Press Conference ''CROCK OF GOLD: A FEW ROUNDS WITH SHANE MACGOWAN'' (O.S.) - 2020

[Music] [Music] johnny depp and stephen deutscher director julian temple uh well i think johnny should answer that first because because johnny um i've been very very lucky to have uh uh a long long history with um with shane you know mcgowan and um he's uh before i met him i was fascinated by his by by his his language his ability to make these incredibly moving um powerful songs and was so prolific yet at this at the same time you know kind of being on the heels of the devil and about 35 years ago is when i when i met shane you know um he was he was exactly who he has always been and will always be he um for the first i don't know a couple of months that you know him um insults become insults become a um you realize that they're a gift because he'll only insult you if he loves you um so in a way i've kind of lived excerpts of this film for roughly 35 years and i really wanted the world to be able to see definitively uh and very importantly who shane mcgowan is and what his legacy is he's a for me one of the greatest poets of the uh well of any time he's he's if you look if you read shane's lyrics and go back and read villon you know the great french poet you'll you'll see similarities shane is one of those people he's special i think i'm done julian maybe well um i did i go way back with shane in a different way uh because we shared the the punk moment in time in london along with a bunch of other guys but um i did actually do the first interview with shane on a little uh crazy half-inch reel to reel video that he you had on your shoulder like a tape recorder uh which is in the film by the way it's a black and white you can hardly see it looks like bog roll vision like shot on toilet paper or something um but you see him there and he he's still you know he's still the same guy there is a bit he's many things but there's still a bit of that punk in shane um so you know it was a challenge obviously shane comes with a warning on the on the lid you know he's not the easiest um guy in the world to he make films about and in fact history is littered with films that have kind of been made about shane and i didn't really get there so i think just the fact that we're we're here showing the film is an achievement but beyond that it's it's a film about one of the great characters one of the characters who's pushed himself to the limits and beyond you know and um a true a true individual a truly unique individual so i hope we captured some of the ferocity of his personality you know um and his music you know just reaches everybody around the world i think he hears it so yeah hopefully i don't know if you've seen the film but if you do i hope you feel you get to meet this guy and all his uh ragged glory and all his charms as they said you want to add something or no okay okay steven doesn't talk i i would like to ask the photographers to please leave to avoid too many people getting together okay a question here i have a couple of questions the first one is for julian uh i would like you to tell us a few words about the editing process of the film and the use of animation that's absolutely great and i have a question to mr johnny depp please uh i would like to hear a few words about you if you could tell us yes here about your experience with shane in that woman's got me drinking if i'm not wrong you've directed the video clip could you tell a few words about that sure you want julian well the editing uh you know is is the thing in the film like this you actually make the film in the journey of putting it together i like the idea of not really having a clue of where you're going at the beginning and you you start collecting archive and hopefully bits of interviews or conversations that you're lucky enough to get with shane uh in fact we we started editing before we really had a lot of material of shame now uh we we had a very intensive thing of finding any bit of old cassette recording of him in four in a morning in a bar in finland or you know just any evidence of of him around the world you know um because he wasn't really talking to us so we had to do that but in a way i think those those moments are the best things because there's such unguarded moments there's a sense of feeling very close to him even though the sound quality is is rough and sometimes um difficult to hear i i think it's part of his character you know you get to feel him through that slightly distorted sound more more beautifully than sitting in front of a camera and interrogating him doesn't work with shane doesn't want to do it fair enough you know um and the archive is obviously a big thing you know this is very much a film about a man who is uh an outsider in some ways both in england and in ireland but manages to synthesize these two cultures through his his songwriting i mean he's written great songs about london you know as well as great songs about ireland uh and that was very important to me you know to make the film especially at this kind of brexit moment where the whole issue of ireland and northern ireland and the border is is very much live again uh to make a film that helped this young kids understand some of this history that shane is a living embodiment of really i mean he is a very proud irishman in in many ways and i wanted to help kids particularly