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> Статьи, статейки, интервью / Articles, Пресса о Джонни и Джонни сам о себе
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сообщение 21.06.2018 - 21:51
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Гадкий чертов маленький сволочной горец
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Вышла потрясающая статья о Джонни и его финансовых проблемах, в RS: https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/feature...arriage-w521671

Ай да Стивен Родрик! Пулитцера-то, может, и не дадут, но пишет сильно.


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- Я считаю, что каждый дает себе право думать то, что хочет, пока он не окажется в жестоком заблуждении. (Джонни Депп)
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сообщение 22.06.2018 - 00:28
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поклонница
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The Trouble With Johnny Depp
Multimillion-dollar lawsuits, a haze of booze and hash, a marriage gone very wrong and a lifestyle he can’t afford – inside the trials of Johnny Depp



Johnny Depp isn't here yet. Still, his presence is all around the 10,500-square-foot rented mansion at 16 Bishopswood Road in London's Highgate neighborhood.

He is here in the busy hands of Russell, his personal chef working up the Peking duck. He is here in the stogie-size joint left by the sink in the guest bathroom. He is here in the never-ending reservoir of wine that is poured into goblets. And he is here in a half-done painting upstairs that features a burning black house, a child Johnny and an angry woman who resembles his mother, Betty Sue.

And then he is actually here. He is in the living room, crooning his entrance: "Oh, my darling, oh, my darling, my darling Clementine. You are lost and gone forever, my darling Clementine."

Depp has come from a photo shoot for the Hollywood Vampires, his sometime band that features Alice Cooper and Joe Perry. Trailing behind is his lawyer Adam Waldman. Depp is dressed like a Forties gangster, jet-black hair slicked back, pinstripes, suspenders and spats. His face is puffy, but Depp still possesses the fixating brown eyes that have toggled between dreamy and menacing during his 35-year career. Now, Depp's studious leer is reminiscent of late-era Marlon Brando. This isn't a coincidence, since Depp has long built his life by imitating his legends – buying an island like Brando, becoming an expert on quaaludes like Hunter S. Thompson.

"Hey, I'm Johnny. Good to meet you."

He reaches out a right hand whose fingers recently had their tats changed from "slim" – a reference to his ex-wife Amber Heard – to "scum."

"So are you here to hear the truth?" asks Depp as Russell brings him a glass of vintage red wine. "It's full of betrayal."

We move to the dining room for a three-course meal of pad thai, duck and gingerbread with berries. Depp sits at the head of the table and motions toward some rolling papers and two equal piles of tobacco and hash, and asks if I mind. I don't. He pauses for a second. "Well, let's drink some wine first."

This goes on for 72 hours.

It had taken a month and almost 200 e-mails for the message to become clear: Come to London; Johnny Depp wants to bare his soul about his empty bank accounts.

It's estimated that Depp has made $650 million on films that netted $3.6 billion. Almost all of it is gone. He's suing The Management Group, run by his longtime business manager, Joel Mandel, and his brother Robert for negligence, breach of fiduciary duty and fraud. The suit cites, among other things, that under TMG's watch Depp's sister Christi was given $7 million and his assistant, Nathan Holmes, $750,000, without his knowledge, and that he has paid the IRS more than $5.6 million in late fees. (Most of the ire is directed toward Joel, who had day-to-day responsibility for Depp's account.) There are additional charges of conflict of interest, saying that TMG invested Depp's money for its own purposes and returned it without profit. The suit seeks more than $25 million from TMG, accounting for "tens of millions" it claims TMG illegally took for its commission, plus any additional damages the court sees fit.

The Mandels categorically deny all wrongdoing and are countersuing, alleging that Depp breached his oral contract with the company. The suit suggests that Depp has a $2-million-a-month compulsory-spending disorder, offering bons mots like "Wine is not an investment if you drink it as soon as you buy it." Depp was continuing to "concoct malicious and false allegations" against the company, according to TMG's countersuit, because TMG had filed a private foreclosure notice on one of Depp's properties, claiming Depp owes TMG $4.2 million in unpaid loans.

Over the past 18 months, there has been little but bad news for Depp. In addition to the financial woes, there were reports he couldn't remember his lines and had to have them fed to him through an earpiece. He had split from his longtime lawyer and agent. And he was alone. His tabloid-scarred divorce from actress Heard is complete, but not before there were persuasive allegations of physical abuse that Depp vehemently denies. Depp's inner circle had begged him to not wed Heard or to at least obtain a prenup. Depp ignored his loved ones' advice. And there were whispers that Depp's recreational drug and alcohol use were crippling him.

During my London visit, Depp is alternately hilarious, sly and incoherent. The days begin after dark and run until first light. There is a scared, hunted look about him. Despite grand talks about hitting the town, we never leave the house. As Depp's mind leads us down various rabbit holes, I often think of a line that he recited as the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland: "Have I gone mad?"

His closest confidant seems to be Waldman, a lawyer he met less than two years ago. Waldman, 49, possesses an unlined face, sandy hair, a designer black leather jacket and a soothing voice that could make the bird-flu epidemic sound reasonable. He tells me he is married to the "world's number-one face doctor."

Depp seems oblivious to any personal complicity in his current predicament. Waldman seems to have convinced Depp that they are freedom fighters taking on the Hollywood machine rather than scavengers squabbling over the scraps of a fortune squandered.

One day, Depp shows me his artwork, and it strikes me that Depp is now a worn Dorian Gray. "I imagine Johnny doing a version of Jack Sparrow at 70, at 80," his friend Penйlope Cruz tells me. "It will be as charming and as great." But the things that were charming when he was 28 – doing drugs and running around the scaffolding on a high floor of Atlantic Records' L.A. building – seem disturbing at 54. (Cruz ends our conversation by telling me about Depp trying to pull his own tooth at a London restaurant while having dinner with her and Stella McCartney.)

Maybe being a permanent Peter Pan is the key to Depp's onscreen charm. But time has passed. Boyish insouciance has slowly morphed into an aging man-child, still charismatic but only in glimpses. If his current life isn't a perfect copy of Elvis Presley's last days, it is a decent facsimile.

Depp and Tom Petty had long been friends, and Petty's death hit Depp hard. "We'd call each other and ask, 'Hey, you still smoking?' " Depp recalls. "Tom would go, ‘Yeah, I'm still smoking,' and I'd feel better: 'Well, if Tom is still smoking, I'm OK.' "

Depp goes quiet, perhaps realizing the sadness of what he has just said. He wipes his eyes. "I loved him," he says.


The two shared more in common than an addiction to nicotine. They both arrived in L.A. whiskey tango from Florida, intent on making it as rockers (perfectly played by Depp in the video for Petty's "Into the Great Wide Open"). Depp changed course after an L.A. drinking buddy named Nicolas Cage told him there was money to make in acting. He eventually starred in his breakout role as a high school narc on 21 Jump Street in 1987.

We sit down for dinner, and I ask if he remembers the first big purchase he made when he started making money. He rolls another joint that he first passes to me and then to Waldman. He wants me to know it wasn't a Ferrari, but a house for his mama.

"My mom was born in a F**king holler in eastern Kentucky," says Depp. "Her poor F**king ass was on phenobarbital at 12."

Depp grew up the youngest of four, raised mostly by his mother, Betty Sue. His father was a civil engineer, but largely absent. They lived first in Kentucky and then Florida, moving, according to Depp, more than 40 times. His mom hurled things, but she was still his mom. "Yeah, there were irrational beatings," says Depp. "Maybe it's an ashtray coming your way. Maybe you're gonna get clunked with the phone." Depp pauses. "It was a ghost house – no one talked. I don't think there ever was a way I thought about people, especially women, other than 'I can fix them.' "

Mostly, Depp remembers his mother coming home from double shifts at her waitressing job; he would rub her feet as she counted out the coins from her tips. He bought her a small horse farm outside of Lexington, Kentucky, with one of his first big paydays.

"Betty Sue, I worshiped her," says Depp, but his smile quickly fades. "She could be a real bitch on wheels." He tells me what he said at her 2016 funeral: "My mom was maybe the meanest human being I have ever met in my life."

After buying the house for his mom, Depp treated himself to a 1940 Harley-Davidson, which he still owns. From 1986 to 2006, he made 32 movies, showing a once-in-a-generation range from Edward Scissorhands – beginning a lifelong collaboration with director Tim Burton – to an acclaimed portrayal of an undercover cop in Donnie Brasco.

Depp acquired a taste for the grandiose life along the way. He bought the Viper Room in the early 1990s, an old speakeasy once frequented by Bugsy Siegel, and turned it into a small rock club where everyone from Guns N' Roses to Johnny Cash played. He suffered through the death of his friend River Phoenix from an overdose at the club, amid wild claims in the supermarket rags that he'd delivered the fatal dose to Phoenix himself. "Imagine living with that," says Depp, his eyes clouding over.

He chafed against playing the standard, dashing Hollywood hero. An adviser yelled at him when he took the title role in Ed Wood.

"The guy told me, 'Johnny, it is not about you doing black-and-white movies about a cross-dressing, D-movie director – it's about F**king the girl and carrying the gun,' " Depp says. " ‘You need to F**k the girl, and you need to carry a gun.' "

A constant in Depp's business was his older sister Christi, who managed his day-to-day affairs. (She never responded to requests for comment for this story.) In 1999, they realized that his current management company couldn't handle his rapidly expanding financial affairs and they needed to move to a bigger firm. By then, Depp had moved above Sunset Boulevard to an 8,000-square-foot estate nicknamed "Dracula's Castle." He spent a day interviewing financial managers. His last meeting, he says, was with Robert and Joel Mandel, brothers who ran TMG. Depp says he immediately took a shine to Joel, the youngest child of an Auschwitz survivor. Depp saw a kindred spirit. "He was a nervous wreck," says Depp. "He was pouring sweat. He was broken." (TMG disputes this portrayal).

I ask him why he would place his money in the hands of a person he would describe as a "broken toy." Depp says because he felt a kinship: "The monofilament that goes through all my characters, if you really look, they're all F**kups. They're broken."

I try to probe deeper, but Depp is restless. The mansion is spookily quiet. It's now three or four o'clock in the morning, and his cook and security guards have all retired. Despite the hour, Depp's mind is a space-ball ricochet, moving through a random series of flashcards of his life. There was an incident last year at the Glastonbury Festival, where he asked, perhaps drunkenly, "Can we bring Trump here? . . . When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?" Depp was roasted in the press. "I was trying to connect it to Trump saying he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, but it didn't come out right," says Depp with a shrug.

He moves to the couches in the living room and flips on the television. Depp has an affinity bordering on obsession with the bons vivants who had their late prime in the 1970s, whether it is Marlon Brando, Hunter S. Thompson or Don Rickles. "Rickles was the bravest comedian ever," says Depp. "He'd say anything." As proof, he finds a video of Rickles on a Dean Martin celebrity roast, turning to boxer Sugar Ray Robinson: "I want to thank Sugar Ray Robinson, who said to Rocky Graziano, ‘Hey, baby, you're hurting me.' Sugar Ray is a great champion. Sugar, we would ask you to talk, but you know the blacks, your lips lock."

"Jesus," says Waldman.

Depp insists it's ballsy, not offensive. I mumble, "I don't know about that." Depp isn't paying attention. He considers himself a funny man and tells me how in one of the early Pirates of the Caribbean movies Sparrow washes ashore and mumbles an incoherent curse.

"I say 'Dirty Sanchez,' " says Depp, using slang for an obscene sex act. "Before the DVD, they dropped it out."

Depp has a great affinity for Sparrow, whose persona is borrowed from Keith Richards, another Depp idol. He's protective of the character and claims he battled with Disney screenwriters repeatedly.

"Why must you have these F**king heinous subplots?" asks Depp. "It's convoluted. There is not a F**king soul that wants to see Captain Jack Sparrow sad."

He flips through the news and comes across a report on Harvey Weinstein. He shakes his head and calls him an asshole for burying his film Dead Man because director Jim Jarmusch refused to give up his contractually mandated final cut. "He was a bully," says Depp. "Have you seen his wife? It's not a wide range. It's not like he went, ‘I must go to the Poconos to find some hairy-backed bitch.' "

Depp pauses, ruminating on whether he is being unkind. He mentions that once he tagged along as Weinstein was picking up his kid from school and that he could tell Weinstein really loved her. "The image that took my breath away was Harvey Weinstein, a goliath Shrek thing, bending down to put on his daughter's raincoat."

Outside, the London dark is giving way to a gloaming predawn. Everyone is exhausted except for Depp. He disappears for a few minutes and returns reanimated, and then proclaims that we have to watch his good friend Marilyn Manson's "KILL4ME" video, starring Depp in a series of lewd poses with barely clad women. Depp cranks the television's volume and shouts above the industrial guitars, "Marilyn's the best. He's such a good friend. He's played Barbies with my daughter." Waldman groans at the Manson music and buries his head under a pile of throw pillows. This doesn't dissuade Depp, who turns the sound up until the screen reads 99.

Jet-lagged, I tell Depp I need to get some sleep. He looks disappointed but leads me down a dark corridor that twists and turns. In my sleep-deprived haze, I think I might be about to be "disappeared." Then, a door opens and a giant man wearing a surgical mask appears. I shout in fear.

"What the F**k?"

Depp laughs.

"That's just one of my security guys. He's got the flu. He'll make sure you get out safely," he says and gives me a half-hug.

"We'll talk injustice tomorrow."

It was Adam Waldman who first contacted Rolling Stone about writing a story about the injustice being done to Depp's reputation and bottom line. He pointed to what he perceived to be an anti-Depp story in the Hollywood Reporter, where the Mandels were cast as eminently reasonable men who repeatedly tried to warn Depp about his precarious financial positioning. Nobody from TMG was quoted, but Waldman was convinced its fingerprints were all over the story.

Waldman made it clear he was doing an end-run without the involvement of Robin Baum, Depp's formidable publicist of many years. I started looking into the case and Waldman to see if he was legit. There was stuff about him being Cher's lawyer – the singer is godmother to his daughter Pepper – but the first hit was a Business Insider story that read "Here Are the American Executives Who Are Working on Behalf of Putin." Waldman was the first on the list, which detailed his service for Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum magnate and Russian oligarch with strong ties to the Russian president.

According to Business Insider, Waldman has been paid more than $2.3 million for his work on behalf of Deripaska. Meanwhile, Deripaska became a bit player in the Russian-collusion scandal when it was reported by The Washington Post that then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort offered to give Deripaska private briefings on the campaign shortly before the GOP convention. Waldman had his own cameo in the Putin-Trump meshugas. In February, none other than Trump would accuse him in a typically factually distorted tweet – without naming him – of trying to broker a meeting between Trump-dossier writer Christopher Steele and Democratic Sen. Mark Warner. In April, Deripaska was placed on Trump's sanctioned list, making it exceedingly difficult for Deripaska's holdings to do business in the United States.

Waldman joined the game in October 2016, having been told by a client that Depp needed help. TMG had just slapped the foreclosure notice on his L.A. homes for failure to make payments on a $5 million loan from the company. TMG had filed it as a nonjudicial foreclosure so there were no public filings. The public at this point had no idea of Depp's financial situation.

Waldman was about to change that. He says he joined Depp for dinner at the Bel Air home of Ed White, Depp's new accountant. Waldman says that White mentioned that he believed TMG had taken a cavalier approach to Depp's accounts. Waldman listened closely and said he'd investigate the situation.

Waldman and Depp quickly became compadres. When Waldman would find a friend he thought was on the Mandels' side, he'd call the star and just say, "Tessio," after the Abe Vigoda character who betrays the Corleones in The Godfather. Depp instantly understood and would mutter back, "F**king Tessio."

Two months later, under Waldman's guidance, Depp filed his lawsuit against the Mandels. The suit claimed that Depp wasn't given monthly financial statements and often was presented only a signature page to sign for transactions. The suit further alleged that – in addition to the $7 million given to his sister Christi – TMG had cost Depp $6 million in tacked-on fees by paying his IRS taxes late for 13 years straight. Depp accused TMG of taking out $34 million in loans in his name as a result of mismanagement, with the final straw being a $12.5 million "hard money" loan engineered by his longtime attorney Jake Bloom in 2014, at 10 percent interest. The loan stipulated Christi's, Bloom's and the Mandels' fees would be paid before loan repayments and definitely before Depp saw a dime of residuals from his Pirates of the Caribbean series. (Depp eventually filed a separate suit against Bloom.) Depp's lawyers argued that the hard-money loan, taken through the financial firm of Grosvenor Park, was an illegal inside deal because Bloom had a prior relationship with Grosvenor. Of the original $12.5 million loan, according to Depp, $1.2 million was immediately disbursed to the trio before the loan was officially processed.

Depp and Waldman believe his lawsuit will change Hollywood forever. The suit swings for the fences and claims TMG owes Depp more than $25 million in ill-gotten five-percent commissions because, among other reasons, they claim TMG had acted not only as financial managers but also as lawyers, meaning it needed to enter a new agreement with Depp for each movie deal. (The same charge would be eventually levied against Bloom, who has filed a countersuit, denying all the claims.) Since this didn't happen, the suit alleges, Depp is entitled to recoup millions in commissions. The TMG suit points to this as being among the most ridiculous of Depp's claims, that they never acted as attorneys since he already had high-priced Hollywood lawyers Bloom and Marty Singer on retainer.

This alleged violation of Section 6147 of the California statute particularly jazzes Waldman and, in turn, Depp. Waldman says when he first contacted TMG, Joel Mandel kept muttering that Depp's situation was all about "Hollywood math," where the star spends what they think they've made, not taking into account taxes and agent and manager fees. (TMG denies this conversation ever happened.)

