From his days on Jump Street when I was in junior high, to his offbeat movie roles during my time as a “serious” film student in college, to our shared penchant for supernatural cinema, Johnny Depp has steadfastly remained the most exciting actor of his generation. But his apparent withdrawal from reality in recent years is the role I’d most come to identify with after my screenwriting career catastrophically imploded. Alas, Mr. Depp—this is where I leave you.
Rolling Stone recently ran a feature profile on actor Johnny Depp, detailing his extensive financial hardships (a reported $650 million fortune vaporized by his compulsive-spending disorder), legal entanglements (home foreclosures and a contentious lawsuit with his former business managers), personal controversies (allegations of spousal abuse and a growing dependency on drugs and alcohol), and “reports he couldn’t remember his lines and had to have them fed to him through an earpiece” (Stephen Rodrick, “The Trouble with Johnny,” Rolling Stone 1317 [July 2018]: 83).
Thorough as Rodrick’s reporting is, though, the documented facts of the respective scandals are less compelling—less tragic, even—than the wider arc of the narrative he presents, illustrating just how far Depp has come from the “days when he was a male ingénue and not a punchline: bankrupt, isolated and one more mistake away from being blackballed from his industry” (ibid., 134).
Isolated is precisely the right word; one can’t read the Rolling Stone piece and not be impressed by the extent to which Johnny Depp is alone in the crumbling edifice of his ivory tower:
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.
ibid., 135
Yeah. But who gives a shit, though—am I right? Whether you’re of the mind that it’s hard to feel bad for spoiled Hollywood stars devoid of limits or impulse control, or whether, like me, you don’t have a crap to spare for the vacuous affairs of celebrity culture (I’ve been checked out at least as long as “Brangelina” was a thing), the trials of Johnny Depp should logically provoke either schadenfreude or apathy, but certainly not sympathetic interest.
And yet I don’t merely sympathize with his current state of reclusion—in fact I empathize with it. Perhaps that’s because the different seasons of Depp’s career—the spring, summer, and arguably now the fall—have run parallel to my own life. During my time as a film-school student in the nineties, he was one of the most exciting actors to follow because of his uniquely unconventional tastes in directors and material. After I moved to Hollywood and learned to loathe the blockbuster, he headlined the last big movie franchise I actually genuinely enjoy. But my awareness of him, and his singular talents, predates all of that. He’s one of the only major artists whose career I’ve followed since its inception.
Down on Jump Street
Depp’s first noteworthy acting gig was a supporting part in Wes Craven’s slasher masterpiece A Nightmare on Elm Street, but it was his leading role in the upstart Fox network’s 21 Jump Street (1987–1990) that vaulted him to stardom.
If you happened to be in junior high school during the years Jump Street first ran—and I was—you know there was no cooler show on TV. Over thirty years later, with more than half that time spent working in Hollywood, I am still in awe of what an ingeniously fertile premise creators Patrick Hasburgh and Stephen J. Cannell devised: baby-faced police officers sent undercover in troubled high schools. It was a brilliant mashup of two of the medium’s most popular genres—the police procedural (Hill Street Blues) and teen melodrama (Fame)—and addressed with seriousness and sensitivity issues ranging from narcotics, AIDS, hate crimes, homeless runaways, teenage prostitution, child pornography, and the dark side of school sports. The unique perspective of the protagonists—adults posing as teenagers—allowed for a nuanced, multisided exploration of those socially thorny subjects, and certainly prompted cafeteria conversations amongst my friends.
I haven’t re-watched Jump Street in many years, because the pop-song soundtrack, so integral to the series’ aesthetic identity, was entirely removed and/or replaced when it was made available on DVD; the music had never been licensed for any format other than broadcast, being how no one foresaw a home-video afterlife for TV shows back in those days. That’s a shame, though in some respects I’m actually grateful I can’t revisit the series—at least as it once was—anymore than I can a particular period of my life which now exists only in memory, never to be reexperienced. In an on-demand world, the inability to access certain things gives them a new, and rare, kind of value.
On the subject of recapturing the past, readers of this blog will attest I am no proponent of so-called reboots, particularly those that capitalize on 1980s nostalgia, but I’d make an exception for Jump Street, which seems like it could be relevant anew in our age of cyberbullying, mass school shootings, and the online recruitment of disaffected Western teens to terrorist causes. (And I’m lobbying for an earnest remake, much as I loved the tongue-in-cheek Jonah Hill movie from 2012, which features a screamer of a cameo from Depp and his series costar Peter DeLuise, reprising their roles in a scene that’s as hilarious as it is heartbreaking.) But there’s a caveat: A Jump Street revival, however well-intentioned, would be tricky, because the success of the original was a feat of casting as much as it was concept.
