Johnny Depp: The Playboy Interviews (50 Years of the Playboy Interview) (4 page)

Depp:
In Lima, Peru I bought an enormous, beautiful bat and two dozen lacquered, stuffed piranhas. Coming home through Customs was funny. “What’s in the box?” “Oh, 24 piranhas and a bat.” “OK, strip-search this guy!”

Playboy:
Do you own anything that is ordinary?

Depp:
I have a lot of pictures that kids have sent me. They are some of the best things—little kids really identify with Edward Scissorhands, and they send me great, pure-genius pieces of art. Paintings of Edward, some of Sam in
Benny & Joon
—kids like Sam, too. They like the fairy tales. I frame some of those and put them on a wall in my house.

Playboy:
You also had a painting by serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Why?

Depp:
I’m fascinated by the dark and the absurd. I’m drawn to what’s behind that. And don’t we all have a bit of the ambulance chaser in us? The Gacy painting is one he did in prison. It’s of Pogo the Clown, a character he used to play at neighborhood get-togethers, family functions. Now, most people believed that Gacy was a pillar of the community, a normal businessman, even as he committed those horrible murders. I suppose what intrigues me is that even after he was caught and put in prison, he was painting this other image he had of himself—the nice guy who played the clown.

Playboy:
Do you think he believed the nice-guy image?

Depp:
I think he did, but he was driven by his sickness. Anyway, I got rid of it. I paid more than Gacys were going for and naively believed the money went to the victims’ families, which wasn’t true. I gave the thing away. I didn’t want it around anymore.

Playboy:
What else gives you the creeps?

Depp:
I used to have a nightmare that I was being chased through bushes and fronds by the skipper from
Gilligan’s Island
. I don’t know what was on his mind, but it wasn’t good and I didn’t want anything to do with it. As a kid I was also afraid of John Davidson.

Playboy:
The TV crooner?

Depp:
Yeah. I’d see him on television when I was younger, and it was that thing that scared me—the smile that was always there. The Man Who Always Smiles. That was frightening because it’s not real. You knew he might have been feeling like shit, might have wanted to kill somebody, but this was his persona, to smile. And it’s not just him. That thing is everywhere.

Playboy:
Politicians—

Depp:
Every politician is John Davidson. Eight out of ten producers are John Davidson. I know directors and loads of actors who are John Davidson.

Playboy:
How about you? Have you ever been a Davidson?

Depp:
[
Nods
] There are times when you put on a smile. It’s a fucking drag, but you mask your feelings because there’s nothing else to do. For instance, you’re giving an interview and the guy says, “How are you?” You can’t say, “I feel fucking rotten, I don’t enjoy this shit and I would really like to strangle you.”

Playboy:
Uh-oh.

Depp:
Strangling is an extreme example. But here’s a John Davidson spot—being a presenter at the Academy Awards. I did that in 1994. I haven’t seen it, but people tell me it went OK. My face was probably frozen in fear, because there’s a weird marionette artificiality to those things. Backstage all I could think was, How do I get out of this? I absolutely almost fled. I had a few options swimming around in my brain. Just collapse, fall over unconscious, that was one. Projectile vomiting. Another option was to tell the truth. Just say, “Before I introduce Neil Young I want to say that I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t want to be here. I just want to go have a drink. I feel nervous and a little bit sick.” Of course, I wasn’t actually going to go out and say that. But what was really eating away at me was this: What if I suddenly get Tourette’s syndrome? What if I go out and start barking and saying motherfucker to the whole world?

Playboy:
But you did introduce Neil Young and get out of there safely.

Depp:
That was a good cigarette after that.

Playboy:
Wasn’t there a time you had a quasi-Tourette’s episode on a plane?

Depp:
Flying from L.A. to Vancouver for that television show [
21 Jump Street
]. I was in first class and something came over me. I was already shaky about the flight when it hit me—you have to shout something shocking. Blurt something, or horrible things will happen.

Playboy:
So then you yelled, “I fuck animals!”

Depp:
Yeah.

Playboy:
And, indeed, the plane didn’t crash.

Depp:
It worked.

