Those eyes, sleepy and wide-awake at the same time, are just part of what
seems soft, watchful, even a bit passive about Johnny Depp. He takes in
everything around him with a deadpan acceptance that’s also, in some
essential way, unprotected. Depp’s vulnerability is what seemed, for a
while, to doom him to a career playing sweet-tempered freaks and oddballs.
He wears the popeyed surprise of a distressed kewpie doll throughout Tim
Burton’s “Edward Scissorhands.” In Depp’s scenes with Vincent Price (who
plays the scientist who creates Edward), the two achieve a true, fairy-tale
magic; they’re Pinocchio and Gepetto as Goth kids might have reimagined
them. But there’s not much any actor could do with the rest of the movie –
a pasteled hate letter to suburbia — and since Edward is its sacrificial
lamb, Depp gets stuck in the masochism of the conception.

As a young silent-film enthusiast in “Benny & Joon,” Depp pulls off some
very skillful re-creations of Chaplin and Keaton routines (he’s particularly
good in one sequence where his hat appears to have taken on a life of its
own), but it’s another sentimental “special person” role. Depp’s best
moments are when the camera just looks at him: in his first shot as he
peeps over the top of Robert Benayoun’s book “The Look of Buster Keaton,”
or, in a moment to treasure near the end, as he swings past a second-story
window and, with gallant nonchalance, doffs his top hat to the lady inside.

When directors make the mistake of using Depp as merely an observer –
which is what Jim Jarmusch did in his absurdist Western whatsit “Dead Man”
– they short-circuit his natural responsiveness. Depp’s three best film
roles to date are duets, each with a partner who comes under his spell. The
overarching joke of “Don Juan DeMarco” is that everybody who meets
Depp winds up enchanted in one way or another. On the surface, this might
look like just another damaged-dreamer part — Depp plays an addled kid
from Queens who reinvents himself as the world’s greatest lover. But
everything about Depp in this role is sensual, alluring and lush, from the
Castillian accent he adopts to his swashbuckler duds: tall, cuffed boots;
shirts of rich, nubby cotton with billowing sleeves; a vest of deep red
velvet. Depp gets so far inside this kid’s fantasy life that he makes this
get-up look great, not ridiculous. It’s no wonder that doormen bow and
women fall into bed with him. (In one scene, Depp kisses a woman’s hand as
if he’s eating soft fruit and tells her, “I give women pleasure — if they
desire it.” The women in the packed theater around me sighed audibly.) Even
the psychiatrist (Marlon Brando) charged with treating Depp’s “Don Juan”
falls for the tale he weaves of a life filled with illicit affairs, duels
to avenge honor, evil slave traders, hiding out in a harem. It’s not the
truth, but it beats the hell out of growing up in Queens.

Brando and Depp treat their roles as a game, a masquerade. The pleasure
that the psychiatrist takes in this delusional Don Juan is inseparable from
the pleasure Brando takes in Depp. He’s glad to find an actor with enough
sense of fun to play with him. Depp turns himself into a dream object for
ripe erotic farce. He puts just the right parodistic spin on Don Juan’s
passion (demanding of one hapless shrink, “Have you ever loved a woman
until milk leaked from her as though she had just given birth to love
itself and now must feed it or burst?”) and his passivity (when he finds
himself trapped in a harem, he regards the naked lovelies disporting in
front of him with a shrug that asks, “What’s a poor virile young Don to
do?”). It’s a luscious performance, as sexy as it is funny.

There’s a different kind of masquerade going on in “Donnie Brasco.” The
director, Mike Newell, begins and ends the film on a close-up of Depp’s
eyes. But instead of drawing us into the character, these shots define
Depp’s distance from us and, finally, his distance from himself. Casting
Depp as an FBI undercover agent who bonds with the aging, small-time hood
(Al Pacino) he must betray, Newell exploits the tension that comes from
casting an actor who’s naturally expressive in the role of a man who must
control his emotions or die. Our own memories of Depp’s dreamy romantic
presence carry over into the movie — and give a special horror to the
scenes in which he has to collaborate in mob brutality to protect his
cover. Seeing someone so young and open retreat to a mental and emotional
place he may never be able to extricate himself from is chilling. When his
wife (Anne Heche, witnessing what her husband’s job is doing to him with a
prickly, muted outrage) accuses him of becoming like the hoods he’s hanging
with, he answers, “I’m not becoming like them, Maggie. I am them” with a
helpless self-disgust. After a while, it’s a toss-up whether it’s worse to
see Depp betray the emotion brimming from Pacino’s huge, dark, baggy
eyes, or the youth in his own.