The show’s photogenic stars were featured in every teeny-bopper magazine of the era (anyone remember Bop?), none more so than Depp, who openly hated the teen-idol status foisted upon him, and later carved out a consciously antithetical movie career. Still, there was no denying he had a special charisma that transcended the typical flavor-of-the-month heartthrob. Even during later seasons of the show, in which he often appeared visibly bored onscreen, Depp’s intrinsic magnetism was more engaging than the sincere performances of anyone he shared the stage with. Simply put, he possessed true star quality. It was apparent from the very start.
On Stranger Tides
When the series ended, Depp made the leap to the big screen, bucking conventional wisdom at every turn by taking roles that often downplayed his movie-star looks in favor of exploiting his idiosyncratic proclivities—as an artistically inclined Frankenstein monster in Edward Scissorhands (1990), a cross-dressing B-movie director in Ed Wood (1994), and the hedonistic alter ego of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998).
Depp’s peculiar sensibilities were a perfect match for the cinema of the supernatural, a personal favorite of mine. His Ginsu-sharp comic timing and capacity to convey genuine pathos make for an unforgettable interpretation of Ichabod Crane in Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow (1999). And he’s deliciously scuzzy as an unscrupulous antiquarian book dealer—yes, you read that description correctly—in Roman Polanski’s occultic mystery The Ninth Gate (1999), which is, alas, merely three-fourths of a great movie; it falls apart in its final act. (Read the terrific book it’s based on, though.)
And then came Captain Jack Sparrow. If 21 Jump Street put Depp in the public eye, Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) heralded the next phase of his cultural eminence: Despite every attempt to avoid it, he was now a global superstar. And he did it on his terms, turning in a wildly original portrayal that the Pirates screenwriters themselves observed as being “exactly like we described but nothing like we anticipated” (Beattie, Stuart, Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, and Jay Wolpert. “Commentaries.” Disc 1. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, limited ed. Blu-ray. Directed by Gore Verbinski. Burbank, CA: Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2011).
Depp’s boozy buccaneer, equal parts Keith Richards and Bugs Bunny, takes a place in the cinematic pantheon alongside Bela Lugosi’s Dracula and Christopher Reeve’s Superman: It is the perfect marriage of actor and character, transcending mere pop-cultural phenomenon—an elusive yet ephemeral standing—to achieve true folkloric immortality.
It could be said, though, the colossal commercial success of Jack Sparrow put the actor in a position whereby he felt he had to “out-Depp” himself with every successive role, piling more and more flamboyant eccentricities onto each character he essayed—arguably to diminishing returns. (See: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Alice in Wonderland; The Lone Ranger.) He would, as such, return to Jack Sparrow again and again, in five movies over fourteen years; it was hard not to enjoy him in the part—he was clearly having a ball—even if it did start to feel like too much of a good thing after a while.
Nihil Infinitum Est.
Since the only thing we Americans seem to love more than a self-made success story is a self-destructive fall from grace, Depp’s waning box-office reliability preceded a torrent of unflattering media accounts of unsustainable profligacy and behavior that had gone from endearingly oddball to offputtingly alarming, even if for no other reason than “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 53” (Rodrick, “The Trouble with Johnny,” 83). Depp, who’d always looked to (his Don Juan DeMarco costar) Marlon Brando as a role model, was increasingly shaping up to be this generation’s Brando in every way.
And we certainly know how that movie ends, don’t we? Brando was never entirely cast out of Hollywood, true, but his reputation as a sybaritic oddity only intensified with each passing decade. Because people don’t get less idiosyncratic with age—they only become more of who they’ve always been. “If [Depp’s] current life isn’t a perfect copy of Elvis Presley’s last days, it is a decent facsimile” (ibid.). The Boomers had Brando and Elvis; Gen X has Charlie Sheen and Depp. All of them, so uniquely talented and enviably handsome, eventually devolved into bloated caricatures of their former selves. Imagine it: Johnny Depp jumped from Jump Street to superstardom, then fell all the way down to this.
As I considered that, it occurred to me there’s a reason why this particular iteration of the bad-boy archetype—the celebrated mad genius turned sequestered mumbling eccentric, isolated and out of touch on his own private island (quite literally in the cases of both Brando and Depp)—recurs with each generation: Because we need it to, for reasons that have nothing to do with schadenfreude, just as my empathy for Depp’s present circumstances share no causal relation—as it is now manifestly clear to me—with the years I’ve invested as a fan of his work.
In Touch with Some Reality beyond the Gilded Cage
In 2014, after fifteen years, I walked away from a screenwriting career—and an industry—I’d grown irreconcilably frustrated with in favor of pursuing my first novel. I promptly withdrew from my social circles, seceding from my writers group and customarily declining invitations to the kind of Hollywood functions it had taken me years to network my way into. I repeatedly told myself my days in L.A. were numbered, anyway, so I may as well get the ball rolling, emotionally if not yet geographically, on my own inevitable exfiltration. (Still here, incidentally).
