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Dark Shadows in Bright Suburbs: Why I Grew up Watching ‘Dark Shadows’

May 20, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Dark Shadows, Johnny Depp, Barnabus Collins

Barnabus Collins: He bites; he scores (Everett Collection)

In seventh grade, I had a routine: go to my friend Katy’s house, do our advanced math homework, play Yahtzee and watch “Dark Shadows.” After the credits, I would run the three blocks to my suburban San Diego cul de sac under the bright Southern California sun in abject terror, unaffected by the sound of the marching band practicing on the football field. The next day, I’d do it again. Algebra. Barnabas. Terror. Supper. “Laugh in” and “All in the Family.”

[Related: Original ‘Dark Shadows’ TV actress remembers past lives]

I had been too young in 1966 to watch from the beginning, so cracking the giant casket of DVD’s of the complete original series that ran from 1966 to 1971 had the feeling of opening an old yearbook, or a photograph album. Just the spooky theme music and the image of the dark waves crashing on the Maine coast, inspired memories of math homework and flat-out fright. When the front door of Collinwood opened, it was a happy homecoming to that formal black-and-white foyer that was straight out of a Hammer horror set.

From the first episode, with the foreboding voiceover spoken by the orphan Victoria, I slipped into the warm bath of the past: the glacial pace of a soap opera that stretched daily from Monday through Friday, parsing out some thrills, letting slip a cookie fortune’s worth of new information, building to that end-of-week revelation that would leave the viewer breathless for Monday. At the end of each episode, there’s often a tease for “The Dating Game,” or that ‘new’ show “The Newlywed Game.”

But, more than nostalgia, the show holds up. It has its surprises — a scene at the local pub bursts into wild sixties frug dancing that could come out of a beach party movie. The characters drink and spew familial bile that goes back decades, if not centuries. A woman cries in the night, inconsolable. Portraits stare down from the formal drawing room walls with bad intent. It’s completely addicting. And I haven’t even gotten to my favorite part yet — the portals in the house between the past and present that allowed the actors to play the dual roles so beloved by more mainstream soaps.

I loved the series when I was young because it showed a world where the ocean wasn’t the surfer paradise of the Pacific, but the brooding, relentless, frigid Atlantic. That unforgiving waves crashing on a rocky coast were where you’d land if you jumped off the cliff. And characters were always standing on that precipice, contemplating bleakness, or discussing in urgent whispers how they want to get out of Collinwood and contemplate jumping themselves. Why had all those governesses leapt from that spot to their doom in the past?

The irony was that, as an oddball teen who shunned the sun, I had those same feelings of foreboding, and the desire to escape a suffocating home, without the external justification. Nothing could have been less scary than those repetitive sunny seventy degree days, my ranch house with the basketball hoop hammered over the garage, the breakfast nook where we ate our meals regularly at 5:30 p.m. while the Vietnam War appeared in nightly installments on the evening news.

[Related: Johnny Depp reveals why Tonto puts a bird on it]

I think that was part of the reason that for me, and possibly for director Tim Burton who lived two hours north in land-locked Burbank, the show had such a tremendous appeal and resonance. Wholesome suburbia struck me as so much scarier, and the gloomy, death-obsessed supernatural soap, “Dark Shadows,” provided release.

This essay original appeared on Yahoo! Movies

Filed Under: Essay, Movies & TV Tagged With: Barnabus Collins, Dark Shadows, Essay, Johnny Depp, Movies, Remakes, Suburbia, Tim Burton, Yahoo! Movies

Yo ho ho: Depp discusses “The Rum Diary” at Columbia U

October 25, 2011 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Johnny Depp,The Rum Diary,Columbia University School of Journalism, The Rum Diary,Film District

Depp auditions for Indiana Jones

Johnny Depp appeared at Columbia University’s Miller Theater for a panel celebrating the legacy of Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson tied to the release of the The Rum Diary on Friday, October 28th. The actor, who plays Thompson alter-ego Paul Kemp, arrived dressed like Indiana Jones approaching the Temple of Doom in felt hat, jeans, blue bandana and boots.

When a low-key Depp took the stage for a bit of academic paneling prior to a School of Journalism screening, Thompson may well have shouted “bastards” on seeing the audience of wonky tweed gray-hairs mixed with the wild ‘fros of youth, but youth wielding parent-bought cameras worth more than the writer’s first journalism paycheck. The Kentuckian was, as became clear over the course of the hour, always a gun for hire, even if that gun spewed ink and bile.

The rollicking movie is a testament to Depp’s enduring loyalty to the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas scribe. In the movie, Depp again plays an alkie journalist, a Don Quixote who finds his literary voice fighting corporate greed and publishing dishonesty – and drinking demon rum – in Puerto Rico, circa 1960.

Sure, there’s a hot chick, a bromance, and an acid trip,but the episodic movie entertains with that combination of deadpan humor and psychedelic absurdity that defined Thompson as a writer. And, to the movie’s credit, it neither worships nor judges the central anti-hero Kemp. Depp does the movie justice by reining in the craziness until it’s demanded, spending a good part of the movie in a hung-over stillness, as if it hurts too much to move his head or see the light.

“Hi, everybody,” sallied the dean of the journalism school, Nicholas Lemann, to launch the panel, “[we have] a few people talking about the movie.” He tried to button up his barely contained enthusiasm for sharing the stage with ultimate hipster turned monster movie star Depp, as well as documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney, writer-director Bruce Robinson, ex-Rolling Stone publisher Porter Bibb and Thompson’s literary executor Douglas Brinkley. Thompson’s son Juan sat in the audience.

Dean Lemann emphasized the “local angle,” as a teaching lesson for the auditorium packed with journalism students facing bleak prospects: Thompson had moved from Kentucky to New York City and even attended the Columbia School of General Studies. But the local angle was the least interesting. Oh, Depp!

