Apologies to Johnny Depp

Ok, I’m going to stop making fun of Johnny Depp. I owe him an apology. See, I never realized the power of blogging. I didn’t know that if I didn’t like a celebrity, all I had to really do was point out that he was a really bad actor and not really as hot as people pretend he is and everyone in the world would realize it and I could ruin his career.

That’s apparently what I’ve done to Johnny Depp. Without even trying.

Honestly, it was all in good fun at first. See, I know a lot of women who are in love with Johnny Depp. My wife is one of them. She’s made it quite clear for years that is pretty much just settling for me. Sure, she loves me and all, but as soon as Depp comes knocking on the door she’s leaving me. I accept that. I get it. I mean, I have my celebrity crushes too. But I would never leave her for one. When Scarlett Johansson comes and asks me to run away with her, I’m going to say no. I’ll tell her, “I’m sorry, Scarlett, but I love my wife. I can never be yours. You’ll just have to settle for six solid hours of the best sex that you’ve ever had and then we will go our separate ways.” She’l beg and plead and I’ll say “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Then we’ll have sex one last time and I’ll send her on her way. Because I am a gentleman. And I love my wife.

But I certainly don’t expect her to have the same devotion to me. It’s Depp, and she’s only human.

Then I noticed a lot of other women were in love with him as well. Friends. Coworkers. Even my mom. It got kind of annoying. He’s not THAT cute.

So I started making fun of him. I called him an aging pretty boy, which is true, I mean, I know people look at him and the see Edward Scissorhands or Sam from Benny And Joon, but really he looks way more like a homeless man these days. I pointed out that he’d basically resorted to playing the same character over and over again in every film. Also true. I insinuated that he’s gotten a lot of his parts by being on the casting couch with Tim Burton. And ok, I can’t prove that last one… but I mean… think about it.

But eventually I found the jab that really hurt. I found the one little knife that every woman who is in love with Depp really hates. Every time I say it, the knife twists in a little deeper.

Richard Grieco is hotter.

I don’t know why that bothers Depp fans so much, but it does… it really really does. I’ve said it repeatedly over the years and somehow it just really burns people up. Honestly, it didn’t even make any sense, Grieco is as much of an aging pretty boy as Depp. I guess it’s because of their career trajectories. Grieco broke out first. He got to leave Jumpstreet for his own show. It failed. Then Depp broke out. And went on to a pretty big career and Grieco got to play the villain in a bunch D-List Lifetime movies.

Then a couple years ago, I noticed something about Depp. I noticed that since Pirates the Caribbean he’d been making a string of pretty bad bombs. Like really bad. Everyone knows about Lone Ranger. But that wasn’t the only one. I started looking into the Box Office returns for his movies. If you go back to 2007, when he made Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, you’ll see that it just barely made its budget back (it made $309M off of $300). His next film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus tanked… like it made a less than 20% of its budget back ($7.6M out of $40M). Public Enemies fell short of its $100M budget by by about $3M. The Tourist only made $67M of its $100M back. In fact, it turns out that if you look at all 15 of Depp’s starring roles since Pirates 3 (in 2007), only two of them have been profitable: Sweeny Todd (2007) and Alice in Wonderland (2010).  He hasn’t had a film make a profit in five years. And he’s made ten of them in that time. Even Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides actually lost money. Many of his films are in fact losers by less than his $24.5M average salary. In other words, it literally costs you money to put Johnny Depp in a movie. (technically he was in two profitable films. 21 Jump Street and Into the Woods, but those are cameo roles. He has like less than maybe 10 minutes of screen time if you add them both together).

That’s been really fun to tease Steph (and other people) with the last few years.

Ok, it’s not fun anymore.

When I was doing my Oscar research part of me started wondering “hey, what happened to that Mortdecai movie that he was heavily promoting a few weeks back?” So I looked it up…  $7M on a $60M budget. Wow… His last film, Transcendence made $23M on a $100M budget. And, of course before that was Lone Ranger ($89M out of $225) and Dark Shadows ($80M out of $150). In the past 3 years, Johnny Depp has literally cost Hollywood over $300M. That’s just… scary…

Like, seriously… why are people still making movies with him? It’s not just me; like literally no one is going to see his movies. The average ticket price is like $8 in America. That means less than a million people have seen Mortdecai. It’s like when your great grandfather is walking around in the streets with no pants on yelling out about how great he was during the war. It’s embarrassing. It’s not even B-List. It’s barely C-List.

In all seriousness… Grieco’s recent movies are actually doing better.

And I’ve decided that it’s all my fault. See, Depp was making bad movies before. He’s been doing it for quite a while actually. Willy Wonka? Alice in Wonderland? He’s horrible in those. They made money… but he really isn’ any good. Frankly he’s not actually “good” as the character in Pirates. The script and cast around him is good (hence the problem with the 4th one). Really, he’s totally been phoning it in since like the late 90s. But until I started pointing that out, no one really seemed to notice or care.

So I’m sorry Johnny Depp. I really and truly am. Now please put your pants back on and come in side and let the nice gentlemen in the white coats give you your happy pills and we’ll put on some reruns of 21 Jump Street for you to watch.

Grieco was so hot in those…