Writing the book, an all-consuming undertaking, only served to ratify and amplify my state of self-imposed semi-exile. I hardly leave my office, and when I do, I tend not to stray from the confines of my neighborhood. Nights and weekends are spent in the company of my nearest and dearest, catching up on the endless deluge of television on Netflix (somebody please make it stop) or the latest presidential disgrace on CNN (for God’s sake MAKE IT STOP).
This past summer, though, circumstance has conspired to evict me from my social cocoon. With the manuscript now completed, I’ve been meeting with authors, editors, and agents at publishing events, and I’ve conducted travel-intensive field research for my next novel, interviewing experts on disciplines I know nothing about, like veterinary pathology. Additionally, I’ve taken proactive, hands-on roles in two different charitable organizations I support, because retweets and the occasional monetary donation were starting to seem woefully inadequate and inexcusably lazy for causes I claimed to care about.
Throughout these experiences, I have invariably found the people I’ve encountered to be interesting, curious, passionate, generous with their time, and, perhaps most of all, friendly and welcoming. In the last month alone, I’ve been invited to dinner with complete strangers on three separate occasions; I accepted each offer and have gotten to know some truly remarkable individuals. Suddenly everything seems different: People I’ve passed on sidewalks and subway turnstiles have, to my surprise and delight, said hi to me—if for no other reason than we were both, for a moment, in the same place at the same time.
Such refreshing congeniality isn’t merely owed to the fact that I’m physically present again—on the street, amongst the crowd—as much as it is, I suspect, that I’m sociably engaged: Back in meet-and-greet mode, which has never been a difficult or uncomfortable state for me to assume, I’ve been projecting an air of openness, of receptiveness, to which others are patently responding. When Twitter is your main conduit to the outside world, you tend to lose sight of that side of human nature—the one that yearns for human connection. I should’ve made a stronger effort to stay connected all along.
And in the midst of this egression, I read about Johnny Depp (“Thank you for listening” were his explicitly chosen parting words to the reporter at the end of their multiday interview), and I realized you don’t have to be an eccentric movie star to live in a bubble of your own making. We all have the capacity for it. It’s just that Depp’s withdrawal from reality is so cartoonishly overt and over-the-top, we don’t see the correlation with our own reclusive tendencies. “Look at that guy,” we admonish. “Living in his gilded cage without any sense of what’s happening in the real world.” And then we put on our VR headsets, or spend the weekend binge-watching Stranger Things and keeping up with the Kardashians, or plug into our preferred forms of “social” media, and retreat in our own ways from the real world—and all its intractable complexities—too.
Each of us, perhaps artists foremost, require solitude. Such is the essential practice of shutting out the clamor of the outside world to spend time with oneself so we might process what we’ve experienced and draw insight from it. Habitual seclusion, on the other hand, is the abdication of our social responsibility to be a part of the community right outside our window; it’s a refusal—however we may rationalize it—to be present in a complicated, overwhelming, sometimes scary world that depends on our participation. In our Digital Age, solitude is becoming ever harder to exercise and attain, whereas seclusion is commensurably easier. Supersized caricatures like Johnny Depp, therefore, serve to move the line of delineation further and further out; his asocial and even decadent behavior justifies ours, because, hey, at least we’re not as out of control and irretrievably out of touch as he is. We still operate within the bounds of acceptable isolationism, of reasonable decadence.
Even a cursory review of Depp’s résumé suggests the man has been nothing if not a master of his own destiny (part of the reason his pleas of ignorance on matters of his troubled finances ring false). Accordingly, the state of isolation in which he now finds himself is, to be sure, one he chose, even if it was a series of incremental (and questionably wise) choices that landed him there. As someone who’s followed his career so closely, it’s hard not to appreciate the irony of his predicament: After refusing to be pigeonholed as a pretty-boy pinup or intrepid action hero or conventional leading man, Depp now finds himself permanently typecast as one of our favorite cultural archetypes—the one that conveniently excuses our own social detachment. And for perhaps the first time in three decades, going all the way back to Jump Street, it’s a role of his I’d just as soon no longer identify with.
I’d never caught the Johnny Depp bug myself, but you (no surprise!) provided an intriguing read about him, and him in the big picture. My high school friends and I gathered around our Sunday night television sets back in the day because 21 Jump Street was a triumph! And also, Richard Grieco. . . This takes me back to that time, and now that my own son has entered the world of high school, I wish for him something like what Jump Street meant to me then. I like your reboot idea, Sean! With modern themes to serve as the springboard for potential episodes, there is no shortage of material. Maybe you just begin to write right now before someone swipes your idea.
It seems we’ve found yet another point of commonality, Wendy! To think, back in the late eighties/early nineties, you and I were watching the same shows and listening to the same music about 900 miles apart! Damn, we would’ve been good friends!
