Oscar-nominated actor Johnny Depp is making his debut as a nonfiction film director by helming a documentary about Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. (The documentary's title and release date have yet to be decided.) In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Depp briefly comments on the documentary: "We shot for a few days and we got 35 hours of footage. That's me and Keith sitting in a room, having a drink and talking. It was intense."
The interview is in Entertainment Weekly's issue dated January 21, 2011. Dressed as his "Pirates of the Caribbean" character Captain Jack Sparrow, Depp is on the cover of the issue, which spotlights the magazine's picks for the most anticipated entertainment of 2011. "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," the fourth movie in the series, arrives in cinemas on May 20, 2011. In the movie, Richards reprises his cameo role as Captain Teague, the father of Captain Jack Sparrow. As previously reported, Richards appears briefly in the first teaser trailer for "On Stranger Tides."
Depp and Richards have become good friends over the years, and Depp has said that Richards was the main inspiration for how Depp plays the Jack Sparrow character. In addition to working on movie projects together, Depp and Richards have also collaborated on Richards' autobiography "Life." Depp was interviewed for the memoir and is one of the main narrators of the "Life" English-language audio book.
January 14, 2011 update: Entertainment Weekly's website has an article with a few more quotes from Depp about the Richards documentary. These quotes are not in the magazine. Here's an excerpt from the article:
“Any time that he’s got a minute, any time I’ve got a minute. We’ve done one, let’s say, installment that was fairly intense. We shot for a few days, and we got 35 hours of footage. That’s me and Keith sitting and talking in a room that’s very, you know, apropos of Keith. We’re sitting on couches, having a drink, and talking.”
In addition to the interview footage, the as-yet untitled film will also contain performance material featuring Richards, members of his band, the X-Pensive Winos, and famous guests. “We had Patti Smith, which was miraculous, we had Norah Jones, and I think there’s going to be a few more,” says Depp, “I think we’ve probably got two more installments [to film] and then we’ll start cutting it together.”
Although the Richards documentary has no release date as yet, Depp says the film will definitely get a theatrical run of some sort. That would befit a movie which was shot by 'Pirates' cinematographer Dariusz Wolski and which, according to Depp, looks like a “a cross between 'The Godfather' and a painting by (famed 17thcentury Italian artist) Caravaggio. It’s really something to see Keith in that atmosphere.”
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