Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz star in Temme Demme directed film Blow (2001), about convicted cocaine dealer George Jung, Johnny Depp says Jung is rehabilitated, he is doing work for DARE Drug Abuse Resistance Education http://inadepptrance.wordpress.com/feed











 

BLOW

2001

George Jung

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Director: Ted Demme

Writers:
  • Bruce Porter (book)
  • David McKenna, Nick Cassavetes  (screenplay)





With : Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Franka Potente, Rachel Griffiths, Paul Reubens, Ray Liotta


Tagline: "Based on a true story"

Rating: R

Awards and nominations:
 2002 COSTUME DESIGNERS GUILD AWARDS:
- Excellence for Costume Design for Film - Period/Fantasy: Mark Bridges (Nominated)

2001 KARLOVY VARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL:
- Crystal Globe Award: Ted Demme (Nominated)

2002 MTV MOVIE AWARDS:
- Breakthrough Female Performance: Penelope Cruz (Nominated)

2002 PRISM AWARDS
- Prism Award: Theatrical Feature Film (won)

2002 RAZZIE AWARDS:
- Worst Actress: Penelope Cruz (Nominated)

2001 WORLD SOUNDTRACK AWARDS:
- WSA Best Original Score of the Year Not Released on an Album: Graeme Revell (Nominated)

(Source: IMDb)








 





 

 

 


  















SYNOPSIS

George Jung is the son of a struggling small business owner. Seeing his family struggle to make ends meet and failing, George vows never to share a similar fate. Moving to California, he starts his own pot pushing operation in which he finds both success and imprisonment. In prison, he meets a cellmate who introduces him into a partnership to the lucrative new market in cocaine. Upon release, George Jung quickly becomes instrumental in establishing the exploding US market for cocaine in which he claimed that he handled about 85% of the supply in the 1970's. However, for all the fabulous wealth and power he gained, the true costs of his dangerously treacherous occupation catch up with him in ways from which he would never recover.
(Written by Kenneth Chisholm)



BLOW BY BLOW

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Book about the film, by Ted Demme.

Combining intimate portraits of Depp and Demme with Jung, evocative stills from the movie's 70s dreamland and the overlapping narratives of screenplay and autobiography, Blow is an absorbing book in its own right as well as a rich souvenir for fans of the film (Amazon).

Johnny wrote a foreword for this book, which you can read here.

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QUOTES FROM JOHNNY DEPP


"George Jung is a lot of things. He's a complicated guy. But first and foremost - what I was really happy to find our - was he is just as human as can be. There is no evil. There is no malice in him. He's not greedy. He's just a good man who recognized his mistakes and has to live with his sort of devastation every day."
Johnny Depp, Reel.com 2001

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The actors snorted milk powder in the cocaine scenes.

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"My opinion is that George has served his time and paid his debt to society. He's not doing anyone any good rotting away in a prison cell. The guy is rehabilitated. And I'm not sure the system rehabilitated him. I think he rehabilitated himself based on the hideous thoughts he's has to live with and realities he has had to deal with. I think he has paid his debt to society. I think he could do much more good on the outside. He's doing work with the DARE [Drug Abuse Resistance Education] program right now. He could, potentially, go on the road with DARE and teach kids the dangers of drugs. And he could also pay his debt to his daughter and try to give her a father."
Johnny Depp, Reel.com 2001

"What we should be asking is why kids need to anaesthetise themselves. I don't know... I went through so many years where I medicated myself. But ultimately, all you're doing is postponing the inevitable. Which is that you're going to have to acknowledge your demons."
The Guardian, may 24 2001

"I remember in that red leisure suit I sort of felt like a Pizza Hut employee, and the white one was the ultimate, with the white turtleneck collar, that was the ultimate in bad taste."
Johnny Depp






QUOTES FROM OTHERS


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Rachel Griffiths plays Ermine Jung (George's mother). The actress is five years younger than Johnny Depp (George).

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"I tried to stick to my game plan, which was always being aware of what my A story was -- the love story between a father and his son, and that son and his daughter."
Ted Demme, PopMatters may 2001

"We stuck to George's life fairly close to the bone, with the exception of the very ending, because he got busted a few times, and we combined them into one bust. I felt that as long as we were being honest, and that we didn't bend the truth to accomplish another goal, to be entertaining or to be a happy ending, I was confident that we'd be able to tell the story the way it happened."
Ted Demme, PopMatters may 2001

"When you do someone's life story, which I've never done, it weighs on you. You feel an added responsibility to get it right."
Ted Demme, PopMatters may 2001

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A lot of Johnny Depp's dialogue was improvised, including the scene where they are trying to find a place to put all their money from selling coke and his line "We're gonna need a bigger boat" (a quote from Jaws, 1975)

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"We watched an amazing number of movies from the late '60s and '70s, which is my favorite time, and we studied their camera movements, their stocks, the way they lit stuff, the colors they used..."
Ted Demme, PopMatters may 2001

"On a broader scale, it's about what happens to children when they're brought up in a bad household. They grow up to become their parents."
Ted Demme, PopMatters may 2001

"Johnny literally blew my mind, it was me, he became me. I told him jokingly that one is the number, and two is the one. He portrayed me, and he literally became me, his voice, his actions, his mannerisms, everything. Totally. It's almost frightening."
George Jung, DVD Blow

"He has an amazing heart. Johnny is so special that he is like a Martian. In fact, that's what I call him - Martian."
Penelope Cruz



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