Johnny Depp
by Gawie Keyser

Translation by Monica

Angora sweater, high heels, long blond hair and denture: strange props for a male moviestar. But not for Johnny Depp, an actor who lives by contradiction, alienation, transformation. His cinematographic life fluctuates continuously, as a chameleon, depending on the reality of the story. Mental laceration dominates the life of the characters he plays. For example undercover FBI agent Joe Pistone, who quarrels with his wife about his dualistic existence. 'I spend all these years trying to be the good guy, you know, the guy in the white fucking hat. For what? For nothing.' Or the ultimate Depp character, Edward D. Wood jr., who in his deepest heart wants to surprise his wife by looming up in angora, on an ordinary evening at home after doing the dishes. A frightened Dolores wonders in Ed Wood (1994): who is Ed Wood? And the wise guys in Donnie Brasco (1997), who just heard that their 'friend' Donnie in reality is a traitor, want to know: who is Donnie?

As viewers of his movies we are often in the shoes of the mafia guys or Dolores Wood. And so the question is: what kind of actor is Johnny Depp? In his movies Depp creates either alienating outsiders or 'normal' characters with whom a lot appears to be wrong mentally. The power of his split life on the big screen lies in the fact, that he uses his own public image to undermine the expectations of the viewer. This works as a confrontation. When we believe Depp to be a stupid teen pinup, like in the television series 21 Jump Street, he plays eccentric roles in movies like What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1990), Arizona Dream (1993) and Edward Scissorhands (1990). When we expect a grunge kid because of these curious works, Depp makes his appearance as a businessman in a suit (Nick of Time, 1998) or as an FBI agent in mafia clothing (Donnie Brasco). And when we reconcile ourselves to the fact that Depp has become a straight on, by testosterone driven male main character, he plays a director of B movies (Ed Wood) with an angora fetish, he turns out to be a murderous alien in the brilliant The Astronaut's Wife (1999), he is terrifically convincing in his rendering of the amphetamine life of Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1999), and in his latest movie, Sleepy Hollow, he plays the role of the effeminate 18th century investigator Ichabod Crane. Depp is the antipole of the archetypal film hero, but at the same time he has much in common with sex symbols like Marlon Brando, James Dean and Montgomery Clift. With Clift Depp shares an elusive kind of femininity, a silent vulnerability. Despite the diversity of his film roles, you can speak, like in the case of the antiheroes Brando and Dean, of a "Johnny Depp movie". You know what you get: ambiguity in the form of diabolic transformation.

When absinthe became again available some years ago in England, Depp bought several cases of it. In the 18th century absinthe was popular among poets who said to have visions after drinking it. Depp's love for absinthe was confirmed by Terry Gilliam, director of Fear and Loathing, an unsuccessfully movie wherein the artistic composition is a metaphor for the experiencing of hallucinations unchained by drugs. Depp's rendering of the journalist/writer Hunter S. Thompson shows a staggering sample of over-acting. Or rather: he was too convincing. This has to do not only with his liking for recreational drugs, but also with his interest for hippy literature - Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac - and his personal friendship with Hunter S. Thompson. In movie magazine Première Thompson admits that Depp is a rebel, an antihero against the grain in the style of Brando and Dean: 'He identifies himself with the image of the exile. This shows in his interest for literature about this subject and in the choice of his roles.' Depp says himself: 'The characters I play... are deeply damaged.'

You can see this best in the three movies he made with director Tim Burton: Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood and Sleepy Hollow. What's peculiar to all these movies - they are all more or less masterworks of the post-modern cinema - is that for a big part they are carried by Depp. The reason for this is not that he's a first-rate actor. It has more to do with his presence and our foreknowledge of his filmic identity. Burton avails himself of this. 'I love actors who like to transform, to change, who love to do the dirty work.' Judging by the contradictory characters that Depp plays, it doesn't bother him which image Hollywood has of him. He confronts also the viewer without fear. He doesn't seem to care that, involuntarily, we have expectations relating to him. For the figures of fiction never die in our imagination, and we give eternal life to Donnie Brasco or William Blake, the cowboy played by Depp in Dead Man (1996). Why shouldn't we long for them? Why shouldn't we expect from Depp to breathe new life into these immortal characters in his next role? What's wreckful is that the actor Depp simply won't do it. But still: even he is not a match for the imagination, so that he cannot totally wipe the relationship between himself and his characters. And that's why there are, sublimated, similarities. The strongest being the fact that Depp, surely in Burton's movies, plays outsiders who are 'damaged', as he puts it. Edward Scissorhands, for example, the Frankenstein monster who is 'not finished', who is taken away from his gothic castle to live among ordinary people in the suburbs. Or Ed Wood, the legendary 'World's Worst Film Director', a notorious cross-dresser who creates a misty alternative scene at the heart of Hollywood. Or Ichabod Crane, investigator from New York, who travels to a mysterious little town in New England, where the Dutch colonists are harassed by a murderous phantom, the Headless Horseman. Crane's character, a man who believes in science and not in ghosts, is molded by Depp's hands into a girl detective, as he says. Ichabod is indeed a sissy. He nearly faints when the New York magistrate - beautifully played by Christopher Lee, master of the old horror movies of the Hammer Studios - gives him the task to try a serial killer. With this Depp undermines not only the conventions of the gothic thriller, which dictate a strong male main character, but also the rules of the classic narrative movie. By implication Lee as the gothic hero, as strong male character in horror movies, carries over the lead to Depp.

What does the actor do with this inheritance? He breaks every rule for which Lee has fought all his actor's life. He does so not without a motivation. Ichabod appears to have to contend with a past that was determinant for the shaping of his character. His mental damage is the consequence of a disturbed relationship with his mother. His confrontation with the Headless Horseman forces him to get over the past. Only then he can admit that the power of imagination is stronger than his faith in science.

Reality and imagination clash in The Astronaut's Wife, an underrated urban horror movie wherein Depp plays an American astronaut who contacts an alien during a shuttle mission. The meaning of the movie is totally dependent on the Depp iconography, combined with the traditional symbolism of masculinity and heroism. Depp avails himself of his physical beauty - his status as sex symbol - in a diabolic way to strengthen the image that the viewer has of the virile, brave American astronaut. As viewer you sit there, powerless, while before your mind's eye the iconography gets the shape of archetypal masculine daring, like it's represented by the cowboy airman Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff. But as an actor Depp shatters this dream. The movie star/astronaut/sexbomb turns out to be a murderous, raping alien in the corridors of the sparkling skyscrapers.

One of the most beautiful metaphores of the art of acting comes from Ed Wood, a movie that like Sleepy Hollow is a movie about film, about the power of imagination. In Tim Burton's version of the life of director Ed Wood, who at the same time considers himself an actor, the stress is laid on the pleasure with which Wood and his production team, composed of transsexuals and drug addicts, plunge into the making of bad movies. In one scene the failures relax after a day of shooting. Eddie, in black dress, angora sweater, high heels and veil, takes care of the amusement: a striptease. His dance symbolizes the freedom with which he uncovers his sexual ambiguity. But the metaphor also applies to acting. To the bars of the jungle percussion rhythm the transformation takes possession of actor Ed/Depp. Every piece of clothing falls off, one by one, even the veil, so that only a close-up remains... of what? The truth? Anyhow, we see a half naked man in angora, without front teeth.

The actor sneers.