Waldman is Depp's self-styled avenger. "No one challenges the monster of Hollywood and survives," Waldman tells me. "Everyone is too afraid. Johnny's not afraid."

Mandel's camp says he learned of Depp's lawsuit when a reporter called him asking for comment, a rarity since it is common in legal circles to contact opposing counsel before filing a suit.

The two warring sides met a few days later in a conference room for a settlement meeting at the law office of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, the law firm that employed Ben Chew, one of Depp's litigators. Waldman was on the phone from Europe, and Chew was on video conference from Washington.

To Mandel's side, it wasn't clear why the meeting had been called: If Waldman had wanted to try to work out a settlement, it would usually be attempted before dropping a legal bomb on the opposing counsel. Mandel eventually spoke up.

"You didn't do your diligence," he said, and cited mistakes in the initial filing, including statements that Depp's finances were being handled by a CPA-in-training, when in fact they were being covered by an accountant with 30 years' experience.

"The facts are there, you can read them," Waldman recalls saying via speakerphone from Munich. "You're welcome to respond to them."

Mandel lost it, according to two people in the meeting.

"You've cost me tens of millions of dollars," said Mandel. "Now it's my turn. I'm gonna destroy Johnny. They'll know everything." (Both Mandel and his attorney, Michael Kump, adamantly dispute that Mandel ever said any of that.)

The Mandel team got up to leave, but in the hall, they say they could hear Waldman's voice questioning the rest of his legal staff if they had carefully gone over the complaint.

Asked what he thought about all the legal shenanigans, Depp shrugs. "I'm just a small part of this," he says. "It's the F**king Matrix. I didn't see the movie, and I didn't understand the script, but here's what it is."

Unfortunately for Depp, TMG filed a thermo-nuclear complaint last summer. The lawsuit described the actor as a spoiled brat with no impulse control. Kump noted TMG had never been sued by any of its other clients and that "Depp lived an ultra-extravagant lifestyle that often knowingly cost Depp in excess of $2 million a month to maintain, which he simply could not afford." The suit claims Depp did give millions to Christi and other friends and family, but that the star knew all about it and still employed those who benefited from his money.

Kump pressed on, arguing that "Depp has also spent millions to employ an army of attorneys" – in addition to his longtime personal attorney Bloom – "to bail him out of numerous legal crises" and pay "hush money." Some of the charges seem like cheap shots. TMG offered no specifics about the hush money and legal crises. His taxes? The suit alleges that they were paid late because Depp was chronically cash poor.

The purchases listed by TMG read like Depp gave his wallet to a tween with ADD. There was $75 million for 14 residences. He spent $3 million to shoot his pal Hunter S. Thompson's ashes into the sky from a cannon. A mere $7,000 to buy his daughter a couch from the set of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. He bought some 70 guitars and 200 pieces of art, including Basquiats and Warhols, owned 45 luxury vehicles and spent $200,000 a month on private air travel.

Then things got personal. According to the suit, Depp kept a sound engineer on the payroll so he could feed him lines through an earpiece while filming. This Depp does not deny, saying the sounds fed to him made him act with just his eyes.

"I've got bagpipes, a baby crying and bombs going off," says Depp. "It creates a truth. Some of my biggest heroes were in silent film," Depp tells me, lighting another cigarette. "It had to be behind the eyes. And my feeling is, that if there's no truth behind the eyes, doesn't matter what the F**king words are."

But that didn't explain the 12 storage facilities for his Hollywood memorabilia, heavy on Brando and Marilyn Monroe. Mandel alleged Depp spent $1.2 million to keep a doctor on call and another $1.8 million a year on round-the-clock security, including for his elderly mother. (When asked why his mom needed security, Depp responded that it was in case she needed an ambulance, according to sources with intimate knowledge of the conversation. TMG tried to convince Depp a nurse would be cheaper, but he couldn't be persuaded.) Kump suggested the source of Depp's problems was psychiatric: "In retrospect, it appears that Depp may suffer from a compulsive-spending disorder, which will be proven in this action through a mental examination of Depp."

Back in London, I'm sitting with Waldman, going over the jabberwocky of the case for a few hours, when Depp emerges after sunset – I never saw him in daylight – dressed in his pirate-homeless attire: tattered jeans, an oversize white shirt festooned with a series of handkerchiefs. His mood is equal parts maudlin and swagger.

There are a few things Depp insists TMG got wrong – for example, the $30,000 a month the Mandels claimed he spent on wine.

"It's insulting to say that I spent $30,000 on wine," says Depp. "Because it was far more."

Depp says they got the Hunter S. Thompson cannon story wrong too. "By the way, it was not $3 million to shoot Hunter into the F**king sky," says Depp. "It was $5 million."

Depp elaborates. He says the cost of the rocket launch increased when he decided he wanted Thompson's arc to be at least one foot higher than the Statue of Liberty's 151-foot height. That part could be true, but I checked around about the price tag and Depp seemed to be bullshitting. Multiple reports said that the cannon stunt did cost $3 million, but perhaps Depp wanted the number to be even bigger, taking a cue from Thompson, who could never resist taking a good, true story and juicing it up with imaginary details.

It doesn't take a psychiatrist to figure out that Depp has been greatly influenced by Brando and Thompson, two father figures who did not give a F**k about what the world thought about them. Depp and Brando had been friends since the 1995 film Don Juan De Marco. When Depp bought an island in the Bahamas, it was Brando, owning his own Tahitian island, who advised him to make sure his house is above sea level.

His connection to Thompson was more visceral, spanning 'ludes and literature. Depp had been a fan of the gonzo journalist for years and courted friendship as he played Thompson in Terry Gilliam's 1998 adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. During the filming and afterward, the two became drug-taking companions.

Waiting for dinner, Depp tells a story about Thompson picking Depp up at the Aspen airport. Doing a dead-on impression, Depp mimics Thompson's mumble: "Uh, there's something I want you to try when we get to the house."

Thompson had a pipe filled with a sticky resin waiting for him. Depp did a hit, and the room spun. Hunter was shocked, says Depp. "He was like, ‘Damn, some kids brought that over, and I took a hit and puked my guts out.' "

Depp says he never found out what was in the strange concoction. They also bonded over an encyclopedic knowledge of pharmaceuticals. Later that night, Depp laments the passing of quaaludes from the drug scene. He reminisces about the bootleg 'ludes he used to take.

"They're made with just a little bit of arsenic, or strychnine," says Depp. He stands up and a grin spreads across his face. "So the high was far more immediate." Once, Depp asked a Florida bouncer to punch him while on 'ludes just for kicks. "You either wanted to smile and just be happy with your pals, or F**k, or fight," he says.

Depp is evangelical in the uses of narcotics and thinks they could have expedited the capture of Osama bin Laden.

"You get a bunch of F**king planes, big F**king planes that spray shit, and you drop LSD 25," he says. "You saturate the F**king place. Every single thing will walk out of their cave smiling, happy."

With the deaths of Brando and Thompson, Depp lost the two people who could understand his fantasyland existence.

Here in London, he turns melancholy, musing about going through his recent travails without them, a F**ked-up genius missing his F**ked-up genius fellow travelers. As Depp's life unraveled, he no longer had his closest confidants. Depp goes glassy-eyed thinking about his loneliness. "Marlon and Hunter," he says. "I needed my guys."

For more than a decade, what was good for Johnny Depp was good for Joel Mandel, and the financial manager took many steps to keep it that way. He installed an extra phone line in his Los Angeles home that had a special ring so Depp could reach him at any point, day or night. On the occasion of his wife's 40th birthday, Mandel had a hundred people over to his house. Still, he reached out to Depp and told him he would excuse himself from the party if Depp wanted to talk about his latest financial adventure.

During the good times, Mandel told Depp his goal was to make him financially secure enough that he would never have to take a part just to pay the bills. They never got to that point. According to TMG's lawsuit, Depp never had more than six months of savings in the bank. This grew exponentially worse after the Pirates of the Caribbean series began, earning him approximately $300 million. Depp had always been critically acclaimed, but it was Jack Sparrow who turned him into a global brand with action figures and $30-million-per-film paychecks coming in. But Depp's tastes grew wilder, and daily conversations between Mandel and Christi revolved around either trying to stop Depp from buying another house or finding a project that would pay for the new house.

Except for Christi, Depp couldn't count on his actual family for guidance – they seemed at the core of many of his financial fiascoes. Over some tuna-fish-and-corn sandwiches – Depp's favorite – he talks of the money pit that Betty Sue's farm in Owensboro had become. Soon after its purchase, he tells me, Depp's other sister and her husband moved in and were hired to manage the property. Eventually, their son joined the payroll. (Meanwhile, Depp was supporting his ex-partner Vanessa Paradis and their two children, Jack and Lily-Rose, in their own French villa that Depp bought for them.)

According to Depp, after years of keeping him in the dark, Mandel communicated to him that the Kentucky branch of his family's spending was out of control. So Depp asked him to send a file with all their expenses. He was in makeup on a Pirates of the Caribbean movie when the file arrived, and he asked his assistant to print it. His assistant said he couldn't do it.

"It's over 200 pages," the assistant said.

Depp called Mandel and asked him what the hell was going on.

"[My sister] was buying handbags for my mom, who was bedridden," Depp recalls. "Jewelry, F**king this, that, everything."

In 2013, Depp was told that Betty Sue had terminal cancer. He moved her up to Los Angeles and rented her a $30,000-a-month house that was far enough away from his spread that they could coexist. Somehow, Betty Sue got better with treatment, and Depp informed the Mandels that the lease should be ended and Betty Sue could head back to Kentucky. But the house kept running up $30,000-a-month charges because, according to Depp, the Mandels forgot to cancel the lease. (TMG says that Mandel simply renegotiated the house's lease as directed, which required giving the landlord four months' notice.)

Betty Sue died in 2016. I ask Depp if he has sold her farm. He tells me his family still lives there.

"Their thinking is that I'm going to take care of them forever and that the farm is now theirs," he says. "I didn't make that promise."

I then ask what seems like a logical question: Why didn't Depp just pick up the phone and read his family the riot act and cut off their credit cards?

Depp furrows his brow and looks confused. He's convinced that was TMG's job: "That's why I'm paying them."

Ironically, the Mandels argue that nothing would have made Joel Mandel happier than cutting up the Depp family's credit cards, but Johnny couldn't pull the trigger. Back at my hotel, I look at Depp's court filings. Among the pile of charges against the Mandels, there is no mention of the Kentucky farm.

Depp's case centers largely on the claim that he was kept clueless until it was too late, despite the fact that, besides himself, the only person who had the power to authorize new expenditures was his sister Christi. The Mandels have produced a series of e-mails and notes that undermine Depp's argument. In 2008, Depp was intent on purchasing a house adjacent to his property in the Hollywood Hills. Mandel suggested it wasn't a great time to buy the house, but it could happen if other cuts were made. Depp wrote back, "We must buy this house."

In the same e-mail, he simultaneously chastised Mandel for sending him hefty packets with too much information and expressed complete confusion at how his finances were run.

There are more signs Depp knew his situation was chronically precarious. Mandel wrote to him again in 2008, as the Great Recession was hitting, about his financial shortcomings. In the same e-mail where Depp insisted on buying the Hollywood Hills house, he said he would talk to his agent, and Bloom, his lawyer, and rectify things: "I will call Tracey and Jake and prepare them to make some ludicrous deals to refill the glass and make it F**king overflow."

A TMG staffer was tasked with trying to moderate Depp's spending on his various homes. In January 2009, Depp contacted Mandel and demanded that the staffer be taken off his account immediately because he was restricting his spending. Later that year, according to Mandel's notes submitted into evidence, Mandel suggested they meet to discuss his financial situation that had further deteriorated because Depp had taken much of the previous 12 months off. But Christi called Mandel back the next day and said Depp didn't want to discuss it and knew what needed to be done.

According to Mandel's notes, Christi called and said, "He realizes he needs to work his ass off" to maintain his lifestyle and that he wanted Mandel to do whatever was necessary to get him through the current rough patch.

That November, Mandel and Christi communicated about a loan that needed to be taken out to cover obligations until Depp got paid for his next film. Christi replied that it was hard to get Depp to sign the loan papers: "He left before I could get his signature . . . always had someone in the room and never able to have him alone. . . ."

Mandel e-mailed Depp again, asking him to watch his holiday spending. Depp e-mailed Mandel back on December 7th, 2009:

"Dear Joel, First, thank you for dealing and getting me through. Secondly, I am doing my very best on holiday spending, but there is only so much I can do, as I need to give my kiddies and famille as good a Christmas as possible, obviously within reason. But, regarding the plane situation . . . I don't have all that many options at the moment. A commercial flight with paparazzis in tow would be a F**king nightmare of monumental proportions. . . . What else can I do??? You want me to sell some art??? I will. You want me to sell something else??? Sure . . . what???"

By January 2010, according to court filings, Mandel was still requesting that Depp sign loan papers. He told Christi that "we are almost $4,000,000 overdrawn." Depp eventually signed.

Depp was stubborn even when his friends tried to save him from himself. In 2010, he started Unison Records, his own label, but by 2014 it had lost between $4 million and $5 million. His friend Bruce Witkin, the label's president, apologized for the losses and suggested it was time to call it quits, addressing Depp by the pet name Baha. Depp wrote back to Bwoosie, a.k.a. Witkin, telling him to keep going and that it took the world 20 years to catch up to his genius. The label was finally closed a year later.

Depp's spending didn't change as he aged. In what court filings by TMG call a "come to Jesus moment," Mandel set up a meeting in 2012 between himself, Depp and Bloom at Depp's Hollywood Hills compound, where Depp had purchased five homes that he had knitted together into an urban estate. It was deliberately planned by the Mandels to occur in the late afternoon, when Depp was clearer headed. Joel Mandel presented Depp with a one-page summary of his situation and stated flatly that something had to change or the financial futures of Depp and his kids were in jeopardy. Depp grudgingly agreed to sell his yacht but would consistently whinge about the sale to Mandel until the end of their relationship.

The "come to Jesus" meeting was actually the beginning of the end, though the relationship teetered on precariously for three more years. According to the countersuit, in 2015, Mandel made another plea to Depp about his dire circumstances, and Depp responded by text: "I am ready to face the music, in whatever way I must. . . . I know there's a way to dig ourselves out of this hole and I'm bound and determined to do it." Things didn't get better. In August 2015, Mandel told Depp's staff that there had to be new rules on controlling expenses on travel, car rental and town-car services.

Later that year, Mandel and his other advisers told Depp he had to make two movies and sell Hameau, his St. Tropez estate, and he had to do it quickly in order to cover millions in loans he had taken out to cover previous debts. The message got the actor's attention. Depp responded by asking Mandel if he was broke.

Depp seemed to come around. He initially agreed on selling Hameau but then reneged after receiving a crying phone call from his daughter, Lily-Rose, begging him not to sell her childhood home. A conflicted Depp took his frustrations out on Mandel: "Listen, you and I are going to have to F**king sit down and you're going to have to explain this shit to me because I don't appreciate a phone call from you in the 11th hour," Depp recalls telling Mandel. "If you're going to call me, call me in the third hour."

It wasn't out of the ordinary for Depp to send an apologetic text or e-mail a few hours after an outburst. Depp vacillated about Hameau, and the property was briefly listed for $13 million and then jumped to $27 million, a sign that Depp was in no hurry to unload it. He broke promises to make the house available for potential buyers. Around the same time, he bought $108,000 in suits while on a trip to Singapore, according to communication from someone who was there.

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By January 2016, Mandel was informing Christi that they had 30 days of liquidity left. Things got so desperate that Mandel told Depp staffers to stop spending money on houseplants. A frustrated Depp said he wanted to review his accounts. The Mandels didn't have a problem with that. Depp still professed he trusted Joel Mandel, texting him in late February that he had great love for him. But then communication suddenly ceased. Depp fired TMG 10 days later, in March 2016, and the legal war began.

In our conversations in London, Depp's ugly 2016 divorce from Heard is the subject that dare not say its name, but it is inextricably linked to Depp's troubles. Before Depp met Heard, his relationship with women was publicly chivalrous. When Penйlope Cruz told Depp that she was pregnant right before the beginning of the shoot for the latest Pirates of the Caribbean, she wondered if she should drop out of the project. Depp told her that was ridiculous. "He protected me every day, and by the end, I was six months pregnant," says Cruz. "I'll never forget that."

Depp and Heard met on the set of The Rum Diary, an odd, unsuccessful ode to Hunter S. Thompson's early reporting years. Christi was apparently opposed to their marriage, and that opposition led to a strain on her relationship with her brother; Depp's last constant connection to the real world was severed. Depp, according to TMG's suit, spent $1 million on the wedding, held on his Bahamian island.

On May 20th, 2016, Depp's mother died. The next night, Heard reportedly called iO Tillett Wright, an artist and friend of the couple, and told Wright to call 911. Wright wrote later on the website Refinery29, "I could hear [Depp] saying, ‘What if I pulled your hair back?' "

Wright called the police, and photographs of Heard with a bruise on her face emerged. Wright also wrote: "The reports of violence started with a kick on a private plane, then it was shoves and the occasional punch, until finally, in December, she described an all-out assault and she woke up with her pillow covered in blood. I know this because I went to their house. I saw the pillow with my own eyes. I saw the busted lip and the clumps of hair on the floor."

Two days later, Heard filed for divorce, on the eve of Depp's mother's funeral. That summer, video was leaked to TMZ of Depp smashing cabinets and pouring himself a Big Gulp-size glass of red wine. When he realized Heard was filming the incident, he appeared to grab her phone and trash it. The couple settled their divorce in August, filing a joint statement that partially read, "Our relationship was intensely passionate and at times volatile but always bound by love. Neither party has made false accusations for financial gain. There was never any intent of physical or emotional harm."