in england who really don't know what the happened between england and ireland so hopefully the film does point that so the archive was very important to me to really look at everything that had been shot during the irish revolution through the 30s 40s to understand that that nature of the independence struggle of ireland animation is something i just love to do if i can get the chance to do it i mean you can you can do it all in your head you don't need a film crew or a bunch of actors or anything you can you can uh sit there and do it with a with a mate you know um i did it first with the rock and roll swindle with the sex pistols made them into cartoons which they absolutely hated they it was like and i think john lydon still does it's like we're not cartoons who do you think we are you know um and sid was a kind of cartoon anyway but um now of course there are whole bands built around cartoons like gorillas and so on but um at that time it was breaking a kind of sacred thing that pop you know rock stars were not cartoons but uh you know i don't think cartoons have to be meaningless i think tech savory showed the way um you know they are great surrealists who work in cartoons they're great philosophers so it's a beautiful medium and when you don't have anything else you know there's no evidence of what you're talking about it's great to draw it out and make it move oh thank you so um yeah many years ago i think it was somewhere i don't know 95 96 i don't i don't remember exactly but uh i was in new york city 94. thank you um i was in new york city and um i i i got this phone call from shane one afternoon and he said hey johnny john you want to make a video what do you mean video like for me for one of my songs when i had a video i went to yeah i mean i'd be honored you know the pleasure what do you want me to do directly so which is confusing already for shane to choose me to direct this the first single of the uh shane mcgowan and the pope's record um i said sure when you want to do it monday it was friday afternoon so like i just said let me see what i can do i'll call you back you know so i called this friend of mine got a crew together um she kind of came up with some storyline um that that involved shane and victoria certainly and uh uh yeah and we had a blast i i thought shane was going to you know go into hyperspace uh a couple of times but he was he was actually um you know he was in great form and and uh i think he especially liked the fact that i wanted to turn the tables you know and and have shane be this very dapper you know super cool you know bar owner bartender whatever you know just looking like very suited up and uh yeah for me to look like this yeah a trash barrel that just rolled into the bar um so i played me actually shane i think always saw himself as a bartender as an option yeah well he'd be a good one yeah he'd be a great one if the bar would be open for about an hour people just pass out but yeah so he he kind of snuck that one in on me and we shot it in a day i think i think we shot it in a day and edited it for two days and then sent it out fun time we have a question over there hi a couple of questions for johnny uh the couple of questions for johnny the first it do you remember the moment in which you discovered uh shane's music and what that said what did that suggest to you when you first heard it and secondly what's the most craziest situation in which you found yourself with shane don't be told oh boy let's see um the first time i heard the pose i think what's what really i mean i suppose it's the same feeling um everyone gets when you hear the pokes or shame shane's voice and those lyrics for the first time you know you you uh it kind of hits you you've just uh bounced off some dissonant wall like some strange the sound what it was was it was the sound of punk rock it had the rage and the anger of punk rock but it had these great melodies and mandolins and tin whistles and banjos and roots uh instruments uh especially traditional um irish and i just thought them the the combination of the two you know the combination of yeah that rage that he that he felt but this melancholy that lived within and he the pogues blew me away they just they just blew me away so um i was in london one one year many many many years ago and uh yeah dirty some and there was a there was a guy uh one of my heroes a guy that was who was a very dear friend of mine and shane's and jerry boyles and uh it was a guy named jerry conlon and jerry was the they made a film about him um that daniel day lewis a jim sheridan film called uh in the name of the father so jerry conlon was the guy that daniel day-lewis plays in the film you know so i knew jerry many many years ago and he brought me to london and then we we all went to dublin together i remember bits of it i remember my breakfast which was a guinness and irish coffee my lunch which was guinness and irish coffee and the dinner was just jamisons or black bush and guinness anyway jerry had spent 15 years in english prisons for a crime he didn't commit he was he was known as one of the guildford four uh so we were talking about he ended up talking about the pose and he says oh yeah shane's a great friend of mine you know okay cool well and uh so he said we'll go see him tonight at the studio so we went and ironically because just thinking of the