Source: Cranky Critic,
1999
Crancy Critic: Star Talk
With Johnny Depp
Still
sporting a gold tooth from shooting The Man Who Cried, his
next flick (which also stars Sleepy Hollow's Christina Ricci),
actor Johnny Depp settled down in front of our microphones to
talk about scarey movies past and present and his ongoing
working relationship with director Tim Burton. Sleepy Hollow
is their third collaboration, with Ed Wood and Edward
Scissorhands preceding this one. While Ed Wood was based on a
real person, many of us totally illiterate film types have an
image of Ichabod Crane seared into our memories by the
animated flick that Disney did years ago. Not Depp, who didn't
bring up the "D" word even once. .
.
Johnny Depp: I
lived with the creation of Washington Irving, first. I thought
I'd wear a prosthetic nose but the Paramount people, bless
their cotton socks, weren't very enthusiastic about that
[laughs]. My approach was to take the Ichabod Crane that
existed and elasticize him a little bit. I kind of thought of
Ichabod as being maybe a little too in touch with his feminine
side. Maybe like a nine year old girl trapped in a grown man's
body.
CrankyCritic:
Which explains a scene where he jump at the sight of a
spider?
Johnny
Depp: I don't recall that being in the script, but we
jumped at every opportunity for me to be a complete ham and
kind of a glutton for twisted humor. I did my best to throw in
things like that at every opportunity. Tim, also, would find
places for these things to happen and he was real good about
it.
CrankyCritic: Tim
is comfortable with you going improv?
Johnny Depp: I
always like doing that. I think that it's important for an
actor to understand that nothing is set in stone and you don't
really know what's going to happen until you're on the set.
More important, you don't really know what's going to happen
until the camera starts rolling. You leave a lot of things
open for the possibility of chance. Mistakes, accidents,
things like that. Sometimes those are the greatest things in
the film. I remember one particular instance in this film:
young Maspeth and I were walking towards the crone's cave and
we're approaching the cave gingerly. Ichabod reaches for his
gun and puts his arm around young Maspeth in a protective way.
During the take it happened that I put my arm around the kid
and I pushed him in front of me as a shield [laughs]. It just
seemed like the right thing to do. Tim liked it and we laughed
like fiends. We kept it in.
CrankyCritic: Is
it that you really like working with Tim Burton or did you
lose a big poker bet to him and are now indebted to him for
life?
Johnny
Depp: [laughs] It's just amazing. For me going back
to work with Tim is like returning home after war. It just
feels so comfortable. Aside from the fact that he's one of the
great visionary filmmakers of all time, he's a dream for an
actor. He's not particularly rigid in the sense that you have
no room to move or you have no opportunity to try things. He
inspires you to go out there and do whatever you feel like
doing. He trusts you, which the most important thing. If you
go too far, as some of us have the tendency to do sometimes,
he pulls you back in to the area where you need to be. That's
an actor's dream.
CrankyCritic:
Let's talk horror films...
Johnny Depp: I can
remember being totally fascinated with Bela Lugosi and the
Dracula films when I was five years old. I can remember
sitting in class in first grade getting in trouble for drawing
pictures of Dracula and Frankenstein. I remember it like
yesterday. When I was 5 or 6 years old, I was totally, utterly
obsessed with a television show called Dark Shadows. I wanted
to be Barnabas Collins. I wanted the cane with the wolf's head
on it. I'm sure that, for my parents, that must have been a
really scary thing. [laughs]
CrankyCritic: So
it must have been a blast working with Christopher Lee in
Sleepy Hollow.
Johnny
Depp: Oh yeah. What a presence that guy has.
CrankyCritic: Did
you have a big exposure to the Hammer films?
Johnny Depp: I knew
quite a bit of the Hammer stuff and dove into more when we got
there. Tim turned me on to a lot of the more obscure films.
Yeah, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, unbelievable
guys.
CrankyCritic:
Then, of the vampires: Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Peter
Cushing, Jonathan Frid, the best vampire is...
Johnny Depp: Well,
there's also Jack Palance. [pause] and George Hamilton
[everybody laughs, loudly] I think they're all different in
their own ways. Lugosi is always going to be ... that
beautiful, dark Tod Browning film is shining in my memory. But
Christopher Lee was a great Dracula. When you're doing a scene
with this guy and he's staring down at you and just about to
jump down your throat; screaming at you, it's frightening.
You're thinking "My god, that's Dracula!" He's
amazing!
CrankyCritic:
Every actor has an idea of how he wants his character to look
on the screen. When you first watched Sleepy Hollow...
Johnny Depp: I
haven't seen it yet.
CrankyCritic: You
haven't?
Johnny
Depp: I'm a total masochist. I wait until the last
second because I get ill. I can't watch myself.
CrankyCritic: Do you not go back and
watch your older movies?
Johnny Depp: Oh, no.
It's just very uncomfortable. I don't know. I've a tendency
like most people to think "Oh, I should've done that..." and
nitpick. I kind of conditioned myself over the years to
believe that once my job is done, once you've done a scene,
that scene is dead. You have to move on. Once my job is done
what happens after that is somehow none of my business. What
the director does with the cutting; you give it to him and
hopefully the performance is good.
CrankyCritic: Then
to the future. Is there any particular role you'd love to
play?
Johnny
Depp: Fortunately I've played everything I've wanted
so far. In terms of historical figures, Rasputin.
CrankyCritic: Do
you feel lucky to have gotten every role that you've wanted?
Johnny Depp:
Blessed. Yeah, really really lucky.
CrankyCritic: Are
you going to keep the gold tooth?
Johnny Depp: The
process of taking them off is a little bit violent and I do my
best to avoid any trip to the dentist.
