Johnny Depp Starts Here
Pomerance skips biography in favor of his own subjective reactions to actor Johnny Depp's magnetism and screen styles in such films as the moodyWhat's Eating Gilbert Grape, the imaginativeEdward Scissorhandsand the hallucinogenicFear and Loathing in Las Vegas. So well-masked is the "ungraspable" Depp, opines Pomerance (An Eye for Hitchcock), that he remains an "authentic illusion." Pomerance adds to the formidable canon of books on Depp by mixing hazy statements like "Johnny Depp has been able to sustain a star career with the performance history of a noteworthy character actor" with convoluted poetics (e.g., Depp as "a return of the freely circulating individual in the context of an extremely repressive  'society of the spectacle' ") and occasional humor (e.g., he wonders how Edward Scissorhands handles everyday tasks with those unwieldy appendages). Pomerance views Depp as the antithesis of the studio contract performer, an enigmatic, elusive figure who is "conceivably the first movie star we will never quite know." Reaching for the penultimate paean, he declares, "Depp is film itself." This overly analytical exaltation of Depp often suffers from overwrought verbiage, but the academics and film scholars it's aimed at may not mind. Photos.(Apr. 25)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.