Maya's Notebook

Hi everyone,

I didn't intend to read two Isabel Allende books in a row, but before I knew it, she had a new book out. The last book I read, The Sum of Our Days, was about 6 months ago, and I hadn't picked up another book until now. Isabel Allende gets me to read.

May 1st, she appeared at an event for National Geographic Live! at the National Geographic Society. I bought a ticket, thinking she was going to talk about her travels because the interviewer, Don George, is editor at-large of Traveler magazine. They are old friends since she contributed to a book he edited called Better Than Fiction: True Travel Tales From Great Fiction Writers. In the event description I saw, they only mentioned his book, not hers. But, when I got there, I found her latest effort, Maya's Notebook, on display and snatched it up.

The heroine of this story is Maya Vidal, a teenager whose life crumbles when her grandfather dies of cancer. Lost without him, she begins to drink and steal. When she runs away from home, she gets into worse trouble, suffering horrific sexual assault, battling alcohol and drug addiction, and entangling in serious criminal activity. To escape the shady characters of her past and impending federal charges, Maya is sent by her grandmother to Chiloe, an island off mainland Chile. With little connection to the outside world, this quiet place helps Maya come to terms with her past and dream of a brighter future.

As with all Isabel Allende books, a cast of colorful characters helps Maya along the way. Burdened by their own problems, she helps her new friends uncover their own histories and hidden connections so that they can all move forward in their lives. The layers of hardship peel off Maya and those around her as she reconnects with who she used to be before tragedy struck and addiction took over. No one starts out that way.

I started this book at a slow pace, impatient to find out why Maya is on a plane, headed to a far off island. But that structure gave way to plenty of  mystery and cliffhangers: The story skips around as Maya writes about her present, past, and family. The reasons for why she is the way she is, where she's been, and where's she's going are revealed when she gets to them. The people she meets along the way are similarly introduced with their co-occurring stories. Soon enough, you won't be able to put the book down. And, don't worry, it'll all comes together as only Isabel Allende can make it.

In person, Isabel Allende is a warm, inviting spirit who chats like she's known you forever. I suppose that's what makes her such a great storyteller. After rattling off a detailed account of this book's wild plot, impressing the interviewer into momentary speechlessness, she quipped, "A good idea, isn't it?" Despite catching a cold while traveling on her book tour, she still made us feel appreciated: "I love to see you. I love this part [of touring]. You all love me, so why wouldn't I want to come here? But getting here is a pain."

And, as usual, she kept us laughing: Acknowledging her best-selling author status, she credited Oprah, who selected her book Daughter of Fortune for her book club. (Read it!) In addition to the initial 150,000 copies of that book already printed, 600,000 more were instantly ordered and ready within the week. She nodded at our gasps, "That shows you the power of Oprah!" When asked whether she missed her privacy since becoming a famous author, she shook her head, "I'm famous among people who read. There are very few. I'm not a rock star."

 Here's an excerpt from the National Geographic Live! event, so you can get a taste for yourself.



I'm disappointed they didn't show here how enamored Don George is with Isabel Allende, which was endearing in the Chris Farley sort of way. Early on, this happened:
Don: "Having you in my life is one of the great treasures and riches of my life."
Isabel: "Oh God! Maybe you are my Plan B!"
Don: "Oh, wow! What an honor! I should put that in my bio!"

If you watched the video above, you know that at the end, he asks her what her dream is. What they edited out is that, after responding, she asks him the same question.
Isabel: And, what is your dream?
Don: For this to go on forever and ever.
Amen to that!

Best,

It's summertime!

Happy Summer, everyone!

"Summertime" Bilie Holiday (George Gershwin/Porgy & Bess)

Views from the Top

Hi everyone,

On June 8, I climbed Old Rag Mountain in Shenandoah National Park. The plan was to hike to the top, eat lunch, do some yoga in front of a spectacular view, and come back down. Unaware of what I was in for, I got home scraped, bruised, and exhausted 12 hours later.

The Kitties were worn out just from hearing about it, except for Lily who was just glad I got home. That makes two of us!

(Illustration Friday: June 14, 2013)

We got some good views along the way, at least....

