In Hollywood filmmaking, timing is sometimes absolutely everything in the launch of a picture.
"Yippee!" says droll writer-director David Koepp about the timing for the release of Secret Window, his new psychological thriller starring Johnny Depp.
Depp, of course, is the eccentric American ex-patriate who is fresh off accolades for his bold performance in Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl. He won the best actor prize from the Screen Actors Guild and earned an Oscar nomination for the same role.
"Yeah," Koepp tells The Sun by telephone from his New York office this week, "of course we were thrilled. We hired an actor and we got a movie star! He was a movie star before but he's a BIG movie star now -- and that's great."
In Secret Window, adapted by the versatile Koepp from a Stephen King novella, Depp plays a writer who is emotionally distraught by the breakup of his marriage. In the midst of his anguish, a homicidal man (John Turturro) shows up accusing him of plagiarism, a crime which could have dire consequences in the heightened world depicted on screen.
In collaboration with Koepp, Depp infuses the role with the quirks and quarks of a real human being, no mean feat and worthy of respect in a genre picture, Koepp says.
"Because it's hard, it's hard. You have all those genre needs you worry about. But the more you can get the behaviour real and recognizable, the more the audience will understand and empathize with the character."
Before Pirates, Depp's rich talents were overlooked and underrated for years, Koepp says. "Not any more! He's starting to get the attention he deserves. I think the nice thing about Johnny is that he's never courted fame, he has courted acting and whatever role floats his creative boat.
"I think that that's an approach that will take you far, if you're good. People respect that. You certainly see that the acting community respects that (in Depp) and I think that, when he took the part in Pirates, he approached it the same way that he would approach a part in a $3-million movie. He just came in with whatever off-beat interpretation that occurred to him and rolled the dice on a $150-million movie. That kind of risk-taking can end in disaster or a huge payoff and I think you see that, in this case, it was a big payoff and he was exposed to this much bigger mainstream audience."
The $39-million Secret Window is not intended to seek out that same audience, Koepp says. He knows the difference, having written for mainstream blockbusters such as Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Spider-Man.
"Not all movies are designed to reach a big audience. This one is designed to reach a very different audience than Spider-Man. It was clearly shooting for every man, woman and child in America. Secret Window doesn't need to do that to be a success either creatively or commercially."
Secret Window is Koepp's third directorial effort after The Trigger Effect (1996) and Stir Of Echoes (1999). "I think that anyone who writes is curious and tempted by directing because you want to see what it's like to take it all the way. And that's hard to do as a writer because you always have to hand it off at a certain point. So there is that curiosity.
"However, the lifestyle -- the director's lifestyle -- is such a drag that I try not to do it too often. It takes a lot out of you. I pretty much know right away when I wouldn't want to give it (a script) away and they tend to be more narrowly focused stories in this one vein."
More Artists
