Just twenty minutes to interview Johnny Depp? The film press says no and leaves

The procedure is now common: for the promotion of films, rather than real interviews, short “junkets” are organized with the stars. Yesterday, at the San Sebastian International Film Festival, twelve journalists rebelled.

LThe film press is rebelling. On Tuesday, September 24, twelve international journalists accredited to the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain collectively decided to refuse to interview Johnny Depp after the competition screening of Modi, a biopic of the painter Amedeo Modigliani that he directed. The reason? The fluctuating and, ultimately, unacceptable conditions of the planned meeting with the American star.

As told to Variety one of the twelve angry men and women, the Italian freelancer Marco Consoli, the film’s press officers had organized two fifteen-minute round tables (or “junkets”) during which two groups of six journalists were allowed to ask their questions to Johnny Depp surrounded by his main actors, Riccardo Scamarcio and Antonia Desplat. A practice that was not exactly ideal (each journalist, under these conditions, can only ask two or three questions, and the risk is that the three interviewees end up talking among themselves rather than really answering their interlocutors), but, alas, it had become commonplace, especially if the commercial stakes are high. For want of anything better, the journalists had accepted this deal that seemed like alms. But that was without counting on Johnny Depp’s lack of punctuality, unfortunately a habitual one. Due to lack of time, the “publicists” then proposed a single “junket” with the trio of “talents” for twenty minutes. The twelve journalists, already quite annoyed, asked to be able to interview Johnny Depp alone. After being refused again, they decided to boycott the junket and, even, not to write about the film.

Information in danger

Will this salutary outburst encourage the marketing teams of Hollywood studios to change their promotional policy? It’s about time… At the last Venice Film Festival, at the end of August, around fifty critics from the international press had already published an open letter to warn that, from Nicole Kidman to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, “almost all the headliners” This edition’s coverage was limited to photos on the red carpet and official press conferences, without granting a single interview, a process “shocking and deeply disturbing” Who “ [met] “information and exchange around cinema are at risk”A protest which, according to the signatories of the text (since joined by around fifty colleagues), “is just beginning.” With this warning: “Soon hundreds of journalists and media outlets could boycott films and artists refusing access to interviews at festivals.”