“This is a classic example: Angel versus Devil. Many personalities of all my characters live inside me. But I think I’m mostly Edward Scissorhands and Jack Sparrow. When I read the script Edward I felt a deep connection with its purity. It reminded me of my dog, his unconditional love. He was not kind, because kindness presupposes awareness: he was simply pure. Instead, I embody the irreverence of Captain Jack.”
big comeback
In May, in these pages, we wondered what was going on with Johnny Depp. The devil seemed to have the upper hand: too many excesses, some dubious career choices. Where was Hollywood’s highest paid star, the most beloved outsider of his generation?
The answer is an arrival in Venice, where on September 4th Johnny presents his most anticipated film of the last few years at the festival. Cast members Black Mass – The Last GangsterFrom Benedict Cumberbatch to Kevin Bacon, from Sienna Miller to Dakota Johnson, the film directed by Scott Cooper is impressive. And this story is impressive – it’s true – taken from the bestseller by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, leading names in Boston Globe (just reprinted by Rizzoli): The story of James “Whitey” Bulger, the legendary Irish mobster in Boston. Don’t expect glamorous Depp Chocolate: To interpret this cruel and disgusting man, Johnny wears blue contact lenses under his seventies sunglasses and a receding hairline that makes him almost unrecognizable. However, expect the performance to be memorable.
Which will be followed during the year by two small roles mistaken for “family solidarity”: a cameo role in London fieldsbased on a novel by Martin Amis starring his wife Amber Heard; friend is horrified Yoga hoses, where his daughter Lily-Rose plays. And then the return of two historical figures: in 2016, the Mad Hatter in Alice in the Wonderlandin 2017 Jack Sparrow in the last episode of the series Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Man Tells No Tales.
New family
The news is that Depp will be accompanied to Venice by his wife, Amber, the Texas blonde who forced him to capitulate last February after 14 years of marriage (but without a wedding ring) with Vanessa Paradis.
Vanessa seemed to calm the demons: he, who always considered himself old-fashioned in search of roots and family solidity that he did not have as a child, turned into a dad capable of playing Barbie with his daughter Lily-Rose (“I tried my characters, but she got tired when I changed my voice, she wanted me to be myself again”) and spend all her free time with her son Jack, “who is very similar to me.” They lived between the south of France, where his celebrity was protected, Hollywood and a private island in the Bahamas. But then, in 2012, there was an official break.
Since then, there have been no heartfelt interviews. Depp limited himself to promoting films: when he did, he got up more than once. He put up for sale a French villa with everything inside, including memorabilia. And, after ups and downs, he married a woman who is 23 years his junior.
Amber was a little more talkative. A few months ago, he said that marriage is “a natural development of an organic process after being together for a long time.” Long two years – they met on the set Rum diary and she, who had a girlfriend at the time, kept him on his toes—but that’s the sentimental vocabulary of Hollywood actresses.
The recent misadventures with Australia’s smuggling your dogs law have been temporarily put on hold, now eagerly awaited in Laguna: a youthful promise seeking professional initiation and a natural talent considered by giants like Brando, Pacino and Hoffman to be the finest of their generation . They will be photographed the most.
noble savage
Also in September, the equally anticipated debut of Johnny Depp took place: the first perfume review. The announcement was met with surprise: an eccentric and reserved actor with a (falsely) scruffy appearance, who provocatively appropriated the nickname “Mr Stink”, “Mr Stink” is chosen by Dior for the role Sauvage, a masculine fragrance reminiscent (but only in name) of the cult of the house About Sauvage.
An amazing choice also for “family” reasons. His former historical partner, Vanessa Paradis, is the symbol and icon of Chanel, the rival house that, in the meantime, has also adopted its daughter Lily-Rose as “The New Face”. A sixteen-year-old girl who inherited beauty, artistic talent and the ability to work from her parents. A few days ago, he boldly joined the Self-Evident Truths Project, a gallery of portraits of 10,000 people who claim to be “not quite straight.” The information campaign, which the father supported by wearing the slogan We Are You, also because the openly bisexual Amber had already supported this initiative.
