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10 Qs With ‘Public Enemies’ Star Johnny Depp

The ‘Pirates of the Carribbean’ star dishes on Dillinger, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and the return of Captain Jack Sparrow.

The mischievous court jester of Hollywood’s current A-list royalty, Johnny Depp can usually be found on-screen draped in greasy pirate dreadlocks or concealed behind ghostly pancake makeup, playing one of his signature exquisitely detailed eccentrics. But in Public Enemies, the latest crime saga from Heat director Michael Mann, Depp tamps down the masquerade impulse and offers a no-frills embodiment of John Dillinger, the legendary Depression-era bank robber who became a Robin Hood figure by lashing out at the financial institutions that had brought such widespread economic ruin to the nation. The resulting star turn is a welcome reminder that Depp is an actor whose gift for subtle introspection easily matches his flair for playing idiosyncratic kooks.

In a recent interview, Depp defended the sanity of his quirkiest creations, advocated striking back at the banks at the center of our current economic crisis, and hinted at what shenanigans we might expect from Captain Jack Sparrow in the next Pirates of the Caribbean installment.

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Considering the strange characters you’re known for playing, do you consider John Dillinger one of your more normal roles, or do you see him as another one of your quirky characters?
Johnny Depp: I think they’re all normal! Although saying that, I think that most people are insane. I mean, we’re all pretty weird, when you get right down to it. I would say he’s normal just in the sense that he was nothing much more than an Indiana farm boy who stepped in a pile of something unpleasant and ended up in prison. He was in criminal school for ten years, and that was his college education. And he became very good at what he learned. And the fact that this guy became a sort of mythic Robin Hood figure—I mean, this is a guy who really took the ball and ran with it, and that’s pretty normal to me. Most people run with it when they get the ball.

Do you think that idea of Dillinger-as-Robin-Hood will resonate with contemporary audiences, considering our current financial predicament?
JD: I certainly hope so.

Do you hope the film will inspire people to rob banks?
JD: [Laughs] I don’t know if I’d go that far. Unfortunately, people are different [now] than they were back then. Back then, in 1933, there was some degree of innocence left. And today, in my opinion, we’ve really hit the digital wall, where almost everything is available. So I think people [today] are dramatically different than John Dillinger [was]. I don’t know if you could have a similar kind of hero today. I mean, maybe Subcomandante Marcos down in Chiapas, who’s trying to protect the Indians in Mexico—he might be the closest sort of thing that we can have, in terms of innocence and purity. Because at that time, in 1933, the banks were clearly the enemy. They foreclosed and they were taking people’s lives away from them, not that it’s all that different now. But here we are teetering on this similar kind of recession/depression, and the banks are still the enemy now, you’re right. Oh, I don’t know. I mean, if somebody starts robbing banks, as long as nobody gets hurt, why not?

Dillinger is portrayed in the film as someone who thrives on improvisation and is very conscious of the immortality of his own image. Did you connect to those traits as being similar to qualities an actor possesses?
JD: Well, like I was saying before, depending on where you’ve been in your life—if you work in sewers, or pump gas, or work construction, or whatever you do—if somebody hands you the ball, you run with it as far as that lets you, which is all I’ve been doing for 25 years. John Dillinger getting out of prison after ten years, and, in a way, getting handed the ball, he started to realize … I hate the idea of him manipulating the media, because I don’t think he did. I think he just understood the game, and he, because of his savvy and the stuff he learned while inside, he learned how to play the game well, as you would. So yeah, there are parallels. I also think Dillinger had a semi-fascination with Hollywood, and the idea of movies, and his legend, and leaving his mark. I think most people feel like that, in a way.

Did you look at anyone who has played the character before, such as Warren Oates in John MiliusDillinger, or did you want to clear your head of that?
JD: There was no way to not remember Warren Oates as John Dillinger. I remember seeing that as a kid and just loving it. But I did stay away from it in regards to starting this film, because I didn’t want to accidentally steal anything from the guy, because he was so good.

Public Enemies is shot in high-definition digital video. How do you feel about working in digital? Do you prefer it to film?
JD: I mean, it certainly has got its advantages, [such as] the idea that you can keep rolling for 52 minutes, and it’s relatively cheap. I think it’s roughly a grand per 52-minute tape. There are advantages, there are disadvantages. For me, I like the texture of cinema. I like the texture of crude, grimy cinema. I sort of prefer that.

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Director Terry Gilliam, who you collaborated with on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, is trying to get The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, a project you two were once attached to that notoriously fell apart during production, back on track. Have you talked about that with him?
JD: Yeah, we have talked about it. Honestly, I love Terry, and I’d do virtually anything the guy wants to do. The thing is, with Quixote, first my dance card is pretty nutty for the next couple years, so I’d hate to ask him to be in a position to wait for me. That would be wrong. But also, in a way, I feel like we went there and we tried something, and whatever it was, the elements and all the things that got up underneath us were there, and happened, and were documented well in that film Lost in La Mancha. So I don’t know if it’s right for me to go back there. I don’t know if it’s right for Terry to.

Gilliam and Michael Mann are both such detail-obsessed filmmakers. Can you compare and contrast the two of them?
JD: Oh, boy. There’s almost no way to compare the two. The only thing you can say in terms of Terry and Michael and their similarities is that there’s a drive, a passion, an intense scratching out of the truth of the moment. But they’re very, very different. Terry giggles a lot.

What can you tell us about your next few blockbuster-sized projects—playing the Mad Hatter in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, the titular hero in The Lone Ranger, and Captain Jack in the fourth Pirates movie?
JD: Well, the Hatter was awfully fun. After doing something like John Dillinger, a performance where there’s some restraint because of the responsibility you have to that guy and his memory, the Mad Hatter was like being fired out of a cannon. [Laughs] The Hatter was great fun, and again it’s one of those things where you’re just amazed that you weren’t fired. I truly am. The Lone Ranger, we’re still in the super-beginning stages, so there’s all kinds of possibilities, but I feel like I have some good ideas for the character that I don’t think have been done all that much before. And then there’s someone else, isn’t there? There was another character we were talking about. What was it? Oh, Pirates, yeah.

It’s so rare that an A-list actor plays the same character four times.
JD: I mean, call me a glutton, you know? Honestly, [it would depend on] if we can get the screenplay right to Pirates 4. Obviously, virtually no cinema is perfect, so Pirates 1 had its own thing, 2 and 3 I suppose had their own thing, and it got a little confusing here and there during the story, not that I’ve seen the movies, [Laughs] but I hear tell. I think, for me, because I enjoy playing the character so much and people seem to like it, if there’s an opportunity to try again, it’s like going up to bat. You want to get back out there and try, try, try, and see what you can do again. At this point, what I’m trying to do is turn it into like a Beckett play. He could be anything now at this point. Jack Sparrow could be in sort of a … some Geisha clothing, I don’t know. We can explore other possibilities.

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