Heard received a reported $7 million payment, and they both signed nondisclosure agreements. Before I arrived, Waldman had instructed me that Depp couldn't speak about Heard because of the NDA.

Heard's name was front and center that night in London because J.K. Rowling had released a statement -– in the wake of the #MeToo movement – explaining why she hadn't fired Depp from Fantastic Beasts. "When Johnny Depp was cast as Grindelwald, I thought he'd be wonderful in the role," Rowling said. "However, around the time of filming his cameo in the first movie, stories had appeared in the press that deeply concerned me and everyone most closely involved in the franchise. . . . However, the agreements that have been put in place to protect the privacy of two people, both of whom have expressed a desire to get on with their lives, must be respected.   Based on our understanding of the circumstances, the filmmakers and I are not only comfortable sticking with our original casting, but are genuinely happy to have Johnny playing a major character in the movies."

Later that night, Depp tells me about the acute depression he entered as his personal and financial lives came crashing down simultaneously.

"I was as low as I believe I could have gotten," says Depp in a dead voice. "The next step was, ‘You're going to arrive somewhere with your eyes open and you're going to leave there with your eyes closed.' I couldn't take the pain every day."

He went on tour with the Hollywood Vampires and decided to write a memoir on an old manual typewriter, like his hero Thompson.

"I poured myself a vodka in the morning and started writing until the tears filled my eyes and I couldn't see the page anymore," he says. He wipes his eyes with the sleeves of his white shirt and continues his monologue. "I kept trying to figure out what I'd done to deserve this. I'd tried being kind to everyone, helping everyone, being truthful to everyone." He pauses for a moment. "The truth is most important to me. And all this still happened."

I have a harder time getting an answer on how Christi had received $7 million in unaccounted money, and his assistant Nathan Holmes nearly $750,000. Depp describes Christi as being the Mandels' "patsy," without going further into detail. Members of Depp's inner circle later tell me that Depp and Christi's relationship was badly damaged when he married Heard without a prenup. "He cut himself off from the only people looking out for him," a longtime associate tells me. The former insider also maintained the idea that Depp didn't know his sister was receiving payments from his account was ludicrous.

Depp also tells me that Holmes never really received the total $750,000. "He didn't get it all," says Depp. Later, Waldman tells me that Depp was confused and that Holmes had received all the money. (Both Holmes and Christi still work for Depp, with his sister running his production company, Infinitum Nihil.)

One of the central questions at the heart of the competing lawsuits will be the court deciding whether informing Christi of Depp's financial state is the same as telling Depp himself. In TMG's quiver is an e-mail submitted into evidence in which Christi told a Mandel associate not to bother her brother because she was "a one-stop informational center" for Depp. When Mandel tried to apply Christi's producer's share of back-end movie profits to pay down the loan, according to sources familiar with the transaction, Depp became furious and refused to allow it, hardly the action of a man being bamboozled by his management company.

It seems Depp's strategy is a classic Hollywood defense: I wasn't paying attention, and while I wasn't paying attention, the people supposedly paying attention robbed me blind. He tells me that, to do justice to the assortment of eccentrics he played on film, he couldn't let the outside world intrude. (Tim Burton told me in his role of Willie Wonka, Depp was channeling one part Anna Wintour and one part Michael Jackson.)

"If there were things for me to sign that would come in – and there would be occasionally – I would sign them like this," says Depp, pantomiming signing an imaginary paper with his right hand while his head was swiveled far to the left, staring into the London gloom. "I don't want to F**king see what they are because I trust these people."

Later, he grimaces: "Now I look right at everything I sign."

After my London visit, I obtain access to some of Depp's loan agreements, including one for more than $10 million. The terms and amount of the loan were right there on the summary page he signed. Depp would have had to sign with his eyes closed to miss them.

It appears it will be up to others to bail out Johnny Depp. One of them was almost stopped before she started. On the night of February 28th, 2017, Janine Rayburn received a courier letter from Michael Kump, TMG's primary lawyer. It read:

"I am writing to provide you with a copy of the Severance, Release, Confidentiality and Non-Disparagement Agreement that you entered into with TMG effective December 3[rd], 2010. . . ."

The letter did not arrive randomly. Rayburn is a former account manager for TMG and was tasked with handling Depp's finances. She was about to be deposed for the lawsuit. Kump's letter was a polite threat, implying that testifying would violate her 2010 separation agreement with TMG.

Rayburn was apparently undeterred and gave her deposition two days later. Quickly, it became obvious why Kump wanted to quash her testimony. Rayburn had worked on the Depp account from 2008 to 2010, and she saw things that she claims were not on the level. According to her testimony, she says her concern was piqued when she was asked to notarize documents without Depp or Christi present – which is illegal in California. Rayburn took the documents back into Mandel's office and put them on his desk.

"I can't do this," Rayburn said she told Mandel.

According to her, on one occasion, Mandel said that Christi would sign her notary log later, but Rayburn still refused. (Mandel's lawyer denies this ever happened and that he went to extraordinary lengths to get Depp's signature while Depp was on set.) During the same time period, Rayburn saw Christi's expenses being paid out of the Depp fund: her daughter's wedding, rent and mortgage payments. On two occasions, she said she asked Christi to explain the seemingly unapproved expenditures. "He's my brother. My money is his money. His money is mine," Christi answered, according to Rayburn's testimony. Rayburn said she asked Mandel about the odd Christi-Depp situation, but he shrugged it off.

Trying to prove Rayburn's suggestions that some of Depp's financial signatures were sketchy, Waldman sent me two Depp signatures. One is for a 2010 loan, purportedly signed by Depp while he was overseas. The signature is generic and subdued. Then Waldman sent me a more recent signature that is flamboyant and outlandish. They look superficially similar. Depp didn't agree. He wrote to Waldman: "If, one wanted to make the signature APPEAR to have been done very quickly, AS MINE IS, but, in fact . . . looks as if executed from careful study, instead of organically. what i'm saying is that . . . these "shapes" DID NOT COME FROM MY HAND!!!"

During Rayburn's deposition, one of Depp's attorneys asked if Depp was kept in the loop about his spending. "I do not believe that Johnny was aware of his financial situation," said Rayburn. "To my knowledge, financial statements were not sent to him."

Rayburn was terminated from TMG in 2010, being told "it wasn't a good fit." Still, she was asked to stay on three weeks longer and train her replacement. Baffled by the firing – she received a $40,000 severance package – Rayburn wrote two pages of contemporaneous notes to herself about her Depp experiences including: "Joel says – JD always drunk – will sign anything." (Mandel's lawyers deny that he ever said anything about Depp's drinking.)

Depp's lawyers also produced an e-mail from a Depp staffer, recounting a time when Rayburn claimed Joel Mandel needed to confront Depp about his precarious situation, but got so nervous he "went home with shingles." The staffer wrote that a residual payment from Disney saved Mandel from having to have the conversation with his star client. (A source close to Mandel claims he's never had shingles.)

Mandel's lawyers also went after Rayburn's credibility. She admitted that just because she wasn't aware of Depp getting sent a monthly statement, doesn't mean it didn't happen. To put distance between her and Depp, Mandel's lawyer elicited Rayburn to admit she'd only talked to Depp twice, and that both times were about his eBay account. Mandel's legal team also noted that she misrepresented her educational background (professing she had a bachelor's degree in business when she did not), and wasn't part of the TMG team that regularly briefed Depp on his finances.

Still, her testimony left a mark. Rayburn's deposition was supposed to continue, but at the end of the first day, Kump had heard enough. He ended her testimony, over the objections of Depp's lawyers.

Part of Depp's suit claims that the Mandels are guilty of inside dealing. According to his legal team, the Mandels wired $1.5 million of Depp's money, without telling him, into Lionheart, a hedge fund that, according to the SEC, is partially owned by the Mandels. Waldman claims TMG never disclosed that they owned Lionheart. (TMG asserts there were multiple conversations.) In 2008, the Mandels put the $1.5 million back in Depp's account with a minuscule profit of $32,000. Depp's return was a measly 0.3 percent, which, the Mandel team says, was because Depp — always cash poor — needed the money and the market was crashing due to the Great Recession.

The chronic late payments of Depp's taxes are a black mark against TMG.

"I just had no clue," says Depp in one of the few moments when he looks genuinely worried. "If you're knowingly not paying the United States government taxes, somebody is gonna F**king catch up with you and hand you a bill and you'll probably go to the pokey."

While the Mandels claim it was all about Depp's cash-flow problems, Miriam Fisher, a tax attorney first employed by TMG and later by Ed White, suggests TMG had two options: get their clients' finances in shape so he could pay on time, or borrow money from a commercial lender and not use the Internal Revenue Service as its bank. "TMG had a lot of options, and they chose the worse one: make the IRS your creditor."

The attention of Depp's suit has shined an unwelcome spotlight on TMG, which has always kept a low profile. The Wall Street Journal reported in August that both the SEC and the IRS were in the preliminary stage of investigating the Mandels on alleged money laundering and fraud. (The Mandel legal team is convinced Waldman called the agencies; Waldman denies the claim.)

Whether these federal investigations will amount to anything is unknown – nothing has emerged so far – but there was no doubt whom the Mandels blamed for their troubles: Johnny Depp. TMG's lawyers released a statement:

"In 30 years of business, no current or former client of TMG has raised any issue, other than Johnny Depp, who continues to spread malicious, unfounded lies about the company. TMG will vigorously defend and defeat all of Depp's fabricated claims."

On the third day, I go back to my hotel room for a hot shower and a change of clothes before returning to the mansion.

"You should have just stayed here," says Depp.

When I tell him I needed to change my underwear, he grins.

"That's why I always wear two pairs," says Depp with a smile. "Matter of fact, I'm wearing six condoms right now." I laugh, which seemingly encourages him: "I also have a dental dam if you need one."

We are all punch-drunk in each other's company, but some are just plain drunk. Maybe it is the booze and hash, but Depp seems happy to just have someone to hang out with, even though we have exhausted the ins and outs of his case. Someone mentions they can't stand Oasis. This is enough of an opening for Depp to grab an acoustic guitar and spend 20 minutes tuning it, before squawking out a few notes of "Wonderwall." My head pounds, but you can tell the guitar brings him comfort, taking him back to his younger days when he was a male ingйnue and not a punchline: bankrupt, isolated and one more mistake away from being blackballed from his industry.

He talks about his early days living with a few roommates in an L.A. flophouse. One time, after ending the previous night in a cheap Venice Beach motel, Depp returned home. Within 48 hours, everyone was scratching below the belt. There was an apartment meeting: "We're itchy. Why are we itchy?"

Depp shaved his entire body. He looked at the crabs under a magnifying glass.

"They look like crab-crabs, like from the sea." He laughs a bit. "I gave everyone scabies," says Depp, taking another drag on a cigarette. "You know how hard it is to tell your roommates that?" He puts on a voice that sounds like Kramer from Seinfeld: " ‘Uh, I got scabies from a hotel room, I swear. Sorry, dude.'

He recalls going to the drugstore to buy Kwell, an anti-scabies medication. "I think the guy was, ‘Price check on the Kwell.' "

Everyone laughs, but Depp isn't done.

"My roommate couldn't say much. He was a bank robber." I say that sounds like bullshit, but Depp tells me to look it up.

"He was the ponytail bandit," he says. "He was 11 and 1, but that one will get you. He only robbed banks in Beverly Hills."

I look it up on my phone, and there was, in fact, a ponytail bandit in L.A. at the time. Depp nods after I show him confirmation.

"I told you," he says. "I don't lie."

The night turns into early morning. A light snow begins falling on the grand backyard of the house, a backyard that no one in Depp's entourage has set foot in during their stay.

This spring showed Depp's legal team in disarray. In April, the team gave notice that it was quitting and an obscure Orange County firm was taking its place. Three weeks later, Ben Chew, Depp's chief litigator, re-emerged and signed back up with Waldman. Adding to his troubles, Depp is being sued by his American bodyguards for back wages, and they have alleged they had to alert Depp to "illegal substances visible on his face and person" when in public. After many delays, Depp finally sat for a deposition on May 26th. The trial is still scheduled for August. What happens next is anyone's guess.

The wild card is Christi. She's made no public statements about the dispute, and neither party has accused her of wrongdoing. But the crux of the dispute may hang on how much power Depp gave her over his finances.

Legal experts say the lawsuit could cost Depp millions in legal fees, and his chance of recouping that at trial seems dubious. Waldman kept floating alternate theories involving Malaysian banks, a Hollywood superagent and Mideast investors, nothing has been substantiated – maybe he'll pull it off at the trial. Depp spent Christmas in France, the winter in the Bahamas and much of the spring at his Hollywood estate. He never did sell Hameau or any of his other properties. He seems unlikely to compromise or admit defeat.

"I have never, ever in my life been the bully kid," Depp tells me. "I never went out of my way to hurt anybody. When I was a little kid, what I was taught was never F**king start a fight, but if somebody F**king tags you or invades your F**king world, finish the F**king fight. To my mom's exact words, ‘Lay them out with a F**king brick.' "

Depp says the fight is for his children, Jack and Lily-Rose, a Chanel model.

"My son had to hear about how his old man lost all his money from kids at school, that's not right," says Depp. He rubs his eyes with his tobacco-stained hands. He says one of the proudest moments of his life was when Jack said he'd started a band and Depp asked what they were called.

"The kid says ‘Clown Boner.' " Depp smiles proudly. "We don't need a paternity test. That's my kid."

Depp rambles on about what he wants to do as soon as the lawsuits are settled and he is vindicated. There is a French book he wants to adapt and direct. It's about a man who loses his wife, loses everything and then checks into a senior-citizen home even though he's only in his forties.

"It's called Happier Days," Depp tells me. (This is not to be confused with a Keith Richards documentary that Depp says he's halfway done with, which is tentatively titled Happy.)

From there, it's a short jump to musing about a remake of Titanic, filmed entirely in a bathtub.

"That would be great, but Hollywood never takes risks anymore," says Depp with a sigh.

I want to go home, but feel reluctant to leave. One of the most famous actors in the world is now smoking dope with a writer and his lawyer while his cook makes dinner and his bodyguards watch television. There is no one around him who isn't getting paid.

Light begins to seep through the windows. Waldman goes to sleep. He has an early flight to Switzerland to go cross-country skiing with Oleg Deripaska. I see this as an opening to leave. Depp looks for a security guard to call me a cab, but his knocking goes unanswered. So he walks me out.

"Thanks for coming," says Depp. "This could be your Pulitzer."

For the next 15 minutes, Depp tries to figure out how to open the gates to his mansion fortress. He clicks buttons and pushes the fence, but nothing budges. He is a lost boy who won't find his way home before dark. I finally tell him I can shimmy over the fence. I clamber over and jump down. Through the bars we say good night.

"Take care, man," he says. He goes silent for a moment. "Thank you for listening."

He then turns around and walks back into his gilded prison and pushes open the heavy door. After a moment, it slams shut behind him.


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Анна Опции пользователя
сообщение 22.06.2018 - 09:10
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Гадкий чертов маленький сволочной горец
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Айла, спасибо! hb.gif Я прям загорелась перевести, но она пугающе огромная, может, по частям?


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- Я считаю, что каждый дает себе право думать то, что хочет, пока он не окажется в жестоком заблуждении. (Джонни Депп)
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сообщение 25.06.2018 - 00:20
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Цитата(Анна @ 22.06.2018 - 09:10) *
Айла, спасибо! hb.gif Я прям загорелась перевести, но она пугающе огромная, может, по частям?

Было бы здорово!
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сообщение 25.06.2018 - 17:38
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Из тех отрывков, что я прочила на русском - очень страшно, страшно что происходит с Джонни и что он ничего не делает что бы исправить ситуацию. На его месте я бы уже давно бежала к врачу. И не исключаю, что то, что это интервью опубликовали , значит на Джонни скорее всего поставили крест.
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сообщение 25.06.2018 - 23:27
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Гадкий чертов маленький сволочной горец
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На самом деле никто не знает, что делает Джонни и чего он не делает. Из статьи эти выводы сделать нельзя) Он через очень очень очень сложный этап жизни проходит, и делает это с большим мужеством и достоинством, как мне кажется. И то, что он нам всем это показывает, может быть важным для многих людей ничуть не меньше, чем его творчество. Собственно, это и есть настоящее творчество — сама жизнь. Нет «картинки», нет глянца, нет идеала. Есть красота — но есть и боль, и слезы, кровь и ошибки. И это не страшно, через это можно пройти.


