CANNES -- Actor Johnny Depp is fond of quoting gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, who advised people in Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas to just go for it in the extreme.
"Buy the ticket, take the ride."
Depp is taking the ride of his life at the Cannes Film Festival, where Fear And Loathing as a film last night made its world bow to controversy, mixed reactions, confusion and excitement (it opens in North America next Friday).
With his head shaved, his body contorted and his voice twisted into the delusional, drug-addled state that Thompson lived in when he created his book in 1971, Depp plays the gonzo author who called himself Raoul Duke.
The actor doesn't give a damn what the critics will say. He cares only how Thompson, Depp's literary hero and now a close friend after he spent nearly four months living with him before the shoot, will react to the performance.
"It's almost everything," Depp said in an interview in Hollywood, where I saw him just before Cannes started. "Yeah, it's almost everything because I felt such a monster responsibility to him." Depp even had asked Thompson for permission to do the movie. He had met Thompson at his Colorado retreat in 1995. They blew up one of Thompson's home-made bombs together, creating an 80-foot-high fireball and bonding for life.
"It was very important," Depp says now of doing his best in the film, "because I had been given his blessing to do it and I have such admiration for him and such respect and hold him in such a high regard. To let him down would be a devastation!"
The Cannes reaction, especially from critics, will not determine how Depp measures his success or failure. When he made his debut as a director at last year's Cannes festival with his film The Brave, critics ripped him to shreds.
The Brave, an unreleased drama about a man who volunteers for a snuff film, got an enthusiastic response from the Cannes audience, Depp maintains. "It was the press' reaction to it that was like being gang-raped by some really, really, really brutal inmates. The press' reaction to it was vicious and kind of painful. But the reception of the film itself at the screening was wonderful. They applauded."
So Depp will maintain the same attitude here this year with director Terry Gilliam's Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas. If critics again shred him or Gilliam's film, Depp plans to take it in stride. "An experience is an experience," he mused here as I ran into him at a reception and later watched him in action at the Fear And Loathing press conference.
Depp seems to take everything in stride these days. He has been on his best behavior in Cannes, stopping to wave to fans in public places where girls scream and paparazzi jostle. I've watched him shake hands, sign autographs and be pleasant to everyone around him, unlike stars who bask in stardom but have their bodyguards push away people.
He also deflects personal praise and bows to the prominence of others. At the reception to launch his new film thriller with Roman Polanski, The Ninth Gate, Depp used his time to pay tribute to Polanski and hope he is worthy.
"Roman is a master. He is one of the true masters of cinema," Depp told me. "He is still fed by cinema. He is still stimulated by it and he is still able to stimulate it.
"I'm looking forward to it (working with Polanski). I think it's important for an actor to adapt to a director if he wants to learn. And I want to learn. This is my schooling."
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