Interview
with Johnny Depp (plays Capt. Jack Sparrow)
Summer
is packed with movies that promise to entertain, but fall short
on story, laughs, and overall satisfaction. A movie based on a
ride at Disneyland is not something you would expect to be good.
However, “Pirates of the Caribbean” is by far the
best summer movie yet, by leaps and bounds, literally! Johnny
Depp is brilliant, he’s so funny, it’s really freighting.
I had the pleasure of meeting the man behind the genius act, and
this is what he had to say about his role:
 How
much fun did you have making this film?
Johnny: Oh boy,
it was almost like a crime, really to have so much fun. [Acting
voice] That’s quite impressive.
Congratulations.
Johnny: Thank
you very much.
I heard you used Keith
Richards as the inspiration for your character. How did you come
up with the idea?
Johnny: I thought
of Keith because I, I was trying to figure out what pirates might
have been like, or pirates, sort of that life style back in the
18th century and I thought, well man they were the rock-n-roll
stars of that, that era…and you think of like the greatest
rock-n-roll star of all time, so many options, but to me it’s
Keith Richards hands down. Yeah, I just…went in that direction
and then, and then you know, got a couple of other ideas like
Pepe Le Pew was also a character that I thought would work, or
at least, there was something about Pepe La Pew that I always
thought was really beautiful. The idea that this guy, just absolutely
had blinders on to reality and just believed what he thought,
and so I always thought Pepe Le Pew was really interesting and
I also kind of thought of Jack Sparrow as a sort of, kind of like,
he’s kind of, constantly moving organism you know, who would
sort of shape himself to whatever situation, whoever he needed
to be shaped, he would mold himself into that, sort of like this
organism with a perpetual martini glass…Keith the sage,
you know, the wise sort of unbelievably smart guy. It’s
kind of like, you know, Hunter Thompson…he’s a brilliant
writer and great man. I’ve seen it happen where people,
because they, they just look at Hunter and they think he’s
out of it, so they assume that he’s just burnt and you know
he’s not illusive, and he’s—you know, and they,
they’ve been kind of, oh disrespectful in a sort of, in
a very sort of round about way, and Hunter being incredibly smart
and he’ll pin point and I have seen him just level, verbally
just decimate people, and I think, I think Keith is similar…People
just assume Keith Richards, yeah really, you know the junkie years
in the 70’s, and he’s out of it, and all that stuff.
No, no, no, he’s one of the most well read brilliant people
I’ve ever, I’ve ever come in contact with. He knows
everything about history, like history.
Can you talk about
the fact that you’ve got this character who is not a conformist;
he likes living on the outside—
Johnny: Yeah
but he doesn’t know that.
Sometimes it seems
like that’s you, you live on the outside. Is that what gravitated
you to this part?
Johnny: Well,
I’ve always, I’ve always been interested in; I guess
fringe maybe is a way of putting it. It’s a, the people
I’ve always admired in whatever arena you know whether it’s
art, or film, or whatever you know, music, always been the, the
people came in from, from the outside, who didn’t just,
you know I mean I prefer Daniel Johnston to a, to a Mariah Carrey,
you know what I mean? Like, like really by far [laughs], okay,
really, so ah, so ah, and you know like Daniel Johnston is who
I admire. I don’t know, it’s people; it’s the
kind of people I’ve always been drawn to.
 Do
you think a part of you slips into all the characters you’ve
played?
Johnny: There’s
no character you can play that where, where a part of you whether
it’s a great big portion or even a little portion, part
of you doesn’t slip in it’s always there, you know,
it’s gotta come from someplace of truth, but ah, you must,
it’s like growing up, you know, I never felt, I don’t
know that I felt so such like an outsider really, like--really
far away from, you know, the king and queen of the prom or whatever
you know. I definitely never felt like an insider, ever, and,
and the way I live my life today is pretty consistent with the
way I lived it back then. I just wanted to do what I wanted to
do. I remember being, you know, thirteen fourteen years old and
just skipping certain classes and sneaking into the guitar room,
you know where, skipping in the school, hiding out with a guitar,
playing in the music room. Yeah.
So in a way you were
like Pepe Le Pew.
Johnny: Yeah,
yeah, kind of, I mean, there were times, I remember being really
really yellow…twelve years old, was it 1974 75 something
like that, you know long hair, you know really not, not, certainly
not one of the sort of jock kids or anything like that and I fell
madly in love with the, with one--the cheerleader, like the most
popular of the cheerleaders of the school. It was like this, it
was beyond Romeo and Juliet [laughs]. It was like, [speaker voice]
this is never going to work, [normal] the formula doesn’t
exist, and sort of, you know coming to terms with that.
Did you try to change
yourself?
Johnny: No, no,
no.
Did you try to go
up to her?
Johnny: She came
around a little, she came around a little [laughs]
Have you heard from
her since?
Johnny: No.
I haven’t run into her. It’s been many many years.
I heard you directed
this film called “The Brave” with Marlon Brandon,
what happened with that?
Johnny: Ah, nothing.
 How
did you enjoy the process of directing oppose to being the actor?
Johnny: It was
pretty interesting, pretty interesting education I would say.
I like the process, I would like the process way more if I didn’t
have to be in it. That was really the drag for me there. ‘Cause
not only did I have time to do all that work, but I had written
that thing with my brother, and I’m acting in it, and directing
it. It was just too many hats, and directing and acting are two
completely opposing sort of things, you know. As a director you
want to be, you have to be totally aware of everything going on,
and as an actor you don’t want to be aware of anything accept
that moment. So yeah, I do like the process of it, but I, I don’t
think I can do it again if I were in it…Plus I had to watch
myself in dailies, which was like devastating.
You don’t watch
yourself now?
Johnny: Oh, I
hate it, I hate it. I can’t stand it.
You do watch your
movies when they come out in theaters?
Johnny: Only
when I have to, only when I’m forced to.
Is it because you
want to critique yourself?
Johnny: Yeah,
you start, you get self conscience. You start to get self-conscience
so at a certain point I just stopped watching the dailies, you
know, I just stopped watching the dailies and I’d know there
were a couple of things I want to print, you know to see what
they were going to be like, and then I would ask my DP, my cameraman,
tell the scripter what you want to print ‘cause I can’t
be objective anymore.
Can you talk about
working with Jeffery Rush, and did you guys put together a back
story for your characters?
Johnny: We did,
you know we kind of did have, we sort of joked around about our
back story…we joke around like, they were, they were, I
wanted, ‘cause here’s this fierce pirate, you know
Barbossa, who at one time had been my first mate and all that
stuff and now he’s taken over my ship and stuff like that,
and I, and I thought the greatest secret that Barbossa would want
hidden, I knew it, I knew it. I was going to actually, I was gonna
add it into the film, but you know once you start getting into
the sword fights and things like that you run out of time, you
run out of dialogue. I, I, I thought his greatest secret was that
his first name was Hector. [Laughs] You know, and he laughed,
you know. So I would, every time we’d come up to set to—you
know, I’d come up to set and he’d be standing there
and I’d say, “Good morning Hector.” [Laughs]
It was really cool.
If you have any questions, or
comments, you can write me at jax@latinoreview.com.
PIRATES OF THE
CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL OPENS JULY 9
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