The
Johnny Depp Zone
Interview
Archive
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The
Unprocessed Johnny Depp
by
John H. Richardson
Photographs by Noman Jean Roy
Esquire Magazine
May 2004
Johnny Depp is 40. BFD.
The Unprocessed Johnny Depp ~ A chatty encounter with America’s most eccentric movie star, who talks about Hollywood, fatherhood, how he’s made a career of failing, and how it all came together in a movie based on a theme park and the most liberating screen character in memory.
“With actors—and really all artists—if they do something that really pleases me on a lot of levels, I’ll stick with them for a couple of movies,” says writer at large John H. Richardson. “And I’ll keep seeing Johnny Depp’s next five movies just because of Dead Man (1996).” Despite his admiration for Depp’s work, Richardson was a little suspicious as he set out to spend an afternoon with the actor, but Depp’s off-kilter personality and bohemian tastes won Richardson over. “A lot of people who are on the fringes get a big attitude about it, and it becomes a way of feeling superior, cutting themselves off. Johnny didn’t do that. He kept his integrity and showed that there’s a meeting point between these two worlds, bringing this joyous, iconoclastic energy to a huge audience. And it really worked.” Richardson’s nonfiction book My Father and the Spy will be published by HarperCollins next year.
The Unprocessed Johnny Depp
The essential meaning of the actor, patron saint of the lost and lonely
THE FACT IS, I WANTED TO MEET JOHNNY DEPP because of Alison, my sister-in-law. She's about forty-five and pretty but always looks a little beaten down, one of those people who seem to apologize for living. She and her husband—who has a job doing landscaping work for one of the titans of our modern economy—have spent years living in the usual small apartments trying to raise a kid on spit and spare change, and Alison would always be so helpful to other people that she'd end up taking care of their kids too, for free. Once, she got so sucked into the lives of all her loser neighbors that she had to move just to get some free time. But a year or two ago something happened to Alison, a blinding flash of insight and revelation that changed her—she discovered Johnny Depp.
But
let her tell it. Here she is, come to my office clutching a box she
laughingly calls the Johnny
Depp
archives. She looks completely different than she did a year ago,
wearing more makeup and tighter clothes and hair gone long and wild
with even a few brand-new gold highlights, and it all comes together
in a way that purrs sexualite—like I
said, a 180 degree
change from a year ago. And she lays out photocopied articles on my
desk, laughing and telling me how embarrassing it was to stand in
line at Kinko’s and copy all this stuff while the woman
behind her
gave her the hairy eyeball.
“When did I first start getting into him?” she asks. “I think with Don Juan DeMarco.” She loved the theme of the movie, that even if it means everybody is gonna think you’re crazy, you have to become the person you dream of being. Then she saw From Hell and was blown away by that, too. He was so mysterious and beautiful and other worldly and kind and intelligent and insightful and . . .
Enough of that. When it comes to adjectives for Johnny, Alison gets a little carried away; she even sends me a supplementary list by e-mail the next day. But all of this just leads up to Alison’s Big Turning Point, the day Pirates of the Caribbean came out. She was with her friend Cyn, a fellow devotee. And as soon as Johnny made his entrance on the mast of that sinking ship, stepping off onto the dock with perfect devil-may-care insouciance, well . . .
“Afterward, we said we hadn’t felt that way since the Beatles.”
They became addicted. Every weekend that summer, they traveled to different theaters. After a while it got so embarrassing, they started telling their husbands they were going to the mall or the gym or the library—anything to cover up their fiendish Johnny jones. They started watching Entertainment Tonight and the E! Channel in hopes of catching the random glimpses of him, scanning the Internet for Johnny trivia, wishing they lived in Florida, where (as rumor had it) fans had started a Rocky Horror-ish interactive Pirates night where they bit into an apple when Johnny bit the apple and said, “That’s very interesting” just when Johnny said it. They smuggled airplane bottles of mojito rum into the theater to keep that Caribbean buzz humming.
