|  Bluntly
Speaking | Johnny Depp
an
emily blunt interview
Bluntly
speaking? This was one interview I was looking forward to.
No disappointments: Johnny Depp shows up to our Hollywood encounter
with a cap pulled over blonde hair dressed in standard "any-struggling-actor-retro-grunge."
Flashing his gold-capped teeth, left over from the recent pirate
role, and extending his hand in salutation he glides into a seat
beside me. He's just cool. Always has been.
His ability to give grandiose and surreal characters soul is proof
of his heapin' helpin' of pure uncut manly talent and frankly
he's one slice of grade A mansteak this rovering reporter wouldn't
mind tenderizing….
Depp
decided he'd tap into the ultimate in bad boy rock and roll legends
for his latest character, pirate Capt. Jack Sparrow. Wildly inappropriate
really, considering it was for Disney Studios! Their first PG
13 film for families actually. But, Depp doesn't give a damn about
Disney's glimmering and prudent history - he was hired to deliver,
and deliver he does. Depp style.
Dipping into the depths of his exquisite mind to discover his
version of a pirate, buried beneath Hunter S. Thompson and several
Edwards he found, Keith Richards as his inspiration. He shared
his love of Keef
Emily:
You really seemed like you had a ball on this film!
Johnny:
It was almost like a crime to have so much fun.
Emily:
I'm a HUGE Keith Richards fan and I am curious as to how you came
up with Keith Richards as your inspiration for Capt. Jack Sparrow?
Johnny:
I thought of Keith because I was trying to figure out what pirates
might have been like, their lifestyle back in the 18th century,
and I thought, oh man, they were the rock and roll stars of the
era. On the road to some degree, freedom, adventure, women, outlaw
behavior, all of that stuff. And you see the greatest rock and
roll star of all time, there are so many options, but to me it's
Keith Richards hands down. So I went in that direction and then
got a couple of other ideas, like Pepe Le Pew was also a character
that I thought would work. There's something about Pepe Le Pew
that I always thought was really beautiful. The idea of this guy
who absolutely had blinders on to reality, and just believed what
he thought. He
was always very, very happy. He was always really in a good mood
no matter what was going on around him. No matter what the reality
of the situation was; he always saw it his way; absolutely
his way. Every episode, he was falling in love with this one cat
and the cat just despised him, absolutely hated him and he always
interpreted it as, 'Oh, she's playing hard to get, she's shy,'
or something like that, and so, I don't know. I thought that it
worked for the character. I always thought Pepe Le Pew was really
interesting. I also kind of thought of Jack Sparrow as a sort
of a constantly moving organism who would shape himself to whatever
situation, however he needed to be shaped, he would mold himself
into that; this organism with a perpetual martini glass.
Emily:
Yeah, Sparrow's swager had that Foster Brooks/Dean Martin-ish
look. Like Jack, underneath the swagger, Keith Richards is also
a very intelligent man.
Johnny:
Oh yeah. Part of it was that Keith was the sage, the wise, unbelievably
smart guy. It's kind of like Hunter Thompson, who is a brilliant
writer and a great man, I've seen it happen where people, because
they look at Hunter and they think he's out of it, so they just
assume that he's just burnt and he's not lucid, and they've been
kind of disrespectful in a very round about way, and Hunter being
incredibly smart, he'll pin-point, and I've see him just level
them verbally, just decimate them, and I think Keith is similar.
Yeah, people just assume Keith Richards - oh yeah, the junkie
years in the '70s, and he's out of it and all the stuff, but no,
no, no, he's one of the most well read, brilliant people I've
ever come into contact with. He knows everything about everything
- a history buff, history to the letter. It wasn't an imitation
of Keith or anything like that. It was just like a salute to him,
and beyond the fact that I think that he's the greatest rock and
roll star of all times, I also think that he's an incredibly interesting
man beyond the rock and roll, beyond The Stones. He's unbelievably
wise. He's really a wise man, a sage, a Buddha or something.
Emily:
And you brought that intelligence through to Jack, bravo. There's
a lot of comedy in Sparrow. Did you help create that, or was it
all in the script?
Johnny:
Those guys had written something so beautiful and such a great
character, and what they had written was so inspiring that I couldn't
help but to just spew - it would either come out on paper, I would
write it all down and run it by them to make sure they were okay
with it, most of the time they were great about it, they were
fine with it. Either that or it would just happen during a scene,
which I prefer. It's always better to just be in the situation
and burn it all out. Let it go.
Emily:
You've got this character that's living on the outside.