Enjoy!

Kiara and I hold it together.

Flowers even grow on mountains!

Children

The Mother Kitty has six.

(Illustration Friday: June 7, 2013)

Johnny Kitties: Celebrating Johnny Depp Film #33--Corpse Bride (2005)

[What is Johnny Kitties? See Johnny Kitties: Celebrating Johnny Depp for all the details.]

For this year's birthday fundraiser, Johnny's Angels created a scrapbook of birthday cards, which was sent to Johnny as a gift. (Above, you can see was I drew inside mine.) Last I heard, we raised more than $5,500 for Children's Hospice and Palliative Care Coalition in Los Angeles.

You can join the celebration today by donating to Johnny's Angels' campaign. Then, eat some cake and maybe watch Corpse Bride! Here's more about that lovely movie, this month's Johnny Kitties feature.

It has its own very, very special, very unique look, movement. And it's beautiful. And, also, it's like a lot of great things: it's a dying art. Johnny Depp on the stop-motion animation used for Corpse Bride

It's a perfect match!

Have you ever been in the situation where, nervous on the eve of your wedding, you go for a walk in the woods to practice saying your vows, and you slip the ring onto a branch, pretending it's your bride-to-be's finger; but the branch turns out to be an actual hand of a dead lady who grabs you, accepts your proposal, and drags you down to the Land of the Dead to live happily ever after? That's what happens to Johnny's character in this movie.

Corpse Bride is a stop-motion animation film directed by Tim Burton and Mike Johnson. The story takes place in Victorian England where two families have arranged the marriage of Victor (Johnny Depp) and Victoria (Emily Watson) for the sole purpose of marrying into wealth. After a disastrous wedding rehearsal, shy Victor practices and perfects his marriage vows during a walk in the woods and slips Victoria's ring onto a branch that comes to life.  He finds himself married to the corpse bride (Helena Bonham Carter) who drags him "downstairs" to the Land of the Dead. Torn between two worlds, Victor must decide whether to fight his way home to his true love or stay in his new, more welcoming community.

I want a wedding invitation!
"That sounds like a movie Tim Burton would want to make," I thought when I heard its story was based on Jewish folklore about a guy who accidentally marries a corpse. It seemed to be a perfect fit, and the more I heard about it, the more excited I became about seeing it! When I first saw the "coming attractions" preview for Corpse Bride, I knew it was going to be special! Look at it!



Beautiful, right? Who knew dead people could be so cute?

Some weddings are difficult to plan.

Positioning the puppets...

For stop-motion animation, puppets are painstakingly positioned and shot frame-by-frame. Tim Burton's featured it in his movies before (see Pee Wee's Big Adventure, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Frankenweenie.) He's a fan and so am I! Corpse Bride was a project in the making for 10 years, as Tim Burton waited to get all the right people involved. "A lot of people get sucked into doing computer stuff, but there's still this great group, a rare group of people, that are still into this type of animation," he explains. "There's just an energy that gets infused into these puppets from these amazing animators, and there is something quite special about moving an inanimate object frame-by-frame."   It's tedious, hard, physical, fascinating work with spectacular results.

And setting up a scene...

At least 85 characters and 200 puppets were built for Corpse Bride. "Stylistically, stop-motion offers something very unique, which is every single thing you see on screen was created by a crafts person or an artist," Art Director Nelson Lowry says. At the forefront of stop-motion animation is codirector Mike Johnson, who oversaw the day-to-day process on this project. For this film, the crew used computers for the first time to assist in the process, perfecting the quality and flow of the animation. "A lot of people thought that computers and digital technology would be the death of stop-motion animation, but really, it's bringing it forward," he says. Shooting the film digitally allowed the crew to see the results instantly and make changes as needed. They used the computers to trigger the camera to shoot the frame and move on to the next shot. "So much of this is a traditional, old-fashioned method of shooting a film," says Producer Alison Abbate. "With the advent of CGI, audiences have become very used to a very slick look, and I think stop-motion's charm is in that it's not slick and not feeling like it's made in a computer. It's nice to sort of walk that fine line between keeping it in the realm of beautiful and a slickness just because it's so flawlessly executed."