Never mind the bad teeth. Never mind the makeup. In fact, that was the point: Captain Jack was so piratically liberated, he made Alison and Cyn question their entire lives. How had they become so cautious, so boring, so utterly middle-of-the-road? What the hell happened to them?
ODDLY
ENOUGH,
Johnny
Depp had the exact same experience himself, which he described five
years ago in a lovely little article he wrote called
“Kerouac,
Ginsberg, the Beats and Other Bastards Who Ruined My Life.” 
The
story begins with the day his older brother ripped Frampton
Comes
Alive! off the turntable, put on Astral Weeks,
and handed
him a copy of On the Road:
“And so began my ascension (or descension) into the mysteries of all things considered Outside. I had burrowed too deep into the counterculture of my brother’s golden repository, and as years went by, he would turn me on to other areas of his expertise, sending me even further into the dark chasm of alternative learning…I wanted my education to come from living life, getting out there in the world, seeing and doing and moving among the other vagabonds who had had the same sneaking suspicion that I did, that there would be no great need for high-end mathematics, nope…I was not going to be doing other people’s taxes and going home at 5:37 p.m. to pat my dog’s head and sit down to my one meat and two vegetable table waiting for Jeopardy to pop on the glass tit, the Pat Sajak of my own private game show . . .”
He goes on, doing that spontaneous bop prosody thing.
So it makes perfect sense that when I finally do get my Johnny moment, it’s like a drug deal: Check into the Chateau Marmont and we’ll call you when we call you. It’s perfect not just because Johnny has himself spent time waiting on the man, not just because he built himself through unwavering loyalty to a vision given to him by others, not just because he’s a rock ‘n’ roll dude who started out in bands (and got this close to a record deal with an eighties glam band called the Rock City Angels), but because Zen Beatnik Lesson Number One is that you must abandon your will before refreshment arrives. So I sit in my room and watch the Hustler and Touch of Evil on AMC and remember what movies can do when they’re sufficiently inspired or deranged, and finally the phone rings and a voice comes on and says, Johnny’s running a little late. Hang tight.
Like I said, it makes perfect sense. What movie star has enacted the paradigm of celebrity evasion more perfectly than Johnny Depp? The guy hides behind masks and makeup and scissor hands and bald spots and oddball, bizarre weirdness more than any other movie star in history. Look at the filmography: Cry-Baby, Edward Scissorhands, Dead Man, From Hell, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. This ain’t a career; it’s a cry for help.
Another
half hour, then the phone rings again. Down the hall, knock knock,
and there he is, sitting in a chair. For a guy who doesn’t
give a
damn he’s definitely sporting a look—professionally
ripped denim,
in a floppy old brown fedora, amulets up his arm, and some kinda mojo
hand necklace dangling to his breastbone. He smiles sweetly, asks
about my room, opens a window, and pretends to be alarmed that maybe
he broke it, making a joke about the days when he trashed a hotel
room or two. And we start to talk, mostly pretty boring stuff at
first. In the spirit of Johnny, I’ll give this to you pretty
much
unprocessed.
JD:
OS X was a nightmare. 9.2 was fine.
J.
Richardson: Yeah.
When
the room-service waiter comes in, Johnny starts talking to him about
antiques and even walks him to the door. The kid leaves beaming.
JD:
When you first got to the teenage period, were you scared shitless?
J.
Richardson: Spoken like a father.
Every
so often, he asks me if I want some more coffee. Every so often, he
rolls a cigarette and smokes it. And adds a little water to his
coffee.
J.
Richardson: You have spent some time in France, right?
Don’t
they do that in France?
JD:
No, this is me just growing up on diner coffee. I’m a Maxwell
House
guy. This is way too highfalutin stuff for me.
I
do ask him about showbiz a couple of times, but it doesn’t
seem to
be a subject that brings him much joy.
