Searching for Johnny Depp
Author: Greg Akers
Can you dig it? I’m walking down the hall of the elegantly unremarkable Cape Fear Community College the other day. Per usual, I’m garnering the exact amount of attention and fanfare that being an Akers justly deserves: zilch. Everybody pays me no heed. Me, Mr. Short Unassuming Guy Wearing Late 90’s Vintage Eyewear. Thankfully, my capacity of “Professional Wallflower” affords me certain privileges and opportunities. Say, for instance, eavesdropping.
I walk the Cape Fear halls, I frequent the Cape Fear cafeteria, I sit on the Cape Fear benches. I breath, I read, I blink, I listen. Turns out, Cape Fear students, faculty and staff have something to say. Sometimes they talk about their spouses or others significant. Sometimes, they talk about the ballgame last night (did you hear Cape Fear lost to Mundane State?!). Sometimes about how well they did on a test and why that means that they’re gonna have pizza today instead of the “hash brown mound”.
And yet, more often than not, above all else, they’re talking about one topic in particular. At first, I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Something about “Boba Fett” or “money debt”. It was all very confusing, the mystery deepened by how often they seemed to talk about it.
For example, I once was in the cafeteria and heard that “Run Me Left is so hot”. Now, I’m not too hip, so I didn’t know if this was me misunderstanding what I was hearing, or if this was the sizzling new rap group featuring Run DMC and Left Eye Lopez. I mean, I just don’t know that stuff. So I did what any red-blooded American would do: I went up and asked.
“Pardon me for interrupting, but I couldn’t help overhear your conversation. Were you talking about Run DMC and Left Eye joining forces, forming a new supergroup named Run Me Left? Do you think it was wrong of Left Eye to burn down Andre Rison’s house?”
I’ve got to be honest: these two girls looked at me like I had just urinated on their table. This didn’t particularly faze me, as by this time I had gotten used to the looks I draw after people realized that I was the one that those zany and totally improvable rumors were about.
After a few moments of confusion, we were all on the same page. My new friend Wanda finally cleared up the mystery for me.
“No, not ‘Run Me Left’, whatever that is. We’re talking about Johnny Depp!”
It was at that moment that I had something akin to what Saul encountered on the road to Damascus. The scales fell from over my eyes, and I suddenly understood a large key to what this life is all about.
I thought back on the conversations I had stolen, I mean overheard, previously in my time at Cape Fear, and they all made perfect sense. Thus, the illogical sentence “I think the best movie that international movie star Money Debt has ever made is Sleepy Hollow”, overheard in my Deductive Reasoning class, becomes a completely rational and well-organized idea. To say that I was thunderstruck would be an understatement of Deppian proportions. Cape Fear was abuzz with Johnny Depp talk and I was the last to hear about it.
I felt like that guy in that movie that sees this corner of rock sticking out of the ground, and he spends his entire life digging it up, like 60 years or something and then, right before he dies, he realizes that it’s no rock, it’s the Statue of Liberty, and it turns out that this was Earth all along. I felt like that guy, on the very first day that he sees the rock. There’s this huge thing underneath him and he’s only seen the tip of it, kind of like a tip of an iceberg, except really a very different concept. Ice is so very different from rocks and Johnny Depp.
So, at that moment, I knew there was a bigger world out there. A world where anything is possible because of Johnny Depp. Who is Johnny Depp? A good question. I knew of him, of course. What do you think...I’m a communist or vegetarian or something? I had seen some of his movies before. He stuck out in my mind as having dark colored hair. That, and he spoke mostly in English. Whew, I look back at that moment, when all I knew was that he had dark hair and was English-fluent, I realize how far I’ve come. But all that is for later. Back then, it was only the beginning.
From that moment forward, I was on a quest. A quest into the heart of America and Americana. A quest into the rules and taboos that bind us as countrymen and women. A quest for spiritual truth and transcendence. Further than all, a quest into the boiler room that lies at the bottom of the pit of every person’s soul, keeping warm the hopes and dreams of a lifetime. A quest for Johnny Depp. I was reminded of a line from the song “The Wanderer” by U2. “I went out searching, looking for Johnny Depp.” How had I missed this line the 8000 times I had previously heard it?
I knew that my journey would be arduous. I knew that I should definitely pack my Swiss Army knife. I knew that we might not all make it alive, but that it was a journey that had to be taken. For I knew that time and fate had bestowed upon me the duty to find out who, what, where, why, how and to what extent Johnny Depp was. I knew that I owed a certain debt to my fellow man, and especially to Jerry, the cafeteria janitor, who has cleaned up things that no one should have to.