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- Я считаю, что каждый дает себе право думать то, что хочет, пока он не окажется в жестоком заблуждении. (Джонни Депп)
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сообщение 26.06.2018 - 16:13
Сообщение #3217


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А по-моему это уже край... Как медик, проработавший 6 лет с врачом-невропатологом, могу сказать, что даже по отрывкам интервью видно, что Депп в такой депрессухе, что его надо уже насильно укладывать в клинику нервных болезней и колоть успокоительными... Потому что, если так и дальше пойдет, то нервный срыв и отпуск в психушке ему обеспечен...
Мдяяя… Ну, не он первый, не он последний - банкротились многие: Аль Пачино, Николас Кейдж, Майкл Джексон и др. Но никого не обворовывала семья и рядом всегда были родные - жена, дети. А тут... Край и тут - жены нет, Ванесса устраивает новую жизнь, в июле свадьба, дети выросли у них своя жизнь, с семьей и сестрой общение прервано, в кинокарьере череда провалов... Херово (пардон за выражение, но по другому это не назвать)...
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сообщение 27.06.2018 - 01:27
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Мой куцый английский и "гугл-в-помощь", может быть, не передали главного в этой объёмной статье -интонаций, окраски, акцентов...Может быть. Но.
То, что читается: это не статья, это - речь прокурора(!), генеральная репетиция перед заседанием суда...Суд, кажется, в августе будет?
Это не статья, это большой камень на шею Джонни!
72 часа и за это время три-четыре фразы Деппа (не больше), которые цитирует Стивен Родрик? Всё остальное - выдержки из судебных протоколов и фразы типа: "мёртвые глаза", "потерянный и инфантильный"? А где человек, с которым общался этот пресловутый Родрик??? Его нет! И невольно возникают вопросы: А общался ли? Если общался, то с каким заранее написанным сценарием?
Слишком мало данных, чтобы что-то понять. Но, вслед за Станиславским, хочется воскликнуть: "Ну, не верю я!"
Простите за эмоциональность.
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сообщение 27.06.2018 - 08:38
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Меня еще очень расстроило то, что Джонни подтвердил слух с подсказками через наушник. Потому что на мой взгляд, то как он это объяснил - похоже на профессионализм.
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сообщение 27.06.2018 - 11:34
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А мой куцый английский и "гугл-в-помощь" + на 99% совпадающий с моим перевод из "КП" перевел, например:

"В интервью «Rolling Stones» Джонни признался: он действительно любит транжирить деньги. И то, о чем говорят его менеджеры, надо умножать на два. Например, Депп заявил, что на вино он тратил не 30 тысяч долларов в месяц, а гораздо больше.

- Говорить о том, что я тратил на вино 30 тысяч долларов в месяц, оскорбительно, - уверяет актер. — Потому что я тратил намного больше.

Опроверг Джонни и утверждение, что он спустил три миллиона долларов на то, чтобы выстрелом из пушки развеять прах своего друга, писателя Хантера Томпсона. «На самом деле я потратил пять!», - хвастается актер.

Семь миллионов долларов неизвестным образом утекли к сестре артиста: Джонни обвиняет финансовых менеджеров в том, что они перевели ей деньги без его ведома. Кроме финансовых передряг Джонни поведал своему собеседнику о тяжелых отношениях с матерью. Бетти Сью работала официанткой, воспитывала сына одна и часто срывалась на нем. На ее похоронах в 2016 году актер назвал ее «самым жестоким человеком, которого он когда-либо знал». Когда Джонни был маленьким, мамаша частенько поколачивала его.

- Она била меня без причины. Иногда в твою сторону летит пепельница, иногда ты получал телефонной трубкой. Это был дом-призрак: никто ни с кем не разговаривал, - говорит Джонни.

Тем не менее, разбогатев в конце 80-х годов, актер первым делом купил матери новый дом. Артист рассказал и о том, как он тяжело пережил развод с Эмбер Херд (который стоил ему еще 7 миллионов долларов. Получив эти деньги, актриса все до копейки отдала на благотворительность). Чтобы заглушить душевную боль, Депп начал писать мемуары. Джонни не отрицает, что заливал горе алкоголем: водка лилась рекой.

- Мое падение было настолько глубоким, насколько вообще это возможно. Я не мог терпеть боль каждый день, - признался он. - Однажды утром я налил себе водки и печатал, пока слезы полностью не затуманили взгляд, я перестал видеть страницу. Я все пытался понять, чем заслужил все это, что сделал… Я старался быть добрым и помогать всем, никому не врать. Правда для меня важнее всего. В финале статьи журналист Стивен Родрик рассказывает, как Джонни безуспешно пытался разыскать кого-то из своей многочисленной армии телохранителей, чтобы вызвать гостю такси. В итоге Депп сам проводил корреспондента до ворот своего особняка. Джонни долго возился с замком, но так и не смог открыть ворота, и в итоге Родрик просто перелез через забор. На прощание Депп сказал ему: «Будь здоров, мужик. Спасибо, что выслушал».


...ну и что это по-вашему, если не край? Можно закрывать глаза, успокаивать себя - да все это сплетни, судилище, где суд? , а судьи кто? и т.д. - но факты таковы - парень в депрессии и запое.
К сожалению, у меня в семье есть пьющий старший брат и вот та же самая картина - все виноваты, кроме него: мамка била ладошкой по попке, жены все плохие, работы для него подходящей нету, ибо он недооцененный гений местного розлива и т.д. У всех алкоголиков песня всегда одна и та же - не я такой, жисть такая... А то, что они себе такую жизнь своими руками оформили, это они не учитывают, нет.
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сообщение 27.06.2018 - 16:55
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Цитата(Татьяна_Л @ 27.06.2018 - 08:38) *
Меня еще очень расстроило то, что Джонни подтвердил слух с подсказками через наушник. Потому что на мой взгляд, то как он это объяснил - похоже на профессионализм.

Про наушник у Джонни давно известно, он этого и не скрывает. Всегда говорил, что ставит себе специально подобранную музыку, а уж что там ещё, неизвестно.

Vassa
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факты таковы - парень в депрессии и запое.

Если бы он был в запое, он бы не выдержал такой тяжёлый тур, концерты почти ежедневные у них.


--------------------
- Я считаю, что каждый дает себе право думать то, что хочет, пока он не окажется в жестоком заблуждении. (Джонни Депп)
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сообщение 27.06.2018 - 17:53
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Цитата(Анна @ 27.06.2018 - 17:55) *
Если бы он был в запое, он бы не выдержал такой тяжёлый тур, концерты почти ежедневные у них.

Ага... А так, в остальном у него все супер? Что касается тура, то (боюсь соврать кто точно), но одна оч. известная группа проехала с туром по России (еще в 90-е), а по приезде в США, сразу из аэропорта в наркологич.клинику поехала, потому что во время тура по России квасили так, что небеса темнели... lol2.gif

А вообще такие люди на время таких мероприятий, типа гастролей, просто подзавязывают - т.е выпивают на гастролях, но в пределах, до невменоса не нажираются, вот и все.
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сообщение 27.06.2018 - 22:37
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В остальном нет, не супер. Можешь ещё что-нибудь ему приписать со словом «факты», будет так же основательно выглядеть.


--------------------
- Я считаю, что каждый дает себе право думать то, что хочет, пока он не окажется в жестоком заблуждении. (Джонни Депп)
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сообщение 28.06.2018 - 01:14
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Каждый когда-нибудь проходит через депрессию, кризис. Молча, тяжело, прячась, зализывая раны...А публичный человек? Ситуация здесь усугубляется во много раз: каждый неверный шаг под прицелом, освещается каждый проступок. Тех, кого так охотно любили, осуждают с наслаждение и пылом!
Да, у Джонни кризис. И немудрено: везде - крах! Семья, финансы, карьера, возраст.
А дальше? Дальше, как у каждого человека, выдержит -станет сильнее, глубже, мудрее. Потонет - ...значит, потонет. Кто может знать, как оно будет?
Я буду ждать новых фильмов и верить, что он сможет всё преодолеть...

А что ещё можно сделать? Я пойду смотреть "Аризонскую мечту"...
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сообщение 28.06.2018 - 01:17
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Таис, да.

Ещё одна свежая статья о судебных тяжбах: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/j...l-fight-1014851

» Смотреть спойлер - скрыть спойлер... «
Johnny Depp's Inner Circle Emails Made Public Amid Legal Fight

Johnny Depp's ex-business managers are fighting to subpoena his longtime reps as part of the ongoing dispute over whether the actor knew the dire state of his finances — and have made public emails they say prove their case.

The actor sued Joel Mandel and The Management Group in January, claiming the firm cost him $8 million in unnecessary tax penalties and fees, loaned without permission $10 million of his money to parties close to him, secured a $12.5 million hard money loan with his residuals and failed to repay itself for a $5 million bridge loan it issued without his knowledge. Mandel countersued, claiming Depp was well aware of the situation — and so were his longtime agent Tracey Jacobs and lawyer Jake Bloom, as well as his sister Christi Dembrowski.

Depp's legal team has filed a motion to quash subpoenas to Jacobs and Bloom for communications regarding the actor's finances, arguing that they're overbroad.

TMG says Mandel, Bloom, Jacobs and Dembrowski served as Depp's inner circle and the four acted in concert to protect his financial and business interests — and the information sought in the subpoenas served to the Bloom Hergott attorney and UTA agent are critical to the dispute.

"[E]ach member of the team had numerous individual communications with Depp and each other, which, taken together, will overwhelmingly establish that Depp was always fully informed regarding his financial problems, and of course, always knew that he was borrowing money to afford his extravagant lifestyle," writes attorney Suann MacIsaac in a Monday court filing.

As to Dembrowski, MacIsaac says it's absurd that Depp would try to limit discovery regarding her knowledge. "In an attached email, Dembrowski even describes herself as Depp's 'one stop informational center,' while instructing a TMG employee that all documents sent to Depp for signature must go through her," writes the attorney.

In addition to that email, TMG's filing includes several others it says prove the actor was in the loop through his sister.

Only one email exchange directly between Depp and Mandel is included. It addresses the actor's need to "take it easy" on spending as well as his $75 million combined pay from The Tourist, the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film and Dark Shadows. (The full exchange is posted below.)

Depp asks "what else can I do???" and offers to sell his possessions. "i got bikes, cars, property, books, paintings and some semblance of a soul left. where would you like me to start???"

In a Jan. 25, 2010, email to Dembrowski, Mandel writes, "We are almost $4,000,000 overdrawn" and asks Depp's sister to get him to sign loan documents for a $6 million loan. She responds, "was gonna get them to you this afternoon...no worries!"

A 2014 exchange between Dembrowski and Mandel addresses the loan secured by profit participation from five of Depp's films, which the actor says was done without his knowledge.

"I need your help this week to coordinate having J sign that Letter of Intent regarding this new loan," writes Mandel in the email. "More than that, it is critical to us that J understand what he is signing and, either now or very soon, how this loan will impact him moving forward."

Dembrowski writes back, "I don't understand impact moving forward."

Mandel says he would be happy to give a longer explanation but, in short: "[A]s you know we are pledging our primary Disney profit participations. These monies will be required to pay back the loan and will be unavailable to us for a number of years (likely next 4-5 years). These monies have been a significant source of our income, and have sustained us during the periods between new work. Without access to these monies, even greater reductions in spending will be necessary."

TMG argues that evidence supporting that Dembrowski's role as his authorized agent is critical because often "Depp was either unavailable or unwilling to speak with Mandel regarding his finances."

TMG says Depp is fighting the discovery requests because the evidence will undercut his claim that the firm hid the state of his finances from him.

"Depp wants to deny this discovery because it will establish that TMG did everything within its power to make Depp, and all of his closest advisors, fully aware of Depp's financial condition," writes MacIsaac. "If TMG was trying to hide Depp's finances to cover-up their alleged misconduct, they would not have repeatedly advised Depp's long-term personal lawyer, Jake Bloom, and his longtime agent, Tracey Jacobs, regarding the situation."

Depp's attorney Adam Waldman sent The Hollywood Reporter a statement in response to the filing. "The Mandels present emails from a trio of advisors to whom they paid over $100 million of Mr. Depp's earnings without any contracts (in addition to the tens of millions they paid themselves)," writes Waldman. "How exactly do these advisor emails defend or excuse Joel Mandel from allegations of 'bad fakes' of Mr Depp's signature on bank loans, handing out millions of dollars in sham 'loans,' ordering his subordinates to 'alter financial statements' and falsely notarize documents, failure to timely pay and/or file taxes for 16 straight years costing Mr Depp over $8 million in penalties, sneaking rights for themselves and others to Mr Depp's movie residuals into hard money loan agreements and the litany of additional, specific allegations in this fraud and malfeasance case?"


Файлообменник с документами: https://www.scribd.com/document/351742993/Depp-Mandel-Email

Ещё одна статья про финансы, май 2017-го: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/...illions-1001513


--------------------
- Я считаю, что каждый дает себе право думать то, что хочет, пока он не окажется в жестоком заблуждении. (Джонни Депп)
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сообщение 28.06.2018 - 20:19
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Мещанское уничтожение Джонни Деппа

Джеймс Блэк, 26 июня 2018 года

» Смотреть спойлер - скрыть спойлер... «

Свежий текст Стивена Родрика в “Ролинг Стоун” о голливудском актёре Джонни Деппе — ещё один пример того, что крушение репутаций стало прибыльным бизнесом. Растянутая статья, начинённая осуждающими выпадами, обращает собственную беспощадную искренность Деппа против него. Описывая его признания в финансовых проблемах и саморазрушительных демонах, Родрик рисует клишеобразную картину сбитой с толку кинозвезды, мужчины-ребёнка, не сумевшего смириться с исчезновением своей звёздной силы.

«Будь честным и немилосердным». Такой журналистский совет Лестер Бэнгс, которого играет Филип Сеймур Хоффман, дает молодому Уильяму Миллеру в фильме «Почти знаменит», в 2002 году. Уильям, которого играет Патрик Фьюджит, следует совету и пишет жгучий и откровенный рассказ о своих наркотических путешествиях среди больших эго рок-н-ролла. Некоторые могут утверждать, что статья Родрика является лишь частью этой традиции гонзо: беспощадно честный отчет журналиста на переднем краю популярной культуры. Тем не менее, есть большая разница между правдой о силе знаменитостей и подталкиванием растерявшегося артиста ближе к пропасти.

Депп явно не святой. Он, без сомнения, согласился встретиться с Родриком в ходе своей (неудачной) публичной войны с бывшими бизнес-менеджерами, прежде чем он был готов сразиться с ними в суде по обвинениям в мошенничестве. Если его предполагаемое физическое насилие над Эмбер Хёрд имело место, это совершенно неправильно. Однако уродливые подробности его развода и колебания его настроения не являются предметом общественного беспокойства, не говорят ни о какой более широкой глобальной проблеме и не свидетельствуют о постоянстве злоупотреблений.

В интервью Депп предельно откровенно рассказывает об амбивалентных отношениях с матерью, о последствиях крушения своего брака и о потерях важных для него фигур отца, таких как Хантер С. Томпсон, Марлон Брандо и недавно ушедший Том Петти.

Для человека, который вырос со взрывоопасной матерью, все это могло быть подано, как причина для сочувствия. Пристрастия Деппа, его вспышки ярости и его, казалось бы, неуправляемое поведение явно являются результатом нестабильного детства. Его недавняя драма может по крайней мере частично объясняться потерей поддерживающих близких. Однако Родрик просто стреляет в Деппа наугад и предаёт его доверие.

“Уничтожение репутации” стало фишкой ленивых журналистов и источником кликбейта для таблоидов. Факт в том, что нет настоящего художника, которого (или которую) нельзя повредить откровениями о его противоречивой личности и пристрастиях. Есть что-то средневековое в том, как наше общество, похоже, гордится уничтожением достижений гениев, определяющих эпоху, особенно когда это скрывается в публичных осуждениях и сплетнях.

Билл Хикс однажды сказал, что любой, у кого есть проблемы с употреблением наркотиков, должен собрать все свои любимые записи и сжечь их, так как большой рок-н-ролл является продуктом опасного образа жизни. Что-то подобное можно сказать о таком актере, как Депп. Его резкая чувствительность, его странные, сказочные экранные творения дорогого стоят, и эта цена — маниакальная и неустойчивая личность. Морализовать его недостатки — расписаться в полнейшем невежестве по поводу психологических цирковых трюков, которые нужно исполнять большим артистам.

Под благочестивым осуждением Деппа скрывается глубокое, восхваляющее себя мещанство. Отношение к нашим художникам — знак того, что именно нам важно в нашей культуре. Учитывая всё высокомерие, содержащееся в статье о Деппе в “Ролинг Стоун”, кажется, мы ценим добродетельное позёрство над ярким, рискованным гением, так необходимым для великого искусства.


Автор: Джеймс Блэк, писатель и фольклорный певец, живущий в Лондоне.

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/artic...30#.WzSv14pn2hD


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- Я считаю, что каждый дает себе право думать то, что хочет, пока он не окажется в жестоком заблуждении. (Джонни Депп)
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сообщение 29.06.2018 - 00:28
Сообщение #3227


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Браво, Джеймс Блэк! Абсолютно, на 100% согласна со статьёй!

Против Джонни развернули настоящую войну его бывшие менеджеры, и всё это в преддверии суда. Судя по некоторым высказываниям в потоке "финансовых"

статей, суд собираются сделать историческим и образцово-показательным, чтоб другим артистам неповадно было идти против капитала!

И вот, хоть один искренний голос в этом потоке грязи!

Почитала англоязычные комментарии под статьёй - люди Джонни поддерживают, любят, и верят в него!
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сообщение 14.08.2018 - 17:39
Сообщение #3228


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”Моя очередь говорить!”

Интервью Джонни Деппа для немецкого журнала TV Movie Magazine

Жестокость, развод, долги, алкоголь, анорексия, депрессия — список слухов о Джонни Деппе постоянно пополняется. Что на самом деле происходит со звездой «Пиратов Карибского моря»? Наш журнал встретился с ним в Гамбурге




TVMM: Рад видеть, что ты выглядишь хорошо. В последнее время люди пытаются вычислить твою «болезнь», а все из-за того, что ты сильно похудел.

Джонни: А ведь совсем недавно говорили, что я разжирел. Еще, якобы, я растерян, у меня психическое расстройство, из-за чего я не могу связать и двух слов. Мне всегда казалось, что я говорю медленно... не спеша. Что бы я не делал, во всех заголовках я «болен». Поэтому я теперь не читаю статей о себе. Чтобы созидать, нужно держаться подальше от этого «цирка», где люди пытаются на тебе заработать.

TVMM: Поэтому тебя нет в соцсетях?

