The more intimate films in his oeuvre so far have included such “difficult” and “challenging” projects as ARIZONA DREAM (1991), BENNY AND JOON (1993), WHAT’S EATING GILBERT GRAPE (1993), DEAD MAN (1996), BLOW (2001) and ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO (2003). He has been directed a film close to his heart, the nouveau western THE BRAVE (1997), which co-starred one of his idols, Marlon Brando, who he met on the film DON JUAN DEMARCO (1995), in which they both appeared opposite Faye Dunaway. While seeming to work almost constantly, Depp still reserves time for his second career, as a musician in the garage band that he founded back in the years when he was earning a living pumping gas at a petrol station in central California. His recent foray into Broadway musical drama, an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s dark tale of SWEENEY TODD, was a major critical success and showcased Depp’s lyrical voice.
The film is set in the early 1960s as a young writer (presumably a stand-in for Thompson himself) arrives at his new job at an English-language daily in San Juan, Puerto Rico. There his drunken and rather outrageous behavior is complemented by equally boozed out rakes, played by Michael Rispoli and Giovanni Ribisi, who join forces to battle both their laconic editor in chief (played with characteristic low key charm by Richard Jenkins) and a real estate sharpie (played with sinister menace by Aaron Eckhart). The forces of conservative complacency and wild-eyed anarchy collide with many sequences of binge drinking, drug experimentation (including an extended sequence of the lead characters tripping on LSD) and foul-mouthed poetry. The film gives Depp a great character to inhabit….a wildly expressive motor mouth who is also his own worst enemy. It is the kind of part that an actor covets that is certainly not entirely sympathetic, and yet maintains its own crazy charisma as our “hero” battles the forces of corruption and calumny. Depp seems to relish the character’s unpredictable reliability and predictable cool, which seems to parallel his own vision of the world. He has once again championed Thompson as a legendary prophet and a touchstone for all that is creative and incorruptible in American life. Depp’s newest entry in the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN series opens this December, but we are looking forward to his next quirky and quixotic project, of which the actor and superstar seems to have many up his sleeve.