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HOLLYWOOD'S MAD HATTER Twenty years ago, a frustrated young TV star and a wild-haired filmmaker met at a hotel off the Sunset Strip, drank coffee, and talked. To an outside observer, Johnny Depp and Tim Burton would have seemed an unlikely pair: one, a reluctant teen idol; the other, a shy, rumpled director with a penchant for the macabre. But from that meeting sprang a creative partnership that has produced some of the most memorable oddball characters in recent movie history: An alienated teenage Frankenstein with scissors for hands. A cross-dressing Z-movie director. A demented candy maker. A murderous barber. On a warm winter afternoon, Depp, 46, and Burton 51 - the duo behind Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Sweeney Todd, among others - sit on a balcony at another L.A. hotel, just days away from the March 5 opening of their seventh film together: an eye-popping new 3-D Alice in Wonderland. This PG-rated big-screen take on the Lewis Carroll classic stars Depp as the Mad Hatter alongside newcomer Mia Wasikowska as Alice, Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen, and Anne Hathaway as the White Queen. Between Depp's whacked-out spin on the Hatter and Burton's flair for imagery, Alice is poised to capitalize on the growing appetite for 3-D extravaganzas stoked by Avatar, which, perhaps surprisingly, neither of them has seen. ("I hear it's good," Burton says with a shrug.) Then again, the film also faces a looming glut of 3-D movies, plus a threatened boycott of the film by theater chains upset over Disney's decision to move Alice's DVD release up by a month. Today, though, the two old friends - both now fathers of two - sip iced tea and look back on their long, strange trip down Hollywood's rabbit hole. EW: Alice in Wonderland has been adapted in one form or another hundreds of times. What inspired you to take a crack at it? Burton: Disney came to me with the idea of doing Alice in Wonderland in 3-D, and that seemed intriguing. I'd never really read the Lewis Carroll books. I knew Alice through music and other illustrators and things. The images were always strong, but the movie versions I'd seen, to me, were always just, like, a little brat wandering through a bunch of weirdos. {Laughs} It was fun to try to make the characters not just weird - I mean they are weird, but we wanted to get deeper into those characters. EW: Johnny, how did you approach the role of the Mad Hatter? Depp: Oddly enough, I reread both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass not long before. I started looking up things on hatters and where that whole term "mad as a hatter" came from. It was actually due to mercury poisoning, because when they were putting together the hats, they used this really vile substance that - it's like huffing - it makes you go sideways. So I just started to get these images in my head. That's where the orange hair comes from. EW: When you did Pirates of the Caribbean, the executives at Disney famously panicked at first over how you were playing Jack Sparrow. Was there any concern this time about portraying the Mad Hatter as a sort of pale-skinned, green-eyed, orange-haired freak? Depp: When we first went in to do the camera tests, I was thinking, "They're going to lose their minds." But Tim fully supported it. It was a couple of solid hours in the makeup chair every day, but it really helped. You start to understand who the guy is through all that weird kind of Carrot Top Kabuki. Burton: From Edward Scissorhands on, Johnny has always wanted to cover himself up and hide. {Laughs} I get it. Depp: I still do. Absolutely. Burton: It's fascinating to see Johnny work up to a character, though. In the past, we've done some studio read-throughs of the script and the executives will come up to me afterward, like {in a nervous whisper} "He's not going to do that in the movie, is he?" I remember on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, we did a read-through of the script early on and Johnny was holding a pencil and pretending to smoke it like a pipe. And this studio executive said to me, "He's not going to smoke a pipe in the movie, is he?" Depp: The subtext underneath that question is so funny. It's like {with mock outrage}, "Are you kidding me? He's smoking a pipe?!" Burton: "The character isn't wearing any socks? He's got ripped jeans? Oh my God, don't do anything to embarrass us!" It's funny, because the thing that worries people most is often the thing that makes it work. EW: And to prove it, there are now people standing out on Hollywood Boulevard dressed as Jack Sparrow. Depp: I was driving down Hollywood Boulevard one day and stopped at a light, looked to my left, and