Jump Street holds a special nostalgic place in my heart, because it was a really cool show that had tremendous thematic depth. A couple of months ago, I wrote about the subject of creative inspiration, and I think it’s fair to say Jump Street impressed upon my receptive young mind the notion that a narrative can be both urbanely hip and emotionally honest, that it can be commercially entertaining and have a social conscience — those needn’t be mutually exclusive agenda. That is something I strived for in Escape from Rikers Island: It’s a balls-out zombie chiller that tries to speak to the ethos and sociopolitical preoccupations of its day. It tries to be about something within the framework of a mainstream genre thriller. Those are the kinds of stories I respond to, and the kind I like to tell, and I’m sure Jump Street influenced me in ways I don’t fully appreciate. (The Jonah Hill movie, in contrast, is amusing as hell but it isn’t deep — not that there’s anything wrong with that approach.)
It’s a show that meant a lot to me for a lot of reasons, including introducing me to so much classic rock from the sixties and seventies that I still love to this day, from the Rolling Stones to Blind Faith to the Staple Singers (hence the reason it breaks my heart that all of that got removed from the DVD release). I 100% hope your son finds a series like that — one that speaks to the very particular stage in life he is entering. I would love to spearhead a television revival of Jump Street — absolutely! — but, for some inexplicable reason, no one is asking me to! But I know just how I’d do it — I know precisely how it should be done. (I’d reinstate the sociocultural weight that was absent from the recent movies.) Alas, it isn’t my intellectual property to run with!
Since you’re such a Richard Grieco fan, wanna hear a funny Booker story? A few years ago, I was at a party in Hollywood when actor Carmen Argenziano, who played Booker’s boss Chick Sterling, introduced himself to me: “I’m Carmen,” he said as he shook my hand.
I, of course, recognized him right away and made an on-the-spot exception to my policy of playing it cool around public figures: “I know who you are! When I was in junior high school, you were on one of my favorite shows — Booker.”
“Oh, my God,” he laughed in recognition. “Richard Grieco!”
“You were always yelling at him!” I said, referring to Argenziano’s role as the no-nonsense boss who suffered through Booker’s rebellious insubordination. Argenziano has enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a character actor in movies ranging from The Godfather, Part II to Angels & Demons, and I can’t imagine it’s every day he gets recognized for his part on eighties artifact Booker! Haha!
I’ve always loved Johnny Depp, but find his increasing peculiarity to be unsettling. I wonder what it is that motivates someone like him compared to someone like Robert Downey Jr., who might have ended up the same way or even worse, but made some very different choices. An excellent treatment of the subject, and very thought-provoking, as always!
Hey, thanks, mydangblog! This is a subject that deserves a more nuanced examination, but I think there’s an element of emotional instability in many great artists that is, if you’ll forgive the cliché, both their gift and their curse; that is, the same constitutional alchemy that creates the very conditions for them to rise to prominence also ends up fueling their self-destruction. Again, it’s a more complicated matter than that bromidic summation, and if you’re interested in further exploration of the topic, I very much recommend the longform essay “The Final Comeback of Axl Rose” by John Jeremiah Sullivan. (Rose, funny enough, first achieved public awareness with the release of Appetite for Destruction in 1987, the same year Jump Street premiered.) Robert Downey Jr. very much stands as evidence — and hope — that we can rise above our demons.
Thanks for reading and supporting this post, mydangblog! I guess you could say I’ve spent the last thirty years preparing to write it, making it my longest work-in-progress ever!
Johnny Depp engulfed me in his charisma, as he does (did?) do many. There would always be something unexpected and gripping about his film portrayals. Your blog is excellent and sadly plays like a requiem for a master; the tragedy of immense talents. Aka Elvis Presley and Marlon Brando. As an author I totally get the balancing act between seclusion and actual in person social involvement. Both are fundamental to the balanced artistic life. Glad you found your way back into real connections.
Beautifully expressed sentiment, Lennie! You managed to say in one paragraph what I needed 2,800 words to articulate!
I suspect Depp, like Brando before him, will for all his days be a talent of immense magnitude — he’ll always be worthy of watching. He’s part of a very exclusive club of preternaturally charismatic stars who’ve left an indelible mark on the culture. I by no means think his best work is behind him; I simply lament — as a lifelong fan — where he’s allowed his personal life to take him. But it’s his life. We can only control our own lives, and Depp serves as a reminder to me of the perils of living in a self-made bubble. And as I’ve spent the last four years re-conceptualizing and reestablishing my own artistic practices and objectives, I allowed my social equilibrium to slip out of balance. I have a hunch in the years to come I’ll look back on 2018 as a period of profound and necessary personal course correction.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Lennie. I hope your summer has been a happy and productive one and that, like me, you are eagerly anticipating the pleasures of autumn! Happy Labor Day!
21 Jump Street was my favourite show when I was young, and the whole cast was the epitome of cool, to me. What a fall from grace it has been for Johnny. It is hard to feel sorry for him losing a 650 million dollar fortune, especially when there are so many people working just to pay the pills and put food on the table. But on a human level, it is painful to watch. It proves that money can’t buy you happiness, I suppose. We are all the same, moving and beating parts that require things money can’t buy. He is broken. And I empathize with that. Great post, Sean. Very insightful. So pleased you are movin’ and shakin’ again. It sounds like there are many great things in store for you!
