Empire
June l997
By STEVE GOLDMAN
(transcript by Meeps)

Depp Water

The child who wanted to be a rock star transformed himself into Hollywood´s greatest new actor on the say-so of Nicolas Cage. But while Johnny Depp eschewed big blockbuster movies in favour of small projects, many felt he hadn´t realized his full talent. Until now, that is. In Mike Newell´s Donnie Brasco, Depp plays the famed FBI agent Joseph Pistone and shows he has matured into a Hollywood heavyweight. "I just do things that are true to me," he tells Steve Goldman.

FORTUNE FAVOURS THE BRAVE.

In one of the most unnerving sequences to be seen on screen this year, Al Pacino and Johnny Depp simply exchange small talk in the front seat of a car. In a flash their loyalties and respective lives hang on the knife edge of a mere conversation. Some wiseguys maintain the Mafia movie has been done to death. To coin a line from the lips of Donnie Brasco - fahgetaboutit. Like a stiff drink on a cold winter´s night, Donnie Brasco, with an atypically mature Johnny Depp in the title role, gets the blood pumping for a new breed of mobster. These are the true underlings of the underworld, the petty loan sharks and hit men who in their day-to-day struggle share more in common with Arthur Miller´s Willy Loman than Mario Puzo´s Don Corleone. Like Loman, they work hard and dream of an illusory "better life." Like the fabled Don, however, their stock in trade remains cold-blooded murder.

"The thing is, these are real people in real situations," says Depp, who spent time on the fringes of the New York mob scene researching the role. "They´re very strong family guys with a tremendous sense of pride and a tremendous strength - it´s just that they´re on the opposite side of the law. I think that the movies over the last 25 years have portrayed them as thugs, villains or murderous animals, and our idea of what they are has been misled. The guys I met were not like that at all."

Written by Paul Attanasio (Quiz Show) and directed by Mike Newell (making a distinct departure from Four Weddings And A Funeral), the film is based on the real life story of FBI agent Joseph D. Pistone, who infiltrated the Bonanno crime family for six years in the mid-70s and subsequently published an account of his experience in the 1998 book, Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life In The Mafia. His observations of lower-tier mob life as rendered on film are uncanny, ringing with a rare sense of verisimilitude and an empathy bred of informed understanding.

His story is equally dramatic. As Brasco, Depp poses as a small-time jewel hustler who slowly wins the confidence of Al Pacino's hard-boiled insider, Lefty Ruggiero. Admitted to Ruggiero´s inner circle of petty hoods by dint of his willingness (and ability) to commit crime, he finds his loyalties increasingly divided between his mentor, government employers, and his own family who remains unaware of his activities.

"He´s a fascinating guy," says Depp of Pistone. "Initially, I thought we wouldn´t see eye to eye. I pictured him as one of those John Wayne characters who would be a little difficult to stomach. What I found instead was a real man, that image that you have in your head when you´re growing up what a real man is supposed to be ..."

"I think the role interested him because of the complex nature of the character," muses Mike Newell, who, in the wake of Four Weddings - "I had had enough of pretty girls and flowers" - rescued Donnie Brasco from development hell.

With Pacino attached to the 40 million dollars project, Newell (an accomplished if unlikely directorial choice) proceeded to hand-pick the seemingly equally unsuitable Depp, an actor whose career has been dominated by a procession of soft-hearted eccentrics. But for the 33-year old actor, it proves the kind of adult role that mainstream Hollywood has clamored for, albeit one he has approached on his own terms.

"Yes, we were concerned when we looked at his work. But Johnny is one of those actors who performs like a long distance runner," explains Newell. "In any film, you stay with him throughout in anticipation of the finale. Here he plays a young man who pretends to be someone he isn´t. His underlying character is initially very cold, but the prolonged exposure to Lefty ultimately makes him human, a transformation which takes place over the course of the picture."

"Joe was the real thing, I´m just pretending," says Depp, cautious not to overplay his own hand (even though Pistone has said that he thinks Depp would survive if he were to go undercover). "On a film set you get however many takes you need to get it right. Joe got just one and he would have to hit his mark every time."

"I did meet some very heavy underworld figures through this project," adds Depp, "and the thing is, I liked them very much, along with some very heavy upper echelon FBI guys who I could also identify with. They happened to be at cross purposes, enemies. But they do have a lot in common. Growing up we´ve all been taught the good/bad guy mentality. But it all boils down in the end to the same game - survival ..."

Since first coming to Hollywood in 1983, Depp has certainly survived. In fact, against all expectations, the Owensboro, Kentucky native has flourished.