The finished product is very much Tim Burton's vision. Most of Corpse Bride's characters are based on his drawings. "Tim had a very clear idea of how he wanted the puppets to look and he'd been working on designs, sketches, and paintings before we met up with him," Puppet Maker Peter Sauders says. While he designed most of the characters on his own, Character Designer Carlos Grangel brought them to life, though they brought on new challenges. His characters are typically tall and skinny with tiny feet, so the team had to explore different ways to engineer the puppets' joint systems to support the weight of each character and its heavy, complicated head. These models were built in a new way with gear- and pulley-filled heads that allow for freer facial expressions. "People get very attached to the characters they're working on and I think, especially with this project, the character designs are so fantastic that people want to make every element of that puppet shine," Puppet Maker Ian Mackinnon says. "They have spent hours on every little detail of that character."

It shows!  In 2010, I saw some of the drawings, paintings, and puppets created for Corpse Bride in an exhibit on Tim Burton's career at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Because of the detail involved, they are perhaps more amazing in person than on screen. "They do such beautiful work," Tim Burton says of the animation crew. "These puppets are very sensitive and textural and really like Swiss watches, they're made so nicely!"

The stars aligned!
This cast of voices for Corpse Bride is dreamy! With Johnny is a bunch of my favorite Brits: Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson, Albert Finney, Christopher Lee, Tracey Ullmann, Johanna Lumley, Michael Gough, Paul Whitehouse, Jane Horrocks.... Can you imagine having all these people in the same room together? Well, keep imagining. "I have scenes with Johnny Depp, Johanna Lumley, and Albert Finney, and I've never met them," Emily Watson admits. "I was shown work in progress of the way things look and the style of it, but you're sort of trying to make it happen in your head, really." So much for that fantasy. In any case, these actors are perfectly cast. "It's a fairly low-budget movie," Tim Burton says of Corpse Bride. "I was very lucky and grateful to get people to do voices for just the love of doing a project."

One of my favorite special features on the DVD is seeing the actors speaking as their characters in their solitary recording booth next to the actually scene they are playing out. They all get animated in that booth while reading their lines, and their reactions translate into the final scene. "When you're recording your voice, you do find yourself moving as the character within the parameters of the microphone and everything," Johnny says. "There's a kind of great spontaneity in that." Helena Bonham Carter, whose work in Corpse Bride stands out to me, agrees: "It's nice to act something when it's so not dependent on what you look like. You can completely create a character, and you're not limited by your own physical envelope. That's fun and, in that way, it's very liberating. In a way, it's sort of pure acting because you don't really have anything. You can be completely selfish. You don't have any marks to hit."

For Corpse Bride, Tim Burton worked with his long-time collaborator Danny Elfman, who wrote the score and voiced the skeleton character of BoneJangles. Like Tim Burton's work, Danny Elfman's music is just as instantly recognizable. For this movie, some of it's haunting, some of it's sweet, and some of it's funny. It's another perfect fit.

And we all got a happy ending!
When Tim Burton described it to me....it sounded really scary, Gothic, and horrible," writer/lyricist John August says of the story's premise. "And, yet, we ended up making a really charming movie. You don't really think about the characters being dead or alive. You sort of see it as this really sweet little love story."

The artistry and passion that went into the making of Corpse Bride is undeniable. This charming, bittersweet, scary, funny, fantastic, beautiful work of art earned a Best Picture Oscar nomination. But who needs awards? "To be able to see these characters in the studio environment, against the sets and speaking dialogue and what have you--It's been a great revelation." Puppet Maker Peter Saunders says. "You think, 'Wow, that's what it's all about!'"  

Marriage is hard. 
It's hard to match the artistry on display in Corpse Bride and decide what scene to highlight. I chose the moment when The corpse bride (Mini) realizes that Victor is trying escape his current situation and return to his fiancee in the Land of the Living. She'll have none of that and drags him back "downstairs." I see her point: She's his wife, after all.

What's next?
Johnny heads back to sea in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

All Corpse Bride Images © Warner Brothers Pictures; illustrations © Melissa Connolly 

Sweet

Lily has a bad reputation when it comes to hospitality, but she is always sweet to me. Here's a true scene, spotted within 20 minutes of her arrival to her new home in D.C.

