The devolution of Depp

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This article was published 26/02/2011 (5396 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Los ANGELES — Johnny Depp theorizes that the genesis of the chameleon character he plays in the upcoming animated feature Rango began with the running style he gave to Captain Jack Sparrow in the three Pirates of the Caribbean movies he made with Rango director Gore Verbinski.

“At times, when Jack Sparrow had to run, there was this very specific run that I wanted. It was from seeing this footage of a lizard running across the water,” Depp says, referring undoubtedly to the Basilisk Lizard (a.k.a the Jesus Christ lizard) popularized on National Geographic TV documentaries.

“It was like the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. So I said, ‘Gore, he’s got to be the lizard running.'”

Verbinski agreed, and thus was born Captain’s Jack’s distinctive running style.

“I actually think that Rango was somehow planted in Gore’s brain from that lizard run,” says Depp, 47.

“And when he actually called me and said, ‘I want you to play a lizard,’ I thought: ‘Well, God, I’m halfway there.'”

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Rango, Verbinski’s first wholly animated feature film is about as far removed from the typical kiddie animated feature as the Pirates of the Caribbean movies were removed from the clanky old Pirates exhibit at Disneyland.

The movie itself is modelled after the existential spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, following the story of Depp’s domesticated chameleon who finds himself in a wild western town terrorized by an outlaw snake called Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy), and where the dwindling water supply is being hoarded by a mysterious malefactor.

Beyond the obvious Leone trappings, the movie makes references to everything from Chinatown (the town’s mayor is modelled directly after John Huston’s ruthless millionaire Noah Cross), to Apocalypse Now and the Don Knotts comedy The Shakiest Gun in the West.

Befitting the unorthodox subject matter, Verbinski opted for an unorthodox style of recording the actors’ voices. Instead of simply recording each actor reciting their lines in an isolated sound booth, he had the actors actually stage the scenes in a no-frills rehearsal space. The sound was recorded and the action was shot on video as a reference for the animators from Industrial Light and Magic, but they were under no obligation to use the precise movements of the actors in the way motion capture animation translates human actor to animated character.

“Gore created this sort of atmosphere that was really, truly ludicrous,” Depp says. “It was like regional theatre at its worst.

“It was very strange,” Depp says, adding that even his seen-it-all friend and castmate Harry Dean Stanton was impressed. “He walks up to me and says, ‘This is a weird gig, man.’

“(It’s) not the idea of motion capture, but emotion capture, you know?” Depp says. “Certain gestures, body language, movement, something you might have done, you know, with your eyes — the animators took it and put it in there.”

Rango continues Depp’s tendency to make kid-friendly films in the vein of Pirates, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Corpse Bride and Alice in Wonderland. The father of a 10-year-old girl and an eight-year-old boy, Depp admits fatherhood has made a liberating impact on his career choices.

“Before Pirates 1, I had a daughter, and for about four years, all I watched was like cartoons, you know … just cartoons.

“And I realized at that point that the parameters were far away from what we do in sort of normal, everyday movies, and that you can get away with a lot more,” he says. “Kids accept a lot more, and they buy it, you know, because they’re free.

“So for me, that was everything, in terms of coming up with what Captain Jack would be,” he says. “So yeah, I trust kids far more than I do adults. Kids give you the honest opinion, you know? They tell the truth.

“I think kids, you know, in general as an audience, are the way forward because they’re not sort of sullied by you know, intellectual expectation or this or that,” he says. “It’s a very pure kind of response to the work.”

And how do his kids feel about their dad playing a lizard?

“They actually call me the Lizard King,” Depp laughs. “They do. I’ve forced them to address me like that since they were tykes.”

 

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca