This weekend, Johnny Depp stopped by the Student Activities Center to speak to Radio-Television-Film and Journalism students who were treated to an advanced screening of his new movie 'The Rum Diary'.

While in town for the Austin Film Festival, the actor joined director Bruce Robinson during a Q&A session at the University of Texas on Saturday.

The filmmakers also answered student questions while RTF professor John Pierson moderated the Q&A, during which Depp discussed the making of 'The Rum Diary', the characters he has played, and how the Occupy Wall Street movement resonates in the film and journalism industries as well.

“There are things that you feel great passion for,” he said. “[The] Rum Diary was born out of a cardboard box.”

'The Rum Diary' is based on a novel of the same name written by journalist and novelist Hunter S. Thompson in 1959. Thompson, who Depp says was a good friend, fictionalized his own experiences and wrote the novel about a journalist who finds himself faced with the tyranny of the rich and wanting to combat American capitalism while working in Puerto Rico.

Depp, who produced the film, said that his interest in 'The Rum Diary' was sparked in 1997 when he came across the journalist’s manuscript for the book in his basement a year before it was published.

Robinson, who also wrote the screenplay for the film, was in “so-called” retirement when Depp called him asking if he had read the book. He said he had no aspiration to make films anymore until now because of Thompson’s celebration of “the morality of humanity.”

“I felt that great engine of rage of morality that Hunter represented, and I hope we got it on film,” he said.

Depp and Robinson also spoke about the latest social movement taking the globe as counterparts of Occupy Wall Street. Both actor and director agreed that money was the problem and that this had seeped into journalism — something Hunter would’ve been enraged by, said Depp.

“I think it’s big business and [journalism] has become some semblance of a product,” Depp said. “It’s not really about selling the truth or telling the truth. It’s really more about inventing something that the people will want to buy. I think journalism is in a bad state.”

Depp said that such issues with money are also evident in the film industry where actors are getting paid “a ridiculous amount of money” to do films. He said that while he was one of those actors, that money allowed him to do more “passion projects” like 'The Rum Diary.'

Throughout the Q&A session, Depp frequently spoke about Thompson’s rage against society, the machine, “or whatever it is,” as the actor said, claiming that he embraced such attitude in his own film career and with the characters he has brought to life.

But Depp’s films weren’t always blockbuster, million dollars films, he said.

“My entire career was based on 20 years of failures essentially these were not groundbreaking money making Hollywood things,” Depp said. “And then Pirates happened.”

The actor also said that playing Edward Scissorhands, in the 1990 film of the same name, was the most important thing he had ever done because it solidified his career like no other.

The Q&A was also broadcasted to various other universities across the country including the University of Washington and Columbia College in Chicago whose students were able to text in questions. Pierson coined the broadcast “Depp-Net.”

Depp thanked the students for attending the event and watching the film throughout the Q&A. He signed autographs and took pictures with students for over an hour outside the Student Activity Center after the event.

As Pierson said, the university students who attended the event are part of the generation that grew up with Depp’s renowned Captain Jack Sparrow character and may not be as familiar with Thompson’s story, but Depp hoped that the students would learn from him.

“If any of you can take anything away from Hunter, understand that the voice that he found was his own a voice. The voice was a voice of rage, but it was not of hatred or menace,” Depp said. “And it is a voice that still resonates and reverberates today.”