THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 6, 1994 TAG: 9410060073
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Interview
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 146 lines
JOHNNY DEPP has played a lonely misfit with scissors instead of hands, a near-mute boy and a loyal kid trying to hold together a dysfunctional family.
People magazine currently calls him ``the Gielgud of grunge.''
Somehow, ``Ed Wood,'' one of the most eagerly, and curiously, awaited movie creations of the year (opening Friday) seems the next logical character for him to play. After presenting that weird cast of characters to the movie world, the cross-dressing director of truly bad cult movies should fit right into the Depp repertoire.
But there's another character he's created, the rebel-on-a-rampage Johnny Depp who is currently tabloid fodder.
He's made the news, as well as all the talk show monologues, with an arrest for trashing a $1,200-per-night suite at the elegant Mark Hotel in New York City.A judge ordered him to reimburse the hotel $9,767.12 in damages.
He's been seen at all the hip places in New York accompanied by his tattoo artist, a group of leather-clad bodyguards and Iggy Pop. His girlfriend, superthin supermodel Kate Moss moved out of the devastated Mark suite and apparently is not making the rounds with him.
Depp seemed bewildered but unbowed by it all.
``You shouldn't believe all that you hear,'' he said. ``Marlon Brando called and told me to `just roll with it, and have a good time. Don't ever start believing what they write.' He's one of the great men of this century, and he's been pretty misunderstood himself.'' Brando co-stars with Depp in ``Don Juan DeMarco and the Centerfold,'' set to be released next year.
Depp was sitting on a couch at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, peering from beneath his long, stringy and somewhat unkempt hair. He was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of the Los Angeles club he owns, The Viper Room, topped by a leather jacket. The interview had been delayed for hours while Depp's publicists talked in soothing voices about how ``Johnny will do the interview, but we don't know just when. He has to fly back to Los Angeles this afternoon, but he wants to be spontaneous. He doesn't want to set a definite time.''
``You want to know what happened about that hotel room?'' he countered when asked about the latest arrest. ``Ya really want to know about that? Well, I'll tell you the truth. We're paying $1,500 a night for the room. Right? And this huge roach crawls across the floor. It was the size of a baseball. I attacked it. But it got away.''
``With a baseball bat?'' he is asked.
``Yeah. What else?''
``What were you going to do with it, stuff it?'' seemed the next appropriate question. He ignored it.
Depp has created an image playing the outsiders of the world, the weird misfits who defy the normal world of posers and hypocrites. He began with a standard leather kid in John Waters' campy ``Cry Baby'' and stepped into big-star status when the eccentric Tim Burton chose him to play the title character in ``Edward Scissorhands.'' He followed with his near-mute role in ``Benny and Joon,'' a movie that gave him a chance to imitate both Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, and the recent ``What's Eating Gilbert Grape'' in which he played a hardworking kid trying to hold together a dysfunctional small-town family.
Now, Depp is taking himself out of the running for the role of James Dean in the upcoming bio movie - probably the most coveted role in the industry.
``Dean made three movies and was an interesting guy, probably, but it's too stagey, too obtuse,'' Depp said. ``I don't think I'm the guy for it. I've done everything I could to avoid labeling. Taking that role would be like wrapping myself in cellophane and hanging up a neon light that read `REBEL.' ''
He shook his head and added, ``It would be a big wallet move, the kind of move I don't want to make. If you want to sell out, it's easy to do. I couldn't choose a film just because of what I thought it would do at the box office.''
``Ed Wood'' is the perfect extension of his repertoire of unorthodox characters. Wood earned a place in movie history as the director of some of the cheapest, most laughably mediocre movies. He was the guy who used paper plates as flying saucers and hired the faded, almost forgotten, ``Dracula'' star, Bela Lugosi in several of his films. Wood classics like ``Glen or Glenda?'' ``Bride of the Monster'' and ``Plan Nine from Outer Space'' are equally derided and adored. The Naro Expanded Cinema once held a festival of Wood movies in which everyone was let in free, but had to pay to get out.