last statement that shane makes in this film when i met shane he was uh how would i put it he was negotiating a pool table he was there was a guitar there was a drink in this hand a pint and in this hand there was a guitar like a beat up acoustic guitar and he was teetering balancing back and forth trying to negotiate which way to fall and uh i watched him do that for about 15 minutes and then i was introduced to him before he fell and from that moment on he was he just you just knew that this was someone there are those moments in life when you go oh my god yeah this this sort of this this will happen one time and one time only you know when you get the opportunity to spend time with greatness like that you um so yeah having known him for a long long time i uh i can only say that i fell in love with him the second i met him and i'm you know still in love with him to this day uh his wife victoria has uh proven herself beyond i mean she's she's a wonderful uh wonderful partner for shane their best friends and i've seen that continue over these many years under all kinds of duress but they're quite yeah it's it's really an interesting fascinating life i think i'm done now i'm sorry okay we have another question congratulations on the film because i i watched it yesterday and i didn't know about shane's music and i love irish music so it was a great discovery for me and i wanted to ask johnny and the director what was the most important thing you guys wanted to let the audience know about shane in the film to discover his personality who he is thanks um i think we wanted to show like different sides to this persona i mean he's a very complex person and uh you know i think it was interesting when he he refused to do interviews but would allow us to do conversations where he just talked with people that were interesting to him because i think each of those conversations shows a different side you know with jerry adams it's kind of almost like a school kid with the you know the commander there um with johnny it's like old mates you know very relaxed very uh humorous and uh engaged with bobby gillespie he's a bit terrifying to bobby and these are all parts you know if you direct the guy you you know this as well or you try and direct him because he doesn't want to be directed um these are all parts of him the man is a kind of tragic uh hero difficult human being but the most wonderful warm and creative generous person as well you know so if the film could capture a slight bit of that that's what we wanted to to put across hopefully we did some of that to show his um well yeah as julian said the depth the the depth of the of the man and the and the uh very profoundly deep um traveling that he does in his head and in his heart you know so to to try to and i mean all of shane's magic is all invisible isn't it and it's sonic and it's uh uh visual i mean it's you when you read the lyrics two songs you you see um you see uh what he's capable of and so to be able to show that that side of shame to show this the other side of shane that's uh still a kind of uh um i mean i was gonna say naughty schoolboy but he's beyond that christ he's you know he's no he's a uh he's an irreverent uh he yeah to show that not the sort of irreverent um i i don't care what you think of me uh sort of lightness of shane he does he really he's not interested certainly not in celebrity or anything like that he he uh i think the important thing about shane the all the all these sides of the man all these facets um are are important to understand how he got where he got and uh to be honest when i when i met him you know 30 plus 35 years ago or roughly i we all every everyone around me was saying yeah it won't be much longer you know he's probably gonna die soon yeah um that's been 30-something years he's still here he's uh one of the funniest i guess that's it yeah to show those sides how how biting he can be how funny he could be i guess the truth the reality of shane is in this and that's that's what's really pleasing to me is to be able to show this um yeah this kind of this person who sort of he's just a little bit further off the ground than then um at least at least i am he's he's he he floats a little shane you know like they said about muhammad ali yeah so just we just yeah to have people see experience these various uh yeah things of shame as you know that's what i mean he's uh i don't know whoever has seen the film or whoever hasn't seen the film i i doubt any one of us have ever or anyone we've met someone exactly i mean like like shane who can charm you within about a half a second and then dress you down completely and then make you feel like he wants to hold you and and then you know the next thing he's pouring a beer over your head it's a it's an action film it's really what i'm trying to say it's it's an action film yes a question at the back uh the girl in blue right at the back a question for whoever can answer it really um is there any anecdote that that you wanted to put in the movie but then you realize it was just too inappropriate or wild or something i think that's you well i mean if it's not in the movie we probably didn't want it to be talked about actually um i don't think that we you know we were open to any anything that really shed light on on this journey you know it was it was not the easiest film to make um but