The following is a translation by MOG of an interview with Johnny in the newspaper Liberation sometime in May, 1997:

"A film about America, not an American film."

Johnny Depp wants to give his word (??) to the "outcastes" of his country.

Eyebrows knit and clothes dark, Johnny Depp has a very serious air. "Oh my God!" he sighs. What's wrong? "Everything. Tonight , the projection. I still haven't shown the film and I feel really exposed, more nervous than usual, very upset. As if my child were starting school. Cliches up the ass.(??) But it's like that....

Is it this story that made you want to go behind the camera?

I've never had the ambition to become a director. Really. I've just made short films. Without story, without plot. Just a sequence of images, music, and sounds that can make you think. But to make a lont film, no, it didn't interest me to create the interior of a classic canvas.(??) For me it's about as exciting (??) as math.

Did you worry about the story structure before you started?

No. The producers suggested a construction in three acts, they explained the character curve, ascending trajectory, descending, and all that. And I told them, "Look I don't see what you're talking about, I don't know what that means and I don't want to know. I wante to make something that comes from me. Maybe it'll be shit, but it will be honest.

Did you talk about wanting to direct with the directors you are close to?

Not about structure. Except, of course, I talked with Jarmusch, who told me, "You want to try to make a film. And you are going to try to force it to go somewhere. After a while (??) it's the film that will drag you along. If you try to control, it will break. It's delicate, a film." And Kusturica also gave me good advice on the expectations of others, producers in particular: "Tell them to fuck off."

On the set, you never asked for advice?

I was really alone. With two people though. Without whom I couldn't have made the film: Kusturica's director of photography and his set designer, real geniuses.

You never leave the screen. It's heavy, for a first time director.

Monstrous! I gave myself the starring role because I needed a reasonable (??) budget. And Raphael does something which seems terrible, revolting. It was a challenge for me to give him flesh, to express the torment inside him. I wanted to avoid cliches and above all not try to force the role (??) to get the audience in the palm of my hand, by piling on the melancholy, the sentimentalism.

How did you get wind of the screenplay?

Someone sent it to me three years ago, for me to play the role. I didn't like it much. I know it was taken from a book, but I haven't read it. I didn't want to owe anything to the author. Originally, the character was not Indian. I wanted it to say something about the outcastes of America. If a rich person arrives in the United States, a businessman, he will be welcomed, while a young Mexican will be robbed of his right to enter. I don't understand that. I want to show the magnificence of the California desert, Mother Nature, the sublime crags and, right next to them, the garbage. What has been done, what the government has done to its people.

In certain scenes, you pay hommage to the directors with whom you have worked....

I wanted to salute them in passing. I quoted Kusturica in the scene where you discover the circus (??) from four different places (??) from the same distance. For Tim Burton, there's an image of Bela Lugosi on television. For Jarmusch, the scene where Iggy Pop eats a bird's foot, and, for John Waters, the one where a transvestite and a Scout leader (??) fight in a bar. There is also Cocteau, my hero, and Buster Keaton.

The rhythm is very slow for an American film.

Once more, I don't feel very attracted by commercial cinema. It's a film about America, by not an American film. It was never a question of that. And I'm fucked.(???) This film won't make me rich.

You're going to play the character of Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?

Yes, it starts in July. It's very exciting, we've already spent time together and he's incredible, completely wild (??) and brilliant. He's also as funny as what he writes. And it's Terry Gilliam who will direct.

recorded by Anne Boulay and Laurent Rigoulet

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