Hey there, incurable dreamer! Thanks so much for reading and commenting!
In terms of its place in the pop-cultural canon, it’s fair to say that Jump Street is mostly remembered for being the launchpad of Depp’s career and for popularizing the notion of “high-school narc.” That’s a shame, it seems to me, because judging it strictly on its own creative merits, the show had a lot to recommend it! Yes, it’s an eighties time capsule — so what? — but it talked frankly to its teenage audience about a lot of then-current sociocultural issues with exceptional maturity. It also wasn’t strictly episodic: It had enough soap-operatic elements — ongoing romantic plotlines, etc. — to feed that particular appetite. Aesthetically, it wasn’t always a police procedural, either: There were episodes that were heavily dramatic, yes, but some were whimsical, or suspenseful, or adventurous, or comedic (and had nothing to do with going undercover); it would occasionally shift genres in a way that was uncommon in those days. The classic-rock soundtrack introduced me to so many important artists from the sixties and seventies — they didn’t merely “jukebox” the show with current Top 40 hits. And the Vancouver locations were — at the time — a refreshing change of scenery from the typical Southern California setting of most television up till then. It was, as you say, the epitome of cool; it doesn’t get enough recognition for that. I don’t think I realized before I published this post how many of us Jump Streeters were still out there! Perhaps I ought to start a podcast about the show!
As for Depp himself: I’ve reached a place where I can empathize with his predicament while still acknowledging his own culpability in that very mess — both mindsets can coexist within my head and my heart. I certainly never intended to be a lifelong Johnny Depp fan… he just kept delivering projects and performances I loved! Anyway, though the piece is a little critical of him, it’s also kind of a fan letter, too. And I am still very much a fan of his; I hope he can turn things around for himself.
Thanks, incurable dreamer, for stopping by and sharing your insights — particularly your Jump Street recollections. I enjoyed writing the piece, and recalling my own fond memories of the show. I’m glad, among other objectives, this post turned out to be a little impromptu tribute to 21 Jump Street. Have yourself a safe and relaxing weekend…
Sean
I always enjoy your posts. Celebrities don’t get rich off of me. I don’t follow their lives. In fact, I wish many of them would simply stick to the script and not say another word publicly. But I am in the minority. As reality tv, People magazine, and so many other platforms say otherwise.
Hey, Stacey!
Indeed, there’s probably a more general dissertation I could do on the malignities of celebrity culture — and certainly the vapidity of Hollywood — but A) I’m not interested enough in the subject to even proffer a formal cultural critique of it, and B) the last thing I’m looking for are further reminders that I still live in the Kardashian Kapital! There’s a reason all my fiction takes place in New York — because writing it allows me to spend the better part of every day there, not here.
On the subject of stories about home, Stacey’s new novel The Bridge Home, Book Two in the Heritage River series, will be available November 7 from the Wild Rose Press! So excited for you, Stacey! Thanks, as always, for reading and throwing in your two cents!
Sean
Thank you a gazillion times, my friend! I appreciate your constant support. I love your honesty about your jaded view of Tinseltown. It’s probably the New Yorker in you and since I’m a Jersey Girl through and through honesty is my favorite point of view. Keep the posts coming on all your view points. Your blog allows me a moment to make a cup of tea, put my feet up, and be taken away to places I can’t imagine otherwise.
Hey, thanks, Stacey — what a lovely comment. Much appreciated, my friend from the other side of the Hudson! I fully realize this blog asks a lot from those who read it — there are no 800-word puff pieces (owing to my utter inability to write with any degree of brevity) — and I value the time and attention folks like yourself commit (on a regular basis, no less) to these long-form essays. Any reciprocal support I may offer you — in the form of a promotional mention and so forth — is an expression of personal gratitude as much as it is professional solidarity.
I in no way consider myself a cynical person, and if I’m jaded — if — I would say my jadishness is safely compartmentalized; how I feel about one thing — like, for instance, Hollywood — doesn’t color how I feel about everything. Know what I’m saying? And one of the things I try to incorporate in all my writing, both my essays and fiction, is a technique my old mentor once dubbed “competing truths” — meaning you try to explore all sides of an issue, even and especially if that means acknowledging the validity of opposing/irreconcilable viewpoints. That, to me, is what makes for honest writing: a willingness to confront the black and the white of any given subject, and arrive at a perspective that at least recognizes all the thorny complexities of the vast gray area between them — that, for instance, Johnny Depp can be both an endearing oddball and an off-putting oddity. Both things can be simultaneously true.