Asked how the book got published, Depp – called “The Colonel” by fellow Kentuckian Thompson –said while he was living in Thompson’s basement during the shooting of Fear & Loathing, the pair would “sit like teenagers listening to records cross-legged on the floor” of Thompson’s basement war-room, sifting through boxes of letters, manuscripts, and gum-encrusted cocktail napkins. Depp pulled out a box marked The Rum Diary. “We should make it into a film,” Depp recalled Thompson saying, to which he answered, “Maybe you should publish it first.”

“It was the proverbial novel left in a drawer,” said literary executor Brinkley. “He would have loved this film.”

Brinkley explained that Hunter, like the character played by Depp, always wanted to be a novelist. He typed books by Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald to learn how they were constructed, to uncover their rhythms. There remain a number of rarely read, unpublished or out-of-print Thonmpson manuscripts, including Prince Jellyfish, 15 – 20 short stories and The Night Manager, a novel about the O’Farrell Theater, which the author called the Carnegie Hall of Sex.

Regarding The Rum Diary, Depp said it was about “the ultimate despoliation of paradise.” As for making the movie thirty-five years later, “It’s done in support of Hunter. It’s for Hunter.”

Depp recalled his first encounter with Thompson at Colorado’s Woody Creek Tavern. They were meant to meet at 12:30 AM but Thompson rolled in at about 1:30 AM. “The door burst open,” Depp told the audience, “I saw sparks. Literally sparks. Out of my way, you bastards, Thompson said.” The crowd parted. It didn’t hurt that the writer had “a three-foot cattle prod in his left hand and a Taser in his right.”

Like Depp, Thompson knew how to make an entrance. Depp continued: “How do you do. My name is Hunter. From that moment on we were almost inseparable….The thing about Hunter was….there was a great rage because he cared all too much. He was the perfect Southern gentleman. I do have some semblance of the rage. It’s only because I care.”

How did Depp react to Hunter’s suicide in 2005 at 67? “Devastated – but surprised? No. You always knew he was not going to be the guy who melted into a bowl of clam chowder.”

Would the actor play Thompson again? “Oh, yeah, he stays in your brain,” said Depp. “I wake up with the bastard. He arrives during the day to save me during certain ridiculous moments. I’d like to see Hunter burst through the fiery gates of hell and come up and spew.” He’s not alone.

Filed Under: Celebrity, Movies & TV Tagged With: Columbia University School of Journalism, Johnny Depp, The Rum Diary

Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

May 19, 2011 By Thelma Leave a Comment

credit: Peter Mountain

Us Rating: **1/2 Johnny Depp returns as irreverent Jack Sparrow in the fourth installment of the wacky adventure series. This time, the pirate embarks on a quest for the fountain of youth, racing against rivals Blackbeard (Ian McShane) and Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) — yet finding time to romance ex-flame Angelica (Penelope Cruz). The actress livens things up somewhat as she and Sparrow spar in a tavern, sling insults and double-cross each other. And campy Rush continues to amuse: When he and Sparrow are captured, he drinks from his wooden peg leg — and offers Sparrow a swig! But the entertaining flick gets bogged down by endless, listless swordfights. Plus, McShane’s serious Shakespearean delivery doesn’t belong in such a satirical romp.


Filed Under: Criticism, Movies & TV Tagged With: adventure, Geoffrey Rush, Ian McShane, Johnny Depp, movie reviews, Penelope Cruz, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Sequel, Us Weekly

3 Life Lessons Learned from ‘Alice in Wonderland’

March 11, 2011 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Mia Wasikowska,Jane Eyre,Tim Burton,Alice in Wonderland,Johnny Depp,Parenting,Helena Bonham Carter,Lewis Carroll,Go Ask Alice

Wasikowska takes a leap

(With Mia Wasikowska ex-ing off the classic women’s lit canon -now she’s Jane Eyre – let’s rewind my iVillage.com post about her Alice.)

There are important messages to take away from Tim Burton’s fantastical big-screen opus

Sure, there’s a hookah-smoking caterpillar and a rabbit in a waistcoat, but that doesn’t mean that the amazing journey of a 19-year-old Alice (Mia Wasikowska) into “Underland” isn’t chocked full of wise life lessons worth practicing in the real world. Here are three worth paying attention to:

1. Be True to Yourself: When Alice is at a Victorian garden party, she sees a vested rabbit hop through the flower beds — but no one else does. “Did you see that?” she asks a number of fellow guests, none of whom shares her vision. The lesson? Trust your own eyes — even if they’re seeing white rabbits, mad hatters and violent red queens. When Alice follows the rushing rabbit down a hole, she embarks on a magical journey of self-discovery that’s unique to her. Lives are like snowflakes: No two are alike. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Books, Essay, Movies & TV Tagged With: Alice in Wonderland, favorite books, Helena Bonham Carter, iVillage.com, Johnny Depp, Lewis Carroll, Life Lessons, Mia Wasikowska, Tim Burton

Movie Review: Rango

March 3, 2011 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Rango (voice of Depp) hangs on by a smiley face

Us Rating: **1/2

Lonely pet chameleon Rango (voice of Johnny Depp) gets separated from his owners and lands in a desert town. Once in the wild, Rango teams up with a spunky frontier girl (Isla Fisher) and takes on a villainous rattlesnake (Bill Nighy). While Depp turns his bug-eyed reptile into a charismatic character, the plot gets lost in a maze of tangents and the story has too many tasteless jokes — like a prostate gag — that are not kid-friendly.

Filed Under: Movies & TV Tagged With: Clint Eastwood, Gore Verbinski, Hunter S. Thompson, Isla Fischer, Johnny Depp, movie review, stoner movies, Us Weekly

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