(Illustration Friday: May 31, 2013)

Tension

Norman is not her favorite.

(Illustration Friday: May 24, 2015)

Farewell

I tried to think of some other idea associated with this word, but once the song was in my head, there was no turning back. I can't get the video to embed here, but you can see the scene here: http://vimeo.com/31680681.

And, here's my illustration, finally done a month later (and Julie Andrews isn't even in this)! Now, the song can be in your head too.

(Illustration Friday: April 26, 2013)

Johnny Kitties: Celebrating Johnny Depp Film #32--Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

[What is Johnny Kitties? See Johnny Kitties: Celebrating Johnny Depp for all the details.]

Who doesn't want this job?
Looking for an heir to his chocolate empire, reclusive chocolatier extraordinaire Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) opens the gates of his factory to five children who have won Golden Tickets for a tour. As they get a behind-the-scenes glimpse into Wonka's twisted world, he weeds them out and finds the winner. But does the winner want the prize? Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is Tim Burton's take on Roald Dahl's classic book.



How dare they?

The generations who grew up watching Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka and Chocolate Factory couldn't imagine another version. When I read the news that Tim Burton was "remaking" it with Johnny as the chocolatier, I was simultaneously ridiculously excited to see it and worried about the inevitable impending fury awaiting them from loyal fans of the original. I wasn't alone: "As soon as I said that I was in, I knew there were going to be great risks involved because we could very easily blow it," Johnny says. "But again, that's very exciting for an actor. It's a challenge. It's a very loved character, both from the book and Gene Wilder's brilliant performance from that earlier film. So, I knew that the risk was that I had to take it from somewhere far way from the area that Gene Wilder had stomped. There's a twisted, perverted kind of side to the character, and so I ran in the direction that seemed right to me." 

Pretty quickly, everyone involved in the film clarified what they were doing: This movie is not a remake; their focus is to stay true to the book. To help with the distinction, the two films even have different titles. While I grew up watching and loving the Gene Wilder classic (and still do), I always think of this one as separate and different. This one is a Tim Burton movie, and Tim Burton movies are unmistakably Tim Burton movies. I knew it couldn't go near anything like Gene Wilder's Wonkavision. Tim Burton even had the Dahl family's blessing, with Felicity Dahl serving as one of the executive producers. Everything would be okay.
  
Really, what's the difference?

"We just decided, when I got involved with it, to just go back to the basics and try to be as true to the book as we could be," Tim Burton says. Screenwriter John August can attest that Johnny was in on this plan too: "When I sat down with Johnny to talk about the character and as we were looking through the last three of four dialogue changes, what I loved is that he pulled out his Roald Dahl book and wanted to go through and add in a few extra lines from Dahl's original book." Dramatizing the book did call for some deviations, but it all seems to work. "Even with the things we added, we tried to at least channel the spirit of Roald Dahl," Tim Burton says.

The film spends more time exploring who Willy Wonka is: How did he become a chocolate magnate? Why did he close his factory for 20 years? Why does he need an heir? Once all those questions were answered, they added some closure to all his issues at the end. (Willy Wonka has some serious issues!) 

I recently read a fan's take on the two films, observing that the Gene Wilder version focuses more on a child's innocent love for candy while Johnny's version shows the greedy side. I'd agree with that.

Willy Wonka is weird.

Johnny's Willy Wonka didn't sit well with most critics who said he'd gone too far in the weirdo direction. I admit there are moments in this movie when I've agreed, but I blame the reviewers who contaminated my first impression. Once I heard what other people thought of it, I couldn't get those ideas out of my head. So, I won't repeat them here. (This is why you should never read reviews before seeing things for yourself.) 

Despite the critics, this film did really well at the box office and is popular among a new generation of fans. These days, it's on TV just as often as Gene Wilder's version, and as I've watched it over the years, Johnny's Willy Wonka has really grown on me. He's supposed to be eccentric, bizarre, and questionable. Who pulls that off any better than Johnny? I admire his subtle moments amid the gam-show atmosphere in which, with a quick look or move, Johnny makes you wonder if you should feel sorry for Willy Wonka or call the police about him. As Felicity Dahl says of Johnny, "he just has that twist, that humor, that wickedness, that naughtiness, that delight that Wonka should have." 

