What does Shane think, have you talked to him, what does he think of Crock of Gold?
Well, I wasn’t there when he saw it, but I got a rave review from Gerry Adams, who wrote me a nice letter, who was there with him when he saw it. People were saying he was laughing a lot, and then there were a lot of uncomfortable silences, then, in the end, he was in tears. I hope it…I don’t really care whether he likes it or not, honestly. I care whether the Irish people do.
I learned a lot of Irish history that I didn’t know about from watching it, so I’m glad you married the two together because you can’t really tell his story without talking about Irish history, anyway.
I wanted to celebrate him, to respect him. I didn’t want to demonize him. I didn’t want to canonize him, either. I didn’t want to whitewash him, but I wanted to deliver something that would clarify how great he was on a lot of levels.
“…in the end, he was in tears.”
I think you succeeded. I just have one more question, how did Ralph Steadman get involved? Because I loved his animation.
He’s a friend of Johnny Depp’s.
Oh well, duh, that makes sense, haha.
Yeah, through Hunter (S. Thompson). I have to kind of make clear that he didn’t do all the animation. He just gave us some drawings for the “blue Maori” moment that we animated along with all the other things that had nothing to with Ralph. He’s great, but he didn’t animate the whole thing, and I keep reading that he did all the animation, which is wrong–
Yeah, I could tell which one was his.
Oh, good. Maybe it’s just the English reviews that are just like, “Wow! Ralph Steadman animated it all!” My friend Johnny Halifax supervised that all for me.