To achieve that, I try to find an equilibrium between passion and objectivity — I temper one with the other. Early in my blogging career, I almost exclusively wrote pieces that were purely analytical, but eventually grew bored with that, because they didn’t reflect my own personality and feelings. But I’m also not the kind of writer who can just transcribe amusing episodes from his life the way mydangblog does so brilliantly week after week — that’s just not the way my brain works. So I think I’ve landed on a formula that works for me: A subject gets me fired up, and then I try to conduct a scholarly examination of it. And then I make sure it has just the right amount of “New Yawk” in it to sound like… well, me. Finding your voice, I’ve discovered, inspires fearless — even fearlessly honest — writing. That’s one of the many gifts this blog, and those who read it so attentively, have given me.
I never watched 21 Jump Street, but started following Depp’s career with Edward Scissorhands. He was a pleasure to watch almost across the board. It’s interesting to me how difficult many super-stars find success, and he’s not an exception. I agree with you regarding the isolation required of many artistic endeavors; writing certainly demands an extraordinary amount of time alone. But I also agree with you that the isolation is a choice as is seeking opportunities for social engagement. It’s not necessarily a balanced scale with equal measures of solitude and social interaction at all times. More often for me it’s like peaks and troughs as the scale act more like a seesaw, but the connection to others happens. I also volunteer, and it’s a great way to stay connected to active, positive, and fun people. It sounds like you’re having a great time. Keep it up. 🙂
Depp is a once-in-a-generation talent, Diana — no question about it — something I tried to acknowledge and celebrate here. I feel lucky, in a way, to have followed his career throughout the different stages of my own life!
A few years ago, I published an ode to solitude that included a quote from the Who’s Roger Daltrey I’ve never forgotten: “It’s when you’re doing nothing… that we get our great thoughts, and our great artistic ideas. You know, you get epiphanies. You’re never gonna get it when you’re being fed stuff all the time.”
Accordingly, I think one of the challenges of our Digital Age is understanding that time spent on our smartphones, or streaming television, or playing these immersive multiplayer video games is not solitude. Solitude is a retreat from stimulation; our ubiquitous — and increasingly time-intensive — digital distractions, on the other hand, offer a retreat from reality itself. And in judicious moderation that’s okay — even necessary — but in the excessive quantities we now habitually consume entertainment, our digital devices are enabling social indifference and making us, as the song above goes, comfortably dumb.
Now more than ever, analog connections are vital. Volunteering, to second your assertion, is indeed a great way to both keep us off our phones and engaged in our communities! And it does keep us positive, because action begets empowerment, and empowerment is the antidote to cynicism and despair. Writers in particular ought to block off a few hours on their weekly agenda to devote to service of some kind: It both gets us out of our cocoons and gives us something to write about when we return to them!
I am very much enjoying myself at present, Diana, and eager to celebrate, as we head into the holiday season, all this year’s good fortune — with as many people as possible! In that spirit, thanks for paying a neighborly visit to the blog, my dear friend. Wishing you all the bounties of autumn…
Good idea to strive to keep empathy for ALL who suffer, offer help when able, & hope that empathy & help will be available to each one in time of need. It seemed to me that of the many who had benefitted from Mr. Depp’s work over the years, there were a disappointing few (Disney, most notably), who offered aid rather than censure for some things that still remain unproven allegations. Kindness, as you noted, is so precious in all our lives.
Thanks for visiting the blog, Chaplain, and taking the time to read the piece and comment on it.
Given the sublime degree of his artistry, I would imagine — purely suppositional on my part — Johnny Depp is himself a man of tremendous empathy. In that spirit, it seems only fair when considering some of the controversies surrounding his life to take into account how (ironically) incompatible a sensitive/artistic soul is with a career in showbiz, particularly at the lofty heights of success and celebrity he has attained. The vagaries of superstardom — intense media scrutiny, fair-weather “friends,” big money (referring to both salaries and budgets in the high-risk game of blockbuster filmmaking) — would force anyone into a self-protective bubble after a while, particularly someone endowed with acute artistic sensitivity.
Extreme isolation is the particular consequence, then, of extreme fame and fortune. Maybe we’re not meant to operate at such extremes — that such a level of global recognition and mass-media exposure is irreconcilable with an emotionally healthy life? I don’t know if anyone’s conducted a formal study on such a thing, but perhaps they should. Perhaps it would help explain instances of modern public meltdowns — the kind experienced by Charlie Sheen, Mel Gibson, Mariah Carey — and give us an opportunity to talk about them not in a sardonic way, but a sympathetic one?
‘Tis the season, after all, for goodwill towards others. I just reread A Christmas Carol, as one often feels compelled to do this time of year, and 175 years after its initial publication, it remains one of the most powerful narrative arguments in favor of empathy, compassion, and kindness. It’s my annual reminder that we never run out of opportunities to practice those virtues… we only need take them when they appear.
Thank you for contributing to a productive conversation, Chaplain. Please pop by again. And Happy Holidays to you and yours…
You probably won’t find it surprising, Sean, that the standout line for me here was “…the only thing we Americans seem to love more than a self-made success story is a self-destructive fall from grace.” While I believe “You always have a choice” to the core of my being, I also believe, as you’ve pointed out here, that we all succumb to bad ones along the way; and yet, it’s for that very reason that we love those “falls from grace” to, as you say, deflect attention from ourselves.