Johnny's first inspiration for Willy Wonka was a local children's television show host, "a guy who certainly puts on a face every day." Tim Burton explains further, "You don't question it as a kid, but as you got older, you kind of go, 'That guy was really wierd!' So, we sort of got into that kind of thinking about those kinds of people that stay in your subconscious somehow."

Being a recluse for 20 years with only Oompa Loompas for company, Johnny figured that Willy Wonka is stuck in an era of the past, makes old references from that time, and doesn't know how to relate to people anymore, least of all children. This guy didn't get out in the sun, which is why he's so pale, and he has that awful haircut. (I think that haircut disturbs me more than anything else.)

As a result, at times, Johnny's laugh-out-loud funny in this movie, especially when interacting with his guests. "I always like working with Johnny because he's an actor who likes to try different things all the time, and that excites me," Tim Burton says. "And, each time I work with him, it gets better." Co-star David Kelly, who plays Grandpa Joe, agrees, "Watching Johnny, you can't see the wheels going round. You keep saying to yourself, 'how is he doing that?' I don't know!" 

Welcome to the factory.

Aside from Johnny, the two other best things about this movie are the supporting cast and the production design.

The Costars

Everyone is fantastic in their roles, including Helena Bonham Carter and Noah Taylor as Charlie's parents, David Kelly as Grandpa Joe, the three other grandparents (Eileen Essell, Mrs. Snow in Finding Neverland, among them), and all the other winners' parents. I can't imagine anyone else playing them.

The Oompa Loompas are all played by the same person, Deep Roy, who I think got the hardest job of all. Every shot of an Oompa Loompa doing something new--dancing, playing an instrument, making a face--is all him. They used a combination of animatronics and computer graphics to multiply his work in the musical numbers. For one scene, they may have shot him in various spots doing different things 60 times and then compiled everything together into one. His days must have been long.  

The biggest surprise was the amazing kids: Philip Wiegratz as Augustus Gloop, AnnaSophia Robb as Violet Beauregarde, Julia Winter as Veruca Salt, Jordan Frye as Mike Teavee, and Freddie Highmore as Charlie Buckett. "I was lucky," Tim Burton says of casting them. "I think, most of the time, when the right one walked in, I just sort of knew it." You may remember that Freddie Highmore did brilliant work with Johnny in Finding Neverland. Reunited here, he fits right in: "Not only did he look the part, but you could just tell he's an amazing person and has got a real gravity to him, a simple but very deep emotional depth," Tim Burton says. "There was just no question about it!" But more impressive is that some of the kids had little or no experience in movies. Can you imagine your first movie being this one? There's a Golden Ticket prize for you! "They're just an incredibly varied bunch of kids, and they're just great fun to be around and great company," Adam Godley, who plays Mike Teavee's dad, says. "They keep us all in tune with what this whole project is really about and who it's really for."

Willy Wonka's World
I love that Tim Burton goes old school: As much as possible, he had real sets built so the actors could really get a feel for it. "Willy Wonka--It's kind of all about texture," he explains. "It was important for us to build the sets, make a real chocolate river, make a real chocolate waterfall....To have as many real things for them to react to, I think, was really important. If you're in one of those green screen rooms for too long, you know, you start to go kind of nuts after a while."

The rooms in the factory are a treat for the senses; each is unique with its own character. As Johnny describes it, "the factory itself is like walking through Wonka's brain--complicated, strange, fun, disturbing, outrageous."  Only on a Tim Burton movie would you have Squirrel Training Camp for a scene in the Nut Room. Again, they used a combination of animatronics and computer graphics. For this scene, they created a room full of 200 busy squirrels on the job, 40 of which are real, very talented nutcrackers. 