My journey would begin simply. Johnny Depp resides most frequently in film. I had to watch some Depp movies. I began to dig….
I was flummoxed. The reality of how big the world of Johnny Depp actually was, made me quiver and shimmy, shiver and quimmy. It was a world I had never before suspected existed. And I was only at the beginning of my perilous quest.
After a little fact checking online (did you know Johnny Depp is, in fact, not 30 feet tall ??!), I moved onto my next step. I had watched Blow, but I needed to find out if Johnny Depp had made as much of an impression on my fellow Wilmingtonians as it had on me. I armed myself with a couple of questions I felt were pertinent, and I hit the streets of the Port City. I questioned the populace about which Depp movies they liked best, which of his performances they thought most brought down the house, whether or not they thought he would win an Oscar in the next ten years, stuff like that.
While the answers varied, I was surprised to find how excited the topic made people. One man, who I’ll call Zagreb for purposes of anonymity, couldn’t stop gushing about Johnny Depp.
“He is great man. I come to America because Johnny Depp. I vote him president in election.”
Another Wilmington citizen, Felicia, mirrored Zagreb’s effusive praise for Depp.
“I just think that boy is so cute. He’s got those little sticks in those shoes and he makes those feet just dance. I just about died when he did that.”
I have to admit that I didn’t know what that meant, but her eyes, riding perched above her smile like a great knight on an effervescent steed, told the whole story. Felicia’s heart was moved greatly by Johnny Depp. He had assuaged fears and pangs in her soul that would ever be unknown to me. And, as with Zagreb, the antibiotic quality of Johnny Depp had worked itself throughout Felicia and had rendered her healed.
I desperately hoped Depp would do the same for me.
It was during a conversation with another Depp devotee that my journey’s next step was made manifest to me. Her name was Moon, and she was the one that told me I needed to see the Johnny Depp movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
“Don’t even think about buying into the whole ‘America is righteous’ garbage that our parents shove down our throat from the time we’re born until we die. Not until you see that movie. It’s gonna open your eyes wide.”
I was scared. The idea that there could be a dark side to Johnny Depp hadn’t crossed my mind. For me, at that time, Depp was a benevolent force, raining sunshine on the outstretched arms of our fair citizenry. When did Saul first realize he might have to die for his beliefs? Did he know it immediately when he first saw Christ in the dust floating above that worn road? Maybe, maybe not. But, it wasn’t until my conversation with Moon did I realize that there was more to Depp than I had first believed. In fact, it was the first time I realized that I may not ever be able to fully comprehend the multitudinous facets of Johnny Depp’s persona. After a quick trip to my local video store, I entered the world of the multitudinous.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is just what the title suggests. Don't watch this movie expecting an uplifting time to be had by all. The finer characteristics of mankind cannot be found within 1000 miles of this movie. What you've got instead, is a wilting look at what happens when the American Dream is blitzkrieged by the depravity of humanity.
Johnny Depp totally owns the role of Thompson. In one of Depp’s greatest performances, the actor transforms himself visibly and audibly to inhabit his character. Depp is the type of actor that studies for months before taking on a role, and he hanged out with Thompson constantly, studying his mannerisms of speech and body language. The results are on the screen.
The stalk of his cigarette holder clenched in his jaw, Depp talks his way through the dialogue with a series of grunts and half-comprehended utterances. Possibly a full fifth of the dialogue I have yet to understand after a fourth viewing of the movie. Thankfully, the film isn’t interested in speaking clearly for every dimwit like me in the audience.
I went back to the mean streets of Wilmington, armed with my trusty knife and my never-say-die attitude, I was ready to once again, take on the Depp intelligentsia. I had the same questions and added a few others, such as with whom should Depp act next. The surveyed impressed me heartily. Their overall effulgence at the subject matter quelled my fears of a public not aware of its greatest asset.
Johnny Depp really needs to act soon with 'Phillip Seymour Hoffman', 'John Cusack', 'Joan Cusack', 'Gaby Hoffman' and 'Danny Trejo'.
Above all, amongst the many people I spoke with about Depp, I got a real feeling that Johnny Depp was going to save the world through rock and roll. When they told me this, another piece of the puzzle snapped into place. Of course he’s going to save the world through rock and roll. It just makes so much sense.