you also have to understand that shane is in a particular place now it's not easy for him to get around so we were waiting around sometimes for shane i put it that way but you know i think everything we wanted in the film is is in there so i i don't really want to talk about things that aren't in there during the process of making the film of course with it with every with every for any film there's always uh you always have those these dilemmas or this that this is why we can't have this today or that uh this guy can't come in or you never you know you never know um on this one shane was a um a bit of a he was a bit of a uh every day was kind of a question mark is he gonna come in today when he comes in is he going to stab me in the neck or is he going to be pleasant or you know he's mercurial individual so um weirdly though it makes you think on your feet that that kind of thing and you had to deal with it in ways you wouldn't have thought of otherwise exactly exactly what i was going to say there are times when for a filmmaker or an actor or whatever but it's there there are times when it's really really good to be pushed to to find yourself in the corner you know um and having to fight your way out so if you let's say we have this much footage of shane um we're going to make the best of this much footage and then at that point fight you're fighting your way out of the corner so if i suppose the film starts telling you hey i want to be this you know um so i i think we the film actually gained a lot from some of shane's uh yeah um irreverent antics at times you know i really i think the film gained a lot by it yeah i mean in a weird way he was guiding it in in the you know with negative things there's a positive thing yeah yeah and i think he's very aware of that and um yeah would it i think it would have been a if he'd sat down in front of a camera and done you know two days of talking it wouldn't be as genuine and as as real as all the little bits of sound we managed to find and but also he you know just the fact that he i mean you got to expect that from from shane he's never compromised in any way with anyone for anything and he'll even go as far as to just be contrary just because it's more fun um so yeah he he um he he did in a way uh just by saying i don't feel like it i mean that's i think that's the beauty of it what you got was the truth what you got was the truth from him whether it was good or bad you know if he didn't want to talk to you you know i mean he he's not he's very shy he's a very shy human being he's a very shy man but when he when his uh hackles are up yeah um he can he can be like a viper you know don't tap the cobra yep we've got another question up here television a question to johnny depp watching the film i was reminded of your fascination with hunter thompson um it seems you you have a great uh attraction for radical uh personalities it does seem that way doesn't it and at the same time you're you're a hollywood celebrity and you have you work in the in the movie industry how do you reconcile these two uh parts of your life how do you get them together um i mean well first the first thing and the most important thing is not to ever consider yourself a hollywood celebrity that's death um and it's against grotesque so we can strike that one out but thanks um i i i i i've always been drawn to um i've always been drawn to people who are um diligent in in um remaining themselves uh so so a fascination with hunter thompson you know as a as a 15 year old kid reading fear and loathing in las vegas suddenly turns into you know you wake up and you're 30 years old or something and you're in and you're living in hunter's basement for three months so fascination becomes this amazing friendship and this amazing uh strangely enough mentorship he was he was everything you know to me like marlon marlon brando you know was everything to me a father a friend a brother uh uh you know um teacher mentor um this artist um yeah i i i've always also always been somewhat attracted to what is considered normal that question what's what is normal you know because you people say oh marlon brando crazy um hunter thompson crazy shane mcgowan crazy keith richards crazy him crazy maybe it's true i don't know maybe you need to be maybe that's freedom you know but uh i i am fascinated with with people who have fought for the truth their truth you know the real truth and uh hunter is as much that as uh shane is as much that artist as hunter was and uh marlon was and keith all i mean all these great wonderful people that i've been lucky enough to know but shane is shane is right up there with ginsburg and uh walt whitman and uh brendan b and james joy i mean for me he's he's right there i think i'm done now sorry we have another question there hi jose manuel romero from cadena said the film demonstrates the political and social and political implication of shane for johnny depp what's your implication and political implication in donald trump's united states nowadays my political implication and what's your political standpoint vis-a-vis trump's united states your implication politically speaking given the situation now you know what's done well i think there's um it's a very very strange time in the world obviously it's you know i mean yeah no need to speak the obvious um so by reading as much as one can in the