Джонни: Честно, я понятия не имею, как работает «Фейсбук» и все остальное, так что в противном случае мне пришлось бы нанимать человека, который бы вел мой аккаунт. Сама мысль, что бОльшее количество людей будут ходить на мои фильмы, если я буду выкладывать фото своего завтрака в «Инстаграм», нелепа. Я достаточно давно в этой индустрии, и застал времена большого успеха еще до «Твиттера», мне не импонирует мысль о погоне за лайками днем и ночью.

TVMM: Так это все слухи, всё, что пишут о тебе... которые выдумывают завистники?

Джонни: Если подумать... возможно. Например, за последние несколько лет я потратил крупную сумму на классные гитары. Вопрос, имею ли я право на гитару Gibson Lee (Gibson Lee - первая электрогитара с цельным корпусом от компании Gibson, один из символов рок-музыки и одна из самых долгоживущих и популярных моделей музыкальных инструментов в мире. - прим. пер.), которая стоит как хороший коттедж, возникает каждый раз, когда я появляюсь с этой гитарой на фото или на сцене.

TVMM: Мы сейчас говорим о гитарах?

Джонни: Я — да. А о чем бы ты хотел поговорить?

TVMM: Например, о твоих легендарных тратах на вино — вроде бы 30 тысяч долларов в месяц?

Джонни: Люди, которые хранят пыльные бутылки в комнате с выверенной температурой, откладывают их на старость, но они не проникаются «сутью» вина. Для меня важны винные погребы, если вы хоть раз пробовали такое вино, у вас не возникнет желания покупать дешевые бутылки в ларьке. Хорошее вино нужно пить из бокала, а не из бутылки, также как на хорошей гитаре нужно играть на сцене, а на спортивном авто ездить по улице.

TVMM: Говорят, ты разорен. Это правда?

Джонни: Я усвоил жизненный урок — деньги не делают счастливее. По крайней мере, пока они лежат на счету и ты ими не пользуешься. Накопления не сделают тебя богаче. Ты богат только тогда, когда делишься с другими.

TVMM: Ты предпочитаешь тратить?

Джонни: Я вкладываю в качество жизни здесь и сейчас, а не в туманное будущее.

TVMM: У тебя много татуировок, они неизменны?

Джонни: Было бы неплохо, но мы знаем, что это не так, хотя бы по моей 'Wino forever' (после разрыва с Вайноной Райдер Депп изменил тату с 'Winona forever' на 'Wino forever' — прим. автора). Для меня моя кожа — отражение моей души. Холст, на котором я могу самовыражаться.

TVMM: И что происходит, когда меняется твое отношение к женщине, запечатленной на твоей коже?

Джонни: В этом случае моя кожа покрывается шрамами, которые оставляет даже самый лучший тату-мастер, пытаясь изменить дизайн. Но шрамы «рассказывают» намного больше интересного, чем чистая кожа.

TVMM: Ты играешь на мировых сценах с Элисом Купером, Слэшем, Полом Маккартни и Джо Перри, как участник группы Hollywood Vampires . Ты ушел из кино?

Джонни: Нет! Как гитарист, и иногда певец, я выхожу на сцену не для того, чтобы засветиться. Наша группа не позиционирует себя как сборище звезд или престарелый бойз-бэнд. У нас нет хореографа, дирижера или режиссера. Каждый из нас самовыражается на сцене. Нам нравится играть песни наших друзей и мы купаемся в эмоциях. Это настоящая роскошь, потому такие впечатления за деньги не купишь.

TVMM: Как ты «пришел» к музыке?

Джонни: Моя мама подарила мне гитару, когда мне было 12 лет. Мы много переезжали и гитара была моим лучшим другом в детстве. И она им осталась, когда мы, наконец, осели в Мирамаре, Флориде, скоро я начал играть в разных группах.

TVMM: Ты хорошо играл?

Джонни: Тогда мне казалось, что да... Но сейчас уже не уверен.

TVMM: Будучи гитаристом в группе The Kids, ты переехал в Лос-Анджелес, чтобы стать рок-звездой...

Джонни: Мы изменили название группы на Six Gun Method, но из этого ничего не получилось.

TVMM: Почему нет?

Джонни: Мне не нужно было жениться на сестре нашего басиста. Лори не была нашей Йоко Оно. Совсем нет. Она работала гримером, а я пытался продавать ручки и часы по телефону. Но Лори познакомила меня с Николосом Кейджем, который посоветовал мне сходить на кастинг.

TVMM: Актером быть проще?

Джонни: Нет. Но актер сам ответственен за собственный успех или неудачи. Мне это больше подходит. В группе если и ошибаются, то коллективно. С камерой я «подружился». В 1984 году меня «сожрала» кровать в фильме о Фрэдди Крюгере, а что было дальше с моей карьерой, вы знаете.

TVMM: Через год вы с Лори развелись. Что пошло не так?

Джонни: У меня постоянно не было денег, кроме того, я уже не был так очарователен, как в нашу первую встречу.

TVMM: Карьерный успех и деньги важны для отношений?

Джонни: Я верил в свою мечту, но мои мечты не придавали моей жене уверенности в совместном будущем.

TVMM: Сейчас ты веришь в настоящую любовь?

Джонни: Конечно. Однако сегодня я не уверен, что у меня получается распознать искреннюю любовь, заслуживаю ли я её, и способен ли поддерживать её.

TVMM: Есть ли в твоей жизни настоящая любовь?

Джонни: Даже две. Мои дети — Лили и Джек.

TVMM: Твои дети от Ванессы Паради. Разрыв и смена тату случились после 14 лет непростого союза...

Джонни: Да, но это не влияет на мои отношения с детьми. Несмотря на всю мою суматошность, эти двое — лучшее, что случилось со мной в жизни. Они сделали меня лучше.

TVMM: Твоя дочь была серьезно больна. После её выздоровления ты пожертвовал миллион фунтов лондонской клинике. Почему?

Джонни: Об этом не должны были узнать, но, внезапно, этот шаг сподвиг и других сделать пожертвование клинике. Все хорошо закончилось.

TVMM: Твоя ранняя цитата: «Дружба для мужчины важнее любви».

Джонни: Сейчас я бы так не сказал. Однако я считаю, дружба между мужчинами намного проще, чем отношения мужчины и женщины. Поэтому когда я схожу с ума, друзья в этот момент очень нужны.

TVMM: Друзья? Их много?

Джонни: Да, но их все меньше.

TVMM: Исполняя последнюю волю нескольких своих друзей, ты потратил огромное количество денег, тем самым обеспечив себе проблемы...

Джонни: Это правда. Для меня было очень важно осуществить их желания. Но некоторое время назад я понял, что у меня не так много денег, как я думал. Мои адвокаты требовали много денег от моих финансовых консультантов, дело кончилось не только судом, но и обсуждением деталей моих трат в СМИ, куда сливали информацию «анонимные источники».

TVMM: В том числе и о трех миллионах, которые ты потратил на похороны Хантера Томпсона?

Джонни: Да. И на вино, о котором мы говорили чуть раньше.

TVMM: Ты в последнее время завсегдатай в суде.

Джонни: Этого трудно избежать в обществе, где можно нажиться на обвинениях в адрес человека вроде меня.

TVMM: Ты абсолютно невиновен?

Джонни: Я эмоциональный, мятежный, что служит поводом к действию для моих недоброжелателей. Я не против того, что этими делами занимается полиция, прокурор и суд. Только так можно добраться до истины.

TVMM: Тебе нравится играть героев в кино?

Джонни: Меня никогда не интересовали классические герои. Благодаря чему в нашей культуре спросом пользуются «плохие парни». Поэтому в моей игре наблюдается легкая шиза. У моих персонажей есть темная сторона, которая и привлекает меня.

TVMM: Можно ли сказать, что в полной мере шизоидным персонажем является капитан Джек Воробей?

Джонни: Джек — пират, который просто не разделяет общепринятых норм относительно имущества, закона и порядка. Когда Джек высаживается на берег, он реквизирует корабль, чтобы достичь своей личной цели.

TVMM: Насколько правдоподобность важна для тебя?

Джонни: Если дело касается кино, мне важен сюжет, неважно, реален он или нет. Поэтому, за редким исключением, я не снимаюсь в документальном кино.

TVMM: Ты принципиальный человек?

Джонни: Я бы не стал так себя называть. К сожалению, я не всегда придерживаюсь своих убеждений и использую свои слабости, называйте как хотите, в работе, дабы придать роли силы и натуральности.

TVMM: Получив роль Геллерта Гриндевальда, ты подвергся сопротивлению от сторонников движения MeToo. Что ты чувствуешь, когда снова и снова становишься жертвой общественного мнения?

Джонни: Я делаю глубокий вдох и иду дальше. Нет оправдания насилию над женщиной. Каждый подобный случай должен быть расследован специальными службами.

TVMM: Говоря о насилии над женщинами: представитель департамента полиции Лос-Анджелеса подтвердил, что 21 мая 2016 года патруль прибыл в твой дом на South Broadway по вызову относительно домашнего насилия. Прибыв на место, полиция допросила всех присутствующих, проверила помещение и заключила, что никаких неправомерных действий совершено не было. Тем не менее, твоя тогда еще жена Эмбер Херд получила от суда запретительный приказ и подала на развод...

Джонни: Должен прервать тебя. Ты должно быть знаешь...

TVMM: … что есть пункт в вашем соглашении о неразглашении.

Джонни: Который применим и к полицейским, судья, занимавшимся нашим разводом, определил степень законности предъявленных мне обвинений от Эмбер. Сейчас нет смысла поднимать эту тему.

TVMM: Напомню, что запретительный приказ был отозван после переговоров ваших адвокатов относительно финансовых деталей развода.

Джонни: Пожалуйста, мы можем снова перейти на тему гитар, музыки и кино?

TVMM: Как ты справляешься с тем фактом, что некоторые проблемы невозможно решить единолично, если не сказать — вообще нельзя решить?

Джонни: Отношусь терпимо. Я думаю, любую проблему можно решить постепенно. Все возможно. Я никогда не предавал свою мечту стать гитаристом и играть на большой сцене, даже когда уже стал актером. Куда бы я не направился, я всегда брал с собой гитару. Я знаю, люди надо мной смеялись, даже издевались за спиной. Я игнорирую. Потому что моя мечта не осуществилась, судьба так распорядилась. Я сам осуществил свою мечту с друзьями. Я иду своей дорогой и делаю свою работу. Неважно, играю ли я Геллерта Гриндевальда в кино или пишу песни с «Вампирами» и записываю их в студии. Неважно, получу ли я назад деньги или мне придется снова их заработать. Я поднимаюсь, отряхиваюсь и иду дальше.

Интервью было проведено немецким журналистом Джерри Вагнером во время летнего тура «Голливудских Вампиров» в Гамбурге. Джонни и Джерри уже встречались раньше, однако, Джерри сказал: «В этот раз я был поражен его открытостью, юмором и эмоциональностью».

http://www.johnnydepp.ru/jdportal/html/mod...ge&pid=1131


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сообщение 3.10.2018 - 19:03
Сообщение #3229


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Интервью для британского журнала GQ

Johnny Depp will not be buried
Hollywood divorce: where acrimony meets alimony somewhere on the highest, most exposed precipice. And when those disputes are embittered further by costly lawsuits against once-trusted advisors and accusations of domestic violence, the truth – as presented by either side – will take the fall. We don’t know the truth. But following an invitation to spend time with the face of one multibillion-dollar franchise and a whole rogue’s gallery of tender, oddball tales at the French village he once bought to share with another former partner, we now know his version of it. Aggrieved, aggressive and vulnerable, by turns it’s all these things. He spoke, we listened and here is the truth Johnny Depp wants you to hear

The death metal begins at 2.43pm. It’s loud. And it is coming from inside the church. The noise is a proud, ungovernable fury, like a prize bull being dragged to the slaughterhouse by its copper nose ring. The idyllic quiet of the southern French countryside, the soft rub of the cigales and the warm breeze rolling off the Mediterranean is torn down the spine by wailing, demonic vocals and pedal distortion. Everyone outside, some drinking small glasses of pastis de Marseille in the 37C heat, turn to look at the church door and then at one another.

Despite the rupture, the shattered tranquillity, it is a positive sign for those who want an audience with our host. The man rumoured to be sleeping inside the small, single-storey chapel – its original confessional area transformed into a closet, its cloister now used as an artist’s studio with large, unfinished canvases leaning against the perimeter – must surely be awake. No one could sleep through what sounds like Satan’s own alarm bell.

Two weeks ago there was an invitation, confirmed late yesterday, to come to Johnny Depp’s villa and talk openly and without caveats. If you rise at 5am in North London, get the first Nice-bound British Airways flight out of Heathrow around 7.45am and then take a taxi for an hour due east along the scorched yellow coast, past Cannes, past Fréjus and not quite to Saint-Tropez, you will find yourself in the rural town of Le Hameau De Gassin, hemmed in by rows of young, short vines, forming tracks like nature’s braids, their bruise-coloured fruit just beginning to swell and sag with new weight.

Depp’s complex of around seven or eight small stone abodes sits above this quiet, unremarkable old town, with a view that stretches out over the rippling Ligurian Sea. On a clear day you can walk out to one of the several high, rocky outcrops on the estate, squint and see the island of Corsica and, beyond that, waters rich with fables and myth, where scholars believe Homer’s Odysseus ordered his crew to tie him to his own mast to hear for himself the song of the Sirens.

Squint harder and you might catch Italy’s west coast twinkling, with Pisa, Genoa and, beyond that, the beauty and corruption of Florence. Earlier, I arrived at the compound’s gates, passing director Tim Burton and his family, who were off out on a boat trip with various children, sun-kissed and grinning. Burton has been staying with Depp these past weeks, enjoying the baked, private utopia.

Having been buzzed in, a golf cart driven by a native named Daniele takes me up to the main set of buildings. Daniele – a man in his late sixties with an impressive whipped-cream moustache and a long, ivory ponytail who, it must be noted, looks astonishingly like Asterix from René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo’s famous French comics – is the man from whom Depp bought the land and original 19th-century houses 20 years ago. It was purchased by Depp and Vanessa Paradis, his then partner, as a sanctuary, a place to escape with children, to play freely away from the full beams of Los Angeles and Paris.

When the estate was listed on the market in 2015 for $63 million – a warning shot of the actor’s financial problems – many of the news reports described the property as being a “village-like compound”. As our tyres crunch their way up the wide gravel path towards the collection of stone buildings, it’s easy to see why.

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There is a modest main house with weathered blue shutters, almost entirely covered in rippling, bright-green foliage. There’s a hidden pool, a gazebo, a stone terrace with wooden shade and a jumble of around four or five bedrooms and bathrooms. The slanted, near-flat roof is terracotta tiled, while on the lower flank a heavy wooden door leads into a cave à vin, now converted into a cosy – if you find crypts cosy. The space is peppered with candle drippings and cowhide throws.

From here we turn hard right, pulling inside what feels like the estate’s main courtyard, or village square, a place where the road widens and comes to a natural point of congregation, a patch of gravel with a small tree at its centre.
In front of us, 30 feet away, is the church, silent, with its door locked, while to our left is what appears to be a quintessential French café, a building that was originally intended to be a garage. The café’s brown fabric awning has a name across it in an art-nouveau period type, “Chez Marceline”, which refers to Marceline Lenoir, Paradis’ long-standing acting agent.
At a polished wooden table outside the café, two men are sitting sipping Evian. Their names are John Evans and Daniel Rolle and they are expecting us. Evans’ and Rolle’s looks are route-one Mayfair hedgie on an off-site: crisp, pale-blue shirts (tucked in), narrow but not-too-skinny indigo jeans, a woven belt at the hips and a vintage Rolex on the wrist. It’s clean, tasteful and quietly refined, rather than anything ostentatious or flash.

Evans and Rolle have been the point men in regard to today’s logistics. They work for a London-based company called Hawthorn, a public-relations firm that, among other things, specialises in dealing with crisis management for companies and high-net-worth individuals.

One of Hawthorn’s partner companies in the US has been consulting on the sale of The Weinstein Company, but it’s worth mentioning that Evans himself advised against such a move, despite the “ludicrous fee” offered. Firms such as Hawthorn don’t do minor skirmishes or call editors seeking corrections in the entertainment pages; they are a firm who exceptionally wealthy clients call if there’s no one else to call. They are the Harvey Keitels of this world: wolf men, fixers, public-image adjustment specialists, polymath corporate strategists.

Ben Elliot, nephew of the Duchess Of Cornwall, is a cofounder and partner of Hawthorn. He also set up Quintessentially, the concierge service for the wealthy elite – think heli-skiing off Everest’s Hillary Step or a balcony suite with a view of the Monaco Grand Prix. It was Elliot who made initial contact to ask whether GQ would be interested in meeting and talking to Depp.

Despite Depp being someone who has long underscored his disdain for the media – someone who once chased the paparazzi with a plank of wood outside a London restaurant for photographing his children – we were informed that he wanted to talk.

It’s about two months after the publication of a widely read Rolling Stone interview, entitled “The Trouble With Johnny Depp”. It is an article that Depp will talk about later, addressing it as he does most topics, with a sort of vengeful nonchalance. This is a man, I will come to understand, who will happily spill his guts all over the table, yet remain flippant about cause and effect. This “coolness”, one suspects, is his armour. The actor refers to the Rolling Stone article as “a sham”. In fact, he goes much further. “I was shafted. The guy [journalist Stephen Rodrick] walked in with absolutely one intention. And I could see it and I thought maybe I could help him understand, you know?

“I trusted Jann Wenner [cofounder and publisher of Rolling Stone], as I knew him through Hunter [S Thompson, the late writer and a mentor of Depp]. I trusted what the magazine stood for, or what it used to stand for. I wanted Jann to see if he could write, to see if a piece could be written... to put things in perspective. That’s all, just to put things in perspective.”

