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Why Johnny Depp Matters (in a hip-hop generation)
By permission of Eugene J. Douglas

Johnny Depp is the first important actor of the hip-hop generation. Not because he's tucked deep into the heart of the hip-hop theatre movement (with its predictable cadences and bland riffs on performance art), but because he's the first actor to take the aesthetic of hip-hop and turn it into performances that have cultural resonance. Depp himself might not cop to being hip-hop; he comes from the world of rock and roll. In fact, being in an 80's rock band (The Kids) is what brought him to Hollywood in the first place – not acting. However, since putting down the guitar and picking up the script, Depp has been able to create performances that feel both familiar and edgy, mostly due to the fact that he takes stuff that's already out there and combines it in ways that no one could have expected. In his best roles the actor has sampled existing elements as diverse as Buster Keaton, The Tin Man, Pre-Teen Girls, Casey Kasem, and Hunter S. Thompson (among others), spinning them into something completely new. You could say that he's America's first successful Re-Mix actor. And what could be more hip-hop than that?

Before we go any farther, though, let's define what we mean by "hip-hop." in this particular instance, "hip-hop" refers less to a particular brand of music than it does to a multi-racial, reference-based lifestyle that was made possible only through the visionary work of African American artists, particularly in the worlds of music, dance, and graffiti art. Hip-hop is of this time, it is of this place, and it is uniquely American. Johnny Depp's acting takes the best elements of a hip-hop consciousness – sampling, the recombination of disparate elements – and uses them to expand the craft of acting. In fact, most major advancements in the art of performance have been about taking what has come before and grinding it into something new. Think back...

Eleanora Duse was a 19th century Italian actress, and company leader, who broke all the rules of her time. Back in the late 1800's, the rule of the day was ham acting, "spotlight performances" which were based more on oratory than on honesty. Duse's genius was in her departure from that style and into an acting mode that was much more quiet, subtle, and truthful. Her approach to acting was so influential that it prompted a Russian fan of her work, Constantin Stanislavski, to found a system that would be able to recreate it. It was Stanislavski's riff on Duse that helped define our 20th century approach to acting – and still forms the basis for most actor training today.

Next, look at Lee Strasberg's advancement on Stanislavski's system. Strasberg's approach, with its focus on an individual's interior experience, sampled a small element of Stanislavski's system, Emotional Recall, and morphed it into what many refer to as "method acting." In an early-to-mid 20th century era when everyone was supposed to behave like things were "just fine" – and turn a blind eye to openly-tolerated racism, sexism, self-hatred, drug addiction, queer hatred, and downright homogenization – Strasberg's Actors Studio-based ideas helped a whole generation of actors, and America itself, come to grips with its insides. His active combination of both the inner and outer landscape is what redefined America's notion of "reality" as more relative than fixed. That notion was sampled by the next generation of artists, creatives who blew the roof off the idea.

By the late 20th century, many artists were taking the idea of a relative reality beyond kitchen sink dramas and fourth-wall examinations of life. They decided to further fragment the artistic, and cultural, landscape by unleashing what can only be referred to as a gradual movement towards "post-everything." Post-Everything weakly describes the frenzy of performance that was set on departing from previous forms, deconstructing an easily graspable notion of experiential reality and discovering alternate modes of communication and presentation. Absurdism and Deconstructionist theatre, Performance Art and other experimental forms gradually bloomed on the scene, running parallel with the durable form of realism. And the acting of this era (with everything from Richard Pryor's comedy to The Wooster Group's theatrical experiments to the solo work of Karen Finley) was so schizophrenically diverse that it seemed to reflect a culture in search of its existential identity – a society wondering who were were, what we were doing, and how we could create a new artistic language.

That search has led us to the next stage: hip-hop consciousness. This is a verboten term to some, because it seems to reflect a departure from a cold, analytical, Euro-centric world-view to a place that's more untested, not as codified, and, dare I say, more dark-skinned in its inception. Yet hip-hop is about much more than race, as so many African-American inventions, from Jazz to fashion to the way we talk, have proven. It is a big-tent culture that has given rise to artists of all hues. Back in the late 1970's, when a Jamaican-born DJ named Kool Herc first brought out his turntables and used contemporary (and older) records as a background for Masters of Ceremony, or as elements in a new type of Bronx-based party music, everything changed. Sampling was hatched, and the idea of using existing material as something vital, not merely nostalgic, was born. It's followed since that recombination has become the rule in our lives. And not just in music. Which is where we rejoin Johnny Depp.