But then again: why him?
The doubts melted away when we went to Palm Springs and Joshua Tree to see the film of the advertising campaign, and we saw it. A complete savage, a cocktail of damned beauty, last frontier restlessness and Mark Twain-esque American innocence. Aboard a ’69 Dodge, he leaves town and travels the lonely streets of the West in search of communion with nature and its animal side like a modern-day shaman. This isn’t a Johnny cartoon of the past few years: it’s the sexy Johnny that made women all over the world fall in love with him.
Did you already know Jean-Baptiste Mondino, photographer and campaign director?
“No, but he is very close to Vanessa, so I knew that when you work with him, you instantly fall in love with him. It happened to me too, because he is a man who has kept his purity. I told him that we need to make a silent film that does not have the luxury of speech. Working with him was a moment of freedom. We went from the crazy cacophony of Los Angeles to the silence of the desert. I trusted his story, his vision. And you know what I liked the most about this experience with Dior? Some arts and crafts are dying, they are dying in our digital age. The idea of combining fragments of fragrance to create a unique perfume is an amazing art for me. I’m old-fashioned at this.”
Many arts are losing their craft.
“I am amazed by television, which, sometimes going against the current, is not inferior in terms of artistic level to the best cinema. Some shows – I think the ones I watch on Netflix – are brilliantly written. It’s incredible how many elements they manage to cram into 55 minute episodes.”
Okay, but in essence: why the Dior advertising campaign?
“I don’t know much about fashion, even if I think I understand its meaning, I understand its aesthetics. But “wild” is a very important word for me. It suggests a certain humanity, a rebel without compromise. Like John Dryden’s The Noble Savage. After all, many of my characters were just that. Not corrupted, not corruptible.
Looking for roots
There is more than just the wild west in the film. Mystical symbols of indigenous cultures appear, animals sacred to Native Americans: coyote, eagle, bison. In the biographies of Johnny Depp, exotic features are always attributed to those drops of Indian blood that he is very proud of. It is no coincidence that he decided to play Comanche Tonto, another of his funny outsiders, in The lone ranger. And someone criticized him for it.
What will you say to those who say that one distant ancestor is not enough to make you a family?
“I was lucky that the Indian peoples we worked with treated me with great respect, especially the Comanche, who greeted me. Their boss said he wanted me to play the part because I have blood of my own, and LaDonna Harris, an amazing woman, literally adopted me. With this film, I wanted to launch a provocation in the way that Indians have always been portrayed in films. A bit like Jean-Michel Basquiat, who puts a cross on a word, and even if you cross it out, this word becomes the very word you look at. Even today I maintain excellent relations with the Comanche and the Navajo.”
The other America he loves is the America of writer Hunter Thompson. How did you meet?
“Through a mutual friend. I was in Aspen, he told me: come to the tavern, I will call Hunter and let you meet him. We were sitting at the table when at some point the front door flew open and the crowd parted like water, because he was holding a stun gun and a stun gun, also electric, and shouted: “Get out of the way, you bastards!” A classic hunter. Then he showed up and our story of love and madness began. When it comes to frivolity, Hunter was king.”
Has he already read his books?
“Almost everyone. There are very few authors that I find really funny, and Hunter is one of them. So you can imagine how happy I was to meet a writer that I have always admired. To end the night, we went to his house, to make little bombs out of propane and nitroglycerin tanks and blow them up in the backyard.We’ve been best friends ever since.When he asked me if I wanted to do a movie adaptation of his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (directed by Terry Gilliam, 1998., ed), for me it was obviously a great honor, but I also told him that he would probably hate me for the rest of our days. “You have to take the risk,” the bastard replied … When he was shown the film and he called me, I said: “Now you hate me, don’t you?”. And he: “No, why? It was like the ghostly sound of a trumpet on a lost battlefield.” How can you not be conquered by someone who says so?