Tough tongue twister

[bobquasit]

I was walking past the TV displays at Best Buy just now, and I saw Johnny Depp playing Willy Wonka - they're pushing the DVD heavily right now.

He was making an odd face, and suddenly a thought crossed my mind:

"He's channelling Carol Channing."

And that's it. "Channelling Carol Channing". Try saying THAT three times fast.

Comments

[klyfix.livejournal.com]

Is channeling Carol Channing better than channeling Michael Jackson?

[moonlitmagik.livejournal.com]

i love j. depp but how he looks in that movie scares me..

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

Depp does a lot of mixing and matching other actors performance bits into his work, it's one of the reasons why he's good - he's a chameleon of sorts.

Ex: Benny & Joon, where he is obviously playing Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp, combined with what I think is Stanley (Of Ollie & Stanley) to produce an even more 'lovable pathetic character'.

Ex: 9th Gate. Corso is at least in part based on young Jack Nicholson (not his voice, but the body langauge), I'm not sure of the other part of the character, but I'm not an expert on these things.

I'm still trying to figure out his version of Jack Sparrow... the body language appears to be unique, but the vocal intonations I know I've heard before as well as the facial posses. Maybe part John Waters (I haven't seen enough footage of him to know).

The thing is that there are actors and celebrities who are, really, icons and at this point archetypes in people's minds for certain character portrayals, so if you mix a couple of them together there is a subconscious connection with the character being played that makes perfect sense and makes the performance work better in people's minds. It's that which I see Depp doing in his films.