Playboy:
You even faced down your fear of John Davidson, didn’t you? He played a talk show host in
Edward Scissorhands
.

Depp:
I had nothing to do with that. It was strange to work with him after years of being afraid of him. He was doing
Oklahoma!
somewhere at the time and he had a perm.

Playboy:
How John Davidson of him.

Depp:
So I got rid of that demon. It was a weird exorcism. We talked about his perm.

Playboy:
You’ve had other demons. There was a guy who kept calling around town insisting he was you. He said you were an impostor who had stolen his identity.

Depp:
Sick. Scary. It was like the ultimate Dungeons & Dragons game, and I was the enemy.

Playboy:
He called the studio demanding the money he had made for
Scissorhands
. That was funny to a lot of people. Was it funny to you?

Depp:
It makes you think. I’ve had other threats, too, and what hits you is that these people believe they’re right. They can justify their hatred of you because in their world, you are the enemy. It makes you rethink your job when you realize you can affect someone so intensely. So to me, they’re not evil.

Playboy:
Stalkers and kooks aren’t evil?

Depp:
They think their hate is justified.

Playboy:
How can you sleep?

Depp:
I’m cautious but not really paranoid. I carry a gun. Not today, but when there are threats I carry a gun. I grew up around them and I can shoot a little. I could never kill an animal, but I always liked target practice. Now I have a couple of Winchesters, a couple of .380s and a .38. Because basically, who wants to have a bunch of bodyguards? I don’t see myself with that kind of star treatment. I’d rather bounce around on my own. But at the same time, when there’s someone out there who actually wants to take your life, you should try to be ready.

Playboy:
Being stalked must darken your view of human nature.

Depp:
I never had the brightest view of human nature. I think humanity—society, at least—is violent. It’s not getting any better. I don’t think I’m cynical, but I do think maybe the world is more…sinful than ever before.

Playboy:
Does that feeling find its way into your work?

Depp:
It must. It’s a sense that the world is harsh to some people. Harsh, judgmental and wrong.

Playboy:
Your movie misfits often fight back in funny ways. There’s a story that you insisted on filming an alternate line in
Benny & Joon
at the climax of the love story.

Depp:
That’s true. It’s right when the music comes up and he looks into her eyes. The line is, “Joon, I love you.”

Playboy:
And your line was—

Depp:
“Joon, I’m a bed wetter.” I’m still passionate about that line. I didn’t get away with it, but I think it could have gotten a laugh and been touching at the same time. You can’t help laughing at the pain of this poor bastard, but he’s honest. And more than that…it’s easy to say “I love you.” The audience expects it. But to say you’re a bed wetter, to reveal something like that, is saying I love you. It’s saying I really love you, enough to tell you my deep, dark secret.

Playboy:
Do you have a favorite date movie?

Depp:
Wuthering Heights
with Olivier is a real tearjerker. Or Mike Leigh’s film
Naked
. You won’t forget that one.

Playboy:
How does porn affect you?

Depp:
I like a porn film now and again, but I don’t go out of my way to see one. I saw
Edward Penis Hands
. Tim Burton sent me a copy. It is a great film, really funny. As for most of it, I suppose it’s arousing to some people, but I get a little embarrassed watching people fuck. You’re sitting there watching and suddenly it seems so strange—the image changes in your mind and they’re not people anymore. The guy looks like a dog, making horrible faces. I’m sure there are beautiful porn films, artistically made. I just don’t want to see that guy.

Playboy:
How about love scenes in your own films? Are they arousing?

Depp:
I’ve never done a love scene that was arousing. The atmosphere is too ridiculous. You’re lying there kissing some girl, professing your undying love, and you see that grip over there eating a bologna sandwich.

Playboy:
You’ve never had a boner on-screen?

Depp:
Oh, I may have had a boner, but not in a love scene.

Playboy:
You’d better explain.

Depp:
Who knows what goes on underneath the table, outside the frame? I may have a feather duster down my pants. It’s not necessarily sexual, either. If I’m having a difficult time with a scene, getting too serious, I like to take a handheld duster or maybe a wrench, shove it down my pants and play the scene that way. Any object that doesn’t belong—it takes your mind off the seriousness of the situation. Just when you’re bursting into tears you realize there’s a dust mop in your shorts.

