A Gentle Audacity
Monday, October 1, 2007 at 10:19PM Johnny Depp. I love the guy! Can't help it! Don't want to! He's got it all. Beauty. Brains. Brio. Talent. Sensitivity. Humor. Mystique. Charm. He's as easygoing as he is erudite ... as generous as he is gorgeous ... as disarming as he is disconcerting. His savoir can't get much fairer. Hot? He could teach fire a thing or two. Rumor has it volcanos and deserts come to him for advice on how to be hotter. Blast furnaces will undoubtedly be next, followed in due time by incendiary devices. Johnny has captured my fancy, and my fancy is happy and productive in captivity.
I have not been a Johnny fan for as long as a lot of people, but when I fell, I fell hard. Back in the day, I never watched 21 Jump Street. Long before my unlikely transformation into the zealous fangirl you see blogging here today, I had seen Edward Scissorhands and liked it but I didn't "see" Johnny in that film. (Could it have been the hair and makeup?) I had seen parts of What's Eating Gilbert Grape but I must have been very distracted that day because my consciousness was not raised to Johnny by that (excellent) movie either. (It's one of my all-time favorite Johnny movies now. I pretty much have it memorized. The book it came from is one of my top ten favorite reads, too. Kudos to Peter Hedges.) Besides the pirate movies, my other cherished Johnny DVD's include Finding Neverland, Secret Window, Sleepy Hollow (yikes he is smokin' as Ichabod Crane), and Donnie Brasco. He is positively miraculous as Donnie Brasco. That performance deserved an Oscar.
One day last July my teenaged son, Andrew, told me that we needed to see Pirates of the Caribbean. I had never heard of it. I didn't even remember it as a ride at Disney World. Just went right over my head, I guess. Imagine that. But as is his wont, Andrew was insistent. "Mom," he said, giving me a meaningful look, "Johnny Depp." Big grin, eyebrows waggling. I shot back, "Johnny Depp? Isn't he, like, really weird?" (Hey ... people make mistakes, okay?) Be that as it may, I tossed the boy my Blockbuster card and told him to run over and get the pirate flick. Fifteen minutes later he was back, emptyhanded. Blockbuster was fresh out of Pirates of the Caribbean. This scenario was repeated at least three more times over the next week before I myself drove over to Blockbuster. It was Friday night, we were ordering pizza, and I was going to have pirates with my pepperoni. Or die trying.
Blockbuster was yet devoid of pirates. I asked the nice man why we were having so much difficulty getting our hands on this movie. He replied that it was because they had exactly nine copies of the DVD and were getting fifty calls a day for it. He said it would likely be a while before we'd be sailing with Captain Sparrow. "Great movie, though," he assured me. I was perplexed. "But," I said, "You always get, like, seventy-five copies of these things, don't you?" I waved my arm toward the walls groaning with nauseating quantities of newly-released Hollywood bilge.
That's when he patiently explained that Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which my son was anxious to see and I was by now desperate to see, had been out since 2003. The resurgence of interest in the film was on account of the recent arrival in theaters of its sequel, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. This was all news to me. Now I really wanted to see it. Had to see it. Would stop at nothing short of piracy to see it. I grasped at straws. "Do you happen to have a copy of it for sale?" The nice man looked at me as pityingly as if I had asked for an actual date with Johnny Depp. Wagging his head mournfully he intoned, "Oh, no ... I don't think there's much chance of that ... but we can look." So we did, and ... swash me buckles! ... they had exactly one two-disc collector's edition of The Curse of the Black Pearl -- for a mere $14.99! Who said therapy was not affordable? Whipped to a frenzy of anticipation, I seized that slim shrink-wrapped case and clutched it to my bosom as though it contained the answers to all of life's little mysteries. Which, in a way, it did. Maybe not all, but at least some.
And so it was that, about an hour later, comfortably ensconced in my easy chair, faithful pet Chihuahua (name of Javier) perched on my lap, fresh hot pepperoni pizza and frosty Diet Coke at hand, I selected "Play Movie." And I have never been the same. I mean, come on ... who or what could have prepared me for the Captain?
I think some pepperoni ended up in my lap. Or maybe Javier got it. I didn't really care. See, that pirate plundered me heart (I had already dropped me brain). His inimitable insouciance, his madcap machinations, his droll derring-do, did me in. First of all I love to laugh, and I don't know how it could get any funnier than Johnny as Jack. I thought he deserved the Oscar for the island scene alone. "I know just what you mean, luv ..." Johnny as Jack is brilliant. I hope they make three more pirate movies in swift succession. If we had Rocky Eighty-Two I don't know why we can't have Pirates Four, Five, and Six.
JohnnyJack sauntered into my life and unleashed something in me. Maybe not exactly my inner pirate, but perhaps a suburban approximation of one. He made me see things just a little differently, as if he'd brought the Pearl around gently, revealing something on the horizon that had been hidden. Since becoming a slavish Johnny Depp fan I've jettisoned some things that I didn't need anymore, and called at Tortuga for fresh supplies. They include (in more or less equal amounts) optimism, courage, perspective, resolve, and even a little of Johnny's special brand of gentle audacity. At least I hope that's what's in this here chest.
Reader Comments (1)
Ah, yes. Johnny is truly a captivating one. I too found love for Johnny through the first Pirates movie.