The Libertine

page 23

! There May Be SPOILERS in the movie reviews !

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.

 Look here too!

• Film review: Depp at his decadent best
• Depp: Kate's smart and a good mum
• Depp loses pin-up crown to 'geek'

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.

Other stories:

Ditching libertine life for love

Potter star 'next Jude Law'

Dodgy death of Brian

An artist on the skids

Dirty secrets and lies

Bollywood loses the plot

St Nick's holiday blues

Record sale for film poster

Darcy seals it with a kiss

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? "Fuck '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."

He‘s one of Hollywood‘s biggest names and now he‘s starring as the scandelous 2nd Earl of Rochester in "The Libertine". We chat to Johnny Depp.

Johnny, thanks for taking the time to talk to us.

"Hey man, how are you?"

Can we start by asking you to tell us a bit about the 2nd Earl of Rochester?

"Oh yeah, John Wilmot. He was a contemporary of King Charles II, part of his court, at that heavy time of the Restoration. A beautiful poet – oft times written off as a satirist or a pornographer or a debauched madman – but a beautiful poet and someone who I think never really got a particularly fair shake through history."

You certainly seem to like playing real–life characters – this is the eighth time you‘ve done so. Is that something you specifically look for when considering scripts?

"Boy, I don‘t know. I have done it a few times. It depends you know on the person, on the character, on the historical figure. The weird thing is it kind of ups the stakes in the terms of your responsibility, because you want to do your best to serve their memory well."

Did you feel a certain connection with the Earl?

"Oh yeah, I‘ve felt a connection with all the characters I‘ve played, but doing the research and reading up and learning about John Wilmot gave me a beautiful opportunity to sort of educate myself. Yes he was to some degree a pornographer, yes he was to some degree debauched, yes he was to some degree a drunk – and yeah, he essentially killed him at the age of 33 by sex and liquor. But he was a very complicated man. He was a hyper–sensitive man who unfortunately self–medicated to a degree that ended up taking him out. And he was a great writer with a lot to offer; he wrote beautiful poems."

The role also gives you the chance to use some pretty industrial language too.

"(laughs) Yeah, industrial. That‘s a pretty good term for it."

The movie was filmed all over the UK. You seem to have spent quite a bit of time over here recently and you got to film in some rather historic locations. Was that enjoyable?

"Oh, it was incredible. Every day was like an incredible history lesson. You‘re in the kitchen at Blenheim Palace and it‘s like ‘What?‘ It‘s unbelievable."

Towards the end of the film you‘re pretty much buried beneath a layer of make–up. Do you find this a helpful tool as an actor?

"Very helpful, just as every sort of angle – in terms of the work – is helpful. The sets, being surrounded by period sets, and being wrapped up, bound up in period costume all adds to achieving the goal of finding that guy, as does the make–up. And luckily I‘ve got to work this amazing make–up girl Patty York who I‘ve done a great deal of movies with over the years. It was a real challenge in terms of taking Rochester through those various stages of disease and I think she did a beautiful job."

The film certainly illustrates that 17th Century England was a very violent and dirty place. How do you think you would have coped living back then?

"Oh man, you go back and you read Pepys Diaries and things like that and it‘s unbelievable how people lived. No one drank water; you couldn‘t drink water ‘cos it was contaminated, so you drank beer at breakfast! Maybe for a little while I‘d have done alright, but it might have gone underneath me a little too much. But I think I would have done better in the Restoration than I would have done under Cromwell."

We can‘t pass up the chance to ask you how work is going on the "Pirates Of The Caribbean" sequels…

"It‘s going beautifully. It has all the right sort of elements involved. It‘s got all the right levels of action, fun, absurdity, irreverence and humour. I think we‘ve taken it to a really nice place. It doesn‘t feel like a sequel at all, it feels just like another angle on the movie and those people. So yeah, it‘s really going well."

Does the third movie have a name yet?

"I don‘t know. I don‘t even know what the second film‘s name is yet, I just call them "Pirates 2" and "3"."

It‘s called "Pirates Of the Caribbean: Dead Man‘s Chest".

"Ah good, well thanks for telling me!"

"Why I stepped aside for Depp"

AMERICAN actor John Malkovich has no regrets about handing over the plum role of randy Restoration rake the Earl of Rochester to another actor. In fact, he suggested that Johnny Depp should star in the new film, The Libertine.

After appearing as Rochester in a stage production of the Stephen Jeffreys play at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, Malkovich thought it would make a good movie.

That was getting on for ten years ago. It's taken that long to get the film on screen, including a last-minute threat to financing because of changes in British tax laws.

"I always had in my mind that we would hire or at least attempt to get Johnny Depp to play the part I'd played on stage," recalls Malkovich.

"I've no regrets whatsoever that I didn't get the chance to play him on screen. The first thing is that he died at 33, I was 44 when I played him. It's a young man's story, a young man's film.

"Of course, one can get away with that on stage but the cinema's not like that. As soon as we began to think of it as a film I thought of Johnny. I never thought of anyone else."

As well as being one of the producers of The Libertine, Malkovich appears as King Charles II, the monarch with a love of the arts who didn't know how to handle the volatile, mischief-making Rochester. The actor felt the story was about one's responsibility to one's talent, something that the supremely gifted Rochester didn't take seriously. "It's a story of artists that I often heard repeated in the Thatcher years in England. Rochester spends tons of time complaining what a c-word Charles II is and it's up to Rochester to do something, and he never did.