JD:
I don’t recall anything that knocked me out. I like not
seeing too
much of what’s going on out there, you know? In fact, I like
not
seeing what’s going on, not knowing what anybody else is
doing and
not knowing who anybody is. It’s like ignorance is bliss.
J.
Richardson: I think out here, you get caught up in what
other
people’s values are. It’s easy to lose sight of
your own.
JD:
Yeah. I really, more than anything, despise the competitive thing
that just sort of is in this industry, you? It would be different if
it were kill or be killed, but it’s not, you know?
He
gets quiet and internal, sucking on his little brown cigarette,
tapping it on the rim of the ashtray, sinking down under his big
sheltering hat. But I try again, asking him if he had to ignore a lot
of expensive professional advice to make so many oddball movies.
JD:
Well, I took their advice. It was Cocteau, I think -- Cocteau
said advice is a great thing to listen to and disregard. [He
laughs.] And at times it is, you know? Because nobody really
knows what you’re feeling, what you’re really going
for, what
you’re really trying to do. Hell, I didn’t even
know what I was
going for. I just knew that I didn’t want to be assembly
line.
J.
Richardson: Cheez Whiz.
JD:
Yeah, Cheez Whiz. There were agents, upper-echelon agents over the
years who said, Listen, here’s the deal: You have to do this
because you can make this much money and you can do this and you can
do that, success and power and all that. I listened to them and they
were right, you know, but I was right. I couldn’t go where
they
wanted me to go.
J.
Richardson: Are you happy being an actor?
JD:
Yeah. I’m a lot happier now than I used to be.
J.
Richardson: Yeah?
JD:
‘Cause for a lot of years I was really freaked out. Maybe I
took it
all too seriously, you know? I was freaked out about being turned
into a product. That really used to bug me. Now, more and more, I
enjoy the process. Creating a character, working that character into
a scene, into the movie. I mean, the last couple of things have been
just a ball.
You
seemed to be having fun on Pirates, I say. Alison
is going to
want to hear about this.
JD:
I had a ball. I really had a ball every single day. It was just a
gas. It’s probably the most centered and content
I’ve ever been,
starting a little bit before that point, because everything comes
from home and emotion and what you’re living in. We started Pirates
and my girl was three and a half, a great relationship. My little boy
was just in the throes of the caveman period and hilarious.
J.
Richardson: Is that one of their bracelets you’re
wearing
there?
JD:
My daughter made these for me, and then, amazingly, she chose every
single bead on this one, little skulls and stuff. She put these
skulls on, and then she had one green bead and she said, “Ah,
this
is gonna be for Daddy . . .”
He
seems pretty happy talking about his own movies, which gives him a
chance to praise the directors and other actors. The surprise is that
he often agrees to make them even if he doesn’t much care for
the
script. If he’s a fan of Roman Polanski, that’s
reason enough to
say yes to The Ninth Gate.
JD:
I think Polanski is one of the few filmmakers who nearly did a
perfect film, a couple of them. Chinatown was
almost perfect.
It may be perfect. And I was really excited about the prospect of
going to work with him. The screenplay was sort of like, all right,
you know. Maybe when we get in there, we can float around a little
bit and find some stuff and change it. But he doesn’t want to
do
that so much.
He
laughs again, happy to be talking about the quirks of someone he
admires—that’s Roman, and he’s the
filmmaker, so what are you
going to do? Hell, sometimes Johnny makes movies without even seeing
a script.
JD:
Dead Man, there was no script.
J
Richardson: Just ‘cause you like Jim Jarmusch?
JD:
‘Cause I love him, and, you know, he’s another guy
who’s made a
perfect film. Probably a couple of times.
Same
with Ed Wood. No screenplay there, just an idea by
Tim Burton.
And Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which
he’s going to
shoot with Burton this summer in London. And same with Pirates.
JD:
I was sitting in a meeting with Dick Cook over at Disney, a kind of
general meeting, and he said, “What kind of stuff are you
looking
to do?” I said, “I don’t know.
