The last time Johnny Depp sat in the director’s chair, he was in his early thirties, he’d never made a Pirates of the Caribbean movie and was dating Kate Moss.
The film was 1997’s The Brave, in which he co-starred with the legendary Marlon Brando. The critics panned it and he never directed another movie. Until now. Modigliani – Three Days on the Wing of Madness sees Depp back calling the shots.
Speaking to Metro at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the 62-year-old looked like a mix of Keith Richards and his Pirates character, Captain Jack. His fingers were covered in rings, his arms and chest bearing tattoos like war-paint, his face half-hidden by a wide-brimmed hat.
You might imagine that the subject of his new movie, the famed Italian painter and sculptor, might well approve of this rebel rouser bringing his life to the screen. So why direct now? ‘I asked myself that too. Why now?’ he grunted. The answer is simple: Al Pacino.
‘It was Al, who’s a hero and a dear old friend,’ he explained. ‘I didn’t have any plans on making another film as a director at all until Al Pacino called.’
Back when these two made crime classic Donnie Brasco, Pacino was planning a Modigliani film. And now? ‘He goes, “I think you should direct it,”’ he continued, his voice dropping into a pitch perfect Pacino impression.
Pacino felt his former co-star understood Amedeo Modigliani, the struggling artist living in Paris at the turn of the Twentieth Century. Like Modigliani, for better or worse, he has always trodden his own path across his wild career, one that’s seen him fall in and out of favour with Hollywood, following his very public court appearances alongside ex-wife Amber Heard.
But now in his 60s, the actor knew he was way too old to play the artist, in a story that takes in 72 hours of his life. Then he came across a photo of Riccardo Scamarcio, the impossibly handsome, green-eyed Italian who played the villain in John Wick 2.
‘There was something beautifully, poetically kind of savage [in him]. A straight shooter, not full of s**t, pardon my language,’ he said. ‘I saw something in his eyes. You can’t help but to see something in his eyes.
‘Riccardo to me is like a young Brando, young Pacino, young Chris Walken.’
They first chatted on FaceTime when, bizarrely, Scamarcio was at a petrol station. ‘I was driving down from Rome to Puglia in the south of Italy,’ the actor, sitting quietly next to Depp, recalled.
‘I had my daughter and the nanny in the car. I had this phone call 10 o’clock at night in Italy. So I stopped at the gas station. And I asked the people at the gas station to let me in the place to do this phone call with Johnny Depp! And they said, “Of course, of course!”’
‘I saw cans of oil!’ Depp laughed. ‘That’s when I really knew it was perfect.’ Scamarcio has already played one famous painter – in the 2022 film Caravaggio’s Shadow. But this was always going to be different.
He put his actor through the ringer, not least when Scamarcio had to act opposite Pacino, cast as Maurice Gangnat, the influential art collector who has the power to turn Modigliani from an unknown into an artistic legend.
‘I felt pressure, like a huge mountain on my shoulder,’ Scamarcio, dressed in a navy waistcoat and white T-shirt, shrugged.
He compared it to taking a penalty in football in the last minute. ‘I know I make the goal!’ he cried. It didn’t help that Depp completely re-wrote their scene at the last minute, with phrases like “more dialogue to come” scrawled across the pages.
‘I went to Al and knocked on the door of his trailer,’ he remembered. ‘He said, “Hey kid! I don’t know what to say. You’re not even English, you’re f**king Italian!”’
For Depp, this lively biopic is all part of the comeback trail after Hollywood studios backed away from him – his public image rocked by allegations of domestic abuse. Right now, he’s filming Day Drinker alongside sometime co-star Penélope Cruz, with director Marc Webb.
Whether this means he’s back is hard to say, but he was clear-sighted on his four decades in the industry. ‘Hollywood,’ he said, ‘didn’t always agree with some of my choices, which was always a bit of a drag.’
He remembered when the executives would come down to his sets. ‘If I saw fear in them, and fear especially of what I’m doing, it was like adding fuel to my choices when I saw them worried. It fuelled me to continue.
‘It fuelled me to push it further, not because I wanted to hurt anyone or anything like that. Just the fact that they were worried about my character choices told me very quickly and very simply that I was doing my job. If they weren’t worried, then I would feel I wasn’t doing my job enough.’
Depp was on a roll, speaking with the sort of freedom that makes you feel he’s far removed from the cookie-cutter young stars that are schooled in saying nothing to the media.
‘Ultimately, what I’ve learned about Hollywood is that it can be very limiting, especially creatively,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to play with structures that are existing.
‘I think that one should have their own unique voice, just like in life. Nobody else should be making choices about who you are and what you feel and what you see.’
It’s why he felt thrilled by making an independent movie about Modigliani, away from the system.
‘It’s very freeing to be actually involved from the very beginning of a project…to develop that project that wouldn’t necessarily get made in Hollywood. Because at this point, I’m not going to go in and do a tap dance for anybody. So it was a learning experience, Hollywood,’ he added, grinning.
‘They still have a lot to learn.’
You imagine if Al Pacino ever reads this, he’d be proud.
Modigliani – Three Days on the Wing of Madness is in cinemas July 11, with special previews nationwide July 10.
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