What's Eating Johnny Depp?
When I was seven years old, I fell in love for the first time. To many of you that may seem quite young but, to me, it was completely rational. I can’t remember why, but at some point in 1995 or 1996, my mum recorded John Waters’ Cry Baby (1990) off of the TV - but only managed to record 40 minutes. I can’t remember how I found it, but when I saw Johnny Depp singing King Cry Baby in that black and white 1950s suit for the first time, I was utterly swooned. I fell completely head over heels in love: I watched that video on repeat (just those 40 minutes); I took photographs of the TV in a bid to token my love for this man; and I begged my mum to buy me a Cry Baby poster – she did and I kissed it goodnight religiously for about three years. Cool I know.
This is what you call true love, am I right? Lucky for me, around this time, Channel 4 aired a Johnny Depp season devoting an entire month to the actor. I recorded Arizona Dream (1993), Benny and Joon (1993), What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? (1993), Ed Wood (1994), Dead Man (1995) and Nick of Time (1995) onto VHS so I could thoroughly study this gorgeous, captivating and talented man.
So here I am, in the prime of my cinematic youth and solely dedicated to this one man, having 100% convinced myself that he is the greatest actor on the planet. Now, this obsession began to dwindle around the early 2000s and it is only as I have grown older that I understand why, and for two reasons: I later left Johnny for another man, River Phoenix; Johnny has betrayed me. I thought that it was because I had found a new love in River as adolescence came my way, but I now know that this is not the case; he betrayed me and all of the others out there who stood by him since Cry Baby.
Around post-21 Jump Street fame (as we all know) Johnny was sick of being pinned as the “heartthrob” or “teen idol”. So he did what any decent rebel would do and starred in an obscure John Waters film. The man was known for his transgressive, cult and often “filthy” films, which was the perfect way to diminish these often degrading labels. As well as this, and his starring role in Edward Scissorhands (1990), the man was perceived as one of the most up-and-coming actors; taken seriously as opposed to being just a pretty face.
Following his array of impressive performances in films such as Arizona Dream, Benny and Joon and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, the actor proved his versatility and ability to accept a challenge. As cinema moved into the mid-to-late-1990s, I could see that Johnny was starting to take on more heightened roles – Donnie Brasco (1997) and Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) – but I felt that he was starting to lose his edge when he re-teamed with Burton once again for Sleepy Hollow (1999). I for one could see a pattern forming that I knew I was starting to dislike: the wigs, the make-up, the ‘we’ve-seen-this-before’ routine…
Charles Dickens once said “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times”- I feel this is the case when it comes to Pirates of the Caribbean (2003). When Jack Sparrow came along, everybody loved it and it was during this time that I saw a change in Johnny. As the years went on, his roles were fluctuating – good with roles in Blow (2001) to bad in From Hell (2001) and The Man Who Cried (2001) – and it seemed that his safety net was consistently Burton (and Bonham Carter, of course). But now comes his latest roles as Whitey Bulger in Black Mass and The Mad Hatter in Alice Through the Looking Glass. Everybody kept saying that Black Mass was Johnny’s “comeback” performance, having gone from the risk-taker to a monotonous face full of make-up and wigs. And, it’s safe to say, that nobody cares about an Alice in Wonderland sequel. Am I wrong?
Often I look back on Johnny’s old films of the 1990s and reminisce about the love that we once had. That may seem unhealthy to some but I feel it is necessary. I had the wonderful opportunity to meet Johnny at a press conference for Mortdecai (let’s not even go there) and, despite knowing that his film was utterly abysmal, he was extremely polite, friendly and considerate to the press. However, we’ve grown apart over the years, and I have still to find a sense of closure, but it's hard to forgive.