In “Donnie Brasco” Depp is, for the first time, fully believable as an
adult on screen. But it may be “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” an odd-duck
charmer of a movie, that captures the tenderness that makes Depp so likable
in the first place. His Gilbert is a young man stuck in a small town acting
as the de facto head of a family that includes his retarded brother, Arnie
(DiCaprio), and his enormously overweight mother (Darlene Cates, a
nonprofessional actress who gives a very touching performance). His
responsibility to them keeps him from leaving, and the role could have been
a real bummer, a slacker George Bailey. But Depp doesn’t rely completely on
Gilbert’s sense of duty to explain what keeps him in one place. He brings
to Gilbert the concentrated sadness of someone who knows his life is being
wasted and can’t quite find the will or inspiration to do something about
it. When Gilbert tells Arnie that he’ll take care of it if anyone hurts
him, he says, “Why will I take care of it? Because I’m Gilbert.” That’s his
role, and the resignation in his voice is too deep to allow for resentment.

Depp wears long reddish brown hair in the role, parted in the middle and
swept back behind both ears. That hair defines Gilbert; he goes with the
flow, offering no resistance. In one scene, Arnie, in response to some
remark, dances around, chanting, “We’re not going anywhere!” Gilbert,
feeling the irony of that line, walks away in a slump, his hands thrust in
his pockets. From the back, he looks like an old Indian man shuffling
along. We can’t see Depp’s face, but his slouch tells you exactly how he’s
feeling

I can think of just a few actors — Julie Christie in “Shampoo” and Myrna
Loy in “The Best Years of Our Lives,” to name two — who’ve been able to
communicate, silently, with their back to the camera. But then this is a
performance about the weight of empathy. Depp’s scenes with DiCaprio (who’s
astonishing) are miracles of connection; they hum with love traveling
through faulty wiring and still making itself felt. And when Gilbert runs
out of patience and hits Arnie, you’re torn up for both of them. Earlier in
the movie, Gilbert describes his wish: “I want to be a good person.” When
he thinks he’s failed, Depp’s expression tells us that Gilbert wishes he
could run away from himself. The movie rewards Gilbert’s goodness. At the
end, his face shows that he understands the difference between staying
somewhere because you have no choice and staying knowing that you have the
freedom to go.

Johnny Depp is a constant reminder of the joys and perils of being a
critic. When Depp began trying to build a career in movies, fresh from “21
Jump Street,” most critics treated him as a joke because he was a teen idol
and a TV actor. “Maybe I’m a joke now,” he recently told Rolling Stone,
“but at least I’m my own joke.” The body of work Depp has been building,
each part chosen with an eye toward stretching himself, reminds us that one
of the chief pleasures the movies offer is the surprise discovering a
performer’s possibilities — and the impossibility of predicting what
they’ll be.

Lovett grew up in a tiny community settled by his grandparents just outside of Houston, Texas. The only child of two Exxon employees, he got his start in the music business as a teenager, playing guitar and singing the songs of his country-western idols on the local club circuit. At Texas A&M University, he majored first in history, then graduated with a double major in German and journalism. He continued singing and writing country songs and gained a small but loyal group of fans with his witty, cerebral lyrics, skilled musicianship and, of course, that lonesome voice. As his star rose, Lovett was frequently compared to k.d. lang; like lang, Lovett tempered his passion for country music with an intelligence about the craft, and his fans tended more toward the “appreciate country, love a sardonic take on it” crowd than the true-blue, Hank Williams by way of Billy Ray Cyrus camp.

If Lovett’s songs reveal a self-effacing, quietly knowing character — the kind of guy who gets the joke, even when (maybe especially when) he is the joke — his brief but memorable film performances (particularly in Robert Altman’s “The Player” and “Short Cuts”) suggest that an extremely sturdy, if quirky, character lies beneath his shy exterior.

But what’s not so apparent about Lovett is just how comfortable he is in his own skin. He is a man who may seem to reveal himself completely in his songs, to offer himself entirely to the listener, yet he’s highly skilled in the art of self-protection. To be sure, this instinct was partly born of necessity: In 1993, Lovett married Julia Roberts and found himself the subject of intense and not entirely flattering media attention. Throughout the brief marriage and subsequent divorce, Lovett handled himself with aplomb, gamely answering questions about Roberts’ bathroom habits and other trivia, yet successfully dodging inquiries about what brought the couple together in the first place — as well as what drove them apart a year later. After the divorce, Lovett released an album of songs titled “I Love Everybody,” all of which he claims were written prior to his marriage. His most recent album, “The Road to Ensenada” has a similar flavor: intensely confessional, yet revealing little concrete information other than the size of his hat (he wears a 7).

