In a recent interview with Geoffrey Rush for Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Men Tell No Tales he shared quite a bit about Johnny Depp. This interview does contain some spoilers, so read at your own risk and find out what Geoffrey Rush thinks about Johnny Depp.

What do you think of Johnny Depp?

Johnny was the king of the independent films here, great characters like Edward Scissor Hands and What’s Eating Gilbert Great and all of the things that he did.

How Johnny created Jack Sparrow according to Rush

For him to create such a unique, unpredictable pirate — there’s nothing like it in literature or cinema before. And he got nominated for a Best Actor, which is just fantastic, you know. ‘Cause that — these actual adventure films just don’t really get a look in on that territory. But I remember him telling me when we shot the first film, he said, you know, we’ve gotta — we can’t be stereotypes. We’ve gotta create really imaginative kind of people that an audience will get very engaged with.

And he said I’ve been toying with the idea of, you know, I like the British rock stars of the ‘60s ’cause the, you know, the pirates always had sort of clear-cut identities.

How was working with Johnny Depp? [SPOILER]

We always — you know, the scripts are always pretty good. They know — the relationship is — we’ve sort of decided now that the black pearl is our mutual girlfriend and we both want her, you know. Then chances are that Jack Sparrow will end up with the ship, which he does in his — but that sense of harmony’s never always gonna stay there I think that, you know, if there is any kind of sequel. I don’t know. I’m dead. Again.

Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Men Tell No Tales is now in theaters.

As part of the Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Men Tell No Tales press junket we interviewed Brenton Thwaites.

Australian Brenton Thwaites, who had impressed the filmmakers in such films as “The Giver” and “Son of a Gun,” was awarded the role of Henry, the young Royal Navy sailor who is on a vigorous quest to help save a father he has barely known from a terrible fate.

Sitting with Brenton you can tell that he’s new to all of this fame. He was very modest, a little shy and of course very good looking. He gave short answers to the questions but he seemed to really love becoming part of this fun franchise known as Pirates of the Caribbean. One of the questions we were dying to know the answer to was what he thought it was like working with Johnny Depp. And he said it was very scary. ‘’

It was terrifying

We asked him if he could elaborate a little bit on that because it’s really hard to imagine what Jonny Depp is really like in person. I mean I can imagine the intimidation factor because of how famous he is.

It’s always terrifying because you never know what he’s gonna say or do. It always results in humiliation for me. You are always, entering a scene, you know, thinking this guy now is five movies worth of Jack Sparrow. And he’s on the ball and you know, kind of irreverent and impulsive, you know. He kind of- you just anticipate what he’s gonna do and say, so that’s great because, you know, as an actor, it kind of improves your acting in the sense that you’re always open and free and relaxed to go with the flow, but also pretty terrifying.

We also wanted to know how he got the role and what it was like fitting himself into the storyline. He is the son of Elizabeth Swan and Will Turner. He began by telling us that he had to audition and re-audition quite a few times. The movie was put on hold and then he had to audition again and finally landed the role. As far as becoming part of the story. He said it helped him actually…..

I feel as though as it was kind of easier than not having them because they provided such a backstory for my character. You know, we, we start the movie, Dead Men Tell No Tales with the boy version in my character, basically saying, you know, I believe there’s a treasure that can break your curse, and I can spend more time with you. And he says, okay, well if there is, go find Jack Sparrow. He can help you find it. And so I feel like the goal and obligation for my character has already been set, and that, that kind of gives Henry a, a lot more drive and focus for the whole movie.

A lot of times when you work on movies the directors let you either ad-lib or value an actors input. We asked Brenton if he felt valued and if his opinion mattered during the movie making process and he said yes. The “old-school-dudes” did value his opinion.

You know, I think they did value my input as an actor- as an newcomer. There were so many different characters coming into this one to make it a fresh new thing, you know, and I think all the old-school dudes really wanted, you know, make it fresh and exciting and, you know, it’s something they hadn’t done before. So Javier coming on board, myself, Kaya, and the two new directors who- that primarily done independent films were kind of, you know, supported and encouraged on this one.

Since I often take the pictures during these interviews, I hardly ever ask a question. I’m so nervous that maybe I missed an answer while taking the pictures and I’d hate to waist anyone’s time with that because these interviews go by so quickly. However, with Brenton, I realized I wanted to know something about the movie. I wanted to know what the locations were like. Pirates of the Caribbean has the most amazing locations. My family and I actually visited one of the locations for one of the older Pirates movies in San Juan. So I asked him what he thought about the many locations he filmed at.

