12 h, oct 2, 2020 y - Johnny Depp CROCK OF GOLD Zurich Film Festival Masterclass

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FROM NZZ:

Johnny Depp praises the punk pirate Shane MacGowan - does a soul mate reveal itself?

The biggest star of this year's Zurich Film Festival has arrived to pay tribute to a slightly smaller one: Johnny Depp presents a documentary about the former frontman of The Pogues.

By Urs Bühler

This face with crooked teeth looked worn forty years ago: At that time he was the head of the London folk punk band The Pogues and a hero of our student days. Now we see the now 62-year-old Shane MacGowan on the screen, the trains almost old-yearly, the tooth gaps accurately filled, the gaze goes into the void. But the power of music surpasses that of the images: If his still unheard-of fresh songs sound in the film in his scratching voice, memories of the eighties, of wild nights and of tender rendezvous rise in us. The Pogues embodied the poetic to melancholic side of punk with their style characterized by Irish melodies.

The wife mediates

MacGowan never gave off a spark of glamour. If he had persied at the Zurich Film Festival, hardly anyone would turn around for him. Johnny Depp, on the other hand, despite all public (self-)dismantling of his person, caused more fuss than any other guest during his last visit here two years ago. Now he has arrived again, despite the pandemic and as the only Hollywood star. The fans waiting on the Sechseläutenplatz are brought less close this time, but the scream factor remains high. Before that, however, Depp explains to the press in a more intimate setting the film he recently produced: Julien Temple's "Crock of Gold. A Few Rounds With Shane MacGowan». The rich collage of archival material, conversations and animation scenes rolls up a life already in childhood characterized by alcoholism, catholicism and nicotine.

When The Pogues landed their biggest hit in 1987 with "Fairytale of New York", a kind of counter-draft to the pacifier "Last Christmas", Depp's star was just rising. Soon after, he met the singer-songwriter for the first time, as he remembers the media event: "He was one of my heroes. However, I could not understand what he was saying to me, and I did not have the impression that he particularly liked me. However, MacGowan's wife Victoria Mary Clarke, who is also present, contradicts here: "Shane thinks you're crazy and funny, he likes that very much about you. You are very similar, only in your uncompromisingness."

Depp acts incredulously, but in fact a certain soul mate is difficult to deny when he now, hidden under his peaked cap, has every effort to find the thread or keep it in answers that are more self-talk. There are only water bottles there, but he seems somehow intoxicated at times. That was MacGowan on stage almost always, even if he says in the film that they were actually sober better: "But it was just much less fun." In the nineties, the band threw him out, as his lifestyle no longer seemed compatible with their professionalism. Johnny was the only one who stood by him, says Clarke, allowing him to perform in his club and playing in the video (she means the one for the great "That Woman's Got Me Drinking", which MacGowan recorded with his new band in 1994).

A quiet suspicion

While Depp mutters his five years older friend as a genius and calls himself an ignorant, one finds himself thinking whether he must have thought of MacGowan for his interpretation of the pirate Jack Sparrow as well as of Keith Richards, whom he likes to name as a source of inspiration for this role. He is far from finished acting, says he, who has a rock band himself, by the way. And when you see him and his peers like this, you can guess what is so great about art: it often ages better than its authors.

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