news you to to to sort of form an opinion about what's going on well there's really no way to form an opinion about exactly what's going on with covet there's i mean there's no way to figure it out but that that's on the uh sort of global like let's get our together side as far as politics i enjoy comedy as much as the next guy you know what i mean i i watch trump speak and i laugh and it's wonderful he's uh it's good comedy it's great comedy but it's frightening comedy so i don't really have any um no i'm not i'm not yeah i'm not not so political in that way especially in terms of the states if there's a i don't know people are in well divide and conquer just a little i don't know people are in panic people are being fed fear um so i don't give a about politics i would like to take the people out of fear and danger um i don't believe he's the one to do it i don't think he's capable i'm not sure he's capable of um well um i'm i'm sure he's capable of going to the bathroom by himself and that stuff i mean i don't think about too much i don't think of that i don't think about that but no he's uh he must have an amazing sense of humor he must he has to i think i'm done now thank you thank you yes another question here is for johnny and julian it's about the statement of shane that he doesn't want to be called poet do you think there is any possibility to separate poetry and music and what would be the best word to describe him stubborn and contrary and irreverent because if you said if someone said he wasn't a poet he would fight and say what do you mean i'm not if you call him a poet he'll say i'm not a poet if you say you're not a poet you'll say you i am a poet you know um but i do underst me personally i understand what what he's saying because i think that if she if if shane in in all his because what he spews up is truth and the very from the depths of his being um for him to be called poet i'm sure makes him feel very uncomfortable to be considered by by others for example people people when they talk about me as an actor or the work i've done and stuff they'll say so as an artist what do you think of blah blah blah i'm dead in the water there i mean as soon as they say you as an artist i i um there's an internal grimace i i recoil in horror because i don't i can't con i can't consider myself an artist at all you know not certainly not because what if anything i've done in cinema i think you can approach your work as an artist um or to try to deliver something that's interesting and and that's really the focus is that journey and not not the label or the or the um result the the the journey is what's important and not not the results you know um so i think that's probably what what makes shane um deny himself the title of poet but he's wrong let's see get another one julian do you want to add anything to that planet pretty good okay okay we've got time for one final question uh here in the second row it seems could you tell us something here good morning johnny could you tell us something about the basque country about san sebastian did you know it did you like it scary casco thank you very much thank you thank you i i um i have been here before i have spent a little time in basque country and it's um yeah i mean it's it's it's one of my the places that i've been able to unfortunately explore the least in in terms of spain but um in san sebastian i was here like i said to the lady from the um festival i was talking to this woman from the festival last night and i said man it's seems like it's been a long time since i've been here like 10 years something she said 20. um but i have very fond memories of this place and i and and um i'm obsessed with the um oh man what's it called charcoal chuckle no the green v chocolatey taco chocolate taco i'm obsessed with it that's the green stuff right you pour in bubbles and stuff yeah it's a celebration exactly yeah no just the very thought of doing that makes it circus-like you know suddenly it's fun yeah no i'm i'm i'm i'm so happy to finally be back here and uh um this is this festival uh has always meant a lot to um to to real cinema you know to to cinema cinema it's it it's been very true to uh its roots this this festival and um um of all of the film festivals that do happen that commence you after being in the business and detending these things for the last 175 years uh this festival um in san sebastian has always been um the least the the uh the smallest tiniest amount of uh let's just call them hollywood types what i feel here in san sebastian is is truly a festival it's about it's about cinema it's about the filmmakers it's about the the people people who work on it make these films and get them made which is miraculous in any case um um and and not so hung up on um i don't know the kind of goofy sensation was side of of it you know so there's a great respect for cinema here i don't watch movies myself but i do like um i like documentaries people don't act in documentaries thanks john thank you yes thank you okay we have to finish here i just want to thank the presidents here in san sebastian of the three of you i hope that you enjoy the festival this time as well and best of luck with the premiere of the film you

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Length: 43min 28sec (2608 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 20 2020