We shot at about five or six different locations; mainly the studios. I was talking about Saint Martins Square twenty minutes west of the studios where all the mud was. We shot there for a good month and a half, and we shot in Northern New South Wales; they had a beautiful beach- both Hastings Point for our entrance into, our entrance into Saint Martins, I think, you know, the coastal element.

And my favorite location was up on Hamilton Island, shooting out on the Great Barrier Reef. We had some days we shot at a beach called White Haven Beach which is beautiful squeaky beach. You know, when you walk on the sand, it squeaks which is not so good for the sound, but it’s great for effect, and it looks beautiful, and I think we had the most fun right there.

Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Men Tell no Tales is beautifully made and has an amazing story. You can now see it in theaters.

Moana is now in theaters and has been the number one movie for three weeks in a row, which means, if you haven’t seen it yet you’re missing out on something great! This movie, as I saw one of my mommy friends say, “Disney hit it out of the park again”. Moana has a fantastic message of listening to that voice inside of you and do what you’re meant to do. You can make a difference and follow your dreams you just have to believe. Plus, when you see this movie there is amazing music by not only Lin Manual Miranda but also Opetaia Foa’I whom we fell in love with during his interview last month. We will be sharing that one very soon as well. For now, we have an interview with the Directors Ron Clements & John Musker.

The first question that was asked was about the difference between a completely animated film and a CG created film. For both Ron & John this was their first time creating a CG animated film and they had to take some tutorials and learn how the process would go. They both said that of course story creation is basically the same. There are story boards and the voice actors of course. The changes come in with animation you can get started with a pencil and paper right away. You can start testing out character development but in CG you have to build the characters in a 3D setting and make them work (RIG them) movement, shading all within that world. It takes a lot longer to set up initially. They said it was very complicated and that when they would review something for the animators there were certain parts they were supposed to ignore and they had to ask…..

JOHN: Also, we had the crazy thing when we were watching we go to these review sessions when the movie was being done in CG where we’d look at it and say okay, so is that the real sky in that shot? And they say no, no, that’s just a placeholder. Forget the sky. And we go okay, but those trees, we should take those– no, no, the trees, were going to trade those out later for the real trees. And then we’d say, so we can ignore those rocks? No, the rocks are the real thing. And we wouldn’t know looking at it why one was real and one–.

RON : It’s very complicated.

They went on to describe what was really difficult, the water and the lava monster…..

RON : And the lighting. There’s a lot of, a lot of cool things you can do. But a lot of things even that had to be figured out in the movie. Even the idea of a living ocean that has a personality of a monster, a lava monster, some of those things particularly where character animation and effects animation merge, that doesn’t– that isn’t done usually. So, and there were a lot of things just to figure out how to do it and a lot of really smart people that, that sort of said we actually don’t know how to do this. We don’t even– but we are confident that we will figure it out.

JOHN : We’ll figure it out before the end of the movie. And they did. They really did.

The thing about Disney and their movies now is that the story has to be really strong. One of the things that helps the story is how much research they put into their movies. With Moana, this is a story about the island culture of the Polynesian people. There are many stories about their history and Maui is a legend so Disney had to get this right….

JOHN: I read about this guy Maui who was unbelievable. He was you know, shape shifter. He had a magical fishhook. He could pull up islands. He had live tattoos, kind of a superhero.

John and Ron talked to us quite a bit about the research put into the movie. They had pitched John Lasseter a simple idea about Maui and he said go do some research. They spent three weeks in  Samoa, Fiji, Tahiti. They met with cultural ambassadors, linguists and anthropologists and learned how the Navigators worked and just spent time connecting with the people.

RON : And their connection to the importance of respect for nature, respect for the environment and also the interconnectedness and extended families…. and the idea of your heritage and your legacy. We heard this expression in Tahiti, “know your mountain.” And your mountain is essentially everything that led up to you, all the people that led up to you, everything that happened, all of the things that if they didn’t exist, you wouldn’t exist. And, and they said,

“if you don’t know your mountain you really don’t know who you are.”

 

JOHN : ……….while doing research they heard from people on the island that said, we’ve been swallowed by your culture. One time can you be swallowed by our culture? So,…..we absolutely took that to heart. That became sort of our mantra as we did the movie over the course of the years and we kept people involved from the Pacific islands. We had an oceanic story trust that we bounced story ideas off of costume ideas, the way the characters looked throughout this process. We would Skype with them. They came out to visit sometimes. And case in point, Maui, in the early going he was bald. He had no hair. Some drawings were–.