The Chocolate Room is the stunner, where edible delights abound! Johnny remembers visiting Pinewoods Studio early on in production and seeing the production designer practicing chemistry in a bucket to concoct the perfect chocolaty mixture. "I came back a couple months later, and the bucket had turned into huge vats. There were millions of liters of this chocolate flowing!" It took them 5 days to fill the studio with it. Seeing the final result, Felicity Dahl approves: "When I went to Pinewood and saw the whole of the Pinewood lot covered in Wonka, I knew if Roald had seen that, he would have just said, 'This is what I had in my mind.'"

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was nominated for an Oscar for costume design. While it didn't win that, it was nominated for a bunch of other awards and won a couple for favorite family film. Freddie Highmore won a best actor award from the Broadcast Film Critics. And, despite his controversial performance, Johnny earned a couple of acting awards too. Was there ever any doubt?

The Kitties are all about the candy.
On February 1, Willy Wonka opened his factory gates to five children and their parents for a tour. With the Oompa Loompas (Simon) always on the job, Willy Wonka whittles down his choices to find the perfect heir to his fortune. Greedy Agustus Gloop (Norman) gets sucked out of The Chocolate Room. Competitive Violet Beauregarde (Mini) balloons into a blueberry. Squirrels toss spoiled Veruca Salt (Lily) down the garbage shoot, and cheater (or "Mumbler!") Mike Teavee (B.J.) shrinks down to size after he breaks some rules. In the end, both Charlie (Comet), who inherits the candy-making business, and Willy Wonka, who is warmly welcomed into Charlie's family, are the lucky winners!

What's Next?
Johnny gets animated and accidentally married in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride!

Image credits: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Images © Warner Brothers Pictures; image of Tim Burton with Johnny Depp © unknown; illustration © Melissa Connolly 

Train

Is it just me, or do you always think of Buster Keaton when someone mentions a train too?

This drawing was instantly inspired by a scene in one of Buster Keaton's best movies, The General (1926). You can see it here:

Now, see how brave Comet can be? (This seat is not recommended.)

(Illustration Friday: April 19, 2013)

Wild!

When in the backyard, kitty instincts typically take over... Happy Earth Day, everyone!

(Illustration Friday: April 12, 2013)

Hometown Glory

My heart has been with my hometown this week.

I think Stephen Colbert put it best:

 

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Buckle on your hats and stay strong, Bostonians!

Johnny Kitties: Celebrating Johnny Depp Film #31--The Libertine (2004)

[What is Johnny Kitties? See Johnny Kitties: Celebrating Johnny Depp for all the details.]

My part was just a slice of the pie, and it felt great to have that collaboration with everybody--from the focus puller to the extras to the DP to the director. We were all in there swinging at the same beast and fighting for what was right. It was very intense, down and dirty, swinging and clawing the whole way. I'm very proud of the film.

-- Johnny Depp on making The Libertine 

"You will not like me." 

The Libertine (Johnny Depp) is John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647-1680), a favorite of and foe to England's King Charles II (John Malkovich). Director Laurence Dunmore explores Wilmot's gritty world torn between his domestic country life with his wife (Rosamund Pike) and precarious existence in London as outspoken writer, promiscuous drunk, and  popular wit. Loved and hated by the king, who had high hopes for his prodigy, Wilmot lived his short life to the fullest, said and did what he wanted, and usually got away with it. He died at age 33, probably of syphilis. Before that happens, you'll catch a glimpse of his fast-paced life and the guts it took for him to speak his mind. An avid fan of theatre, the Earl also falls in love with upcoming actress Elizabeth Barrie (Samantha Morton), who breaks his heart. Yeah, this is a cheery one, alright. 

It was a long, bumpy road. 

This movie was at least 10 years in the making. Talk of it would appear, disappear, and reappear while Johnny made other movies. It all started with John Malkovich, who starred as the Earl in The Libertine, the play, in Chicago in 1995. He got the playwright, Stephen Jeffreys, to adapt it to the screen. And, after working with Laurence Dunmore on a commercial, he hired him to direct the movie. He met Johnny for dinner and asked him to play the starring role. "Why don't you play the part?" Johnny asked, since John Malkovich had already received critical acclaim for the role in the play. "Because I want you to do it," he responded. Good choice!

The Libertine was plagued with financial, scheduling, and whatever other problems for years. I saw it as a labor of love among the small group of people involved from the very beginning, even though I knew nothing about the story or this guy it was all about. I wasn't sure if it would ever come to life.