I’d kind of like to do some
kiddie stuff. Something a bit more accessible for mine, you
know.”
He said, “We’re thinking of doing this thing, Pirates
of the
Caribbean,” And I just said,
“I’m in.”
J
Richardson: That’s the last thing I would have
expected you to
do, a movie based on a theme park.
JD:
I can’t explain it, you know. I just had a feeling.
I don’t
know why. And there was every chance in the world for it to be
something horribly embarrassing. I just had a good feeling, and then
all the elements came together and it worked fine. Interesting.
Of
course, they were a little freaked out by the way he came at the
role—the makeup, the gold teeth, the weird way he walked and
talked.
JD:
There were a number of people, you know, when those first dailies
came in, it was like, What’s that? What’s he doing?
I just kind
of ended up having a few conference calls and meetings and stuff, and
basically, again, I just had a feeling that I had my hooks into this
guy so deeply. I just had the feeling that the kiddies would like him
and that it wouldn’t just be like a kiddie character; the
average
Joe could like him and the heaviest of intellectuals could like him.
What’s amazing to me is I didn’t do anything
different than any
other character, you know what I mean? I mean, I just did the same
job I always do. But somehow the film hit, and now I meet these
little kids who go, “Man, you’re Captain
Jack!” And you can see
in their eyes that it’s not Johnny Depp or any of that
bullshit—they’re meeting Captain Jack. God, what a
high that is.
That you’ve somehow pierced that curtain and have made an
effect to
some degree. That little kid’ll have that memory of watching
that
movie when he’s a grown man or a grown woman. And that, to
me,
means so much.
J.
Richardson: Ten years ago, when you were in your thirties or
late
twenties or something, could you imagine yourself saying that?
JD:
No, I was just a dumbass.
So
it’s not quite the no-compromise life Alison imagined, at
least not
anymore. Which leads him into the past, how he came out of Florida
with his rock band in 1983 and lived in Nic Cage’s old
apartment
near Hollywood Boulevard, so broke that he took the Mexican change in
Cage’s drawers down to the check-cashing joint on the corner
of
Hollywood and Whitely so he could buy a hot dog or a pack of
cigarettes. Getting his first role in Nightmare on Elm Street
for the “shocking” sum of $1,200 a week. Gradually
realizing he
wasn’t gonna play guitar for a living after all.
JD:
At a certain point you get one of those moments where you just go,
okay, apparently this is the path you’re on now. Just go a
little
farther and see what happens. I always figured I could go back and
play music if I needed to.
Then
he brings up the TV-heartthrob thing, something he spontaneously
returns to several times, how he got the part on 21 Jump
Street
that changed his life so fast. Suddenly he was living in a nice hotel
and getting paid big money and people were staring at him in
restaurants.
J.
Richardson: You were playing some kind of teen detective,
right?
JD:
I was playing a cop who looked young enough to go undercover in high
school.
J.
Richardson: And fuck with the students.
JD:
And fuck with the students.
J.
Richardson: An asshole. You were playing an asshole.
JD:
Yeah, a fascist.
Which
is kind of funny considering that he was the opposite
of that
slick young cop who could get over with the kids because he was so
down and studly and in control.
JD:
I’ve always been drawn to those fringe types. The
whole “we
who are not as others” thing, you know?
J.
Richardson: What’s that?
JD:
There was a book called Freaks: We Who Are Not as Others.
I
always loved that title, We Who Are Not as Others.
Not so much
freaks, but we who are not as others. I always thought that was
great.
J.
Richardson: That’s why it’s strange
you’re in Hollywood,
‘cause it’s basically a mainstream place.
JD:
Maybe I was just too dumb to sell out.
J.
Richardson: I do have a feeling like if Depp is doing Pirates
of the Caribbean, there must be some reason why
he’s doing it
that’s authentic. Maybe I won’t in ten years.