It's important to note that it was by way of the people I encountered that I really grasped who Johnny Depp is. For example, you can't watch fire and understand the depths of its spirit. You have to talk to those that have been burned by it, you have to talk to those who have the scars to prove they know what fire is.
I wasn't the first to come their way looking for answers about Johnny Depp, and they were happy to point me in the right direction in my quest for truth. It's only now that I've realized that I won't be the last to seek him out. Something about life being a wheel, the whole business was kind of over my head. But, I essentially understand that I'm not the first and I'm not the last.
Now that I was a halfway-literate person in the culture of Johnny Depp, I felt it was time to confront the very entity that I was studying. That meant going to the very seat situated in the Most Holy Place. I was going to talk to Johnny Depp himself.
I had some connections on the left coast and I called in some old favors to get Depp’s telephone number. That done, I waited for the perfect moment to come, and then, with the pulse raging in my wrist, I picked up the phone and dialed.
Seven rings later:
“Umm, hello?”
“Mr. Depp? Johnny Depp? Pardon me for bothering you, but could you answer a question? When do you think you might be saving the world through rock and roll?”
“Wha—Who is this? Do you know what time it is?”
“Yes, sir. My name is Greg and I‘ve been on this whole big thing, a quest kind of like that guy in the movie that was digging. Do you think you might be working with Gaby Hoffman soon?”
“Look, I don’t know who the <expletive> this is, and how the <expletive> you got this number, but this conversation is over. Don’t ever call here again.”
There was a click in my ear, and really, that was the extent of my conversation with Johnny Depp.
Of course, I was onto his game almost immediately. Published cinema trade reports said he was working on this new movie out in California, and clearly he was so deep into his role that he was acting out his character even off the set. This was just like before he did Fear and Loathing. It was really amazing, that I had come that close to the venerated truth for which I had searched so long for. To talk to Depp and interact with the character he would be playing. Marvelous.
The distance between the almost-truth and the real-truth is razor thin. Sitting at home, the telephone still oozing tone after my disconnected phone call, the real-truth finally clicked into place in my mind, like a Roulette ball nestled home in RED 14, as if it had always been there and would remain so forever. Real-truth had come home to roost in my mind, and once you are acquainted with real-truth, its a life-long relationship.
And here's the REAL truth. Johnny Depp is not an actor. He doesn't "play" characters. He's not sometimes Ichabod Crane and sometimes Dean Corso. He's not an acting water faucet to be turned on when the film rolls.
No. He's Johnny Depp and it's a full-time job. I hadn't just had a phone conversation with a movie character that Johnny Depp was playing out in California. I had spoken with Johnny Depp, and the character that he is portraying in California is every bit as much a part of the inner-most soul of Depp as Edward Scissorhands and Joe Pistone.
For Johnny Depp, every new character is nothing more than a new way of expression of some previously unspoken turmoil or delight that has long been chambered under lock and key in his heart. Depp demonstrates what makes himself tick every time he takes on a new roll.
Depp is an eternal giver. His charity to the viewing audience is boundless. He gives himself to us deeply in every film.
Words swirl around me like the depleted tendrils of a near-dead fire. Words that can never begin to describe what is indescribable. Words that mean nothing unless you already understand the subject they refer to.
Some words are mine. Some are yours. They’re all true.
Johnny Depp: Genius. Gold-stamped, certified. Genius.
Also: Passionate. Mysterious. Fearless. Serious while making you laugh. Funny while making you think ponderously. Wildly popular with the kids. An icon of his generation. Real strong, quick wit. Really cool.
Also: A fine actor. Transforms himself in each of his new incarnations. Can play dumb, can play whippy. Always chooses his roles with marked aplomb. Makes the films his own.
Also: Ladies love, girls adore. Makes leather look like it’s cheese-easy to wear well. Boyfriends smirk, but inside, they know.
Also: Tenebrously revealed. Incomplete. To know fully is to know too much. Faceted like the Hope Diamond. A slight rotation reveals anew.
Finally: All of these words together mean nothing. They’re like a blurry picture and you can’t tell if that shape at the top is an arm or a walrus.
Johnny Depp is kind of like that.
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(Editted for length)
*** Note -- I printed this article off the internet many years ago and have kept it in my stash of JD-related things, because it was one of the funniest (and best) stories written about Johnny that I had ever read. Kudos for a job well-done Mr. Akers.
L. Griffin