The Libertine

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! There May Be SPOILERS in the movie reviews !

WHAT'S THE STORY?

This is the story of John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, a 17th century poet, wit, war hero and exponent of debauchery, who famously drank and debauched his way to an early grave, dying of syphilis at the age of 33, only to earn posthumous critical acclaim for his life's work. The explicit content of the film, which was directed by former Wells Blue School pupil, Laurence Dunmore, is well known and it was filmed mainly on the Isle of Man because tax breaks for film companies were cut by the government. Even so, filming still took place in Wales and in England at Hampton Court, Montacute House and Wells Cathedral in Somerset, which doubled as the House of Lords.

Written by Stephen Jeffreys, adapted from his own stage play, Johnny Depp plays the legendary hell-raiser Earl of Rochester, a wit who amused and outraged the court of Charles II (played by John Malkovich).

The female interest is provided by Samantha Morton, playing Rochester's mistress and Rosamund Pike, playing his wife Elizabeth Malet.

Comedian Johnny Vegas also has a part playing the character Sackville, adding to his burgeoning acting credits.

A TALE OF FOUR EXTRAS

Bert Bryant had to be practically carried by his wife Sandra and son Jason to the gentlemen-only audition held in Wells yet he was one of the few chosen to film at Montacute House for the latest Johnny Depp film, The Libertine. At the time no one knew what they were auditioning for and by the time the news was out more people came forward but it was too late.

Bert is now the proud owner of a framed autograph from the star, albeit he mis-spelt his name.

He spelt it Burt in the American way. It reads: To Burt with respect and best wishes Johnny Depp.

Bert said: "At the end of filming he shook my hand and gave me the keepsake. I am chuffed with it. He was softly spoken and a really nice gentleman, brilliant."

The gift marked the end of a complete week working at Montacute House in the non-speaking part of the butler. It was Bert's strong features the film company wanted. He said: "When I got my wig on I looked completely sinister."

For the sum of £85 a day Bert had to be on set by 6am and often, being one of only two extras working at Montacute, he was made up alongside the stars.

Fully costumed, teeth and nails blackened, his wig was glued on and the day began.

Said Bert: "I was two hours in the make-up chair on the first day.

"The wigs were the same as those used in Lord of the Rings.

"The only trouble was that you were dressed up in period costume all day and you never knew when you would be wanted on set."

The working day would end at 8pm with the wigs being peeled off like Elastoplast, then extras and stars alike would have to run the gauntlet of all the kids screaming outside. "It was an experience," said Bert.

Mrs Bryant added: "You should have seen his hair when he came home at night. The sides had been shaved to stick the wig on and his own hair was a mess."

Bert said: "I have had another film company ring me, backed up by a letter, asking if I would be interested in taking part in another film if it was made in the area. I said I would."
 

'TWO-AND-A-HALF HOURS IN MAKE-UP AT 6AM BEFORE SHOOTING COULD BEGIN'

Derek Cooper, Wells cinema owner and one-time Bafta judge, went along to the male-only auditions too and was given a part as a lord. It was the second film he has appeared in, the first being the equally naughty Canterbury Tales filmed in Wells in the 1970s, when Wells Cathedral front was used as the entrance to Canterbury.

Said Mr Cooper: "When it came out it had a lot of controversial scenes including nudity. The Libertine is the same - it is the story of the Earl of Rochester after all.

"I am not going to give anything away. My wife June and I went to a screening in London and Johnny Depp is simply amazing, his performance alone is worth an Academy Award."

Director of the film, Laurence Dunmore, went to Wells Blue School and is returning to Wells on Sunday (November 20) to introduce the film. It will be screened at 4.30pm, with the doors opening at 4pm.

When asked what the Wells audience would think of all the swearing in the film, Mr Cooper replied: "Well, it's going to be very interesting.

"I don't think many of them realise how fruity the film is, though they mostly understand that it's a true story about a guy dying of syphilis who was a bit of a randy bugger."

Mr Cooper, who was paid around £85 a day for his efforts, says the worst part of the experience was spending two-and-a-half hours in make-up at 6am before the day's shooting could begin.

"It was a lengthy job. Then, if it was raining, we had to run like mad in cloak and breeches across to the Cathedral, trying not to get everything wet, particularly the wigs.