JD:
Shit, I may be doing TV in ten years. Or doing fucking appearances at
a hamburger stand dressed as Captain Jack, you know.
Doubtful,
especially when you consider the way he gasses on about how much he
loves Ed Wood, the thought that when Ed was storming the beaches in
World War II, he was wearing a bra and panties underneath his combat
fatigues. He seems so happy telling stories about making the
movie—“And
there I was, man, I was in like a tight skirt and my wig all screwed
up and lipstick smudged all over my face”—it lights
up his face.
JD:
He was totally pure. It really all came from an absolutely right
place. That was why Ed Wood was so important to Tim
[Burton,
the director] and I. It was really like a love letter to him. We
appreciate this guy, you know?
J.
Richardson: There’s purity to all those characters
you play.
They’re trying to be sincerely themselves and not fake it.
JD:
I think that’s important. Even in your own life. When you
meet
someone like Hunter Thompson and watch him, get to know
him—people
say whatever they want to say about Hunter and his
books—he’s
pure, he’s absolutely pure. There’s really not an
ugly bone in
that guy’s body.
J.
Richardson: Really?
JD:
Yeah He’s just himself. That’s rare. You know, like
Roky Erickson
and the 13th Floor Elevators, a band out of
Texas. They
were basically the first psychedelic-rock band in 1965. And if you
listen to old 13th Floor Elevator
stuff—Roky Erickson
especially, his voice—and then go back and listen to early
Led
Zepplin, you know that Robert Plant absolutely copped everything from
Roky Erickson. And it’s amazing. And Roky Erickson is sitting
in
Austin, Texas; he’s just sitting there. And Robert Plant had
a huge
hit. It always goes back to those guys, you know? I love those
fucking guys.
He
lights another one of his little cigarettes, pours a little more
water in his coffee.
JD:
The interesting thing is, like, for the most part, I’ve kind
of
been able to glide through this weird little thing they call a career
in terms of the business world and in terms of the industry in many
movies that were considered absolute failures, flops. So I’ve
kind
of made a career of—
J.
Richardson: Failure.
JD:
Failing.
Then
there’s a knock on the door and in comes David Koepp,
director of
his latest movie, Secret Window. It’s
time for Depp to go
back to the odd business of being America’s most eccentric
movie
star, the man who inspired my sister-in-law and made women all over
America drool over a fey pirate in makeup.
JD:
That’s the thing, a pirate could do whatever he wants.
He’s a
pirate. Bind his feet like a geisha. He could do whatever he wants.
Anything. He’s a pirate. There’s no limit.
J.
Richardson: Yeah.
JD:
That’s what’s so fun.
John
H. Richardson Interview
By E Bronte
Posted
on the Johnny DeppZone
April 21, 2004
Here is my recent interview with John H. Richardson, writer-at-large for Esquire magazine. For anyone who is new here, Mr. Richardson has a cover story about Johnny Depp in the May issue of Esquire (US version.)
The questions asked were all contributed by loyal Johnny Depp Zone “members.” It was actually quite easy to edit the long list of questions that flooded in, because the same one kept coming up again and again and could be consolidated. It seems we do think alike.
Enjoy!
E
Bronte: What was JD like as an interview subject? Nervous?
Guarded? Forthcoming? Chatty? Bored? Boring?
J.
Richardson: He was . . . not chatty, but seemed happy to
talk. He
seemed to like to talk about the boring stuff – kids,
computers,
Django Reinhart – but also seemed happy enough to talk about
the
career stuff, although I noticed that he steered it in several
directions, subtly -- one, mentioning the horror of Jump Street-celebrity
experience, and two, praising other people. He loves to praise other
people. I wonder if some of this comes from his brother.