saw Willy Wonka having a conversation with Jack Sparrow. It was so cool, man. {Laughs} EW: Johnny, you've said you don't like watching yourself on screen. What is it like to see yourself in 3-D in Alice? Depp: I'm actually unable to see 3-D. I've got a weird thing where I don't see properly out of my left eye, so I truly can't see 3-D. So I have an excuse {not to watch myself} this time. {Laughs} EW: It's been 20 years since you two first met at a hotel to talk about Edward Scissorhands. Tim, what do you remember about that meeting? Burton: All I remember is coffee - a lot of coffee. In fact, I think I'm still coming down the walls from that. I'd never seen {Depp's cop show} 21 Jump Street, but meeting Johnny, I could sense that this thing was probably not why he got into acting or where he wanted to go. My impression was that he had something inside of him, but because of the show he was on, people thought of him in a certain way that wasn't accurate. There's a painful quality when you grow up and you're not perceived correctly - and that's what the character of Edward Scissorhands was about. It was an instinctual thing, but I could see that Johnny was that character. EW: Johnny, did you have the feeling you'd won the role in that meeting? Depp: I was convinced there was no way I'd get it. Everyone in this town wanted to play that role - including Michael Jackson. {Laughs} I'd had a great meeting with Tim and left zipping on coffee and chewing on a spoon, but then I didn't really hear much for a few weeks. When I got the call saying, "You're Edward Scissorhands," I was just elated. I knew how important it would be. It was a big risk for Tim to take on some TV actor. With 21 Jump Street, they were trying to make me this thing, this product, and I couldn't deal with it. When Scissorhands came, I knew even if immediately afterwards I was booted out of Hollywood and was pumping gas or working construction again, at least I was on solid ground. I was exactly where I needed to be. And even if that was all I'd done, I was fine. I knew what road I wanted to go on, but Tim pushed me onto that road. Burton: And within weeks he was vomiting behind a bush in Florida. Depp: {Laughs} I was covered head to toe in leather on that movie, shooting in Tampa or wherever it was, and it wasn't long before I was in full heatstroke. I remember there was one scene where I'm running from the cops. I'd done it, like, six times already and I was dying. Tim was like, "How are you doing? You got one more take in you?" I was like, "Yeah, sure." I ran down the street, heard "Cut," didn't stop running - and ran on to the side of someone's house and just hurled into a bush. Burton: By the way, how come they haven't made a movie out of 21 Jump Street? Depp: They're going to. I'm hoping they'll let me do a cameo. Someone will say, "What ever happened to Tom Hanson?" and they'll find me somewhere hoarding jars of peanut butter and shaking in my underpants. {Laughs} EW: Four years later, you guys reunited for Ed Wood. Johnny, what were you feeling about your career at that point? Depp: In terms of Hollywood, people were still wondering, "Why won't he carry a gun and f--k the girl?" That's all they wanted me to do: carry a gun and nail some broad, you know. I'm not opposed to that, but I thought there might have been other things to investigate. Burton: You should have just said to them {in a thick, Tony Montana accent}, "I leave the guns and broads at home. I come to work for fantasy." {Laughs} As an outsider, I always felt like you kept your integrity. If you had done the parts they asked you to do, you would have made a lot more money a lot sooner and all that s--t. But you picked things that you wanted to do. Depp: Yeah, luckily. It was more out of ignorance than anything else. I was just like, Well shouldn't I just do the things I want to do? Isnt' that right? But apparently Hollywood didn't work that way. When I did Pirates, I felt like I'd infiltrated the enemy camp. I'd never been welcomed in before. Nobody had ever asked me. Not only that - they'd been adamantly against me. Most times, Tim had to fight, fight, fight to get me in these movies. Burton: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was the first time the studio brought Johnny's name up first. EW: Johnny, what's the scariest thing Tim ever asked you to do in a movie? Depp: Singing in Sweeney Todd. Burton: No question about it. Depp: The thing is, I dumbly thought that once I'd gotten through singing the demos and going through the recording process in the studio, I was home free. I thought I'd get on the set and just lip-synch. I didn't realize that you've got to sing it live on the set. Me and Helena {Bonham Carter} were, like, belting it