``I wanted to play Ed's energy and enthusiasm,'' Depp said. ``I don't see how anyone could call him `bad' for being true to his artistic ambitions. I really admire the guy. Nothing stopped him. He made movies and he made them his way. Today, they call him `the worst director in history,' but how could that be? He got those movies made. I don't believe Ed was really ambitious. I think he just had a hunger - a hunger that he had to express.
``I didn't really impersonate him - just his energy. I used a little of Ronald Reagan for him, too.''
Ed Wood, in addition to being a feisty pusher determined to raise the few bucks he needed to make his el cheapo movies, was a cross dresser with a particular affinity for pink angora sweaters.
``Ed liked women,'' Depp said. ``His choice was women; it's just that he felt that wearing women's clothes made him closer to women. It was kind of a comfort thing for him. I don't have to understand it to play it. I got into the outfits, and it gave me a new respect for what a woman has to do to go out. I wore the outfit off the set, but there was no confusion. I was obviously not a woman. No one mistook me."
Sarah Jessica Parker, who plays Wood's early girlfriend, Dolores Fuller, said, ``He looked better than I did in those angora sweaters. I mean, a girl had real competition here. The thing was that Tim urged all of us not to go over the top - to just wink at the camera. Ed was such a windbag that Johnny had the real tough role here. Ed was usually unpredictable and out of control. The film is really a love story between Ed and Bela Lugosi.''
Martin Landau, who is likely to finally win his Oscar for playing Lugosi, agrees.
``I'm supposed to be an older man, right?'' Landau said. ``But with Johnny, we became real kindred spirits. I feel as if Johnny is my contemporary, or the other way around. Johnny's been getting a lot of bad publicity lately, but he's a very sweet, gentle kid. It was that way with Bela and Ed, too. Here was this young guy who wanted to do movies and Bela was bitter and old and overlooked by the industry, yet they shared a desire to make movies - and they did it. I shared the feeling for Bela because for 10 years I got only bad, nothing roles in movies. I know what it's like to be overlooked. "
Earlier, Depp credited Landau with rekindling his interest in acting. ``During the filming of `What's Eating Gilbert Grape,' I just wanted to get out of acting altogether. It was a miserable experience. Perhaps it was because my character was so bland and so stuffy. Anyway, Martin, on this film, taught me that the craft is the important thing. Martin is a true craftsman.''
Depp, now 31, was born in Kentucky, the youngest of four children, and grew up in Florida. His teen ambition was to be a rock musician, not an actor. He joined a band called ``The Kids,'' a group that eventually got known well enough to open for The Talking Heads and the B-52s. He lived in a 1967 Chevy Impala and supported himself by selling pens until, in 1983, he went to Los Angeles and was introduced by Nicolas Cage to his agent. His first movie was ``Nightmare on Elm Street,'' in which he got swallowed by a bed. His break came in 1987 when posters and Johnny Depp T-shirts began to sell because of his role as a high school narcotics agent in the Fox TV series ``21 Jump Street.'' Almost immediately, he was receiving 10,000 fan letters a month.
At age 20, he married 25-year-old Lori Allison, a make-up artist. They were divorced two years later, and he has since been engaged to actresses Sherilyn Fenn, Jennifer Grey and Winona Ryder but freely admits that Winona was the great love of his life - now a lost love. He bares his right bicep to show what is left of his famous ``Winona Forever'' tattoo. He is removing it, but the process is so painful that he can do it only letter by letter. Now, it reads, ``Wino Forever.''
On the left bicep is tattooed ``Betty Sue,'' a tribute to his mother.
Tim Burton, David Lynch and John Waters are his favorite directors - all creators of the unusual. It was Burton, he confirms, who ``took the biggest risk with me. There were at least a half-dozen other more famous guys who could have done `Edward Scissorhands,' but they weren't willing to look bad in it. I was just this guy from a TV series, but Tim fought for me. He fought, too, to get `Ed Wood' made. No studio really wanted it.'' by CNB