If Brando and Dean were exemplars of their emotionally conflicted times, and Post-Everything artists were reflections of a time when everything was in flux, then Depp is an expression of our age of readily available information. Thanks to the Internet and DVDs, every idea on performance, history, and the living arts is at our fingertips. And so, for this era, it's not about emotional recall anymore; it's about cultural recall. In Depp's widely varying performances his best acting happens when he steps away from the 20th century tradition of emotional realism, and even the forced eclecticism of Post-Everything art, and into this new form of sampled acting. Of Re-Mixed Acting.

Depp's most savvy performances have been combinations of material that's already out there. In fact, he's the first performer whose genius almost completely relies on being able to work off of something that's extant; think of the way he mixes Casey Kasem's voice with Ronald Reagan's gestures in the film Ed Wood. He's like a DJ at the turntable, extending a break-beat from this source and mixing it with a horn blast from that source. And let's make something clear right now: Depp is not just copycatting. Anyone who's seen the actor at work knows that his creations are never simply Xerox copies; they are always uniquely filtered through the actor's peculiar sensibility, and that's what makes his work so great. It's old, it's new. It's right now.

On the flip side of things, Depp's most stilted performances come when he's asked to work solely within the deadening form of "realism," or what passes for reality these days. For instance, compare his blank turns in What's Eating Gilbert Grape and Dead Man to the magic he creates in Benny & Joon or Pirates of the Caribbean. Or contrast his dead-on work in Donnie Brasco to the by-the-numbers bullcrap of Nick of Time. And it's not just about whether his material or fellow collaborators are off the mark – he's been able to elevate disasters like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas into fascinating character studies – it's about the fact that when Johnny is allowed to sample, he rules. And when he's working from 20th century traditions...he still does quite well, but the work pales in comparison. Johnny Depp proves that a new age of acting is upon us. A heightened age. A hip-hop age.

Get used to it.

(What follows is a small examination of Johnny Depp's performative highlights. Watch them in any order that you want. In fact, we encourage you to mix them up as much as possible.)

Edward Scissorhands (1990): This one made people sit up and take notice. As the title character in Tim Burton's suburban-punk remix of the Frankenstein tale, Depp creates a character whose childlike innocence and openness charms you from the first moment – no small feat, considering the fact the he's wearing a bondage outfit, fright wig, goth makeup and has scissors for hands! While the actor had previously performed bit parts in feature films and become a reluctant heartthrob on Fox's 21 Jump Street (even his turn in John Water's Cry-Baby was no stretch), this role showed early signs that Johnny could transform and invest a fable-like character with true dimension – something he'll attempt to do again in this year's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
This is Depp's first successful departure from "realism."

Benny & Joon (1993): Depp's skill at sampling grows, big time, in this annoyingly quirky comedy about a man (Aidan Quinn, as Benny), his mentally challenged sister (Mary Stuart Masterson, as Joon), and the magical young man (Depp) who shakes up their lives. The movie itself has a troublingly uneven tone, but if you look at the flick solely as a showcase for Depp, you can almost forgive the badness. The actor plays his character – Sam, a man who idolizes Buster Keaton – with deadpan control, and though the comedy sequences were choreographed by Rob Kamin, Johnny absorbs those moves and makes them his own. He flips, flies through the air, glides on furniture, and even throws a bit of Chaplin into the mix.
Rent the DVD, fast forward to Depp's scenes, and enjoy an actor who's starting to understand his skill at recombination.

Ed Wood (1994): A performance I never tire of. Sampling The Tin Man, Casey Kasem, and Ronald Reagan, Depp delivers one of his most memorable re-mixed characters: film maker Ed Wood, reputed to be the worst director of all time. Notice the aw-shucks tenor of his acting, the "performance" of emotions, the constant enthusiasm, and the upglides at the end of almost every sentence. This performance has the excitement and theatricality of a by-gone era, while masterfully mixing Kasem's voice, Reagan's way of comporting himself, and The Tin Man's sunny optimism into a character that both amuses and interests.
The Oscar-winning performance of Depp's co-star Martin Landau, as Bela Lugosi, is one of the finest acting jobs in recent history. Not to be missed.

Don Juan DeMarco (1995): A subset of Deppian performance that can be referred to as "meta-acting." The term, coined by acting guru Robert Cohen, basically refers to an actor who's playing a character who's playing a character. In the film, Depp plays a troubled teen who actually believes that he is the world's greatest lover, Don Juan. When Depp is playing the teen's impersonation of the Latin-Lover archetype he's on fire, delivering moments that trade on our stereotyped notions while also seducing us with its modern concerns. Unfortunately, when the actor transforms back into the "realistic" playing of the teen, his acting becomes devoid, vacant, and one note.