out with the whole crew watching. It was just mortifying. EW: How would you describe the sensibility you two share? Depp: There's a similar respect for the absurd and things slightly left of center. I've just always understood what Tim's looking for, and he trusts me to go out there and do the stupid s--t I do. Burton: Like dress up as a scary clown. {Laughs} Over the years we've learned that we have similar tastes. We both like old horror movies. We talk about TV performers that scared us as children. There's a lot of common ground. Depp: There are directors I've worked with that I've had a grand old time with: Terry Gilliam, Gore Verbinski, and Hughes brothers, a number of guys. But the collaborative process of making a film with Tim - that energy is like riding some kind of enormous wave. There's this connection, this shorthand. It sounds corny, but it's truly home for me, where you can try absolutely anything and you might be afraid to fall flat on your face but that's what makes it worth it. EW: Still, there must be times you disagree, right? Burton: It's hard for me to even think of something. We always work it out. There's never been a big issue. Depp: Not even on Sleepy Hollow when Tim strapped me to a strange piece of metal behind two gaseous horses after they'd had some curry and dragged me through the mud. {Laughs} EW: Your lives have obviously changed a lot over the years you've known each other, and now you're both family men with two kids. Has that changed the kinds of things you talk about together? Depp: Well, we've discovered the Wiggles. That's one thing I can always be proud of: I gave Tim his first set of Wiggles DVDs. Burton: {Groans} You try to maneuver your way through the least offensive children's programming, but it's hard. I keep trying to show my son {the psychedelic 1970s kids' show} H.R. Puf-n-stuf but he's not going there. Oh, well. Depp: He will. EW: There's been talk of you two adapting the 1960s vampire TV series Dark Shadows. Will that be next? Burton: For now we're still basking in the glow of Alice. But we're working on Dark Shadows. When you work with someone like Johnny, it's always about, Are you excited about this? Do you see something there? Depp: I still just wait for that call from Tim - "Did he call?" {Laughs} I sit at home and just stare at the f--king phone.
I have a subscription to EW, and just got this issue yesterday in the mail. I couldn't believe what a collector's item it is!!! The only thing is, I'm not sure if the issues they'll be selling in stores will be the same as this one that was mailed out to subscribers. First of all, it's EW's 20th anniversary, so this is the 20th anniversary issue and Johnny got the cover! This issue focuses their main feature article on Johnny and Tim's 20 year collaborative career together. My issue has FOUR different magazines covers with Johnny as four of the characters from his movies with Tim. The Mad Hatter is on the front cover as is shown in the photo that Reemi posted. When you open the cover, the next page is another cover with Edward Scissorhands. You turn that page and there's a cover with Ed Wood. Turn that page and there's a cover with Willy Wonka. Each of the three covers that are inside look like an actual magazine cover with "Entertainment Weekly" across the top. In the bottom left corner of each cover is Johnny's name and the name of the character, the name of the movie, the year, and "directed by Tim Burton" and then there's one of Johnny's characters' quotes from the film. After the page that is the Willy Wonka cover, you turn the page again and there's the Table of Contents, and the photo across the top third of this page is from Alice in Wonderland. It's got the backdrop of a castle and then all the characters in the Red Queen's court are outside on the lawn playing croquet. The text with this photo says: "Page 26 - Next Stop: Wonderland. Helena Bonham Carter's Red Queen presides over a crazy court in director Tim Burton's 3-D tale." The feature article about Tim and Johnny's 20 year collaboration starts on Page 26. Page 26 & 27 are covered by a large, beautiful close-up photo of the Mad Hatter holding up a silver pocket watch in front of his face and grinning at it. His bright green eyes are huge! I wish I had a scanner so I could post it here because I've never seen this photo posted anywhere online. I'm sure we'll be able to get a copy of it somewhere from someone else who has a scanner. The only text on these two pages is the title and sub-title of the article and the writer's name. It says:
Hollywood's Mad Hatter There are lots of photos from all of the films Johnny and Tim did together. The article runs from Page 26-35 with page 33 being a full-page advertisement for a TV show that has nothing to do with the subject at hand. Within those pages there are two articles. The main one is an interview with Johnny and Tim, which I'll type out for you - both are very funny but I'm going to have to "bleep" out some of Johnny's more colorful words that aren't allowed here. Page 34 is a full page article about Mia Wasikowska that features a half-page photo of her (as herself) posing in a mustard-gold colored mini-dress, black tights and black heels -she's lying inside of one of those clear acrylic round half-sphere chairs that hang from the ceiling. There's also a small photo of her as Alice. Her's is a fairly brief article, so I'll type it separately at the end of this post. There are two new photos of Johnny and Tim included that I've never seen before. One is on page 29 and is behind the scenes in front of the green screen for AIW. Tim is reading from a bunch of folded-up papers in his hand and gesturing with his other hand while Johnny (dressed as the Mad Hatter) is standing beside him, looking intently at him, as if they're discussing a scene they're about to film. The caption says, "Johnny Depp and Tim Burton confer on the Alice in Wonderland set." On page 30, there's a behind the scenes black and white photo from Sweeney Todd where Tim and Johnny are both down on their knees on the cobblestone street, and it looks like they're discussing how to do the scene where Sweeney falls to his knees in the wet cobblestone street while singing. The caption for that photo is: "2007 - Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street - Despite never having sung on screen before, Depp (on set with Burton) earned a Best Actor nod for his turn as the vengeful barber Sweeney Todd in the director's bloody adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical." Across the center seam of pages 30-31, there's a photo of Tim and Johnny (dressed as Willy Wonka) on the set of CATCF. The caption is, "2005 - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Stepping into the role played by Gene Wilder in the 1971 adaptation of Roald Dahl's classic, Depp (with Burton again) gave candy maker Willy Wonka his own eccentric, androgynous spin." On page 31, there's a photo from Corpse Bride with this caption, "2005 - Corpse Bride - Depp lent his voice to Burton's ghoulish Oscar-nominated stop-motion-animation film about a timid man who unwittingly marries a dead woman (voiced by Helena Bonham Carter). There are three photos on Page 32: A photo of a blindfolded Christina Ricci kissing the cheek of Johnny in their roles in Sleepy Hollow. 1999 - Sleepy Hollow - Depp (with co-star Christina Ricci) played Ichabod Crane, and Burton received some of his best reviews ever for his grisly take on Washington Irving's tale of the headless horseman. A photo of Winona Ryder and Johnny in character from Edward Scissorhands. Winona is standing behind Johnny and has her arms wrapped around him. The caption: 1990 - Edward Scissorhands - Taking a gamble on a largely untested TV actor, Burton cast Depp (with costar and onetime girlfriend Winona Ryder) as a sweetly innocent teen Frankenstein in a surreal fable that drew on Burton's own feelings of alienation. A black and white behind-the-scenes photo from Ed Wood which shows Tim kneeling beside a small sofa outside where he's talking to Johnny and Sarah Jessica Parker who are sitting on the sofa (maybe it's an old car seat that's been removed from the car). We've all seen this photo before. The caption is: 1994 - Ed Wood - Burton and Depp (with costar Sarah Jessica Parker) joined forces with this offbeat and darkly funny black-and-white biopic about the legendary inept but passionately enthusiastic director Ed Wood. On page 35, the top of the page has the headline "Other Great Depp Roles" and there are four photos from some of Johnny's movies that didn't involve Tim as the director: 1993 - What's Eating Gilbert Grape - Depp (with costars Leonardo DiCaprio and Juliette Lewis) gave one of his most understated and soulful performances as a small-town teenager trying to hold together his dysfunctional family. 1998 - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Depp captured the gonzo spirit of his friend Hunter S. Thompson in Terry Gilliam's surreal take on Thompson's drug-fueled autobiographical novel. 1997 - Donnie Brasco - Starring opposite Al Pacino, Depp earned stellar reviews as an undercover FBI agent infiltrating a New York Mafia family. 2003 - Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl - Depp's quirky turn as Capt. Jack Sparrow worried Disney execs at first but landed him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.
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Entertainment Weekly - March 5, 2010