Playboy:
So there are multiple tracks in your head. One’s in character while another is sending out dust mop alerts.

Depp:
Yeah, and the other actor knows, too. That can add spice to the scene. I’ve used tools, fruit, a little squeegee that creates the sound of flatulence. It doesn’t have to be in your pants, either. In a close shot where they cut you off at the elbows, say, I may have a banana in my hand, or some guy’s shoe.

Playboy:
This from the man Brando wants to play Hamlet. What else can you tell us about acting?

Depp:
Sometimes you hate it. So maybe you say, Yeah, I make faces for cash, I tell a few lies. And in a way that’s right. In a way it’s just a gig like any other job. Except it’s more unstable, maybe worse for your mental health. If you’re doing what you should be doing as an actor, you won’t be very emotionally stable. You are constantly manipulating your emotions, fucking with yourself, fucking with your
self
, opening drawers in your head that you don’t really want to open but you have to, to maintain access to them.

Playboy:
What drawers?

Depp:
Family things. Childhood things. Fear and abandonment. Rage. You just feel stupid having this be a part of your job, and it fucks with you in bad ways. When you’re really flopping around in there [
bitter laugh
], you feel like an idiot for doing it. For going through it. It can make you miserable for three or four months. But you do it. You feel like an idiot, but you do it because it’s your fucking job.

Playboy:
You’re talking about
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
, a movie that struck close to home. Gilbert, your character, was trapped in a working-class family, but he had infinite longings.

Depp:
That’s one I haven’t seen,
Gilbert Grape
.

Playboy:
You still don’t want to?

Depp:
No, no. That mixed-up family and him being responsible, those issues clung to me. Making that movie was a bad time. I was as deep in the soup as I could be.

Playboy:
According to the tabloids you were hurting because of your breakup with Winona Ryder.

Depp:
That wasn’t really it. That’s what was written, but we hadn’t broken up yet, we were still up and down. It had more to do with me, with the difficulty of being inside my skin. I was doing what I could to numb that feeling, doing some in-depth poisoning.

Playboy:
What were your poisons?

Depp:
Pretty much anything I could ingest. And I was soused, drinking heavily, really doing myself in. When it gets constant, when you’re going to sleep drunk, waking up and starting to drink again, that stuff will try to kill you.

Playboy:
Did you think your vices would actually kill you?

Depp:
At one point I was living on coffee and cigarettes, no food, no sleep. I was sitting around with some pals when my heart started running at 200 beats a minute. That’s scary. You’re mentally trying to slow down your heart, but you can’t. It’s like being on a plane when the bottom drops out—you drop a couple thousand feet and one second turns into eternity. You really do get all those family pictures in your head. And you feel so totally fucking alone. I was thinking of my grandfather on my mom’s side, a great man I worshiped. His heart just exploded one day. When my heart started racing I hoped it was an anxiety attack, but when it went on for 45 minutes I knew it wasn’t anxiety, it was all the shit I’d done to my body. My friends got me to the hospital, where I got a shot—boom, a shot that basically stops your heart for a second. I could feel myself curling up, going fetal. Then it was over. I got to go home. Now, there’s an experience that’ll scare you into shape.

Playboy:
Did you swear off drugs and alcohol?

Depp:
Well, I’m a little thick so it took a while. I eventually curbed my drinking. A few beers or a couple glasses of wine, that’s not abuse.

Playboy:
Is drug use always harmful?

Depp:
It depends on the drug and the person. Some kids escape into sports. Some people go to the movies. Some escape with drugs. There’s one school of thought that drugs are recreational; there’s another school of thought that they can be therapeutic, a way to deal with problems. I think they’re usually a crutch, a way to avoid problems. I have never known a junkie who got away, never seen one that heroin didn’t get. But it always depends on the drug, doesn’t it? Reefer, obviously, is fine. I have never seen a guy smoke a joint and get so stoned he had to beat the shit out of someone.