers."

"I´ve definitely played characters who are committed to what they are doing. When you play someone who´s really brutal and out there, maybe it just stays in people´s minds. I did a soap opera for three-and-a-half years, where I played the nicest guy in the world. I´ve been in one fight in my whole life and that was in the seventh grade. I don´t think when people saw Muppets From Space they thought I was going to kill Miss Piggy or in Field Of Dreams that I was going to clock Kevin Costner with a baseball bat."

"It´s probably good that I lose some of my edge, but I think there will always be fire. I´m very competitive. Maybe it´s from sports, or just my upbringing, it´s my nature - I got Hannibal because I walked up to Ridley Scott in a gym."

TED DEMME. Director.

"Visiting George Jung in prison, I´d see these same kind of guys that are 20 years old, African-American, whose girlfriends were visiting them with their one-year-old baby. I´d say to George, "Who are those guys?" And he´d say, "They got arrested with 15 rocks in their hand, selling crack. That´s 20 years automatic. Crack as opposed to cocaine. But going to prison is like going to crime school. You can do anything in prison, you´d be amazed."

"George saw the rough-cut of the film. He was taken by it. I think he was in shock. In the last half hour he got really emotional. I showed it to him in prison, I had a videotape in the lawyer´s room on a very small TV. It was me and my assistent, with a guard, the warden and George. And in the last 20 minutes, George was hysterically crying. I was crying, my assistent was crying, the warden´s crying, the fucking security guard is starting to tear up. It was really weird and heavy. So I think he likes the result very much."

"Unfortunately, George is a really, really sad guy. He´s 58, he´s been in prison for eight years, and he´s not getting out until he´s 71. I think he´s got emphysema - he smokes a lot and I could hear it in his cough. Prison is just a bad place to be. It´s not good for you. It´s not good for anything. And I think if he doesn´t get out before that, he´ll probably die in prison, which would suck. He´s all alone. There´s not that many people who visit him."

"I put him on the phone with his daughter once. She´s trying to deal with her whole life and becoming a 21 year old, and having grown up in that atmosphere. The last hour of the movie is fairly accurate about what she went through as a kid. She saw a lot of bad shit. She and Mirtha (Penelope Cruz) were part of our research team. They were there with us the whole way. She hates him. She´s still trying to deal with a really tumultuous childhood."

"For the film we had to get everyone´s rights. There are two people who we had to change the names of, because we couldn´t get the rights: one was Paul Reubens´ character (George´s dealer, Derek Foreal) and one was (George´s business partner) Diego Delgado (Jordi Molla)."

"With Paul Reubens, I was watching Pee-Wee´s Playhouse with my daughter, and it made me think of him - I wanted to work with him real bad. I thought it would be fun. And at the same time, I hadn´t thought of who I wanted to be in the movie. So when he showed up at my house, he was wearing a Guayabera - one of those Cuban shirts with the stripes down them - in the middle of the summer, his hair was really short and he looked Latin. I just said, "Man, you might be a really good Diego," And he´s like, "I don´t think so."

PAUL REUBENS. George´s dealer.

"Ted Demme has a young daughter who had just started to watch my kid´s show. He called me and asked if we could meet. He sent me the script, and told me he was interested in me playing Diego. I didn´t think it was a good idea. Not at all."

"In the original script, Diego says to George quite often, "There´s certain things you are never going to understand, you´re not Columbian." And I felt that the audience in their mind would be going, 'Well, you´re not Columbian, either.' I think it was maybe just a crazy idea he had. But I´m not looking to have that Meryl Streep kind of career."

"I don´t think the audience would have bought it. I think it was a disservice to the Latin community; I don´t think it works on any level. And also I think the baggage I have of being Pee-Wee Herman works somehow with my character in the movie. He´s not such an integral character that you´re transported away and think, "Wasn´t that the guy ...?" I don´t think it is problematic for the film. Whereas for Diego, I think, it would have been. I don´t think I could have pulled that off in the audience´s mind."

"The character is bisexual. Watch it again, you´ll get it, he likes girls and boys. And I can´t really say this, but some of this is in the book and in his FBI dossier. It´s the reason we don´t mention the character´s real name, there´s legal issues involved. He´s still alive, but no one know where he is. He´s one of the only people in the story who isn´t dead or in jail. He wasn´t as sunny perhaps as what shows up on the screen."

"But it wasn´t my character´s film, it was George´s film. The scene where he goes to Norman Cay island where Diego is coked up - right before he gets beat up, where he confronts him with the gun - I was actually in the scene. We shot it two ways, because we were aware at the time that it might not work. Originally, my character´s there, he overhears the whole scene, and he´s in really bad shape - really drugged out."

"In the movie, I wore every piece of clothing I ever made fun of. I mean, a kaftan, leather - the works. It was great. Kaftans are very comfortable. It was shocking."

FRANKA POTENTA. George´s fiancée.

"It´s always been a big hassle to work with a dialogue coach. I´m happy working in my native Germany; I wouldn´t mind working in England. In America it´s more about finding the right character. I couldn´t be an all-American girl. Sometimes the accent becomes so obvious that it´s bigger than the scene."

"That said, Barbara is one of many snapshots in George´s life. We wanted her to stand for fun, for California, and someone who pulls him big-time into that beach lifestyle. That´s basically it. So I didn´t need to know so much about women in the Seventies America. Of course we talked a lot and looked at old photographs from Life magazine, and in the trailer we´d burn incense and listen to Mamas and Papas to get us in the mood. In the morning, we´d all step out of the trailer and go, 'Oh, my God, look at you - you´re wearing that?' It was hilarious."

"It was a little bit weird playing a stewardess because I´m afraid of flying. I´ve managed to overcome it but I´m still scared. I have my little good luck things and all kind of weird shit that I carry with me that I believe in, that comfort me. And I go to the cockpit a lot - I´ve touched down and taken off in the cockpit. On a Canadian flight recently, I flew in the cockpit for four or five hours. Then I´m usually good for another four or five times of flying. But then it starts fading away and I have to go to the cockpit again."

END OF ARTICLE

Return to interview page   Return to Depp home page