The movie that almost broke Johnny Depp: “I thought I was going to die, every day”
In early 1994, Johnny Depp made a decision that would almost break his spirit. He signed up to write, direct, and star in an independent movie with a truly harrowing story, and somehow agreed to be on the hook for topping up the film’s budget out of his own pocket if it went over its assigned $5 million.
Ultimately, the movie pushed Depp to his emotional and physical limit, with the star claiming he felt like he was circling death every single day. To add insult to injury, the film was never even released in the US, and Depp vowed never to step behind the camera again.
When two first-time producers approached Depp about their project, The Brave, based on a novel by Gregory McDonald, the Edward Scissorhands star wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about it. The script told the sad tale of a poverty-stricken Native American man who agrees to be killed in a snuff film on the proviso that his family is paid $50,000, and Depp admitted, “I didn’t particularly like it.”
However, the more he pondered the story, he realised, “I liked the idea of sacrifice for family. And I kept thinking of things I’d like to add”.
Depp soon felt compelled to commit everything to the project, which would be his directorial debut. However, he was fully aware that the project could cost him millions of dollars in budget overruns, and he also knew that shooting in Death Valley, where the temperature often hit 130 degrees, would be physically punishing. When it was all said and done, though, the reality was even worse than Depp imagined.
“This was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done,” he confessed. “It just about ripped me to shreds.”
Indeed, from day one, Depp knew he was in uncharted territory. Before The Brave, his responsibility on any movie had solely been acting, but now he was trying to direct and write as well. It gave him a newfound appreciation for what directors do, not to mention the charmed life actors usually lead. “It’s a cakewalk,” he claimed. “It’s a very privileged existence to shoot for a few minutes and then go back to your trailer and make phone calls or whatever.”
Instead of sitting in his trailer between set-ups, though, Depp found himself living and breathing the movie, while the sweltering heat made him feel like he was working in an oven. “I thought I was going to die, every day,” he admitted to Esquire. “I would shoot all day and act as well, then go home, do rewrites, do my homework as an actor, do my homework as a director. Go to sleep, and even then, I’d dream about the film. It was a nightmare.”
To Depp’s dismay, not even the presence of his friend and mentor Marlon Brando, who cameoed as the mysterious man who funds the snuff movie, could ease the process for the struggling first-time director. It didn’t get any easier when shooting finished, and he found himself $2m in the hole, either. At that point, he had to edit his footage into a cohesive film, and he found it almost impossible to make the ruthless cuts to his cast’s performances that a more experienced director may have made in an instant.
“When I was editing the film…I knew that certain scenes didn’t need to be in the movie, but I couldn’t bring myself to cut them out because I didn’t want to hurt the actors’ feelings,” the star lamented. “And you can’t be like that. You gotta say ‘Fuck it.'”
After somehow making it through production, Depp was able to edit the movie into something resembling a final cut in time for the Cannes Film Festival in 1997. He wasn’t happy with the cut, but knew he needed to make that premiere date. After it screened, though, he was blindsided by the sheer outpouring of vitriolic reviews, which deeply affected him.
“They just fucking destroyed us,” Depp remembered. “It was like an attack on me—how dare I direct a movie. They ate me alive. It was vicious. I was totally, totally shocked.”
In the end, The Brave’s reception was so devastating to Depp that he chose not to distribute it in the US, preferring it to sit “in a vault” rather than be shown to the public. It was released in select cinemas internationally and eventually on DVD, but overall, few could blame the star for wanting to erase the whole sorry affair from his memory. Unsurprisingly, he never directed again.
