USA: PREMIERE OF NEW JOHNNY DEPP FILM "FROM HELL" ABOUT THE JACK THE RIPPER LONDON MURDERS

Record ID: 548393

  • Title: USA: PREMIERE OF NEW JOHNNY DEPP FILM "FROM HELL" ABOUT THE JACK THE RIPPER LONDON MURDERS
  • Date: 6th October 2001
  • Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (OCTOBER 6, 2001) (REUTERS) SCU (SOUNDBITE) (ENGLISH) JOHNNY DEPP SAYING " Well it's a case that I was, I got sort of interested in, fascinated with when I was very, very young and, I'd say I've read the majority of stuff on the Ripper case. A whole lot, a whole lot and I was really fortunate to meet, like, Donald Rumblo and Stewart Evans, a couple of the Ripper-ologists who are just, I mean, these guys are experts, expert experts on the details." SMV (SOUNDBITE) (ENGLISH) ALLEN HUGHES SAYING " First off, we had a definite fascination with Jack the Ripper and then it definitely was a conscious effort to say, hey, you know, we wanna be looked at as filmmakers, within the industry, look at our film, of course, as people, you know, and that we can do anything cause you don't want, you get tired, although I think Hollywood did send us a lot of, you know, regular scripts, you know, you do get tired of people going, hey, you know, when are you guys going to make another "Menace" or when you gonna do this or whatever? You go, hey, we wanna make all kinds of stories, you know? Every filmmaker that was worth his weight in gold, or whatever, did everything, you know?" SCU (SOUNDBITE) (ENGLISH) HEATHER GRAHAM SAYING " I've always wanted to get a job like this and it was interesting because someone was saying the Hughes Brothers were saying that they wanted to give me a shot do to something that I hadn't really done, which is great, just in the same way that they want to get a shot to do something different than what they've done so, it is, it's really, it was exciting to do."
  • Embargoed: 21st October 2001 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES AND FILM LOCATIONS
  • Country: USA
  • Reuters ID: LVA6Q50SZT43KBXS4L2Q4HDITDN6
  • Story Text: Johnny Depp and Heather Graham joined the fraternal filmmaker team of Albert and Allen Hughes for the American premiere of their period thriller "From Hell" on Wednesday, October 17 in Los Angeles.
    After a well-received tour of the film festival circuit, including the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals, Johnny Depp, Heather Graham and the Hughes Brothers are ready to unleash their new thriller "From Hell" on the general public.
    It's a fictionalized account of the investigation into one of the first and most infamous serial murder cases in history, that of Jack the Ripper. Depp plays Scotland Yard Inspector Fred Abberline, whose drug-induced visions give him a special edge in the hunt for the brutal killer of prostitutes throughout the Whitechapel district of 1880's London.
    Graham plays Mary Kelly, a goodhearted prostitute who watches her friends die one-by-one at the brutal hands of a mysterious butcher and who may just hold the key to the killer's identity. Also in the cast are Scottish actor Robbie Coltrane as Depp's police associate and Ian Holm as a respected physician who lends his talents and expertise to the case.
    Sitting in the dual directors chair of the film are Albert and Allen Hughes, the fraternal filmmaking team who previously impressed audiences with their modern-day urban gangster pictures "Menace II Society" and "Dead Presidents." Going back to 19th century England to tell a grisly murder mystery was a conscious decision on their part to get away from the genre that they're known best for.
    Both of the Hughes Brothers and Johnny Depp shared a fascination with the Jack the Ripper case, which has never officially been solved. For the filmmakers, their interest was peaked when they saw an episode of the reality television series "In Search Of," while Depp has been reading up on the case since he was a young boy. Combining their knowledge with the input of several respected Ripper-ologists resulted in a highly detailed and realistic portrayal of the murder scenes.
    While the murders themselves and the characters are true to the real case, the film's hypothesis about the identity of the killer, which involves a conspiracy that reaches into the upper ranks of the British Royal family, is purely a theory.
    Since the Whitechapel district of London has changed a lot since the 1880's, the Hughes Brothers had to pursue other alternatives in order to shoot their movie. They chose to recreate five city blocks of the seedy neighborhood on a huge 20-acre site outside Prague in the Czech Republic. Taking advantage of cheaper labor costs, the brothers were able to build an ultra-realistic simulation of the actual crime scenes, one that was good enough to give the actors the creeps.
    "From Hell" opens in cinemas throughout the United States on Friday, October 19th.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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