By the time it did, I was excited to see it just because it had taken so long. Even during production, the British government cracked down on filmmakers shooting in Great Britain, closing a loophole for filming incentives and ultimately taking away more than 30% of production funding. Some films shooting there had to shut down completely and were lost, but The Libertine survived! "I think everyone across the board who was involved in this production put their hands into their own pockets," Director Laurence Dunmore says. 

Before this film was released, the MPAA threatened to slap it with an NC-17 rating, unleashing the imaginations of Johnny Fans everywhere. I didn't know what all the fuss was about when I saw the film in the theater. It was only after the fact that I realized what I saw was rated R. 

It was a muddy, mucky, chaotic world. 

Reviews for The Libertine were mixed. I remember a couple of bad ones saying how dark, muddy, and unpleasant everything is. To me, that's a success because I figured it looked that way for a reason. "I wanted this film to be swamped with mud and smoke and mists and rain!" the director confirms. "You've got to literally smell the film." Johnny concurs, "It was really down in the dirt. You got in there, and it beat you up." It works! Practically everything is lit by natural light and candles, mud and mist are everywhere, and most of the filming is done by hand-held camera so you feel as though you're in it. 

This movie is grimy in look and feel. And, being completely unfamiliar with John Wilmot, I even found his life story sometimes confusing to follow, but I guess it's because you can only fit so much into 2 hours. "Normally when you're faced with writing a dramatized biography, you invent a lot of stuff to make it more interesting," Writer Stephen Jeffreys says. "With Rochester, it was the other way around. I had to leave all this stuff out because it's so much." If you're really interested, the DVD's director's commentary is helpful in understanding all the background and course of events in Wilmot's life. 

Even though I don't crave to watch this movie very often, every time I do watch it, I marvel at it all--the cinematography, direction, design, costumes, acting. This film has its own distinctive look, energy, and personality. Even if you didn't know all the trouble they went through to make it, you could feel the passion everyone involved felt for it. Every performance is fantastic. Though Rosamund Pike plays Wilmot's tormented wife in only a few scenes, she won a well-deserved British Independent Film Award for her amazing work. 

While watching through the lens of a hand-held camera usually has me craving stillness after just a few minutes, it works so well in The Libertine that I don't even think about it. You feel as though you are there with them in that world. All these ingredients make for an extremely intimate film-going experience. 

"I am up for it, all the time." 

Some of the things that John Wilmot pulled off are so outrageous, it's hard to believe that this guy was a real person--living in the 15th century as a member of the king's court, no less! He was continually banished to the country, most notably for creating a scandalous satire about the king's obsession with sex. Even if you don't like what he has to say, you have to admire a guy who has no fear of speaking out the way he did. 

As always, Johnny thoroughly researched his role. He travelled to all the places where Wilmot lived and where he died. He read his letters, available in the British Library, took notes on them, and incorporated Wilmot's own words into the script. He had dreams that he was Wilmot! "I felt this very strong responsibility to play him right--so much so that I became obsessed," he says. "Without wanting to sound all kind of New Agey, I do believe he paid me at least a few visits." 

All his research revealed myriad layers of the man. "He was written off as a satirist, rogue, hedonistic lunatic, complete drunk, pornographer, and all those things, and he was all those things," Johnny says. "But he was also a beautiful poet. He was a loving father, a confused and tormented husband. He was a very tortured man. He was obsessed with honesty. He couldn't allow for a lie. He had no tolerance for it from anyone, not even from King Charles, which got him in a lot of trouble. I salute that!"  

But even the king couldn't deny Wilmot's talent, which at times was the only thing that held their strained relationship together. "He was a guy who was, I think, probably two or three hundred years ahead of his time," Johnny says of the Earl. Stephen Jeffreys agrees, "Nobody writes like Rochester. Nobody wrote before him like that. Nobody really writes in the same vain about sexuality until the 20th century." But I think Samantha Morton sums up the man most efficiently: "He was a poet, an artist, and revolutionary of his day. And if he were alive today, he'd be certainly very rock and roll!" 