"What I found exciting was watching the cameramen lacing up the film and being present at the conception of a film I would be appearing in and showing in my cinema."
 

'THEY IMMEDIATELY STOPPED FILMING AND WENT HUNTING'

Jason Bryant's part ended up on the cutting-room floor but he also blotted his copybook by turning paparazzi at Montacute. He was trying to get a picture of Johnny Depp and was carefully hidden behind some bushes but all he managed to get was a shot of his dad.

Said Bert: "They immediately stopped filming and went hunting for him."

But for Jason one of the most surreal moments occurred the day after he had visited the real Houses of Parliament in London for his day job.

He said: "We were in the Houses of Parliament and I looked at a portrait of Charles II.

"The next day I was taking part as an extra in Wells Cathedral, which doubles as the House of Lords in the film, and opposite me was the actor John Malkovich dressed as Charles II. The portrait had come to life before my eyes."

In the opening frame of The Libertine, Johnny Depp, all delicious cheekbones and tousled hair as the sexual omnivore the Earl of Rochester, begins by challenging his audience. "You will not like me." But of course you do.

You love him because Depp - in real life an outsider - is fantastic in the role. And because in many ways the 17th-century Earl, "the first punk rocker", whose poetry was so lewd it was banned for centuries and who died of too much drink and syphilis, has much in common with Depp - ex-lover of Kate Moss, ex-drug-user and ex-trasher of hotel rooms.

We meet in a sterile hotel room in Beverly Hills. Depp is wearing a scraggy T-shirt and jeans, spiky hair and hornrimmed glasses - but still looks absolutely gorgeous.

Looking at him - and back at his history - it is easy to understand why director Lawrence Dunmore might have seen him as the perfect person to play the Earl, a man whom Samuel Johnson described as having "blazed out his youth and health in lavish voluptuousness". Depp himself is the first to agree.

"I definitely had a phase in my life when Rochester and I would have spent the night together," says Depp. "He is a character I know in a lot of ways. Guys that are parallel to him are Jack Kerouac - great writer, but horribly misunderstood; Shane Mac-Gowan - one of the greatest poets of the 20th century but he imbibed to a degree where we would all be in the gutter. And Hunter Thompson - a great hero and a great friend of mine. All these guys came into my mind."

But Depp also saw closer parallels between himself and Rochester. "I recognised something that I had gone through. I quit drinking spirits because I wouldn't stop. I would just keep going until a black screen came down where you can't see anything any more and you don't know if you're around."

Depp quit drinking, thinking it was "wasting time", and in the same period he stopped doing drugs. "Trying to numb and medicate myself was never about recreation. It was existing without living ... If I'd done this part 10 years ago when John Malkovich first approached me and I agreed, it would have been very different.

"I would have made a dangerous mistake of trying to live it. Not necessarily going out and shagging everything that had a pulse, but drinking, and I would never have got through it. Ten years later, I have a solid foundation to stand on."

The Johnny Depp of 10 years ago was a more destructive soul. He played a headless horseman (Sleepy Hollow), an opium addict (From Hell), and had serially dark love affairs with gothic-looking actresses like Winona Ryder.

Then, of course, there was the raging, destructive, on-off relationship with Kate Moss. He regularly trashed hotel rooms (when he wasn't strewing them with flowers for Moss) before he left the model to settle down with the French singer Vanessa Paradis, who changed his life.

When we last met I had told him that he and Kate and all their tumult seemed to prove that true love exists. He got very wistful and said: "I don't think I was good for Kate." I'd read that he had taken an interest in her troubles, invited Pete Doherty out for lunch and warned him to "... lay off the drugs. Be nice to Kate."

He reels back into the sofa. "Oy, oy, oy ... Jesus. That never happened. I've never met him. I like him in that I like his music very much. I think he has a great talent and it seems to me that he and Kate could be great together because she's a great girl. She's got a great brain on her and I think she's a good mummy."

He is shocked at her treatment by newspapers. "Dragging her through the mud like that. They are weird and two-faced." When I tell him that Robbie Williams commented that the very hacks writing about "Cocaine Kate" are the ones he had done lines with, Depp says: "That's fantastic of him," his eyes warming to a hot black.

