Culture

Johnny Depp Took Vengeful Aim At “Sweaty, Big-Gutted Man” Barnaby Joyce At A Venice Film Festival Press Conference

"I killed my dogs and ate them under direct orders."

by Hannah Hawkins  5 September 2015

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Remember back in May when Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce straight up threatened to kill Johnny Depp’s dogs? Well, you should, because the story was quite literally everywhere and — sort of beautifully — it hasn’t really left the news cycle since.

A refresher: successful Hollywood actor Johnny Depp brought his two little dogs, Pistol and Boo, with him to Australia when he was filming the next instalment of Pirates of the Caribbean on the Gold Coast. But the pups arrived illegally via private jet, avoiding the required quarantine processing, thus sending Barnaby Joyce into a hilarious rage spiral.

“It’s time that Pistol and Boo buggered off back to the United States,” he said, while he threw darts at a makeshift dartboard made up of photos of various celebrities’ pets’ heads.

After an absolute circus of events — including but not limited to: a Change.org petition of over 22,000 people genuinely begging the minister not to personally murder Depp’s dogs; the hashtag #WarOnTerriers; an interview on The Project that caused all of the capillaries on Joyce’s face to explode; and an obligatory yet particularly fierce on-air tantrum from rambling trashcan Kyle Sandilands — Pistol and Boo were smuggled safely out of Australia and sent home, where they are currently under US witness protection, probably.

This brings us to the present day and the latest moment in a now three-month-old Depp Doggy Saga, which took place during a press conference for his upcoming film Black Mass at the Venice Film Festival. When a sassy journalist asked whether Depp would try to take his pooches on a gondola ride, he responded that he could not do that because he had killed and eaten them. Tee-hee.

“No, I killed my dogs and ate them, under direct orders of some kind of, I don’t know, sweaty, big-gutted man from Australia,” Depp joked (in the first half of the sentence, at least).

Starts at 1:46:

Depp and his wife Amber Heard are due before court in Queensland to face charges over the biosecurity breach this month. Joyce has yet to confirm or deny whether he will yell and shake his fist at them when they do.