"He was a very gifted essayist, he could have been a very gifted dramatist, he had talent in a million ways but never really did anything with it."

After Depp saw the play in Chicago, Malkovich took him out for dinner and proposed he should play Rochester on screen. A screenplay was written and finance raised but the schedules of Depp and Nicole Kidman, who was also interested in the movie, meant they weren't available at the same time.

Meanwhile, Malkovich had recruited a director, Laurence Dunmore, he'd met making a commercial for Eurostar to helm The Libertine. At one point he himself had been mooted to direct the film.

It took another couple of years before Depp was available and then the money had to be raised from a different group of people. Disaster struck two weeks before the cameras were set to roll when the British Government changed tax laws affecting movie production to plug what was seen as a loophole.

"It happened very suddenly and affected a huge part of our budget. We were already in rehearsals," says Malkovich. "I called some people in the Government, not really to enlist their aid but to try and find out if there was going to be any kind of grey period for films already in production or very far into pre-production. Everyone seemed to say there wouldn't be."

He was filming another film, Colour Me Kubrick, on the Isle of Man at the time and a deal was struck with film authorities on the island to save The Libertine.

"My feeling is it's never easy to find financing for the kind of films we produce. It's almost always nightmarish and everything that can possibly go wrong generally does go wrong," he says.

"You just have to keep your eye on the prize and do your best to have the resources you need to make the film your director wants to make. It wasn't a pleasant time."

Once in front of the cameras, Malkovich concentrated on playing his role without offering advice to anyone, certainly not Depp. "I have great admiration for Johnny's skills as a performer," he says.

"I would never dare to proffer any suggestion whatsoever, not only to Johnny but to any actor, because I'm acting in it. That's the director's job. I have more than enough work trying to acquit myself in the role. I don't need to worry about Johnny or anyone else, they'll take care of themselves."

Besides, the stage play was quite different in tone and design to the dark, dingy and squalid portrait of 17th century London life that Dunmore paints on screen.

Malkovich sees no value in spotting differences between his portrayal of Rochester and Depp's. "In point of fact, I never saw myself do the role - I did it on stage, not on TV or for the cinema. Suffice it to say I'm not known to be among my most ardent fans," he says.

"I wouldn't make that comparison because the two performances were wildly different. I always love to watch Johnny work. So I never even thought about that really."

What he will admit is a love of stand-up comedian Johnny Vegas, who appears in the film as historical rake and wit Charles Sackville. "He rapidly became one of my lifelong heroes. I found it impossible watching him to take my eyes off him. I really liked watching him. He's very funny and very moving," he says.

Johnny Depp plays Restoration writer and rogue the Earl of Rochester. Commercial director Laurence Dunmore's feature debut is a very grown-up biopic

John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, was a poet, playwright and rebel whose appetite for wine and women scandalised Restoration England. In Laurence Dunmore's The Libertine, Johnny Depp gives a stunning performance as a man who does not feel alive unless he exceeds every limit.

"You will not like me," Rochester promises in his prologue, laying down a challenge. "I do not want you to like me." Depp plays him as a prototype rock star, and as he stumbles from bar to brothel, deflating hypocrisy and declaiming pornographic poetry, he is, if not likeable, then utterly mesmerising.

The script - adapted by Stephen Jeffreys from his own play - sparkles like Tom Stoppard's for Shakespeare In Love, but has more substance. While Rochester's clashes with Charles II begin as a joke, with his friend Etheridge drolly asking, "Why did he banish you this time?", it becomes clear he is running out of chances. When the King requests that he produce a major work of literature, he needs to deliver ("When would you like it? Friday?" Depp deadpans). Unfortunately, Rochester is squandering his genius on booze, whores, and, most dangerously, love for the actress Elizabeth Barry (Morton).

This is a beautifully grimy period film - the countryside swirls with absinthe-coloured fogs, and St James' Park is a Bosch-like nightmare of humping flesh. Morton puts in a fierce turn as the Earl's soulmate, a woman determined to "continue being the creature I am", while Malkovich's puffy, careworn King is both sympathetic and threatening. Vegas is surprisingly effective as the campy, moist-mouthed Sackville. It is Depp that excels though, exuding real danger and sexuality from the start - by turns tender, tormented, bored or cruel.

By the (literally) climatic scene in which Rochester's play for the king is performed - a jaw-dropping extravaganza featuring the character 'Little Clitoris' and a midget on a giant papier-mâché dildo - pleasure in his daring gives way to horror at the fate that now seems inevitable. It is a measure of the film's achievement that even as the Earl turns outcast and monster, hiding his disfigured face from society, it is impossible to take your eyes off him.

Verdict
This is both a powerful portrayal of a man who pushed the limits of his age, and a funny, filthy piece of adult entertainment. dangerously, love for the actress Elizabeth Barry (Morton).

Film Review by Clare Pollard

The Official Libertine Site



Please email me any missing links you find

Legal Stuff: libertine and the characters, events, items, and places therein are trademarks Odyssey Entertianment. Copyrights and trademarks for the books and films are held by their respective owners and their use is allowed under the fair use clause of the Copyright Law. This site has no intention to infringe on the rights of the film owners The libertine of and intellectual copyright holders of the movies mentioned herein & hold copyright over the movie, characters, merchandise & storyline.