One sequence of Public Enemies was filmed at the Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet, Illinois, a maximum-security prison built in 1925 (and thus authentic to Dillinger’s era) and still in use. In an interview with Trailer Addict at the Chicago press junket, Johnny Depp describes what it was like to film inside a functioning maximum-security prison:

Q: Can you tell about the experience going through the prison? That must have been very . . . surreal.

JOHNNY DEPP: Stateville was wild. Yeah. Stateville was wild, because it’s an active prison, and we were shooting there. Funnily enough, it was a place that my stepfather had spent some of his time [. . .] he’d done a few years in Stateville.

And then they took us to go and look at the maximum security section. All these guys are in there, hundreds and hundreds of guys in lockdown, and . . . uh . . . they’re looking out their bars, out their doors at me, and they’re screaming, “Hey, Captain Jack! Come get me!” [laughing] “Come and help me escape!”

Q: Is it creepy, being in that environment? What do you feel when you are there?

JOHNNY DEPP: It’s pretty intense. There’s a sign . . . I’ll never forget it. The sign that I saw [. . .] on the cafeteria wall, said, “Please sit down when shots are fired.” Not if shots are fired; when shots are fired. And that’s the image I’ll probably take with me to my grave.

To watch the full (and very entertaining) Trailer Addict interview with Johnny Depp, CLICK HERE. The Zone thanks FANtasticJD for finding and sharing the video, and AnaMaria for making our screencap. To see a larger version of our screencap of Johnny being interviewed, CLICK HERE. –Part-Time Poet