Perspective can be a treacherous thing. It can be hoodwinked. It can be manipulated. Perspective, after all, is inherently subjective. Yet Depp was right to be belligerent. Anyone who didn’t know any better would have read that Rolling Stone profile – together with a steadily accumulating digital silo of cuttings and clickbait about the star’s life of late, his financial woes, his savage and hostile divorce from American actor Amber Heard, accusations of domestic violence that he is challenging in a defamation case in the UK, and that videotape – and come away with a pretty bleak picture of the 55-year-old.

The article stated Depp was near to broke: having made $650m on films that netted around $3.6 billion, yet “almost all of it is gone”. Up until a few weeks ago, Depp was suing his longtime business partner Joel Mandel and Mandel’s brother Robert (and their firm, The Management Group [TMG]) for negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, forgery and theft.

The suit claimed that as his tax filers, TMG had failed to pay Depp’s taxes on time for all 16 years of their representation, costing Depp more than $8.3m in penalties. Depp’s suit also pointed at TMG’s conflicts of interests, their alleged wrongful investment of the star’s money in companies with which they had a relationship and their enabling of Depp’s immediate family members to spend his fortune without proper authority or knowledge. TMG counterclaimed against Depp for breach of contract and fraud, saying that it was the actor who was responsible for any financial turmoil in which he found himself. Last summer, the Wall Street Journal and others reported that Depp’s former business managers were to come under investigation by the American IRS, Department Of Justice and Securities And Exchange Commission for bank fraud and money laundering.

By the time I reach Depp in his French villa, the litigation has reached a settlement and, later this month, in August, he will win the first stage of a separate case against his longtime lawyer Jake Bloom, over $30m paid to Depp’s former attorneys Bloom Hergott by his former business managers without any contract. The latter appears to be a vindication of sorts for Depp. “Hollywood jolted,” reported one industry headline.

Sitting with the Hawthorn executives in Chez Marceline, waiting for Depp to emerge from his quaint, nondenominational lair, there is also continued talk of stories emerging about Heard and the pair’s acrimonious split. Heard filed for divorce in May 2016, only 15 months after the couple got married in February 2015. Court records filed by Heard cited “irreconcilable differences”, with a temporary restraining order granted against Depp, who Heard accused of domestic violence. A much-circulated leaked video claimed to show Depp “throwing a wine glass” at Heard and the 32-year-old’s lawyers previously claimed that Depp “violently attacked” her. Heard herself was arrested for domestic violence against a previous partner in 2009. Heard denied the accusation and no charges were brought.

The claims then go from the disturbing to the downright bizarre. Although the couple’s divorce settlement was reached in August 2016 – with Depp paying a reported $7m and the restraining order lifted – even this morning, on my way to Depp’s compound, the most peculiar story yet emerged from their volatile relationship, that Heard allegedly defecated in the star’s bed after a particularly nasty row in April 2016. Heard has come out with a statement last night claiming the incident was far from a dirty protest on her part, but rather blamed the deposit on her dog, a 4lb teacup Yorkie called Boo, who suffers bowel problems.

As I hear the satanic noise blare out from Depp’s church in France, it makes one wonder: who, or what, am I about to encounter today, at his home, inside his sanctuary? An actor who is crippled by fame, money and excess? A relic of an old Hollywood star system that is broken and growing old disgracefully? Someone who simply doesn’t fit into the brave new era, an era when scandal and stories can no longer be hidden away or buried under an avalanche of enforced NDAs?

Or is Johnny Depp simply a man who has been wronged and harbours a genuine desire to set out to protect his name and his past work so that he can begin to bring himself back from what has been a period of his life he’d sooner forget?
Does he seek vengeance against an industry – and certain individuals – that he says took advantage of his naivety?
Is this a man who still believes in trying to be the outsider, an artist who desperately wants to be free of responsibility, something that might be mistaken for isolation and eccentricity but is actually something closer to a belief in romantic rebellion?

“It’s time. He’s ready.”

As I’m led towards the church where the demonic wall of noise has finally been silenced, I realise, perhaps for the first time, that I have no idea who or what will appear, blinking into the hot white light. It feels like stepping inside the eye of everything that tornadoes around this one man and his astonishing life. As the church door opens and I hear a cough, I wonder: where does the myth of Johnny Depp end and the truth of who Johnny Depp really is begin?

“Are you a John or a Jonathan?”

“I’m Jonathan,” I say. “You must be Johnny.”

“Johnny, John... I’m a John. Is it Jon-a-than or Jon-a-thon? I’m John Christopher Depp II. I have a number after my name which makes me sound... I don’t know, grander than I should be.” Immediately there’s that smile, one that hovers between charm and mischief, heroic and villainous. His eyes will remain behind an enormous pair of reflective aviator shades for the next four hours. “Shall we go and sit in the sun, talk, get heatstroke, vomit and die?” A pause. And then the head goes right back with the laugh. “Maybe later.

Come on, Jonathan, there’s a really cool little spot I want to show you...”
Depp has emerged from his slumber looking if not healthy then certainly healthier than I expected. Friends I had spoken to about my assignment voiced concerns over Depp’s mental and physical state – most with little to no actual factual insight, it should be said – many referring to an image taken of the star recently while on tour round Europe with his band, Hollywood Vampires.

The photograph, taken by a fan, showed Depp gaunt, pallid and in need of some sleep – or at least a large green juice and once round the block on a SoulCycle. Not only that, but, perhaps even more disturbingly, his usual battered fedora had been replaced with a baseball cap, a baseball cap with the word “fugly” emblazoned on it. Johnny Depp? In a baseball cap?

Today, however, Depp’s skin is clear and absent of bloat or puffiness. It must be added, however, that his clothes are less intact. He is wearing a baseball cap and his shirt in particular appears to have had its arms pulled off, as if it was once the property of an irate Bruce Banner pre-anger management classes. In fact, the shirt is like nothing I have ever seen before: part dress shirt, but with a mandarin collar, yet no sleeves. Over his shirt is a pinstripe blue waistcoat and around his neck are various chains, trinkets and talismans.

On the end of one necklace is a silver “gonzo fist”, the icon characterised by two thumbs and four fingers holding a peyote button originally used by Hunter S Thompson’s 1970 campaign for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado. Through Thompson’s prolific life and writing style, the fist has become a symbol of gonzo journalism as a whole. For Depp it is both a memento of his late friend, someone he once lived with in a basement in Owl Farm, Thompson’s base camp in Aspen, Colorado, and a reminder of how one should work and live, with a strong sense of the individual and unhinged from corporate or fiscal systems. As Depp so often says, “Beat the system from the inside out.”

The jeans are baggy and a patchwork of blues, holes that have been mended and stitched innumerable times. Depp’s trouser-wearing history has always been, well, patchy, to say the least, always looking like he’s just come from break-up sex with a werewolf. He was once taking a child to a birthday party in Los Angeles when he realised his jeans had a hole the size of a hubcap across the rear-end. Rather than change, which would have been the sensible thing, he grabbed a roll of silver gaffer tape and fashioned his own filler.

Depp’s belt is something else. It’s worn brown leather, but the buckle is attached to the side rather than the front. It’s unusual, I note, as we walk towards a huge stone table where we will sit and talk in the shade for the afternoon. “This? Well, it’s no Texas Belt Buckle. You know what Texas Belt Buckle is?” I have to confess I do not. “Well, a Texas Belt Buckle is where you have to pull your scrotum up over the top of your jeans without undoing them. All the way up and over. Oh, the horror of it all... You have to bring your cock back around and stick it through... Your cock has to go around the bend in a sort of semi fruit basket and then, well, then you’re F**ked. You pull your testicles out over the top and leave them just resting there. That’s a Texas Belt Buckle. Then, of course, there’s a Dirty Sanchez, which is something else entirely. ‘Dirty Sanchez’, which I managed to sneak into Pirates...”

For those in the dark about what a Dirty Sanchez might be, all you need to know is that it’s a term that originated in the spit’n’grind of the LA porn industry, something that could occur when certain protruding members are stuck into certain orifices and then into certain other holes. I’ll let your imagination run dark, but let’s just say it’s unfathomably gross and a term for an obscene sex act that couldn’t be less suitable for inclusion in a $300m Disney film about a pirate, itself based on a family-friendly theme park ride in Florida.

“Yeah, I [said] it in Pirates and they never caught it when it went out to the theatres,” Depp chuckles as we take our seats opposite one another. “They caught it when it went to DVD. I did it because I wanted to see who would be the one at Disney to find it...” As to why Depp wanted to find out who would be the person to red flag such a thing is unclear, although the fact he is still proud to have got the obscene term included in that first blockbuster – albeit as a mumbled, near incoherent entry – and past corporate eyeballs (and ears) is not insignificant.

It serves to illustrate what has been, and what still is, at Depp’s moral core, a conflict that boils and foams beneath the actor’s surface: the tussle of being true to his artistic sensibilities while also being a willing participant in and figurehead of a billion-dollar franchise. It is the age-old problem faced by many successful creatives, that of art vs commerce.

Jack Sparrow was for Johnny Depp what Iron Man would eventually become for Robert Downey Jr: a global hit that pivoted the actor – or at least his image – from that of a young, somewhat surly indie misfit who had already illustrated a distaste for being a teenage pin-up (via 21 Jump Street), wore oversized vintage leather jackets and smoked Marlboro Reds while smooching wild fashion cats such as Kate Moss, into a global megastar with his own merchandise line, including a 25cm-high pirate figurine with removable cutlass and leather booties.

It was the moment the man who played Ed Wood turned into Mickey Mouse, albeit Mickey Mouse with a fondness for a bottle of Château Calon Ségur (2014). “I was freaked out by it,” he admits when he realised where acting was going to take him, rather than music, which had always been his main creative outlet. “I mean, at the beginning I genuinely didn’t give a F**k about acting. But I began to enjoy it. I enjoyed creating those characters up there, being in the trenches and sparring with collaborators, actors, directors... The trouble with working with these big studios is they can get uncomfortable about certain creative decisions you make. That happened with Pirates. My view is if the studio isn’t worried then I’m not doing my job properly.”

Did Disney try to alter his Pirates performance? “Disney hated me. [They were] thinking of every way they could to get rid of me, to fire me. ‘Oh, we’re going to have to subtitle him.’ ‘We don’t understand Captain Jack Sparrow. What’s wrong with him?’ ‘What’s wrong with his arms?’ ‘Is he drunk?’ ‘Is he mentally F**king stupefied?’ ‘Is he gay?’”

I ask Depp directly: did Disney ask if Jack Sparrow was being played as openly homosexual in Pirates? “They asked me, ‘Is he gay?’ and I answered the question over the phone. It was a lady called Nina Jacobson from Disney at the time [Jacobson is herself gay, it should be noted, and has long campaigned for greater diversity within the all-male club of old Hollywood boardrooms] and she asked me a couple of questions and then said, ‘What is it, Johnny? Is he gay?’ My tendency, of course, is to be irreverent so I said, ‘Nina, didn’t you know all my characters are gay?’ That was a pretty abrupt end to the conversation. And I just continued shaping Jack the way I believed was best.”

Was Depp angry at Disney for its lack of vision? Its lack of trust? “No. I told them, ‘Look, you don’t like what I’m doing, fire me. You hired me to do a job and play the character and this is what I want to do.’ This is the work. I mean, hadn’t they seen any of the work I’d done previously? You might want to take a look at that before you hire a motherF**ker, you know?”

Did he feel vindicated once it was clear his treatment for Jack was going to work, when audiences fell in love with him? “I knew I was right. Even the very first time when they came back to me saying, ‘No, no, what is this?’ it felt right. Even when the other actors were looking at me like I was an absolute menace, I stayed with it. I mean, the older actors were probably thinking, ‘Jesus Christ, he’s wrecked.’ Because I would tear up the script on set. I’d go rogue. I’d fly for a little bit to see where things went. And not everyone appreciates this way of working. Oliver Stone didn’t appreciate it when I changed all the lines he wrote for me in Platoon and that’s no doubt probably why most of my stuff ended up on the cutting-room floor.”

Depp and I are sitting under what can only be described as a tent or canopy of green vines. We are about 150 metres from the main house. Inside the tent is a huge, monolithic stone table and benches that resemble something dragged from the palaeolithic age, pockmarked and grooved from years of wear and deterioration. Depp bought it when they acquired the house. “I did a film with Roman Polanski [The Ninth Gate] in Paris with Vanessa. We were supposed to stay two months and we ended up staying ten years.”
As we talk, Depp keeps his cap and his shades on. Occasionally he seems a little sleepy, stifling a yawn, although after a while he shakes off the sleep and is engaging, coherent and certain. He twists and moves rarely, maybe tucking his legs to one side or sitting cross-legged like a sort of skater/war vet/yogi. Otherwise, he is entirely still. He takes care with his answers, speaking at a steady pace, unafraid to be patient and wait until the right word arrives from his consciousness and escape into the ether.

A man, maybe a housekeeper, brings us refreshments in one of those light-blue plastic laundry baskets: sweet, bottle-green tea, Coca-Cola, water. No alcohol. Later I ask Depp if he believes he has a problem with alcohol: “Do I like a drink? Yes. Do I need a drink? No.” The only visible vice is the rolling tobacco that he smokes in liquorice papers; he’ll roll one up every 20 minutes or so and often not light it immediately. He lets it hang from his mouth, the paper sticking to his lower lip as he talks and answers questions. He has all the tobacco warnings, all the images of blackened lungs, scribbled out by an assistant. His fingers are cluttered with rings and his arms are full of black ink.

The tattoos have been much discussed: the “Wino Forever” on the upper right biceps being perhaps the most infamous, an alteration of what originally was “Winona Forever”, which Depp got when he was dating Winona Ryder, the pair having worked together on Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands in 1990. A more recent tattoo read “Slim” in a gothic font, a letter on each of the proximal phalanges (the finger bones closest to the palm of the hand). Slim was the name Depp used to call his ex-wife Amber Heard. After the divorce he had it amended to “Scum” and more recently “Scam”.

There’s something about the torment of the past few years that, intentionally or not, shakes such spiky subjects – his break-up, his reputation, his financial problems – to the surface. Quite simply, they are in the air. I can feel it. Depp can feel it. And without even being nudged, the topics fall onto the table and demand to be picked at.

Depp, one can tell, feels he has suffered, sounding at times like a wounded animal who has healed and is now ready to bite back. He is also, although he may deny it, angry – angry about a lot of things – and he’s vengeful and absolutely, categorically certain of his position and his standing.

“The last three or four years has felt like a perverse situation that was inflicted on me. It hurts.” How did the actor take the claims about his long-term managers eviscerating his trust, their relationship, in that way?

“It is crass to speak about money but, I mean, when I found out the Pirates 5 film had just been finished, right before the business manager started to go, ‘Oh, you’ve got to sell the house in France! Oh, my god! Shit’s hitting the fan!’ Now, my front fee – I am even embarrassed to say it – for Pirates 5 alone was £35m. And then I went on my honeymoon after that film and while I was on honeymoon that’s when I got the call from the guy and I was like, ‘What? I don’t understand? How could this be?’”

TMG claimed that they did what they could to handle Depp’s finances responsibly and repeatedly warned him that he was overspending, but he has a different perspective. “My belief was that I needed to not envelop myself in the notion of money, how much I was making, how much was there. I just knew that I was making enough money in salary and back-end that everything should be tickety-boo. Nothing should have gone as sideways as it did. And when I found out, that is when the war began. It was from every angle. The judge, you know, called them on all the petty personal allegations and said you are trying to decapitate this man in a public forum. That is not what you do.”

Depp has a theory, however, about a wider conspiracy being fuelled by the troubles surrounding his finances and deteriorating marriage, a theory that points to the Hollywood industry itself, “this vile F**king circus”, as the actor calls it. “But did it stop all the power mongers in Hollywood who were interested in shutting me up? Big money was being thrown about. People suing me at every opportunity. I mean, it’s all so obvious. Listen, I know I was never going to be Cinderella – I know this and accept it. But it felt like within a very, very short period of time that suddenly this version – for lack of a better word – of Cinderella had been immediately turned into the beast. He’s Quasimodo.

“I could feel people look at me differently, because of the accusations towards you. And then people start putting things in magazines: ‘He’s insane. He needs to take a sanity test...’ You know, ludicrous stuff. But the only thing that I could do was know what I still know. Ultimately, the truth will come out in all of this and I will be standing on the right side of the roaring rapids. I hope other people will be too. I know the truth and if I had to walk away from all of it today, the job, the career, all of it, and go toodle-oo, then fine.

“I’ve got nothing to prove to anyone, because I’ve never been in competition with anyone. I don’t buy into that shit. I’m not interested in receiving any spray-painted action figures. You know, maybe whatever this thing is, whatever I leave behind, you know, my legacy to my kids or the people, I haven’t watched 98 per cent of that shit. It may be completely insane. It may be crap. It may be interesting. I don’t F**king know what it is. But what I do know is that I did something, and I tried something different, for a period of years. Did it work? Who the F**k knows? But I did it and I’m fine to stop.

“I love the process of creating a character. I love the safety of, you know, being that character. I mean, there was great safety in being as open as you could possibly make yourself on Edward Scissorhands and to try to see things, mundane, normal things, as beautiful and new, you know? Captain Jack was a different animal, Ed Wood, a different animal, Mad Hatter [from Alice In Wonderland], Willy Wonka [Charlie And The Chocolate Factory]...

“Yet there’s a common thread going through all these characters. There’s a filament that connects them. Even though they’re all very different, they’re all very much the same, because it all has to come out of some sort of truth, you know? And the truth is they’re all F**king misfits. They’re all misfits and they’re all misunderstood. And judged in a condescending manner, in a bad way.”