Currently, Lovett can be seen playing a drug dealer in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and a sheriff in “The Opposite of Sex.” The latter film stars Christina Ricci as an oversexed, underloved burgeoning femme fatale. Lovett reluctantly busts her gay half-brother (Martin Donovan) on a child-molestation charge. If it sounds preposterous and implausible, it is; the good news is that Lovett, as the soft-spoken widower with an affinity for cheap beer and head massages, steals every scene he’s in.

Recently, Lovett was in San Francisco promoting “The Opposite of Sex” at the San Francisco International Film Festival. He spoke to Salon about his upcoming film and music projects, and why he hopes he’ll someday lose his creative spark.

Do you still live in Texas?

Yes, I still live in what’s left of the family farm, in a house that my grandfather built in 1911. I feel really proud to have been able to hold on to part of my grandpa’s land, and live in his house. And, as much as I’m gone, I couldn’t imagine living someplace else.

How much time do you spend there now?

All of my time, when I’m not working somewhere else. I spent most of this year in Los Angeles recording my new album, which will be out in September. It’s called “Step Inside This House,” after a song on the album written by a Texas songwriter named Guy Clark. This is an album of songs by people I know from Texas. I didn’t write any of the songs. These are songs I’ve played for years, like the first music I played back in clubs when I was 18. Guy Clark, Walter Hiatt, Eric Taylor, Michael Murphy … there are 10 different songwriters represented, and there are 21 songs, all by people I know.

Sounds like a fun project.

Really fun. Really fun. Some of the songs are previously unrecorded — the guys that wrote them never recorded them. The Guy Clark song, “Step Inside This House,” was the first song he ever wrote. He was a big help to me when I was starting out. He was someone whose music I really admired.

When I first went to Nashville in 1984 with a demo tape, I was just trying to get other people interested in my songs, because I thought that was a realistic way to pursue the business. I didn’t go to Nashville trying to get a record deal. I felt like I had some songs that other people could record. I played my own songs in clubs at home, and I was interested in being a songwriter and performer, but it never occurred to me that I could get a record deal myself. It just seemed like too much to hope for. But it seemed like I might be able to get other people interested in my songs. So I went to Nashville with a demo tape, and I had a meeting with this guy at the publishing company that represented Guy Clark. I was surprised at how open people were to taking a meeting and listening to my music. They were all, in the most positive way, really discouraging.

But I had reached a point — playing the same six or eight clubs, making the rounds — and it was time for me to either learn how the business worked and take a step forward, or get a real job. So I went to Nashville to investigate. I mentioned to this guy at CBS that I was a fan of Guy Clark’s, and he gave my tape to Guy. And as I started going into Nashville every month or so, to take meetings and try and generate interest, I kept running into people who said, “Guy Clark played me your song.” Guy listened to my tape, liked it and started playing it for everyone, so he was really instrumental to my getting a record deal. And all of this happened before I even met him. It was an unsolicited show of support from one of my musical heroes. So I was very excited to record the first song he ever wrote.

So is this album a sort of tribute to him?

It’s really a thank you. I’ve always admired his songwriting, and I’ve played the song many times. All of these songs for me acknowledge how these writers and songs have been a part of my life.

How did you get involved with “The Opposite of Sex”?

My agent called and told me about the script. I have no idea how my name came up for the role, but I really liked the script, really liked the writing. It’s the biggest role I’ve had, and I spent more time in front of the camera than I have before, which was actually sort of comforting.
I got to actually get into a bit of a groove with the work, and figure things out a bit.

When I play music, it’s sort of my responsibility — the whole deal of doing the record, that’s my job. To get to be a part of somebody else’s job is a lot of fun. Don [Roos, the director] is so smart, such a great writer, and working with smart people who are passionate about what they’re doing is a great job. It’s like getting to be a guy in the band.

Tell me about your character in the film.

Carl is one of the most clear-in-his-own-mind characters in the film. He knows what he’s about. He’s not unflawed, but he knows what he’s done in his own life and deals with it in a very straightforward way — doesn’t make excuses for himself, knows what he wants. He’s the only character in the film who pursues his desire for sex in a straightforward, unself-conscious way. He’s very consistent. I’d like to come off like Carl.

Looking at the characters you’ve played in films — the baker in “Short Cuts,” the sheriff in “The Player,” Carl in “The Opposite of Sex” — there seems to be an essential decency about all of them.

If that’s the reason I get selected for certain roles, or if that’s the quality that comes through, I would be happy about that.

Robert Altman once said that you represent art without irony.