Donnie Brasco (1997): Watch Johnny Depp's face in this movie. Observe the stone cold, immobile expression; the furtive eyes; the razor sharp clarity of thought that's pulsing just beneath the surface – especially in his mixed emotion moments with Al Pacino's character, Lefty. Brasco has Depp playing real life undercover agent Joseph Pistone and proving, once again, that his work soars when sampling an existing source. The actor physically trained with Pistone, getting himself into shape and mimicking the former fed to such a degree that Pistone himself says he couldn't distinguish between his own voice and Depp's impersonation. Screenwriter Paul Attanasio said that this was the film in which Johnny went from being a boy to a being a man, and it's a thrill to watch that transformation. With Donnie Brasco, Depp again proved that he could hold his own with a screen legend (Pacino, in a beautifully tragic role) and upped his currency, big time, as a credible leading man.
Another of the actor's "meta-acting" performances, this one is a genuine success on both sides.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998): An important character role for Depp, and another example of how he excels when sampling an existing life. This is a performance that, by the actor's own admission, he "couldn't shake." And you can see why. Johnny actually lived in the basement of madman/writer Hunter S. Thompson's house in order to recreate his spirit for the movie, which is based on the author's influential end-of-the-good-times book. The film is something of a turd, but pay attention to Depp's walk, his floating fucked-up gestures, the facial mask, and especially that brilliant mumble. At first, you think he's putting you on (and even Depp admits that he can't believe he got away with this performance), but that quickly melts away as his character, Raoul Duke, becomes the perfect tour guide for a grotesque, lost, inebriated America.
Note: Depp's head was shaved by Thompson himself for the movie.

Sleepy Hollow (1999): Not one of Depp's best, but a fascinating exploration of B-movie horror acting, nonetheless. Mixing what Depp refers to as a cross between a "pre-pubescent teenage girl" and the Hammer horror actors Peter Cushing and Vincent Price, Johnny turns in an Ichabod Crane that captures a particular flavor of camp acting. This Tim Burton flick (which got an uncredited screenplay polish by brainy British playwright Tom Stoppard) gave Depp another chance to sample and recombine archetypes in a performance that co-star Christina Ricci (seriously miscast and adrift here) referred to as acting "with no vanity."
Note: Depp originally wanted to do a carbon-copy of Disney's cartoon version of Ichabod Crane by applying humongo false ears and a pasted on schnozz. Burton argued against it, and – perhaps sadly – won.

Before Night Falls (2000): In this sumptuously beautiful film, which follows the life of exiled Cuban writer/poet Reinaldo Arenas, Johnny Depp doesn't appear until about an hour and twelve minutes into the action. But when he does, the results are powerful. The actor plays a dual role – as cross-dressing Bon Bon and the sadistic Lt. Victor – and creates two completely specific characters: one a glamour queen with a coy, seductive manner and the other a deliberate, dead eyed interrogator who cruelly intimidates Arenas (deeply played by Javier Bardem). Although Depp appears out of nowhere, and disappears just as quickly, he never distracts from the action (unlike Sean Penn's jarring cameo) and you completely believe that he belongs in the world of the film.
Before Night Falls also marks a period for Depp (which includes Chocolat and Once Upon a Time in Mexico), in which the re-mixer displays that he can also thrill within a heightened, and poetic, reality.

Pirates of the Caribbean (2003): Perhaps the actor's wildest, most out-there performance, to date. Depp samples, as he puts it, Keith Richards and Pepe LePew in order to create the brash pirate Captain Jack Sparrow. Depp steals (and gleefully mugs his way through) this wildly entertaining movie with a drunken swagger and breathy, slurred speech, a la "Keif." He also manages to turn almost all of the violence against him into a cartoon with his Pepe LePew reactions: the google eyes, the asides to the camera. With Pirates, Depp manages to go far beyond "realism" while still giving us a character capable of cold-blooded villainy, sexuality, pathos, and a helluva lot of fun. (He's also got one of the best entrances in recent film.)
Note: Depp's pirate look wasn't created in some makeup lab; the actor walked onto the set with that look already chosen. Watch for the reprise of Jack Sparrow's unique style in the upcoming Pirates sequel.

Finding Neverland (2004): A great example of the difference between re-mix and retread. Marc Forster's deeply clichιd film about Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie (is it the tale of an iconoclast who encourages inspiration in his young pupils? The story of a dying woman? The white, old-fogey establishment versus the free thinker? A biopic?) squanders the talents of his great actors, including Kate Winslet, Julie Christie, Dustin Hoffman and a bunch of gifted youngsters. But this movie's biggest regret should be Depp, who samples J.M. Barrie, does a superb Scottish accent and truly starts to sell the idea of himself as middle-aged man by bringing nuance, caring, and gravity to a picture that doesn't deserve it. Although the film fails, it succeeds in giving hope that Johnny Depp, who we've seen run the gamut from heartthrob to character actor to mature leading man, will get a chance to display some of that newfound gravitas in a film project worthy of his gifts. Let's hope that opportunity comes soon.

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