It’s uncanny, in fact, that I’m just today able to go back and read this post of yours from August, after having only minutes beforehand reread my own past post the non-people.
I remember an interview with Christian singer/songwriter Amy Grant during a time when she was going through her divorce from first husband Gary Chapman. “Christian” booksellers were pulling her music from shelves and “Christian” radio stations were refusing to play her music, wagging many a finger in her direction. The interviewer asked her what she had to say to people who were disappointed and disillusioned with her choice to seek divorce. I’ll never forget her reply: “I’m just a person like everyone else. I’d say that the only difference between you and me is that there is a giant spotlight on me. I don’t know if people would be so quick to point fingers if the spotlight changed directions.”
First off, Erik: What a delight it is to have your unique voice back in the mix again! You were one of — if not the — first regular supporters of this blog, and it is a testament to your steadfast sense of friendship that you would take the time to comb through all the (lengthy) posts of the past few months to share some of your insights and wisdom. Thank you.
I vividly recall the “non-people” post and I’m glad you included a link to it here (I wish I’d thought to!). I encourage everyone to read it because it clearly articulates a lot of points I made far less concisely here, in both the body of the post up top and in the follow-up comments down below.
Without absolving Johnny Depp of his own complicity in his misfortune — without diminishing his agency as the master of his fate — maybe we ought to take a harder look at the role we play in celebrity culture: collectively crowning someone the Next Big Thing, elevating them overnight to the status of cultural icon, censuring them when they step out of line or fall out of fashion, then reducing them to a punch line when they’ve outlived their novelty. Hell, in our mass-media era, we’ve even turned that bloodthirsty practice into formalized entertainment through reality-show competitions like American Idol!
Look: It’s hard to make the case that celebrities deserve compassion, too — nobody sheds a tear when a wealthy, handsome, talented movie star like Mel Gibson, through a series of bad personal choices, catastrophically sabotages his own enviable career — but maybe it behooves us to consider, as Chaplain suggests above, and as Amy Grant so perfectly expressed in that quotation you cited, that extreme fame and fortune brings with it commensurately extreme standards and scrutiny, and celebrities are, in the end, merely imperfect people dealing with that imperfectly. It ought to tell us something that so many talented (and presumably sensitive) artists — be it Depp or Sheen or Gibson or Mariah or Britney or Axl Rose or Demi Lovato — succumb (each in their own way) to the overwhelming pressures of celebrity: If they can’t handle it, what’s to say we could? That consideration might be worth sparing a modicum of sympathy for them. And practicing sympathy does so much more than merely humanize others; it humanizes us.
Yes, to say, “Look at them, look at their terrible choices,” is to say, “I would have handled things differently. But this is utter hubris. We aren’t them. So who’s to say what we “would do” in the same life path and unique circumstances. When someone chooses to hurt others, I’ll speak out. But when they wind up hurting themselves, I can only find compassion—even if without absolution, as you point out. By the same token, I can then have compassion for myself and others closer to home, even if without absolution: “You/I made a bad choice. It hurts to see the results. What will you/I choose from here?”
Well said, sir. It’s important to keep in mind that it’s always easy to judge a situation from the outside looking in. And while, yes, an external perspective on a given matter allows for a degree of objectivity that the direct participants simply don’t have — hence the reason therapy can be so constructive — it’s also crucial to acknowledge that, as third-party observers, we don’t (and can never) have the full picture. We never really know, after all, what’s going on behind closed doors or in someone’s heart, and it’s easy to say, “Well, I would do this in that situation,” not taking into account the invisible dynamics that shape the choices — those both conscious and unconscious — of another person. Sympathy, then, starts with recognizing that my perspective and experiences aren’t your perspective and experiences, so an apples-to-apples comparison is neither fair nor applicable.
I believe the role we hold in someone’s life as that third-party observer is what many people miss. A friend who’s earned the right may be able to share some constructive criticism, brainstorm or comfort. A counselor or therapist is invited by a person to offer their insight. However, we ‘distant oglers” have, in my opinion, no place or right to even develop our thoughts on a person we don’t even know unless A.) it is for safety reasons for ourselves or those in our care or B.) if we truly believe we may have opportunity to make a positive difference. Anything else seems to me to be the definition of “judgement” (with perhaps a dose of gossip thrown in for bad measure).
I recall you once wrote an essay about complaining (feel free to provide a link to it!), the gist of which was this: If you’re telling someone about some hardship or aggravation in your life who either A) can’t do anything to help, or B) whose advice on the matter you aren’t really seeking, then all you’re doing is bitching for the (pointless) sake of it, which might feel good in the moment but does nothing toward amelioration of the problem.
