I guess it’s good I stayed in music.ĭEPP: I sold one thing, one gross of pens to one guy. I lasted two days and didn’t sell anything. But I actually think that was the first experience I had with acting. You’re eligible to receive this grandfather clock or a trip to Tahiti.” You promise them all these things if they buy a gross of pens. But the beauty of the gig was that you had to call these strangers and say, “Hi, how ya doing?” You made up a name, like, “Hey, it’s Edward Quartermaine from California. Johnny DeppĭEPP: I marketed pens-on the phone. YOU DON’T EXACTLY KNOW HOW YOU’RE GOING TO PHRASE THIS OR THAT. I STILL APPROACH A SCENE AS ONE WOULD APPROACH A GUITAR SOLO. I think he just wanted affection, on whatever level. Every time I saw him, he’d want to hold hands. Being in his New York apartment felt like you’d walked into 1950.ĭEPP: And books everywhere. Those guys were the quintessential starving artists.ĭEPP: Indeed. POP: I think, later on, he was a little obsessed with that stuff. They’d sent a limousine-back in those days it was a stretch limo-and Ginsberg got in and goes, “Wow, how much do you think this costs per hour?” Afterward, I offered to give him a ride home. He just looked around my apartment and went, “How much did this cost?” ĭEPP: I met him when we were doing this documentary called The United States of Poetry in 1995-I was reading some Kerouac for the movie. I think I was a little over-the-hill by that time. He visited me once but he didn’t flirt, so I’m kind of hurt. POP: You mention Ginsberg flirting with you. But, of course, now you’re familiar with some of the better Bordeaux-Cheval Blanc and those.ĭEPP: It’s a ways from Boone’s Farm, for sure. Boone’s Farm was a big favorite for the Stooges, and especially for me. JOHNNY DEPP: Oh, yeah, man, Boone’s Farm was one of the early muses. IGGY POP: I’ve got this article that you wrote in 1999 called “Kerouac, Ginsberg, the Beats, and Other Bastards Who Ruined My Life.” In it, you mention being a teenager and daydreaming about drinking Boone’s Farm with the cute cheerleader. Last February, Pop, who now lives in Florida, phoned Depp, who was at his home in Los Angeles, to talk about heroes, guitar solos, getting into character, and getting away from it all. The actor and the musician then met again on the set of Cry-Baby and have been friends and collaborators ever since (Pop even scored the lone movie that Depp directed, the 1997 drama The Brave). Or maybe Johnny is just the same old Johnny-the Johnny who, with his band the Kids had a dream come true by opening for Iggy Pop in the early ’80s. Escaping the makeup trailer in this month’s techno-fable Transcendence, the actor plays a present-day artificial intelligence researcher whose mind is incorporated into a computer system-his character, in other words, disappears into a network of his own design. Now, aged 50, Depp may be reinventing himself yet again. And, for much of the past 15 years, those complicated sideshow characters of Depp’s have been the main attraction in a series of CGI circuses (as Willy Wonka and the Mad Hatter in Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland, respectively, and as Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean series). With his star turn in Tim Burton’s eerie fantasy Edward Scissorhands (1990), Depp began putting together the menagerie of oddballs, outcasts, and misfits ( Ed Wood, Don Juan DeMarco, Ichabod Crane in Sleepy Hollow, Raoul Duke in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ) that would define his reputation as Hollywood’s unpredictable master of disguise. And, even as he became grist of young-Hollywood tabloid mill (dating the likes of actress Winona Ryder and model Kate Moss), there seemed to be another Depp hiding beyond the spotlight, an inquisitive artist who sought out his creative heroes, including Marlon Brando, the Beats, his good friend Hunter Thompson, and Thompson’s partner-in-crime, the artist Ralph Steadman (with whom Depp appears in this month’s For No Good Reason, a documentary about Steadman’s life and work). In his first headlining role, in John Waters’s cult greaser comedy Cry-Bab y (1990), the actor sent up his own pinup status, playing a high school toughie with his tongue planted firmly in cheek. After his early roles, as the cute boyfriend in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and the cute narc on the late-’80s cop show 21 Jump Street, Depp fought against his matinee-idol image. In a sense, he’s managed to position himself as the beatnik troubadour of American cinema. Johnny DeppĮven more than the other superstars of his generation (the Pitts, the Clooneys, the Cruises), Johnny Depp has built a personal mythos as complex and compelling as his career. I WAS NEVER DISAPPOINTED BY THE PEOPLE I’VE ADMIRED. THERE ARE THOSE WHO MEET THEIR HEROES AND GO, ‘AW, FUCK.’ AND I’VE NEVER HAD THAT, LUCKILY.
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