Ah, DVD extras–no wonder we love ’em! Zone member b.p. olive discovered an 11-minute gem of an interview with Johnny Depp among the extra features on the DVD Gypsy Caravan: When the Road Bends. “An audience favorite at film festivals worldwide, Gypsy Caravan is a dazzling display of the musical world of the Roma, juxtaposed to the real world they live in,” notes Amazon.com. “Five bands from four countries unite for the World Music Institutes Gypsy Caravan 6-week concert tour across North America with the musicians astounding every audience they meet.” One of the featured bands is Taraf de Haidouks from Romania, familiar to Depp devotees from Sally Potter’s The Man Who Cried, in which they played Cesar’s Romani family.
“[T]he Taraf used to come into my trailer–I mean ALL of them,” JD recalls in the interview. “You know, there was like 18 of us [. . .] crammed into this little trailer with all the instruments, you know, and the small cymbalom and the stand up bass and the violins and the whole, you know . . the whole nine yards. And we’d sit in there, ’cause we were shooting nights, and kind of pass around, you know, a bottle of wine. And, just . . they’d play for hours and hours.”
And the music? “You hear joy, in the purest and most honest sense possible,” explains JD. “[. . .S]orrow, suffering, you hear everything in their music. And that’s what was always astounding for me. You know, when I first met them and they played literally for me, I mean just in front of me . . . I just never experienced anything like that rush of uh . . . purity, honesty, um . . intensity, beauty, um . . everything.”
If you would like to read more of Johnny Depp’s interview, you can find b.p. olive’s transcription on the Zone’s Pit forum. We thank her very much for bringing the interview to our attention and for her hard work in transcribing it–well done! Thanks also to FANtasticJD for her screencap of Johnny during the interview; to see a larger version, CLICK HERE. If you would like to own Gypsy Caravan: When the Road Bends, it is available from Amazon HERE. –Part-Time Poet