Johnny Depp is crazy

Shows Off His Tatt

Plus he's gonna be on SpongeBob Squarepants!

At last year's MTV Movie awards, it was apparent that Johnny Depp had added to his 13-plus-strong tattoo arrangement by getting yet another one. This week, while filming The Rum Diary, the tatt that reads "Silence Exile Cunning" was once again clearly visible on his arm. The three words are part of an extended quote from the James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. [The full quote goes: “I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use - silence, exile, and cunning.”]

Nice enough. But it's so large. Like, an Angelina-style large tattoo. Isn't that a weird choice, especially for someone who is meant to be a blank canvas because they totally inhabit their acting roles? It brought back memories of the cast of Charmed - Alyssa Milano, Holly Marie Combs and Rose McGowan era - who were pretty much completely covered with giant tattoos all over their bodies. Even so, the trio continued to get even more tattoos and the situation became so ridiculous that the show's makeup department outright refused to go on painstakingly covering their art every morning... so overnight their once-clean-skinned witch characters became simultaneously tattooed!

The "Silence Exile Cunning" (it's advised you don't say this too many times in a row) tattoo also reminded me of how crazy Johnny Depp secretly is. It's all a very quaint-kooky kind of crazy but crazy it is. Don't get me wrong, Johnny Depp is a lot of things. He's cool. He's good-looking. He's perfect in so many ways.

It's just that he's also a lot of other things. He was a serial engager (Sherilyn Fenn, Winona Ryder). He thinks he's a musician (remember his horrible band P?). He busted up his hotel room in New York cos he claimed he saw bugs everywhere (it must be noted that this is actually one of my favourite stories ever. It is also the best ever cover of Interview magazine complete with the most awesome coverline ever, in my humble opinion*). He's a raving lunatic, basically. Fortunately for the Deppster's agent, he doesn't give that many interviews so he's able to keep the crazy relatively under wraps - kinda like a pre-Scientology-spouting Tom Cruise. Plus, I can forgive just about anything JD does thanks to a tiny phrase that Tom Cruise will never have available as a life line: 21 Jump Street.

Still not convinced he's not all there? Par example: "My body is a journal in a way. It's like what sailors used to do, where every tattoo meant something, a specific time in your life when you make a mark on yourself, whether you do it yourself with a knife or with a professional tattoo artist."

Do it yourself? With a knife? Ack!

Speaking of tattoos, Johnny always had a lot but, admittedly, some ended up turning out better than others. His "Winona Forever" one - inked for then-girlfriend Winona Ryder - obviously wasn't the best idea for sadly love can fade... but, luckily for him, tattoos can be altered! The odd part is that he still thinks it's funny - like he actually laughs out loud when he retells the story - that he got the inscription famously converted to read "Wino Forrever." Really? That's still funny? O... K...

Despite the obvious and often delightful crazy, I still wonder how long it took after the epic fail of the Winona Forever situation before he was next able to take the monumental, body-altering step of getting a tattoo again. I imagine your average person would be quite hesitant. But, given Johnny's body of work, clearly he didn't suffer any of these hang-ups as he seemingly gets a new mark about as often as Lindsay Lohan heads back into rehab. ie. A LOT. Still, while he's had no issue adding the names of his darling kids, Lily-Rose and Jack, to his tattoo collection, long-time love Vanessa Paradis has not made the cut. Maybe he's had a hard time working out what high-larious variation the name "Vanessa" could be turned into were they ever to split? "Undresser", anyone?

More importantly than all of this - and, if I were honest, the actual reason I started this post but then got, ahem, side-tracked - JD has lent his gravelly voice to the episode of SpongeBob Squarepants that airs in the US this week. He guest-stars as the voice of Jack Kahuna Laguna (hee hee), a legendary surfer who lives on an island where SpongeBob and his friends find themselves stranded after being swept away by a wave.

He's done 21 Jump Street AND SpongeBob SquarePants? I think we all now know that it is entirely possible for a hot person to earn two lifetime passes!

* This is the best excerpt from Interview magazine's Brendan Lemon interview with Johnny Depp from 1995 re: his arrest

BL: I want to ask you about your arrest last year for busting up a Manhattan hotel room. Now as one who was arrested once myself in New York, and who spent the night in a holding pen, I want to say that it was the most humiliating experience of my life. But at least I had the cover of anonymity. You did not.
JD: No, I didn't. I did to some extent, thought, because people didn't expect to see me there. (laughs) They had other things on their mind, and seeing me there was not so important. The New York cops that I experienced were pretty nice. They were just doing their job and some goofy actor decided to get into a little bit of trouble and ended up in the pokey.

BL: When you were arrested, did the police realize immediately that you were Johnny Depp? Or did it take them a while to figure it out, like it did when Hugh Grant was arrested last summer?
JD: No. They knew my name.

BL: I won't ask you to rehash the scene of you in jail, which I understood involved the other prisoners screaming your name and the cops asking you for autographs. But I would like to know: Were you taken aback by being arrested in a situation like that?
JD: I just thought, I've done much worse things and not been arrested for them. As a kid you get into stuff and you get away with it. The idea that some guy, like everybody else, gets upset, freaks out, smashes a couple of things, and goes to jail for it -- that's one thing. But for these kinds of things to turn into the media frenzy is another thing. OK, Hugh Grant got busted with a prostitute. Fine. Leave it at that. What'd I do? Broke a couple of things. I paid for it.

BL: You said that at the hotel that night you just sort of freaked out for a moment. Had you had too much coffee? An argument with your girlfriend (Kate Moss)? A really bad day?
JD: There's one thing I do want to clarify. It had nothing to do with an argument with Kate. It had to do with me.

BL: So no one thing set it off?
JD: OK. There was a bug in the place that I was trying to kill. This thing had tried to attack me and to suck my blood -- a big cockroach. And I tried to get it, I tried to whack it. I'd miss and I'd smash a lamp.

BL: So this was all about trying to kill a bug?
JD: One very big bug.

BL: Big-as-a-Buick bug?
JD: Yeah.

BL: Do you have a thing about bugs, generally?
JD: I like bugs, normally.

Carolyn Stewart
My heart wants pancakes for breakfast but my brain says oats o'clock, April 23, 2009