Dressed in a sombre black suit and a white linen shirt, he now sports close-cropped hair in lieu of his trademark locks. At 33, he is neither the tattood young rebel of tabloid lore - keeping the rumour mills spinning for years with successive engagements to Sherilyn Fenn, Jennifer Grey and Winona Ryder, and further fuelled by the death of River Phoenix on the doorstep of The Viper Room (which he owns) - nor the polished Hollywood player. Instead, Depp comes across as an earnest if weathered pro who has chosen his own idiosyncratic path.

"Johnny is still fine," he says, somewhat thrown when asked if he may have outgrown his boyish moniker. "No, Johnny is what I`ve been called for years. If people start calling me John, I´d really worry I´d start using that Grecian Formula."

The youngest of four children of a city engineer and his wife Betty Sue, a former waitress (they divorced in 1972) Depp was a fairly unhappy child. He has spoken of carving his initials in his arm with a penknife at the age of 12. "Yeah, it was probably some early form of tattoo for me. It was anger and unhappiness and a form of self-loathing."

Once he fronted a struggling rock band, The Kids, whose biggest breaks were opening for such names as The Pretenders, The Ramones and Iggy Pop. He only embarked on an acting career at the suggestion of his friend Nicolas Cage and his former wife, actress Lori Allison (the marriage lasted two years). Acting was supposed to be a temporary diversion for Depp. Instead it became his permanent gig. He was eaten alive by a bed in his first film, A Nightmare In Elm Street. He was subsequently digested by Oliver Stone´s editors in Platoon - "my three-second breakthrough" - with most of his performance ending up on the cutting room floor. It was around this time that he landed the TV series 21 Jump Street (an unexpected hit) where he spent the next four years trying to wrangle his way out of a six-year contract.

Despite the 10,000 fan letters he received each month, Depp was looking for something more than teen heart-throb status. He found it while the show was on hiatus, taking his first starring role in the 1989 John Waters film Cry-Baby as Cry-Baby Walker, a send-up of his own TV image. The following year he made Edward Scissorhands with Tim Burton, his first (and to date, only) major box office hit.

On paper, his choice of films suggest something beyond an "alternative" taste. Far beyond it. Let´s not forget that Depp is the man who, over the course of the past seven years, has played a dyslexic who fell in love with a schizophrenic (Benny and Joon), attempted to escape the wrath of his 500-pound mother (What´s Eating Gilbert Grape) and frolicked as an angora-clad-cross-dresser (Ed Wood).

Not exactly mainstream fare. Indeed, more telling are the roles Depp has declined: Lestat in Interview With A Vampire (before Tom Cruise accepted it), Brad Pitt´s romantic lead in Legends Of The Fall, and the hero cop in Speed, which launched the career of Keanu Reeves.

Through Depp has remained something of an anomaly within the industry, he has emerged on screen as something more potent. He has been described as the man who "invented grunge" by John Waters. Ed Wood co-star Martin Landau compared him to James Dean. According to Time, he´s simply "the most interesting actor of the 90s."

"Johnny will do anything," said Benny And Joon co-star Mary Stuart Masterson. "He makes bold choices in his work and I think people appreciate that. There´s also a light in him, a uniqueness, a generosity of spirit that they respond to."

"I just do things that are true to me," says Depp with a shrug. "Other people might think these are odd films or odd roles, but to me they are not odd at all. It`s not that I have a fear of commercial success. I wouldn´t complain. I´ve got a real low tolerance for formulaic things simply designed to make your wallet fat."

That wallet, nevertheless. remains a candidate for the Rosemary Conley treatment. Though Depp´s most recent cinematic forays - the Jim Jarmusch Western, Dead Man, and the recent misstep, Nick Of Time - did little to bolster his commercial viability, the actor´s going rate is now a reported 4 million dollars per film. The former hotel inhabitant (who in 1994 quite literally wore out his welcome mat at one NY establishment) also recently purchased a 3 million dollar estate in the Hollywood Hills. True to Depp style, it is said to be the former residence of Bela Lugosi.

He has, notably, spent little time at this new homestead. Having completed Donnie Brasco, Depp plunged straight into his next project, The Brave. Based on the Gregory McDonald novel, it tells the story of a Native American ex-con who gets approached to act in a snuff movie. The Brave, which will reunite Depp and Marlon Brando on screen, marks Depp´s first time behind the camera as writer-director (a co-writer credit goes to brother, D.P. Depp) "I can´t say I approached it like a director. I was much more naive, like a guy who wanted to make a drawing. Regardless of how good or bad it is - it´s still my drawing."

He will follow it with the widely anticipated Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas - "I´m a glutton for punishment" - playing gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.

"The Brave needed me to be there all the time and that can get a little sticky for your private life," says Depp of the South Dakota shoot, a self-imposed exile which he admits tested the mettle of his relationship with supermodel Kate Moss.

"Not just with my girl, but my family as well," he says. "You´re working 17, 18 hours a day. My mom is in Kentucky and my girl would be in London or somewhere and they don´t know what you´re going through. They don´t understand until at a certain point you say, 'Look, here´s the deal - this is what´s happening to me and you´ve got to help me. You´ve got to be there.' I know I´ve been going nuts, just trying to finish my movie. It was a crazy thing to do - that´s not to say I regret it because I don´t. But I would say it´s not the most rational decision I´ve made in my life. I´m happy what we´re getting from the film. I´m proud of it. But it´s much more work than I anticipated."

His transition to full time actor-auteur following The Brave would seem a logical move. But Depp has never let logic dictate his course. "No, never again," he insists with an ambiguous smile. Or as Donnie Brasco might put it, fahgetaboutit .... ----------

ME AND MY SHADOW.
(Steve Goldman)

In a really rather reckless manner the real Donnie Brasco, despite a Mafia price on his head, decided to do some publicity ...

Joseph D. Pistone, the real Donnie Brasco, has to keep a low profile these days. For while publishers and film makers have paid considerable - and undisclosed - sums for the former FBI agent´s story, there remains another contract which has yet to be fulfilled - namely a $500,000 dollars price on Pistone´s head, courtesy of the Mafia.

"I have individuals that I travel with all the time that are friends of mine," says 58-year-old Pistone, who retired from the FBI last year. Pistone needs all the friends he can get. His undercover work for the Bureau during six years, from 1976 to 1981, resulted in criminal prosecutions which put more than 100 mobsters behind bars.

"My outlook is, I take enough security precautions as far as where I go, where I live, the names I assume, etc.," he says. "I´m not about to let a bunch of gangsters dictate the entire extent of what I can do." Pistone has done just that, metamorphosing himself into an undercover cheerleader for the new movie, carefully keeping the identity of his wife and children out of the press. This didn´t, however, stop Pistone from wearing a Donnie Brasco promotional baseball cap at a recent US press conference to promote the new film.

"Well, is anybody here a Mafia hitman?" bellows the ex-lawman whose best friend is the 9mm handgun he carries at all times. "If you are, I hope you´re better than I am ...."

-------

UNDER COVER GIRL.
(Christopher Hemblade)

Opposite Johnny Depp in Donnie Brasco, Anne Heche is making a lot of people sit up and take notice ...

A short, spright and scrubbed 27-year-old skips into Beverly Hills´ most exclusive hotel with all the pomp of a chambermaid. A surprising entrance for the actress who this year will erupt into something rather significant on the fame scale.

Anne Heche had been simmering for some time in TV work such as her Emmy-winning turn in Another World, and small but significant roles in films such as The Juror and Nicole Holofcener´s Walking And Talking. Now, with her impressive performances as a sexy scientologist alongside Tommy Lee Jones in the forthcoming Volcano, and as Joe Pistone´s wife in Donnie Brasco, she seems set for A-list recognition.

"I wanted to work with Johnny Depp more than anything," she says, her eyes rolling, "and what with Mike Newell directing, I was totally in awe - although I had to pretend I wasn´t!"

It all might sound a little implausibly be-dazzling but it has not been a textbook rise. Hers was a beleaguered childhood, with both a father and brother who died prematurely.

"My dad didn´t tell the truth and there was deep therapy - to the point where I turned down roles for five years while I sorted myself out." Resourcefully, she used the experience by investing it in a short film she has written and directing called Stripping For Jesus.

"It´s all about a woman who ends up murdering someone and it´s about the contradictions of religion. People need something as a support but you got to look to yourself."

The therapy talk Heche speaks might sound a little like LA psychobabble but it helps explain why she is so calm and collected about the attention she is about to get.

"You´re fine once you stop wanting everyone to like you. And if there is a backlash I can stop and do something else."

The challenge she has most enjoyed is Volcano.

"Unlike Brasco, which was a relationship piece, Volcano is much bigger and you´re trying to spit lines out correctly so the building being blown up doesn´t have to be rebuilt and blown up again ..."

Next, Heche is up for for a role alongside Harrison Ford, but in the meantime she can enjoy the memory of working with two of her heroes, Hoffman and De Niro on Wag The Dog.

"That time when I told them I was in awe, Barry Levinson just said, "Fuck your awe!" and the others said, "You are the one on the up now ...."

As well they might.

END OF ARTICLE

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