Johnny:
Yeah, but he doesn't know that. [He winks]
Emily:
In that sense you two are alike - I mean because you revel living
on the outside
Johnny:
I've always been interested in… I guess fringe may be a way
of putting it. The people that I've always admired in whatever
the arena, whether it's art or film, whatever, music, have always
been the people who came in from the outside, who didn't just
- I prefer Daniel Johnston to Mariah Carey. You know what I mean?
Really by far; like really. A Daniel Johnston, I admire very much.
I don't know. It's the kind of people I've always been drawn to.
Emily:
With Daniel Johnston, he puts let's say - to be nice - more of
his personality in his work versus Mariah Carey.
Johnny:
[laughter] That's so foreign to me [Mariah Carey] that I - [laughter]
Emily:
Thankfully you've always picked the more, shall we say, off beat
roles - they can't really pigeonhole you.
Johnny: I think that the second that you get pigeonholed, one
of two things happens. You either get really rich, really successful
or game over. I mean, if you find an arena that you're good at
or whatever, a thing that you can do, and to some degree, it becomes
a kind of shtick and you do that each time out of the gate, it's
not particularly satisfying, I think, as an actor. I don't think
that it's fair to the audience. I think that it's important to
want to surprise the audience, to want to surprise yourself and
I think that it's important, each time out of the gate to go,
'This may be the one where I lose big. This may be the one where
it's too much or not enough.' I think that it's important as an
actor.
Emily:
Despite the fact that you play a huge array of characters, we
seem to get something of you in each of them.
Johnny:
There's no character that you can play where part of you, whether
it's a great big portion or even a little portion, part of you
doesn't slip in. It's always there, it's got to come from someplace
of truth. It's like growing up I never felt, I don't know that
I felt so much like an outsider really, really far away from the
king and queen of the prom, I definitely never felt like an insider
- ever. The way I live my life today is pretty consistent of the
way I lived it back then, I just wanted to do whatever I wanted
to do. I remember being 13, 14 years old, and just skipping certain
classes and sneaking into the guitar room, and hiding out and
playing in the music room.
Emily:
Was there a point when you ever wanted to be a member of the club?
 Johnny:
No, I was always happy with that. I never got it. There were times
where I remember being really, really well liked around, um, 12
years old, it was 1974 or 1975, something like that, long hair,
certainly not one of the jock kids or anything like that, and
I fell madly in love with the most popular cheerleader in the
school. And it was like this - it was beyond Romeo and Juliet.
I was like, 'This is never going to work. The formula doesn't
exist.' And then coming to terms with that.
Emily:
Have we not all been right there? [laughter]. I heard that you
directed this film called The Brave with Marlon Brando - what
happened to that?
Johnny:
Nothing. [A sad grin]
Emily:
How did you enjoy the process of being a director?
Johnny:
It was a pretty interesting education. I like the process, I would
like the process way more if I didn't have to be in it, that was
really the drag for me, because not only had I come to do all
that work, but I'd written the thing with my brother and I'm acting
in it, and I'm directing it. It was too many hats, and directing
and acting are two completely opposing things. As a director you
have to be totally aware of everything going on, as an actor you
don't want to be aware of anything except that moment. I do like
the process of it, but I don't think I could do it again if I
were in it. Plus I had to watch myself in dailies, which was devastating.
Emily:
You don't watch yourself now?
Johnny:
Oh I hate it, I can't stand it.
Emily:
But you do watch your movies?
Johnny:
Only when I have to, only when I'm forced to.
Emily:
Is that because you'll critique yourself and therefore not be
in the moment?
Johnny:
Yeah, you get self-conscious, so at a certain point I just stopped
watching dailies, I knew there were a couple of things that I
wanted to print to see what they were going to be like, and then
I would ask my DP, my cameraman, 'Tell the script girl what you
want to print, because I can't be objective anymore.'
Emily:
What was your input on the Jack Sparrow look? On the hair, on
the braided beard etc.?
Johnny:
That all happened in one day. We were sitting around the make-up
trailer, and I knew that I wanted to have the dreds, and I wanted
a lot of things tied into my hair, like stuff that I'd picked
up on voyages and what not, just tie it into my hair, kind of
like Keith, because Keith has little coins and beads - I wanted
all that stuff tied into my hair, and then the little braids and
the little dingles. I wanted that. And the kohl came from,
you know how athletes where black here for reflection, I started
thinking about the tribes of northern Africa, and the Bergers
which they have been doing for thousands of years, using kohl
under the eyes, which is medicinal in a way, and protects the
eyes from sand and sun.