Huh! Altman’s cool. He’s so insightful about people. He gets right to the heart of the matter, whatever it is, and just strips away any pretense, any bullshit. He just gets right to it.

Are you going to work with him again?

This summer, in a film called “Cookie’s Fortune.” It’s sort of a murder mystery, set in the South. I play Manny, who runs the catfish place where one of the main characters, played by Liv Tyler, is employed. And Manny sort of has a crush on her, it’s a sort of flirtatious relationship. But Manny’s an old guy like me, and he’s married. And essentially decent.

How was working with Christina Ricci?

Great. She’s great. We didn’t have many scenes together, but she was around, hanging out. I just think she was perfect. Christina is so straightforward herself, and that straightforward, unself-conscious quality that she brought to the role of DeDee, I think she did that role in a way nobody else could. When you listen to the narration, you can almost hear Don saying the lines himself, but she delivered it in a way nobody else could have. She’s heavy.

So what is the opposite of sex?

The opposite of sex is … sex. The opposite of sex is everything that comes with sex that you think of as not being part of sex. Like all of the feelings — the actual responsibility, the actual caring for someone, the potential to lose someone. The opposite of sex is everything besides the physical, and it all sort of underscores that sex is very important. It’s all the same, you can’t have one without the other. The true opposite of sex is nonexistence.

What do you think about what Ricci’s character DeDee says at the end of the film, that sex is too much trouble?

She doesn’t mean it.

But a lot of people would agree with her.

Sure. Oh, sure. But that’s life. Life is experiencing all the joy, and the pain, and the loss. Ultimately we all die, and the struggle of life is to keep that in perspective, and not let the ultimate outcome discount any of what lies between.

Do you think you’re able to do that?

It’s something I strive to be ever mindful of. And not always with as great success as I’d like. You have ups and downs. But what’s the alternative? How do you protect yourself? Get cable and watch a lot of TV?

Do you ever see a film because it features an actor you really love?

An actor I really admire for the choices he makes, and his unconventional approach, is Johnny Depp, because I think Johnny could be so mainstream, he could be knocking them over the center-field fence all day long if he wanted to. But he makes such interesting choices, and he’s so talented as an actor. I know that if Johnny Depp decides to do something, then there’s really something to it.

The characters you play in your movies, and also some of the characters you create in your songs, seem to be coming out of a place of pain.

Well, it’s easier to write about painful things, things that you’re trying to work through.

Do you think you’ll ever stop writing music?

I don’t know. Writing is so difficult, every time I write a song I like, I’m not sure if I can ever do it again.

What was the last song you wrote you felt that way about?

I feel that almost every time. Making up stuff is hard. Having a good idea is hard. Saying something in a way that hasn’t been done, it’s hard.

Do you see yourself ever getting married again?

Sure, I’m not opposed to the idea. The goal of marriage is not … marriage and children is not the goal, the goal is to love someone.

But are you worried that being too happy would cause you to lose your creative spark?

I’d love to be too happy and lose my creativity. I would.

A lot of articles have been written about Linda McCartney suggesting that Paul was too happy with her — that he just wrote silly love songs about her, and never developed as an artist because he was too content. Do you think that pain is necessary to the creative process?

That’s really horrible. Great art is not what we should aspire to in life. We should aspire to lead a good life. Art is not life. It can be life support, it can be a byproduct of life. A person’s art should reflect his life, but first you need to live your life. If Paul McCartney never wrote a song after he met Linda, so what? He wrote a lot of great songs before that. It’s poetic, in a way, the whole idea that James Dean will live forever; when an artist just stops, it has a similar quality — there’s a mystery to it. I find it very intriguing.

Well, folks … I was massively, squealingly delighted from start to finish, and I wasn’t even high.

This could be the greatest film ever made about the sodomizing of the American Dream, Vegas-style. It is as deeply satisfying as only the yowling, primal trashing of several rental cars and hotel rooms while in the grips of a hopelessly depraved ether jag and several sheets of blotter acid can be. Terry Gilliam has captured the fiendish spirit of Gonzo with a huge steel-jawed animal trap. He has created a .357 Magnum turbo amyl-cracking blood-spattering adrenalichrome hayride filled with trapezing wolverines, ominous Christian hitchhikers and profuse Samoan vomiting that truly does the Duke proud (as you can see, I’m campaigning heavily to get this review on the movie poster — I just want to be somehow affiliated with this movie).

