Starfucker Thursday: Johnny Depp

There’s something I’d like to say from the get-go here, and it’s something that makes me different than most of the rest of the world: I don’t think Johnny Depp is hot. I’ve never thought Johnny Depp was hot. I also don’t think pirates are hot, and I think Johnny Depp as a pirate is about as sexy as Joan Rivers as a guest star on Big Brother. In fact, I think the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie might be the single worst movie I’ve ever paid to see and, while the screenplay made no sense, it was at least an hour too long for a movie based on a theme park ride, and the Disneyfied racism was disgusting, I also think Johnny was a huge part of my problem with the movie.

So, bear that in mind.

On the other hand, I like pretty much everything the man has ever done for Tim Burton. For all the director’s wackiness and really glossy love of darkness, he seems like one of the only filmmakers that can rein in Mr Depp’s inclinations towards silly for silly’s sake.

The first time I saw Johnny I was four, and my family took me to see Platoon while we were on vacation. While I didn’t see Edward Scissorhands or Cry-Baby until years later, I didn’t really know what he was about until Benny & Joon, despite the fact that he was all the rage with the tweeny girls who probably had no interest whatsoever in Edward Scissorhands or Cry-Baby.

Anyway, since then, he’s appeared in a number of movies I love (like Edward Scissorhands and Cry-Baby, once I got around to seeing them, as well as Ed Wood and the fantastic Arizona Dream, where he and Lili Taylor and Vincent Gallo and Faye Dunaway and Jerry Lewis and Paulina Perizkova all try to commit beautiful suicide to the tune of a mariachi band.

He’s also been in some awful movies (like that thriller that took place in real time that I can’t remember the name of right now), as well as a bunch I have no desire to see whatsoever. (The Secret Window! The Ninth Gate! Chocolat!) He was surprisingly not distracting doing drag in Before Night Falls, and Tim Burton totally crushed on him by animating him in Corpse Bride, one of the best movies I’ve seen in the past few years.

And now he got an Oscar nomination for Sweeney Todd, which is a really enjoyable movie although it’s mostly the sets and costumes and bright red blood that really interest me. There’s one shot of him and Helena Bonham Carter on the beach that’s hilarious, but mostly I like his performance because you don’t really think about him as Johnny Depp, Totally Quirky Movie Star the way you do in his other movies. Also, I really hate the music in Sweeney Todd, and I don’t know why I haven’t heard anybody else complain about that.

Sweeney Todd is extremely not hot with his white makeup and Victorian stinkiness. But Johnny Depp was never hot. Never. Well, maybe a little bit in Ed Wood, but that’s about it. He’s too ridiculous to be sexy. I also imagine that he’d be a cold fish in bed. Either divalike or just totally unresponsive, I’m not sure which. But the man does absolutely nothing for me that way. When he was younger, maybe, but not any more than any average-looking Hollywood guy. And definitely not now with all the bad hair and terrible goatees and what have you.
Below are some pictures of him from over the years. He has his shirt off in a lot of them and I don’t care. Kind of like how I don’t care about his dumb tattoos or dumb facial hair. And, while I like the towel and workboots outfit, I’d like it a lot better on, say, Richard Greico.

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