RON : [OVERLAP]……a little more like Dwayne.

JOHN : We’ll do it more like Dwayne……but then when some people saw it from Tahiti particularly they said no, no, no, long hair is part of his….his power. So, he’s got to have long hair. So, we, okay, forget it. He’s going to have long hair. So we tried …..this great Polynesian football player’s long hair and people from the islands we had seen these great dudes with great manes of hair. And so we gave him that kind of hair …..

As they did their research they decided to make the movie centered on a girl instead, Moana which means ocean. She wanted to reconnect her people with their ancestors and learn to be a navigator. By focusing on her the story touches us so much more than a super hero story would have. She finds strength in herself and motivates us all to follow our dreams.

Like my friend said, they hit this movie out of the park and you need to go out and see it. They story is spot on, the animation is spot on, and the music is spot on!

The new lead actress of the Star Wars franchise, Felicity Jones is bright and wonderful woman to sit down and chat with. Felicity Jones is an English actress who started her professional acting career as a child, appearing at age 12 and now at age 33 is now Jyn Erso. Jyn Erso is a member of a team of rebels that sets off on an impossible mission of saving the galaxy by recovering the plans for the planet killer that the Empire is building. The plan seems impossible and from what little footage I have seen this movie, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story will have you on the edge of your seat. I was lucky enough to sit down with Felicity Jones and interview her. She spoke with us on many things like how she found out about getting the role to how much of a family everyone on set became.

How did you find out you got the role?

I had a phone call from Gareth Edwards, but I’d actually, my agent who I’m very close to and we’ve worked together for years and years and years. She sort of said to me, ‘I have a, I’m pretty sure it’s yours.’ but she said, ‘but, when Gareth phones you up can you make sure that you sound really surprised?’ You go like, ‘great.’…. ’cause he wanted to break the news to us ….he called and said, ‘I’d love you to play the part.’ ….And then I was thinking, ‘that’s great but there’s gonna be a lot of training involved in this film so I’d better get my ass to the gym.’…

So what kind of training was there?

She mentioned to us that she did Judo at a very young age but that this was still a lot of work. She also said that there was a lot of learning from the very beginning and that she likes doing the stunts. She worked very closely with the stunt team and that a lot of practice was needed, a lot. She also got to do a lot of wire work which is also very hard. She said whenever she wasn’t in costume she was in sweat pants. I found it interesting too that she had different costumes for different types of work but they all looked exactly the same. It makes sense that when you are on a wire verses running for your life your clothes need to move in different ways. Since no one has seen the film yet she couldn’t tell us things like if Jyn has a love interest in this movie, but she didn’t say no. Her exact words were…….

“There may be something”

We also asked her to tell us about her character which she was able to do

Jyn has a very strong ideology. She hates the empire, she hates everything they stand for they have destroyed her family, so anytime she sees a storm trooper she is like an animal who wants to take them down. She at the same time has a wonderful humanity and she, she learns how to be a leader throughout the film. She starts off and she’s a bit of an outsider and, and um, it’s very suspicious and untrusting of people.

She’s had a bit of a hard life, there’s been quite a lot of struggle, so it’s not easy for her to trust people. And, and throughout the film you see her actually forming these kindred spirits with the, with the other rebels. And finding something that they all have a common dislike of the empire and they unite over that despite their differences.

As becoming a part of the Star Wars family is such a big deal we asked her how she felt now being a part of this legacy.

Star Wars I feel the reason it’s lasted for so long is it’s about family, it’s about um, and it’s not just blood relations it’s all, it’s family, the family that you form with friends. Um, and friendships I think what’s so special about it is those friendships are across different races, um, different languages, uh, but it’s people who come together and they’re obviously united by, by fighting the forces of evil.

And she went on to say that she formed fantastic friendships with her co-workers so that enhanced the experience a great deal.

……it’s an incredible thing to be part of but the thing that I actually love are the friendships. And I really, really with the cast I absolutely love all of them and everyone is very different and we all have our quirks and our ways but there, there is a real spirit of collaboration. And I never felt like there were any huge egos, it felt like everyone was in it together and there was real support.

I can’t wait to see the entire movie. The fight scenes I did see with Felicity Jones in them were outstanding. That girl Jyn can really kick some butt!.

If you’d like to see what the actors were like on the day of our interview here is an episode of The Star Wars Show:

Star Wars Rogue One is in theaters December 16th.