Gilliam has so egolessly orchestrated the genius of himself, Ralph Steadman and Hunter Thompson that it’s like watching a legendary jazz trio in which each heavyweight witch doctor knows when to peel off a world-beating solo and then politely back off to vamp and support the other guy while he flexes his peculiar sorcery. He is the only director imaginable who could have correctly realized the checking-into-the-hotel-on-acid scene, replete with bleeding rapist iguanas, sinister carpeting and a concierge with an undulating head.

The unlikely casting choices turned out to be savvy and successful, if not perfect. Johnny Depp surprised the hell out of me again, pulling off his portrayal of the stress-fractured Thompson-as-jibbering-paranoiac with intensely magnified flying mescaline colors. That pretty little man can really act, and he can really act like Raoul Duke, the Thompson character, even though he is, unfortunately, too physically small to capture the heavy physical menace that the huge, lumbering Thompson inspires. Depp’s Thompson is a fretful, bowlegged insect, more on the crackpot eccentric tip than evocative of the multiple felon, gun-loving miscreant vibe that collects around The Man Himself. Depp makes Hunter seem almost childlike and reasonable: He’s the one holding it together enough to hit the kill switch when the circumstances hurtle toward life-threatening weirdness. Whereas people I know who have been around The Actual Hunter Thompson all speak of him as being pretty unsafe at any speed and making the hair stand up on the back of their necks due to the pregnant heat of his total disregard for social rules. You don’t get the feeling that Depp’s Raoul Duke would be capable of sudden random violence or shockingly amoral behavior: He’s too fragile, with too much of a conscience. Depp’s Thompson, while a skilled and pleasing representation, falls a wee bit short of the hair-trigger scariness that any physically powerful, armed, terrified man (Thompson especially) inspires — but frankly, I can’t think of another Hollywood actor who could have done a better job.

Benicio Del Toro, who looks like he bravely DeNiro’ed 40 extra pounds for the role of Thompson’s attorney, is even more unintelligible than usual: His enunciation, usually crippled by his nine-pound tongue and Brando palsy, is further confounded by a Chicano accent and the conceit of being on more narcotics than the crowd at Woodstock. As a result, his performance can probably only be understood by aphasics, those who can lip-read through an overgrown Freddie Prinze mustache or fanatics like me who have memorized the book. Still, Del Toro can’t be beat for pure atavism; he’s a big sweaty mongrel who is capable of inspiring true discomfort and that sinking feeling you get when you know something really, really ugly and out-of-line is going to happen.

There were a couple of things added to the film that weren’t in the book that pushed Thompson’s keenly balanced hypertension over the plausible limit. Gary Busey’s homosexual cop, for example, is a superfluous groaner who does not serve the film: Nobody with any serious love of Thompson is going to buy this breach of his deeply ingrained, old-school homophobia. There were several wasted cameos; Ellen Barkin is inexplicably Hispanic in this film, Mark Harmon is so conventionally handsome and well-spoken that he seems like a fearful slumming tourist in this movie. Thompson, in his cameo appearance playing the Doctor of Journalism himself, is shown muttering under a sun-visor instead of shooting dwarves or peacocks or something more befitting of his oeuvre.

But these are all very small complaints, considering I was expecting this movie to be disgraced by insecure Hollywood execu-thugs who need to stick their worthless, soul-killing 2 cents into everything and don’t know when to shut up and let the artists do their work. There were all kinds of depressing stories about the inception of this project: the interminable delays, original director Alex (“Sid and Nancy,” “Repo Man”) Cox dropping out over “creative differences,” etc. — industry gossip that suggested an abysmal script, the ultimate albatross necktie for a film version of Thompson’s magnum opus. Not to mention the conspicuous absence of Hunter Thompson from the project, Hunter Thompson being notoriously absent wherever he is these days.

But incredibly, it seems that for once, Satan’s L.A.-based whirling-knife gauntlet of artistic castration accidentally chopped together the right combination, and True Joy has miraculously prevailed. This movie allows for all the important stuff I never thought would make it onto the screen: Moribund paintings of Barbra Streisand, Del Toro’s unforgettable macerating of several grapefruits with a large hunting knife, gratuitous Debbie Reynolds romping; trademark Steadman blood-sprays all over the mirrors, the Spanish Maid Scene, the use of a vintage IBM Selectric II, long, uninterrupted, beautiful, un-Hollywood-screenplayesque, ranting Thompson orations on the dignity of the ’60s that must have given many an executive producer the night sweats.

This cinematic masterpiece gets an exploding five stars in my book, mostly for being uncompromisingly and devotionally true to Thompson’s book. Eight hundred seventeen devil breasts. Eleven thumbs way, way up. Cintra says check it out — but read the book first for maximum enjoyment. For once, a book and film actually belong together in gleefully unholy matrimony.