"[Kate's] growing up," he adds. "We all are. Let her be. But I never took Pete Doherty aside and I never sent her a mirror, as has been written.

"They said I sent a mirror to the place where she was getting straight because it is supposed to be an old Indian custom: look in the mirror and find your own strength to abstain. But I would never have thought a mirror would be the right thing to send her. I feel so bad for her."

He has not spoken to her directly. But his message to her? "f**k 'em. They [the press] are trying to crucify her, and all that's gonna do is give her more power. She should take that and run with it. Ultimately I know she's very strong and very smart. She'll be fine."

After the split with Moss, he fell in love almost at first sight with French singer and Moss lookalike Vanessa Paradis, who quickly became pregnant with Lily Rose, now six, then Jack, now three. Fatherhood revolutionised Depp. "I helped give our daughter life, and she gave me life."

He is a die-hard romantic and believes that Vanessa is The One. He's fiercely loyal to her. "It's amazing to be parents together, that's the truth." It is perhaps because of this fierce loyalty that he has never been in touch with Moss.

Does he believe it's possible to be in love with more than one person, I ask? "For some people it is," he says. "Everybody's different. Some people, they call it an arrangement, don't they? But that's not for me. I'm old-fashioned. It's my Kentucky mentality. I can't seem to escape it."

Depp and Paradis moved to France to bring up their children because he said LA was too violent. Has he become disenchanted after the recent riots and curfews that spread out from Paris? "It's insane that setting cars on fire is the new strike. It takes a lot away. I'm sure it'll clear up to a certain degree, but now we are based back in LA because I have work here. I went there [to France] to live because it seemed so simple. Now it's anything but. I don't know how they'll recover from this."

Perhaps he'd like to move to London, I venture. "I love London. There's no shortage of comedy programmes - Johnny Vegas - restaurants and newspapers." Are you still a fan of the Mirabelle? "Oh yes, where I got arrested" [in 1999 Depp was held in a police cell for four hours after he chased a photographer outside the restaurant with a piece of wood]. "I'm not sure they want me back, but they do have a terrific wine list and I do like a good claret."

Does he feel that character who chased the paparazzi is a long way away? "Nooo. I think the perception of me over the years was off-kilter from who I really am. I mean, I've had my problems here and there, but I was reduced to the bad-boy rebel. But I really don't get that," he adds.

"You know the incident at the Mirabelle was because they [the paparazzi] wanted to get a photograph of Vanessa and me and her tummy. She was about to burst and I thought, I am not going to allow fatherhood to commence as a novelty. I was already protective of my kiddies."

I ask him if he wants more children. "Oh yes. I'm pretty good at it," he says twinkling. "They make me happy. Simple fun things. Me and my son zooming around in little cars or my absurd stories about Barbie dolls getting obsessed with peanut butter. And, of course, work keeps me happy."

Next up is a story of an Australian bank robber who escaped maximum-security jail and went to live in Bombay as a slum doctor, then became involved with the Bombay mafia. It's an epic story. Bad boy turns good - and typical Johnny.

He rolls up another cigarette in black liquorice paper, the gold and platinum caps on his teeth glittering. They are very fetching. "It's for weekend appearances and kids' birthday parties. I'm Captain Jack Sparrow [his part in the children's blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean] - which is what I'm sure I'm destined for." He laughs. "They're not permanent, but the dentist who does the violent scraping to get them off hasn't been available."

So, from hotel-trasher to children's entertainer (he's off to film the third Pirates film soon)? There's a line in The Libertine where his character says: "Things I cannot do and feel in life I must do on stage." Is that how he feels? "No, and I don't think Rochester did. He was just masking things. I think he felt too much. He was looking for an escape from reality, from his thoughts, his fears, his pain."

So his Libertine phase, he says, is ended. But has it? His eyes light up when I produce a gift for him. Because the film features lots of 17th-century pornography and elegantly carved dildos, I bring him one from a chic Los Angeles sex-toy emporium called the Booty Parlor.

It's one that's been named after him. He is genuinely ecstatic and starts waving it around. "I haven't had one of these for 20 years. It's gorgeous." He says that he's going to put it in a frame similar to the ones fire extinguishers are held in.

Depp the libertine is back? There's a pause before he says: "It'll have a sign: break only in an emergency."

The Official Libertine Site



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