Johnny rocks it!

Johnny is Amaze-balls! in this movie--capital A, exclamation point! He is in nearly every scene of The Libertine, a grueling 45-day shoot, and you can tell he's in it for love! 

"From an actor's standpoint, when you read that opening monologue and then the ride commences, you know when you're reading that beautiful dialogue and these incredible scenes--one after the next--that you'll never ever see the likes of it again," he says. Since the movie is based on a play, it very much feels like one because of the heavy dialogue and long scenes. Wouldn't it be fantastic if Johnny were ever in a play? Well, this is as close as you're going to get for now. 

Of course, Johnny's dedication goes deeper than saying some gorgeous prose. He got to know the person behind the story and how he really lived. "Why? How do you arrive there? How do you arrive at that need for such excess and the need for self-medication because I don't think it was about fun for him," he says of Wilmot. "My angle was ultimately an attempt to understand the guy, and then trying my best to please him. It's ultimately a kind of love letter to him. Hopefully it comes off that way." 

Long before shooting began, Johnny and Laurence Dunmore worked collaboratively on his character and how Wilmot impacted everything, from the cast and story to the movie as a whole. "Our process was one of continual discussion. It was a constant collaboration and a constant evolution that I certainly found immensely rewarding," the director says. "Johnny was very engaged and absorbed in Rochester as a man, as a historical figure, and as a writer. I think we were both informed and yet we were also empowered to interpret Rochester and how he comes across on screen." 

Johnny admits that had they made the film when originally planned a decade before, it wouldn't have been the same. "It might have been okay, but I don't know that I was ready or that I could've understood so much of Rochester," he says. But, of course, everyone had great faith in their star: "Johnny Depp possesses an incredible ability to engage both on an individual level and an audience as a whole," Laurence Dunmore says. "His power in this piece, I think, is a testament to his ability as an actor to both transform and also to bring an audience into a world that he exists in." And, Writer Stephen Jeffreys points out what I'm always thinking: "You could look at his face for a minute and it's never doing the same thing twice in all that time. He just has that ability to convey deep feeling and what's going on in his head through his eyes and his mouth and these tiny moves of the face, and I think that's an incredible skill." It's true!

And, it's not always pretty. He is dying of syphilis through about half the movie, and he's quite wretched by the end. Johnny admits it wasn't an easy road: "It was a long, long way from sitting with John Malkovich in Chicago, and sitting in a restaurant saying, 'Yeah, I'd love to do it,' to suddenly, you're standing there almost 10 years later, and you realized what you've gotten yourself into: You've made a serious commitment, and you now have a very serious responsibility to this guy. You've got to dig down deep. You've got to get a little squirrly here and there and go places you don't necessary enjoy going to. I think, as an actor, you have to constantly test yourself, or push yourself, to go places that maybe you're scared to go to or places you haven't wanted to go to. I think you have to put yourself in a situation where you go, 'I could fail miserably.' I felt myself there. But I've felt myself there in a lot of things I've done. And I think it's a good thing." The Libertine brought out some of Johnny's best acting ever. Ever! 

Who knew Gordon could get there too? 

I was afraid of getting to this movie for Johnny Kitties. Was I bound to draw some Kitty-inappropriate scene? It turned out to be an easy choice. 

I love that, in this movie, nearly everything indoors is lit by candles! It's beautiful! In one of my favorite scenes, John Wilmot visits his latest muse, Elizabeth Barrie (Mini), at the theatre to help her with her acting. Gigantic chandeliers hang low above the stage at mid-day, as everyone is preparing for that evening's performance. It's as if the room is on fire as Johnny and Samantha Morton play this intense 11-minute scene. 

You can tell by the movement of the camera that Laurence Dunmore is following them around with the equipment on his shoulder getting in their faces. (At one point, lost in the moment, he actually did catch fire and the actors rushed to put him out.) Despite such distractions, these actors are deep in it! The director says that each time they shot those 8 pages of dialogue was a single take. I mean, come on! Where are the acting Oscars for this one?  

What's next? 

Johnny gets a little lighter...and frothier...as Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  

The Libertine images © The Weinstein Company;  Illustration © Melissa Connolly