E
Bronte: You indicate that his “I don’t
give a damn” look
appears to be carefully constructed. Did you get the same impression
about his public persona – that “Johnny Depp,
self-deprecating,
nice-guy celebrity” is another great character in his acting
repertoire? Or do you think he revealed at least something of his
real self in your interview? (By the way, I’m not suggesting
or
asking if he’s a phony. Every celebrity is a product sold for
public consumption. It’s the nature of the beast.)
J.
Richardson: No, I don’t think the nice-guy thing is
constructed. It’s intentional, but not constructed. He
definitely
seems to have a sense of decency and egalitarianism. This came
through for me strongest when, at the photo shoot, I talked to his
makeup artist. She’s been with him since Arizona
Dream, and
she wasn’t any glamorous, fabulous person . . . a little
socially
awkward, a real person.
E
Bronte: What other celebrities have you interviewed and how
does
JD compare?
J.
Richardson: George Clooney, Keanu Reeves, Sean Connery,
Angelina
Jolie, lots of others . . . they’re all different,
obviously. Most of
them seem like nice folks, most of them are pretty guarded (except
Angelina). Johnny’s the most bohemian by a long shot, in the
sense
that he’s into all those romantic beatnik artists. And lots
of
other artists and musicians. I guess I would say that his frame of
culture references was bigger and hipper than any other actor
I’ve
met. He’s not faking that at all—really knows his
stuff.
E
Bronte: Were you given any restrictions up front? Forbidden
subjects?
J.
Richardson: No. Although his publicist emphasized that he
doesn’t
live in France.
E
Bronte: Realizing that you’re a guy and probably
didn’t spend
a whole lot of time noticing, was Johnny physically what you expected
based on what you’d seen of him in movies and photos? Taller?
Shorter? As striking (beautiful) in person? Is his face as fine-boned
and delicate in person as people have reported?
J.
Richardson: He’s smaller than me (J. Richardson is
6’.) A bit
fine-boned, I suppose, but not dramatically so. He has a way of
huddling down under his hat and his totems. But when the camera was
on him, some of the times, he kind of beamed Johnny out. It was
striking, like one of those magic powers in those hobbit movies.
E
Bronte: Was anything additional discussed that
didn’t make it
into the article that you found interesting?
J.
Richardson: Yeah, of course. I liked talking about music with
him, Django and swing and such. I liked his little ironic remarks.
Lots of those. He knows the names of famous bookbinders. And he has a
very sweet affect that’s touching and pleasing.
E
Bronte: Were you pleased with the outcome/editing of the
article?
J.
Richardson: Not really. Originally it was twice as long and
more
ambitious, taking the form of a beatnik rant. Oh well.
E
Bronte: Did JD mention any books by name that he has read and
admired?
J.
Richardson: Beatnik stuff, mostly. Other stuff I
don’t
remember. I think he’s read a lot of what hip English
students
read, minus the litcrit theory.
E Bronte: When and where was the photo with the old bottles taken? And the other photos?
J. Richardson: All in a house in the Hollywood Hills with a view that stretched a All in a house in the Hollywood Hills with a view that stretched a hundred miles over the bay. When Johnny walked in, he said, “Too bad about the view.”
E Bronte: The “scribble” drawing behind the title of the article – did Johnny draw it?
J. Richardson: I don’t think so.
E Bronte: Did some topics seem to excite Johnny more than others, or make him clam up?
J. Richardson: He was pretty open. He was a little skittish about the drug references, I suppose. And that France thing.
E Bronte: And John, you may scoff at these two questions, but they are important to women – what did he smell like, and what was his handshake like?
J. Richardson: His handshake was firm but not obnoxiously so. I didn’t notice any smell.
E Bronte: People have said that upon meeting him, they had an instinctive feeling that he was “a little bit dangerous.” Did you find this to be true?
J. Richardson: No.
E Bronte: And lastly, they want to know about your new book, My Father the Spy – when will it be out and is it a memoir, biography, or expose?
J. Richardson: It’s a biography with a bit of a memoir, I guess. Supposed to be out next year, but I keep getting distracted.