Actor Sean Penn spoke with the Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman in an interview for Rolling Stone that was published Saturday.
Using an elaborate plan, Guzman escaped from a high security prison seven months ago and had been on the run. Authorities announced that they captured him Friday, a day before the Rolling Stone piece was published.
Penn’s article had an extensive editor’s note tacked to the top which stated that the article had been reviewed by the subject, who had made no changes, and that some names and locations had been changed.
Penn went on to describe his encounter with Guzman and how it was arranged (via Kate Del Castillo, a Mexican actress who Penn wrote supported Guzman) in great detail.
Penn outlined the ways he secretly arranged to meet Guzman and how he flew from LA to a jungle for a seven hour discussion with the drug kingpin.
“He is interested in the movie business and how it works,” Penn wrote. “He’s unimpressed with its financial yield.”
When Guzman asked Penn how much he would be paid for writing the article, Penn said he responded, “when I do journalism, I take no payment.”
A Q&A between Guzman and Penn appears at the bottom of Penn’s narrative. Mexican officials said it was Penn’s interview that led them to Guzman.
In a comment to the Associated Press, Penn said Monday that he has “nothin’ to hide.”
Read the full piece.
Watch a clip of Penn’s interview:
Mexico gives us Affluenza Kid we give them Sean Penn, it would be a straight up deal, no cash, no future draft choices, clean and simple.
I really don’t know what the big deal. In fact, it may be the reason they were able to find El Chapo. Who knows. I like Sean Penn. He may be controversial but he has done a lot of good philanthropic things. He was in New Orleans helping to save poor folks when no one else was.
Ha! Doesn’t relish the thought of blowing MCA execs, do he?
What a weird story. Recently I watched a Sean Penn movie from a couple years ago where he played some sort of government assassin who gets out following a botched job overseas and starts building wells in poor countries. His past catches up with him, of course, and he becomes a well-building Jason Bourne. It wasn’t a good movie, but is interesting because I think that’s who Penn wants to be now – a world traveller with special skills who finds himself in dangerous situations. I guess it’s kind of interesting that he got this interview, but the article was 90% about everything that Penn experienced in getting the story. It’s weird.
I bought a cheap junk scifi paperback years ago (early 80s) in an airport that I read on a flight. The then absurd premise has stuck in my head and becomes less absurd with every passing year. Celebrity news couples for full surround, full sensory newscasts no longer report the news in a silly or serious manner but now have sex while lying in front of the news, be it erupting volcano or political convention.
Naked News webcasts of a few years past were dull, they should have gone into the field…