The same could be applied to critical insight of another: If it’s unsolicited, or done behind the person’s back, or uttered in schadenfreude, then it isn’t constructive criticism, it’s gossip, which is really a softer word for destructive criticism. That should really be avoided at all costs — for everyone’s sake.
Sean, you may have been referring to either of my posts dwelling or drain. And I’ve lived long enough to know that dwelling, regret, worry, bitterness, know-it-all-ism, judgment and gossip are massive time (and soul and happiness) wasters.
These are all great posts, Erik, and I’m looking forward to more “Best Advice” from you in 2019 on your blog and in your forthcoming book!
Hi Sean! Thank you for this trip down memory lane! Think I was five or six when the series aired on television the first time. The show was repeated in South Africa in 1997 and I must say it was one of my favorites back then. I’ve been a fan of Johnny Depp eversince then. To me he is just human. I loved the way you wrote this. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks, Lena! Yes, Jump Street was a terrific show: topical, exciting, sexy, soap-operatic, and even creatively experimental with respect to how it would shift genres. As I said in the piece above, I really haven’t revisited the series in over 30 years at this point; I wouldn’t mind watching it from start to finish again — it’s available on Prime Video — but it simply wouldn’t be the same experience without the original pop-music soundtrack.
Occasionally I catch snippets of it on cable TV (there seems to be a host of channels that do nothing but air grainy, low-definition reruns of TV dramas from the ’70s and ’80s), and I’m reminded how compelling it was. Episodes like “Fun with Animals” and “Swallowed Alive” (both of which were written by Eric Blakeney, who later helped develop the story for Mad Max: Fury Road) are still powerful, as is “Orpheus 3.3” (which I referenced heavily in “Oh, Snap!”). It’s a show I remember with great fondness, and you can absolutely see that Depp was destined for stardom; he had a uniquely special quality about him, even then.
I will, though, take this opportunity to rescind my explicit support for a remake/reboot/revival of 21 Jump Street. While I certainly still believe the concept of undercover-cops-posing-as-students could be creatively repurposed to address the unique social challenges of adolescence here in 2023, I have come to believe over the past few years that it is no longer morally responsible to position police officers as heroic protagonists in fiction, for reasons I explained at length in “Forget It, Jake, It’s Tinseltown” and my analysis of Michael Mann’s Heat 2. It was an inspired series in its day, and kudos to the writers and producers for using it as a vehicle for greater social awareness, but the whole genre of police procedural has reached its mandatory retirement age, methinks. I hadn’t yet come to that conclusion when I published this post in the summer of 2018.
It really was a terrific show, Sean! It’s so sad that the original soundtrack changed. I remember how we as a family couldn’t wait for the next episode on a Saturday. It was a wholesome show. Still miss it, though. Johnny is definitely one of a kind. Unfortunately I have to agree with you on the morally responsible part.
After the colossal success of Saturday Night Fever (1977), movies — and then dramatic television series — began incorporating a lot more contemporary pop music into their soundtracks, what is known as “jukeboxing”; it is one of the aesthetic hallmarks of 1980s cinema.
Slick police procedurals like Miami Vice and Jump Street adopted the technique. Jump Street not only featured then–Top 40 hits, but also a good deal of classic rock from the ’60s and ’70s — music that the show’s Baby boomer producers had grown up listening to. That was how I got introduced to groups like Blind Faith and the Staple Singers. So, in that sense, Jump Street provided me with something of a musical education.
At that time, there was no sense that a TV show could ever have an afterlife on home video. The best a series could hope for was to hit the hundred-episode mark, at which point it could be sold into syndication. No one foresaw that one day TV shows would be made available in their entirety through DVD box sets and streaming services.
As such, the pop music that was licensed for those series was limited to the show’s broadcast exhibition, either first-run or syndicated; home-video rights were not included in the negotiated licensing agreement. Consequently, a lot of old shows have had to replace their pop-music soundtracks with generic and/or public-domain music. In Jump Street‘s case, the show suffered badly for it, because many of the scenes were edited and paced to the original music.
For example: In the third-season episode “High High,” written by Eric Blakeney and directed by Mario Van Peebles, there is a montage sequence cut to “Monkey Man” by the Rolling Stones. But on video, the song is replaced with an instrumental piece that doesn’t match the tone of the scene or the timing of the cuts, so the whole thing plays all wrong. That’s just one example I can think of offhand, but there are a hundred others just like it. So, to rewatch the series now would be to have an altered experience, much the way the Star Wars movies we can watch on Disney+ today aren’t the precise cuts we grew up with in the ’80s. It’s similar… but not the same.
That’s probably for the best. Having access to all the media we grew up on has made it increasingly difficult for Xers and Millennials to leave childish things behind, a theme I’ll be exploring in my forthcoming blog post “Into Each Generation a Slayer Is Born.” Look for that next week, Lena.
Thank you, Sean. That’s a very interesting piece of information. I will definitely keep an eye out for your new blog post.