The message is loud and clear as to what Depp believes went down with his long-term management and business partners. I wonder: does he worry about his reputation, his legacy, not least in regards to women? Is he concerned that so much of what has been put out in the press, so much of the scandal, has caused an irreversible erosion of his good name? Or does he simply not worry because, as he says, he never wanted to be put on some pedestal or claim to be a role model, a Cinderella figure?

“Do you know... I’ll tell you...” The following pause is long. Depp and I sit in silence. The question hovers over us. Then, he seems to simply decide to talk.

“It’s not about being a role model. No, it’s not that at all. The tape that came out...” He stops and chuckles and repeats his words, “The tape that came out, or the tape that someone made, that miraculously appeared on YouTube, taken from someone’s phone. That was not Downtown [LA, where he lived with Amber Heard]. She [Heard] wanted to make like it was recent. It was an older video and [what happened in it] had to do with finding out that I had lost hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The video in question, blurry, clandestine, shows Depp filling a large beaker with red wine and then grabbing Heard’s phone after seeing she is recording. The video was “leaked” or released by showbiz gossip channel TMZ in the States, although compared to Heard’s other allegations against Depp the video content seems unexceptional or certainly the least disturbing.

Although the pair have now settled out of court, what Heard alleges to have happened in April 2016 still reverberates throughout my meeting with Depp. Heard alleged that on Saturday 21 May, Depp attacked his wife and threw an iPhone at her face. Heard phoned the police, who found “no evidence of any crime”. However, Heard claims to have taken a selfie later that day showing bruising around her right eye and cheek. The following Wednesday she filed for divorce. Depp is currently suing the Sun for alleging in a headline, since altered, that he is a wife beater.

I feel like I have to broach the subject with Depp. Does the actor consider himself a violent man? An aggressive man? Can he lose his temper or is he prone to if intoxicated? “The thing that hurt me is being presented as something that you’re really as far away from as you could possibly get, you know?

“Then there was that time when the paparazzi were trying to take a photograph of Vanessa and she’s pregnant with Lily-Rose and I was not going to let them make a circus out of it. So I did what I had to do. Got her in the car, they didn’t get the picture, and I said, ‘Take a F**king picture because then I’ll stove your F**king head in. You’ve got your cameras out. First one click. Let’s go.’ And that’s just the truth. I would’ve. I’ve even said before, if a paparazzo gets a shot, they’re far away and they get a shot of me and my kid, whatever, that’s their thing. But if I catch you, I will eat your nose. I will eat your nose, chew it up and swallow it in front of you and then you’ll F**king think about it next time. I F**king mean it. But to...”

Depp goes quiet again. It seems like he needs to take stock every so often, to recharge, to get back into a specific lane or mood every time the conversation veers into talking about the volatile relationship with Heard and the results of its breakdown. “To harm someone you love? As a kind of bully? No, it didn’t, it couldn’t even sound like me. So, initially, I just kept my mouth shut, you know? I knew it was going to stick on me and it would get weirder. Keep going, you know? Go nuts. I ain’t going to get into a pissing contest with someone about it. Spit out what you need to spit out and, you know, my attorneys will take care of the rest. I never went out and spoke about the shit.

“But of course I care what my family and my kids think. I mean, you realise right away, essentially, that what is being done is the commencement of what they hope is to be your funeral.” Depp is still talking at a measured pace, in his low, cool tones, but his words are just a little clipped at the ends. His vowels just a little firmer.

“And worse than that, to take away future earnings that are for my kids, you know? I do this shit for my kids, man. How could someone, anyone, come out with something like that against someone, when there’s no truth to it whatsoever? I’m sure it wasn’t easy for my 14-year-old boy to go to school, you know what I mean? With people going, ‘Hey, look at this magazine, man. What, your dad beats up chicks or something?’ Why did he have to go through that? Why did my daughter have to go through that?” I tell Depp I can see how that would anger him. “She didn’t...” Depp is often all too aware that some of the intricacies of his and Heard’s relationship need to be put in the third person. This is why, at times, he will start off using a subjective pronoun but switch to something more objective, swapping a “she” for “that person”.

“Why didn’t that person speak to the police?” continues Depp. “I mean, they spoke to the police, but the police saw nothing and they offered her an emergency medical technician. She said no. Police see nothing on her. Police see nothing broken in the place, no marks, and then they offer her an EMT to have a look at her and she says no and I don’t know if it was the next day or a couple of days later, but then there was a bruise. There was a red mark and then there was a brown bruise.”

A day after the alleged phone-throwing took place, Heard was seen at a party, specifically Amanda de Cadenet’s 44th birthday party. De Cadenet posted a picture of herself, with Heard smiling brightly on her right and model Amber Valletta to her left. Heard is tagged in the photo; her hair is brushed over her left eye and cheek. At some point, however, the image was deleted. Depp is emphatic about his version of events. “She was at a party the next day. Her eye wasn’t closed. She had her hair over her eye, but you could see the eye wasn’t shut. Twenty-five feet away from her, how the F**k am I going to hit her? Which, by the way, is the last thing I would’ve done. I might look stupid, but I ain’t F**king stupid.”

To suggest that a woman, a man or anyone might have made up such a serious allegation is a tremendously dangerous and damaging thing to do. If we as a global community are striving for equality and acceptance to run through every part of our lives, through all races, cultures and genders, then we need to believe those who stand up and claim to have been subjected to physical or verbal abuse.
Let me be clear: this is not a piece of investigative reporting. It is merely a snapshot, a chance to sit down and talk to a person of immense interest and talent, who has, it must be noted, brought joy to millions of film lovers all over the world, ever since he moved from Kentucky to LA and a friend, Nicolas Cage, told him he should go and see his acting agent.

This isn’t a piece claiming to know with any authority about what happened between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard in May 2016 or at any other time between the pair in private. All I wanted to do was come to Depp and ask him to give his side of the story, which up until now has not been properly heard. Before we met, it was agreed with his advisors at Hawthorn that both parties would go into this meeting with one simple aim: to record what happens candidly. From my side, this is what I saw and this is the conversation we had.

“We probably shouldn’t be talking about this,” continues Depp, “but I am worried. I worry about the people that bought it and I worry about her. It’s just not right. I will never stop fighting. I’ll never stop. They’d have to F**king shoot me. An episode like this takes time to get over. It’s a mourning for someone you thought was...”

Again, a pause and quiet. All I can hear is the blood rushing about my skull, nitroed by adrenaline and the swirling white nicotine clouds.

The love of his life?

“Well, something. I did marry her somehow.”

Is he single now?

“Yeah,” he says, chuckling and sounding somewhat relieved.

Does that feel good?

“Yeah.”

Does he think about wanting to find love ever again?

“No.”

I need to take a leak. Depp tells me I can use his bathroom and that I’ll find it back at the church. He gives me a set of instructions and directions, although with the electricity of the conversation we have just had still pinging about in my hot skull I nod and smile but when I actually arrive at the church I realise that I wasn’t really paying attention. I walk in through the main door and that’s when I realise I am standing slap bang in the middle of Johnny Depp’s bedroom. Alone. With a full bladder.

Actually, I am not quite in his bedroom yet. I am in a small kitchenette. There’s a sink and a box of tissues on a small table and beyond that a door that leads to the bedroom. I can see it’s the bedroom because I can see the huge four-poster bed against the far wall. I venture further in, thinking that there must be an en suite somewhere and now I really am in the middle of Johnny Depp’s bedroom, inside his church, which he had built in the compound he bought with his ex-partner 20 years ago. It makes one’s head spin to be alone in someone’s private space. It’s so intimate, like climbing inside their head or diary and riffling through their thoughts without telling them you’re doing so.

I take a quick scan of the room. There’s a jumble of family photographs, a guitar on a stand and clothes strewn about like a teenager just home from school. Down the far end, towards the main church door, which is blocked, two sofas face one another. On the sofa closest to me, down the right-hand side is the most intriguing object of all: a black vintage typewriter with round, silver keys.
To the left of the machine is a pile of notes and typed pages. I had heard a rumour that Depp was writing a memoir, a book of his life, and had been doing so for the past few years. It’s a book about the abuse he suffered at the hands of his junkie, desperately violent late mother; about how, in anger, he used to take a baseball bat from the garage as a kid and just spend an hour wailing it against a palm tree in their yard; a book about the work, the films that never made it; about his relationships, his friendships; about when Allen Ginsberg called the actor as he was dying; about Bob Dylan, his friend; about Edward Scissorhands; about the industry, the circus; about the corruption, the excess and the sordid beautiful truth about it all.

There’s a page spooled into the machine already. There are a handful of sentences typed, the black ink speckled and smudged on the grained, ivory paper. What is written is private. It’s also eloquent. It reads like someone trying to write vividly, someone desperate to get it out, get it down, so he might hold it up and scream, “Look! This is what happened!” This feels like snooping. I make a swift exit and go back to the bathroom in the café. Eventually I wander back to Depp, the smoke signals from his cigarette indicating he is still where I left him.

“You know, on the road with the band, it’s impossible to bring oil paints,” explains Depp. “Mineral spirit stinks up the F**king place, you know? So I’ve just been doing watercolours and odd drawings. I’ve also been doing a lot of writing. I kind of started a book, a couple of months before I broke up with Amber.”

Fiction? Memoir? A play?

“I’ve written around 300 pages. I have about 300 more pages more to go. I am halfway. They are more memories. And some of the beauty and the knowledge that I’ve been able to glean or sponge off of some of these magic F**king people I know, from Brando to Hunter to Patti Smith to Dylan to Ginsberg. I have been so lucky to have met all these folk. I don’t have cards or make notes really. No structure is blocked out. I have reminders. I’ll make a list of reminders.”

Of events he wants to remember?

“Yes, but it’s not written in any kind of linear form. It should be more like the unplanned telling of a story around the campfire.”
I ask Depp if he finds it hard writing about some of the more painful memories.

“Sure. I mean my childhood was dark. My mum wouldn’t edit. There was no editing. She would say what she meant, what she felt, in that instant. No matter how wrong it might have been even, or how hideously evil it was in the moment, she didn’t edit. It came out: bleurgh! She was out of her mind, obviously, and she didn’t know what the F**k she was doing. She got four kids and she hated the world. Was there F**k loads of verbal abuse? Yeah, man. Was there F**k loads of physical abuse? Yes. And never-ending, to the point that pain, physical pain, was just a given. But the last four, five years that I was involved, let’s say... Well, that was quite a dark time too.

“I mean, you can write about those things and what’s interesting is you write about those things early on and once you’ve had a few years away from that chapter you go back and reread what you’ve done so far. And then you realise that you do feel the same way you did, but you’re so far beyond it. It puts everything else into perspective. Because at a certain point one must be able to say, ‘What the F**k else can any of you do now? What else can any of you do to hurt me?’”

The patter has changed. He is still calm, still warm, but the emotions are right here on the table with us, right in our faces. Maybe it’s just Depp’s natural charisma, but the intensity of the conversation feels like lifting weights. Not because it’s difficult to talk or that it isn’t natural, but simply because of the rawness, the emotional density of the topics. We sit in silence. Depp doesn’t move, not a single muscle flinches. It’s like he’s looked into the Gorgon Medusa’s eyes to see for himself life’s savage reality.

The cigarette hangs unlit, like a stogie to be chewed on or soaked with spit. “What was it that Dylan Thomas said, ‘To begin at the beginning,’ right? And Ernest Hemingway, ‘All you have to do is write one true sentence’ – one of the hardest things in the world to do. And [Allen Ginsberg’s] ‘First thought, best thought.’”

Depp has taken his writing lessons from brilliant yet often difficult men. He has strung them together like bunting: to begin at the beginning, all you have to do is write one true sentence: first thought, best thought... Much like Ginsberg, Depp has that ability to perform, to unspool himself and all his kinks. A drive into Depp’s memories, one suspects, would be like trying to control a car on a winding mountain road with its brakes cut, thrilling yet perilous.

“And Hunter. Hunter! He was right in the centre of every story. And all those stories were true. I have all the tapes and the napkins. Hunter wanted me to buy his archives, but I’m its custodian. They belong to Hunter’s grandson, Will. I think we are going to take it on the road, to show people, to show people the reality, the madness and the goddamn beauty of it all.”

For the first time, Depp takes off his shades. He rubs his eyes, which aren’t bloodshot or kohl-lined, but are clear, backlit and luminous. “I want the truth. That’s really my biggest obsession in the world. It’s just the F**king truth.”

Yet to live on impulses, to put down all the raw facts unedited as they come out, well, that’s a powerful type of storytelling. As Hunter himself warned of such precision reporting: “Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity.”

The truth has no time for perspective. Or rather, truth is not about perspective as a point of view. But to see the whole truth? The whole story? Now, that sort of perspective will allow you to get the entire picture: the correct height, depth and position of all the facts in relation to one another, something that is absolute.

There is no doubt Depp is seeking the truth. That is his mission. One day, maybe he will find the right words, in a conversation or in a book, and when he does they will be simple.


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сообщение 6.10.2018 - 01:10
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..."Одно несомненно, Депп ищет истину. Это его миссия. Однажды, может быть, он найдет правильные слова, в разговоре или в книге, и когда он это сделает, они будут простыми..."
Красивое завершение статьи. И, думаю, это правда...
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сообщение 9.10.2018 - 19:30
Сообщение #3231


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Жалко очень его, таким хрупким сейчас кажется.


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- Я считаю, что каждый дает себе право думать то, что хочет, пока он не окажется в жестоком заблуждении. (Джонни Депп)
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сообщение 12.10.2018 - 10:32
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Шикарное интервью Джонни о Гриндевальде: https://ew.com/movies/2018/10/11/johnny-dep...wald-interview/


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- Я считаю, что каждый дает себе право думать то, что хочет, пока он не окажется в жестоком заблуждении. (Джонни Депп)
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сообщение 2.11.2018 - 12:53
Сообщение #3233


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Цитата(Айла @ 14.08.2018 - 18:39) *
”Моя очередь говорить!”

[i]Интервью Джонни Деппа для немецкого журнала TV Movie Magazine


http://www.johnnydepp.ru/jdportal/html/mod...ge&pid=1131


Что-то Джонни задергался на вопросах об избиении. Раньше я была уверена, что он и пальцем Эмбер не трогал, а теперь не знаю...
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сообщение 2.11.2018 - 15:01
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Цитата(Vassa @ 2.11.2018 - 12:53) *
Цитата(Айла @ 14.08.2018 - 18:39) *
”Моя очередь говорить!”

[i]Интервью Джонни Деппа для немецкого журнала TV Movie Magazine


http://www.johnnydepp.ru/jdportal/html/mod...ge&pid=1131


Что-то Джонни задергался на вопросах об избиении. Раньше я была уверена, что он и пальцем Эмбер не трогал, а теперь не знаю...


Ну, там документы уже начали выкладывать, что все эти её фоточки липа была для прессы прокатило, а экспертизу делать она отказалась. Нарисовали синяк то.

Это только первые странички, там их много будет.

Доки
Перевод в паблике ДД в ВК.


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Кот в мешке наплакал...
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По-моему, за Джонни- правда!
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сообщение 6.11.2018 - 22:36
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Неужели их прижучат, наконец.


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- Я считаю, что каждый дает себе право думать то, что хочет, пока он не окажется в жестоком заблуждении. (Джонни Депп)
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сообщение 7.11.2018 - 01:28
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В документах как-то просматривается, что дефки врали и подстроили вот это вот, по крайней мере из того, то что выложили. А там много ещё будет страничек.
По факту то, суд признал это, Херд тоже признала и подписала. Что она теперь будет кричать, что её пытали? Доки же были против неё, а у неё пшик подтасованный и свидетелей 0, кто в суде бы выступил. Это в соцсетях они орали, эта (это) Иа или как там её, у себя в свитере кричала, что будет свидетельствовать, она по телефону все видела... бррр слышала, как Депп там бил телефоном (свидетели внезапно появившиеся видели, что они вообще в разных местах, а Херд кричит в телефон и афигевший Депп в другом конце помещения) и видела кровавые подушки или ещё чего, не знаю. По факту эта Иа Райт (не помню точно имя) в суде так и не выступила свидетелем.

Компания для сми, эти фотки и заявления, а в суде ничего. Почему тогда её не вывели на чистую воду, вот чтобы припечатали, не знаю. То ли побыстрее хотели закруглить скандал и соглашение сделать, там же премьера "Пиратов" должна была быть, то ли Депп пожалет её... не разобрать. А получилось, что его до сих пор полощат в сми.


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Кот в мешке наплакал...
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После проигрыша Деппом дела о клевете против NGN, и потери роли Гриндевальда в ФТ-3, начались нападки в прессе. И какие! Тяжелая артиллерия, статья с обложки «профессионального» журнала THR, полная нападок на Деппа, его друзей и коллег.

Обложка:
» Смотреть спойлер - скрыть спойлер... «


Статья на английском:
» Смотреть спойлер - скрыть спойлер... «
"He's Radioactive": Inside Johnny Depp's Self-Made Implosion

by Tatiana Siegel December 09, 2020, 6:00am PST

It wasn't just erratic and violent behavior that wrecked one of the world's most bankable stars. It was his unquenchable thirst for revenge.
In the face of mounting bad publicity, Johnny Depp could still count on one friendly industry group — a Polish film festival.

