More than three decades ago, Johnny Depp (Owensboro, Kentucky, 57 years old) met Shane MacGowan, the leader of the group The Pogues.
The intermediary was Gerry Conlon, one of the Guildford Four, unjustly convicted of two IRA attacks in 1975, to which the musician, a world star at the time, had supported and even dedicated a song.
In San Sebastián, the actor recalled Sunday that at that moment he fell in love with Shane.
“And I'm still doing it,” he laughed. “He tried, for 15 minutes, to balance with a pint of beer in one hand and a beat-up guitar in the other.” That friendship and admiration led Depp to produce
Crock of Gold,
documentary that traces the life of a musical genius, an outstanding poet capable of absorbing the spirit of his time, an alcohol addict who was devoured by the darkest part of his Irish soul.
The film, directed by Julien Temple, one of the great producers of music videos and a filmmaker with an interesting career, is competing at the festival, and the star has not minded the pandemic to stand at the Zinemaldia in support of MacGowan, someone who always has fascinated by "their language and their powerful songs."
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Depp sits in front of a group of reporters two hours late.
By his side, Temple.
Both carry glasses of white wine and ask permission to be without a mask.
The actor seems in much better shape than any of his last public appearances and dedicates his responses to praising a creator who fused punk spirit with Irish music and who sold millions of records in the late eighties, until he was expelled from the club. band that he himself had created.
"Shane is a hypersensitive person who learned from a very young age [he started drinking when he was six] how to become desensitized," said Depp about the large amount of alcohol that the musician still ingests even today, in a wheelchair, with poor health and speech problems. , which is self-prescribed as a medicine.
"Then fame falls on you and if you are an introvert all that external attention makes you withdraw even more; he felt uncomfortable with that attention, as it happens to me. What happens is that it is very confusing when all this it starts to happen, you just want to hide and desensitize yourself ”.
The actor likes to look down on some prominent cultural figures.
"I have been lucky to meet and learn from people like Hunter S. Thompson, Marlon Brando, Keith Richards or Shane MacGowan, people who are very true to themselves, one of the reasons they have always attracted me."
And then he explains: "What is not normal is considered a bit crazy, maybe it is true or maybe that is freedom."
And that's why he has a humble definition of himself: "I don't consider myself an artist, I don't feel up to those people that I adore."
About his career, about acting, he points out: “I'm not good at following structures, formulas.
I like to give it my all and confuse the public.
You try to do what you can, let's say I'm an aspiring artist.
But I don't think that cinema is going to lead me to art, at least it depends from which point of view.
Here in San Sebastián we talk about cinema;
in Hollywood, of movies ”.
No matter the question, Johnny Depp turned his answer into an ode to MacGowan: “Shane… it's Shane.
He talks when he feels like it, you can't manipulate him, even when we interviewed him for this documentary, which is a song of love for his life.
Their friendship has to be fought, you have to earn the stripes.
He's a genuine guy.
I traveled from Los Angeles to Copenhagen for his wedding, and when he saw me he blurted out, 'You look like a whore pimp.'
And then yes, he loves you and says nice things to you.
Or insults you.
She is always challenging you ”.
And the actor told an anecdote to underline that constant militancy: “We were in a bar in Dublin, we had had something to drink and at one point Shane extended his fist and asked me to put my hand underneath.
He dropped some pills that I took along with a drink.
The next thing I remember is opening my eyes in a bathtub in the south of France three days later.
That's what I mean when I say you have to earn their respect.
But I do not regret anything that I live with him, whether I remember it or not.