Emily:
The gold teeth. I heard when you showed up the 1st day they were
ALL gold? True?
Johnny: [laughter] No, not all of them, but quite a few. I sat
down with Jerry [Bruckheimer] and a couple of other people, and
I had two more gold teeth. One on the front there, and one I think
over here, and they felt that the way it looked on film was a
little too much, but there were other things. They wanted me to
take off the dingles and they wanted me to calm things down and
everything. So, I figured if that was my only compromise, taking
out two gold teeth? After I took those two off, I added on over
here. I never told them that.
Emily:
So I'm sensing you kind of like the look.
Johnny:
It's funny, because most of the time I do! I can remember going
to Disneyland with my kids, with my daughter and we went into
the princess store and I bought her a little princess dress kind
of thing and the lady behind the counter, I smiled and said thank
you or something, and she looked at me as if to say, 'I have a
really good dentist.' She seemed so upset about my dental dilemma.
Emily:
You and Geoffrey Rush seemed to have a strong relationship that
transcended the film. Did you talk about a "back story"
for the characters?
Johnny:
We did. We joked around about our back-story. Here he is, this
fierce pirate, Barbossa, who at one time had been my first mate,
and all of a sudden he's taken over my ship, and I thought the
greatest secret that Barbossa would want hidden, I knew it. And
I was going to actually add it into the film, but once you start
getting into sword fights and things like that, you run out of
time. I thought his greatest secret was that his first name was
Hector.
Emily:
How did he react when you told him?
Johnny:
He laughed. I'd come up to set and he'd be standing there, and
I'd say, 'Good morning, Hector.' [He laughs] It was really good.
Emily: Has having children [He has a girl and boy] changed Johnny
Depp?
Johnny:
Oh yeah. I would say that the kiddies give you strength. The kiddies
give you strength and perspective and you understand stuff. Things
that would've made me sort of upset or angry before, or things
about Hollywood, things in magazines or paparazzi or stuff like
that, now you can sort of really go, 'Oh, piss off. I'm just going
to play Barbie's with my daughter,'
Emily:
I loved Lost in La Mancha and the
bravery your friend Terry Gilliam showed. Can you remark on the
film?
Johnny:
I thought it was great and really lucky for us that they were
there to document it, because no one would have ever believed
this. That weather, that happened in five minutes. It was incredible.
One minute there was blue sky and boiling sun, and then the next
thing you know torrential downpour, hail, everything's floating
away. Terry, bless his heart, is still very enthusiastic about
picking it up. There's talk of it. I really hope that we can get
it going again. They're very enthusiastic about it, and I really
hope so. I just think that it could be such a great film. It was
going to be great. It was going to be like Terry Gilliam's greatest
hits. We'll see. God, I hope so because God, it was really a blast.
Emily:
Your wife is a big star in France isn't she? Is that as intrusive
as in America?
Johnny: Yeah, yeah, Vanessa [Paradis] gets a lot of attention
over there, but we get the occasional paparazzi, but you know,
I figure it this way, if you're going to get me, just bring a
really long lens, just make sure that you're really far away because
if I'm able to get my hands on them, it could get ugly, and I
only say that because I don't care if they take my photograph.
I don't know why anyone needs another photograph of me, there
are plenty out there, and so, I don't care if they take my photograph.
I don't care if they take Vanessa's photograph, we're adults and
all of that stuff, but when they start taking photographs of my
kids and putting them in their magazines, that I can't support
and that's why they should have the long lens because if I catch
them I'll swallow their nose. I'll bit their nose off and swallow
it.
Emily:
[laughter] I actually believe you…well good luck with the
wee drunk and the little princess, and the film is great.
Depp:
Thank you, thanks that was fun.
Johnny
Depp has always been one of my favorites, and I'm certainly not
alone in this undying adoration. I own absolutely everything [Okay,
there's no '21 Jump Street' tapes - but film-wise] that the guy's
done. Why? Because he's just always a talented treat. Ed
Wood, Edward Scissorhands, From Hell, Blow,
Chocolat, Sleepy Hollow, Before Night
Falls [a mansteak extravaganza film that included Javier -
slurp - Bardem!] Benny and Joon - the list goes on for
about six pages and each time Depp emerges as a completely different
being….or Hunter S. Thompson [as he played in my personal
fave Depp film, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas]! So this
was exceptionally fun...He looked kind of tired as
he swaggered to more lurking press folk.
Pirates
of the Caribbean: Legend of the Black Pearl is truly incredible.
Not only does Depp do what he does so well in character creation,
but the film around him is simply spectacular! Get out and see
this mates it's a classic!
|