On Nov. 21, the embattled star was poised to receive a career honor during the 28th EnergaCamerimage cinematography gala and had agreed to appear remotely from the U.S., with his virtual presence touted in the press. As an added seal of approval at a needed moment, the festival scheduled his latest film, the low-budget period drama Minamata, as its closing-night offering. But after a montage of clips showcasing Depp's "unique visual sensitivity," the 57-year-old actor failed to materialize onscreen. Instead, he sent along a bizarre picture of himself — open-shirted and with platinum blond hair peeking out from under a pair of colorful scarves. Inexplicably, he appeared to be standing behind bars in a Caribbean prison — resembling a carefree swashbuckler serving time for a crime that he doesn't quite take seriously. Minamata, featuring Depp as real-life war photographer W. Eugene Smith, never screened. MGM, the film's distributor, removed it during the seven-day festival citing piracy concerns.

Depp's absence offered a fitting denouement to a month of reputational and career devastation. On Nov. 2, a U.K. court had ruled against him in his high-stakes libel suit against tabloid The Sun over its description of him as a "wife beater." In fact, the judge made clear that he believed Depp had assaulted ex-wife Amber Heard on multiple occasions and that she frequently feared for her life. In the ensuing days, Warner Bros. excised him from its Fantastic Beasts franchise — a firing that played out publicly — while sources tell THR that he is no longer involved with a prestige Harry Houdini TV project produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, his most powerful remaining ally. Over the course of four short years, Depp has spiraled from an A-list star responsible for more than $10 billion in worldwide box office to Hollywood persona non grata, beginning when Heard's abuse allegations first surfaced in 2016 and continuing through a scorched-earth legal strategy that has seen him sue everyone in his path. The result is a tsunami of tabloid fodder as sensitive texts, emails and drug-fueled and violent anecdotes spilled out into the public view. Despite multiple attempts to contact him, Depp could not be reached for comment.

There are few examples of a movie-star implosion of Depp's magnitude that have been so sudden and spectacular. During the height of his stardom, a 13-year stretch ending in 2016, Depp earned some $650 million, including $55 million from his profit participation on 2010's Alice in Wonderland, a Disney tentpole that earned $1.03 billion worldwide. For Minamata, which opens Feb. 21, he was paid just $3 million. The claims made in at least six recent suits, along with multiple interviews conducted by THR, paint a picture of an out-of-control Depp, a casualty of Hollywood's sycophant culture in which his wild spending and substance abuse were rarely challenged. Or as one producer who worked on a recent Depp project notes, "He's just never been told no for the past 35 years. That's typical in Hollywood. But I've never seen it to this extent." November 2020 simply offered the punctuation.

Though likely intended as a creative reset, Minamata appears to be something of a career humbling. When CAA was putting the film together in 2018, it wasn't considering a list of auteurs like Tim Burton. Instead, CAA insisted that the Japan-set drama be helmed by an experimental sculptor turned director with only one unreleased family drama, Lullaby, to his credit: Andrew Levitas, who, unusually for an indie player, albeit one with an impressive career as an artist, has top industry agent Kevin Huvane on his team. When one project insider asked about finding a more seasoned director, the person was told it was Huvane's call. Depp was to be paid $6 million — light-years from the $40 million he earned on each of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies after profit participation, but financiers became skittish about even that figure after a lawsuit filed by a crewmember on the actor's City of Lies, a crime drama about the unsolved murders of The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur that was pulled before its September 2018 release by distributor Global Road Entertainment. (The crewmember claimed an intoxicated Depp punched him twice on set.) Depp's Minamata salary was cut in half, and the film was shot mostly in Serbia instead of a more authentic-looking but also more expensive Asian locale, as originally envisioned. CAA had little luck finding a domestic presale, and the film sat unclaimed for nearly two years until MGM's American International Pictures label acquired it in October. (A source says the film, which received some critical acclaim following its Berlin Film Festival premiere in February, was acquired for high seven figures.)

Things won't likely improve for Depp anytime soon thanks to the havoc wrought in the U.K. case. Pick any spot in Justice Andrew Nicol's 132-page ruling on Depp's defamation claims against The Sun, and you're bound to land on an embarrassing detail.

Among the lowlights is a text from Depp to CAA agent Christian Carino, who previously repped Heard, in which he wrote: "[Heard is] begging for total global humiliation. She's gonna get it. I'm gonna need your texts about San Francisco brother … I'm even sorry to ask … But she sucked [Elon Musk's] crooked dick and he gave her some shitty lawyers … I have no mercy, no fear and not an ounce of emotion or what I once thought was love for this gold digging, low level, dime a dozen, mushy, pointless dangling overused flappy fish market … I'm so F**king happy she wants to fight this out!!! She will hit the wall hard!!! And I cannot wait to have this waste of a cum guzzler out of my life!!! I met F**king sublime little Russian here … Which makes me realize the time I blew on that 50 cent stripper … I wouldn't touch her with a goddam glove."

In another text to actor Paul Bettany, Depp writes, "Let's burn Amber!!!" To which Bettany, apparently taking it as a joke, responds, "Having thought it through I don't think we should burn Amber — she's delightful company and easy on the eye, plus I'm not sure she's a witch. We could of course try the English course of action in these predicaments ­— we do a drowning test. Thoughts?" Depp adds, "Let's drown her before we burn her!!! I will F**k her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she's dead."

It also appears that Depp attempted to interfere with the career of Heard, whom he met on the set of the 2011 drama The Rum Diary and married in 2015. "I want her replaced on the WB film," he wrote to his sister, producer Christi Dembrowski, who previously had a deal with the studio and was influential there. During the trial, he admitted that this was a reference to the Warner Bros. film Aquaman, in which Heard starred.

"He has suffered immense reputational carnage from a reckless set of choices that has left him in septic muck," says Eric Schiffer, a crisis PR rep whose clients include a number of high-profile Hollywood and sports figures. "Can he come out of that? It really comes down to Johnny's choices. He still has a fan base that in many ways is like Donald Trump's with their emotional intensity and commitment to a star icon. It's not based around principles. It's about charisma and their identification of the range of characters that he's played."

But Hollywood decision-makers may be less forgiving in light of the U.K. trial's copious drug references — cocaine, alcohol, Xanax, Adderall, Roxicodone, magic mushrooms and ecstasy. Depp had been earning his $20 million-plus up-front paydays from the major studios, all owned by increasingly risk-averse and reputationally sensitive publicly traded media giants. And while shooting Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales in Australia, Depp swallowed eight ecstasy pills at once, according to testimony in the U.K. case, and embarked on a campaign of terror aimed at Heard. It culminated with the tip of his finger being sliced off, which resulted in his being flown back to Los Angeles for surgery. Pirates was forced to shut down production for two weeks, costing the studio some $350,000 a day. Depp claimed that Heard threw a bottle of alcohol at him, injuring his finger.

By far the most damaging hit from the trial was that Justice Nicol said he believed Heard's abuse allegations. "I have found that the great majority of alleged assaults of Ms. Heard by Mr. Depp have been proved to the civil standard. … I also accept that Ms. Heard's allegations have had a negative effect on her career as an actor and activist." Adding insult to injury, Nicol refused permission for Depp to appeal. But Depp on Dec. 9 applied directly to Britain's court of appeal in an effort to overturn the ruling. In short, publications that refer to Depp as a wife beater would have much less fear of legal retaliation. (British standards for defamation make it more difficult for journalists to prevail than in American cases, giving The Sun's victory all the more significance.) And in Hollywood's #MeToo era, that presents a PR nightmare that no studio is eager to invite.

"You simply can't work with him now," says one studio head. "He's radioactive."

The fact that 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. continued to work with Depp on Murder on the Orient Express and a Fantastic Beasts sequel, respectively, in the wake of Heard's allegations becoming public in May 2016 raised eyebrows around town. The Warners case was particularly baffling. At Comic-Con 2018, the studio brought Depp onstage in costume as the eponymous villain at the end of the Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald segment. The fans weren't the only ones surprised. Sources say Heard, who also appeared onstage as part of Warners' presentation the same day for Aquaman, was blindsided. Despite Heard having once filed a restraining order against Depp, marketing chief Blair Rich approved Depp's inclusion, say sources. Backstage, tensions erupted between Depp and Rich, according to eyewitnesses, and Rich later complained to colleagues that Depp spoke to her in a menacing manner. Nevertheless, Warners — then headed up by CEO Kevin Tsujihara — brought Depp back for a third outing in a move approved by creator J.K. Rowling and gave him a pay-or-play contract that did not contain a morality clause. As a result, the studio was stuck paying his entire $16 million payday for the film even after firing him in the wake of the U.K. verdict. (He had shot only one scene.)

Disney had already backed away from a Pirates future with Depp well before the U.K. trial, even if it never formally severed ties. Bruckheimer, who has been one of Depp's biggest champions and once suggested the finger injury happened because "he got it caught in a car door," was hoping to at least bring the Captain Jack Sparrow character back briefly in the next outing — said to be a female-centric incarnation fronted by Margot Robbie. Disney balked.

Insiders say Depp's relationship with Bruckheimer has frayed in recent months. Sources say the actor was poised to play the iconic illusionist Harry Houdini in a Bruckheimer-produced high-end production, offering a career jump-start after multiple pricey bombs like 2016's Alice Through the Looking Glass, which earned a brutal $300 million worldwide and cost Disney hundreds of millions, as well as 2014's Transcendence, costing $100 million and making $109 million worldwide, and 2013's The Lone Ranger, which cost $250 million-plus and grossed just $261 million worldwide. The Houdini series, which had not yet found a home, would mark Depp's first foray into TV since his 21 Jump Street days. But the defamation ruling may have made his casting untenable.


One studio executive who has worked with Depp in recent years says his inner demons had long ago bled into his professional life, making him "a huge liability" thanks to frequent tardiness and costly behavior, all cataloged in the U.K. suit.

"The discovery that came out in that trial alone would be enough to scare any studio," says the executive.

***

To many observers, Depp's negative press was largely avoidable and stemmed from his aggressive legal tactics. The chief architect behind Depp's sue-'em-all strategy is Adam Waldman, a handsome Washington lawyer with his own sheen of controversy given a clientele that has included Russian oligarchs and Julian Assange. Waldman, who is married to Berlin-based jet-setter and luxury skin-care entrepreneur Barbara Sturm, conducts himself in an unorthodox manner, mocking his legal opponents on Twitter. Sources say Depp met Waldman through Saudi Arabian Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the country's powerful minister of energy, in summer 2016. (Depp spent time aboard the prince's megayacht in the past.) Waldman quickly became a Svengali figure in Depp's life, with the actor axing most of his inner circle.

"Never mind Svengali. He's Depp's Rasputin," says one insider. Waldman declined to talk for this piece.

In short order, the actor severed ties with his agent of more than three decades, UTA's Tracey Jacobs. With Waldman as his attorney, he also sued his longtime business manager, Joel Mandel, for $25 million for gross misconduct and failing to pay his taxes, along with his entertainment lawyer for decades and father figure, Jake Bloom, for $50 million for malpractice. Both cases settled privately with Depp receiving some payout, but at a steep cost, given that the details of his finances and private life were laid bare.

"The abuse and drinking and drugging are one thing — certainly horrible — but then to top it off by going after the very people who were the closest business and personal relationships for years, shows a level of toxicity rarely seen," says one industry figure who has faced off against Depp.

What's remarkable is that Depp is about to embark on the same mission with his $50 million defamation suit against Heard in Virginia. The process will likely be even more intrusive and end up sucking other high-profile figures into the vortex. (Depp is obligated to produce "all responsive communications" with former romantic partners including Angelina Jolie, Keira Knightley and Marion Cotillard.) His odds are even worse than they were in the Sun suit because, unlike the U.K. case, the burden of proof will be on Depp. The case is expected to go to trial in early 2021.

"It is really hard to imagine why anyone would ever decide to pursue a strategy like that, especially now that — after a three-week trial with dozens of witnesses testifying and hundreds of exhibits — the U.K. judge dismissed every unfounded attack on Amber's credibility and concluded that Depp did indeed assault Amber on 12 separate occasions," says Time's Up Legal Defense co-founder Roberta Kaplan, who stepped down from Heard's team in June but continues to advise the actress. "Amber Heard did not bring this on herself. She sought a [temporary restraining order] back in 2016 so that she could change the locks on her front door and be safe. All the litigation since then … [has] been generated by Johnny Depp himself."

Meanwhile, a judge in Virginia has kicked Waldman off the case for leaking confidential material to the press. As such, Waldman has gone silent on Twitter since Oct. 16. His last tweet in the matter attempted to draw a conspiratorial connection between positive articles written by a journalist about Heard and Musk's current partner, the singer Grimes.

The City of Lies crewmember suit also is scheduled to go to trial early in the new year, COVID-19 restrictions permitting. Even before Waldman entered the picture, Depp was engaged in legal drama on all fronts, much of it playing out of the public eye. Sources say he paid his first wife, Lori Anne Allison, $1.25 million to keep quiet after he allegedly left a long ranting message in which he repeatedly used the N-word. The previously unreported settlement was accomplished using fictitious names to avoid scrutiny, with Richard Green serving as the stand-in for Johnny Depp.

But Depp has his backers. Former partner Vanessa Paradis, the mother of his two children, Lily-Rose and Jack, defended him in the U.K. trial, as did former fiancee Winona Ryder. (Depp previously made a multimillion-dollar split settlement with Paradis.) But in a deposition in the Virginia case, ex-girlfriend Ellen Barkin said that Depp threw a wine bottle in her direction. Other explosive suits were settled quietly, including one filed by two former bodyguards, who claimed they were subjected to unsafe conditions and duties like dusting drug residue off Depp's face in public.

While Depp's legal challenges are expensive, one attorney involved with Depp litigation says that he has plenty of money and owns most of his properties outright, including three islands in the Bahamas. Still, he has long courted a reputation as a wild spender. According to legal documents in the Mandel case, Depp has purchased 14 residences. He dropped $30,000 a month on wine alone. And in perhaps the most extravagant move of all, he spent $5 million to have Hunter S. Thompson's ashes fired from a cannon hoisted atop a 153-foot tower in a fleeting tribute to the gonzo journalist.

But those who've worked with him say Depp's expectations of how much his employers pick up the tab are excessive, including on smaller indie movies. THR has obtained Depp's extravagant perks list — the requests worth up to $3 million — for several of his recent films, including 2015's Black Mass. His rider called for "fully licensed and qualified security personnel for JD and JD's residence while JD is on location on a 24/7 basis … for JD's companion and children while JD is on location on a 24/7 basis (whether or not JD's companion and children are on location)." That was provided in addition to "adequate on-set security."

According to a source familiar with Depp's contract, "Celebrities have security, but not teams doing overlapping, 24-hour shifts." In addition to a personal sound technician to handle his earpiece needs — "so he doesn't have to learn lines," adds the source — Depp required two personal assistants as well as a $200,000-a-year "exclusive assistant" during prep, principal photography, postproduction and for a period of six months surrounding the release of the film, and who travels first-class. On Minamata, a film with a modest $13 million budget, he commanded private air travel — G5 or Global Express — as well as the sound technician. (Another source pegged the budget at $11 million and Depp's salary closer to $1 million.) Depp is so reliant on his earpiece that he promoted one of his previous sound technicians, Sam Sarkar, to CEO of his production company, Infinitum Nihil.

One of the perks a distributor can count on with Depp is his social media army of fans. They are among the most loyal and shrill on Twitter. They heap praise on the actor, eviscerate anyone associated with Heard, and have posted exclusive audio recordings of the couple fighting (albeit edited in a way that favors the actor). But many who have battled Depp question whether the army is real or high-end bots. Kaplan believes it's a combination of the two, with bots amplifying what real fans post.

"My firm is involved in a lot of controversial cases," she says. "Our clients are suing the white supremacists and neo-Nazis responsible for the violence in Charlottesville. I have clients who are suing Donald Trump. But, by far, the one case [of ours] that has generated the greatest amount of hostile social media attacks is Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard. Not even close."

The matter of whether bots or humans make up Depp's social media army is significant because it touches on whether the actor's legal chaos and reputational hit is registering with the general public at large. According to Marketing Evaluations Inc., a New York-based company that compiles Q scores (a measure of the familiarity and appeal of a brand, star or company), Depp continues to rank in the top 20, hitting his zenith in 2012 at No. 3, behind Tom Hanks and Sean Connery, and falling to No. 20 in 2020.

"He remains one of the more appealing actors, although there has been somewhat of a slide," says Marketing Evaluations president Steven Levitt. "Frankly, there are some people who pay attention to his private life. And some people tend to disregard that and all they care about is, 'Does this person entertain me?' But unless there's another Jack Sparrow ahead, which really works to his advantage, I would not expect his positive Q score to go up in the next year or two."

Still, he remains the face of Dior's Sauvage fragrance, for which he is paid millions. Outside the U.S., personal controversies may have less impact on Depp's bankability, especially in markets where #MeToo and abuse allegations hold less sway.

"It's like with Mel Gibson. Nobody is saying we're not seeing this film or we're not buying the DVD because it's Mel Gibson," says Erik Engelen, a German acquisitions executive at Splendid Film who released Gibson's big comeback, 2016's Hacksaw Ridge. "The general audience is not that much into the whole persona of things as we sometimes think. Johnny Depp is still a very big star. And the fact that he is coming back to the independent world is maybe a good thing for this career. From a creative point of view, there is probably more to do there than in the studio world."

That's precisely where Depp started, by carving out a lane for himself as the quirky antihero of such unconventional fare as Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood and Chocolat before morphing into an unlikely tentpole star. But the Minamata-type paydays won't keep the lights on in Depp's 14 homes. And for now, the door appears to be closed on studio blockbusters.

"Johnny Depp is a worst-case scenario for handling bad PR," says one top crisis communications specialist. "I use him as the model for telling my clients what not to do. It's not a case of shooting himself in the foot. He shot himself in the face."



https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/...-made-implosion



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