The Daily Aztec: Johnny, I wanted to ask you a little bit about getting into your character, because the voice is a little different than your regular speaking voice. Can you talk about finding your Rango?
JOHNNY DEPP: Early on, some of the talks that Gore and I had had about the character, I mean talk about two grown men, you know, middle aged men discussing the possibility of one of them being a lizard. So it starts off on a surreal kind of note anyway. We talked about how when people in life have a tendency to exaggerate or lie or whatever, you always sort of notice that their voice goes up quite high, you know. It goes to another completely different register. Whereas, if I’m talking to you and speaking and babbling nonstop, and then suddenly I’m really nervous about telling you the truth, my pitch goes through the roof and I’m lying. So that’s kind of where it came from, just an image of a character to be really like a nervous wreck.
DA: You’ve played a lot of characters that kids must love, from Edward Scissorhands to Captain Jack to Willy Wonka. What is your relationship with that audience, as opposed to the more grown-up roles you’ve played? And Gore, I’ve just got to throw in, is it weird to see trailers for a new “Pirates” movie coming out?
GORE VERBINSKI: No, I want to go see it.
JD: I think kids in general as an audience, are the way forward, because they’re not sort of sullied by intellectual expectation or this or that. It’s a very pure kind of response to the work, you know? And the great luck that I had, for example before “Pirates 1,” I had a daughter. And for about four years all I watched was cartoons — just cartoons. And I realized at that point that the parameters were far away from what we do in sort of normal, everyday movies, and that you can get away with a lot more. Kids accept a lot more and they buy it because they’re free. So for me, that was everything, in terms of coming up with what Captain Jack would be. So yeah, I trust kids far more than I do adults. Kids give you the honest opinion. They tell the truth.
DA: Due to the existential issues and some of the darker themes brought up, is this truly a kids’ movie, or are we kind of blinded by the fact that it’s just beautiful animation?
GV: I think it’s a kids’ movie. I mean, I know my kids like it, (but) my kids like “The Holy Grail” and so it depends on your kid, I suppose. We’ve shown the movie for 500 kids and you know, they seem to be absolutely mesmerized and enjoying it. And there’s hilarity. And then when we get into the existential moments, I think they’re not seeing it, their frontal lobe doesn’t operate in that way but they’re kind of the heart. And they know, “Why is he leaving now? Why is he … Where’s he going?” And you see they’re not squirming. You should watch it with a bunch of kids because it’s quite fascinating. They seem to have a kids’ dream logic that we seem to not appreciate as adults; we kind of take everything at face value. And certainly there’s stuff in there for adults so that we get to have a good time as well. But they really stick with it. And I think people constantly underestimate what they can handle.
DA: What projects do you all have in the pipelines? Isla or Abigail, do you have any desire to do animated projects again in the future?
ISLA FISHER: I’m actually doing an animated movie now, “Rise of the Guardians,” and I’m playing Tinkerbell which is a really different voice from Bean’s. And I’m really enjoying that, but I’m in an isolated booth.
ABIGAIL BRESLIN: Yeah, I love animated movies, so yeah, I’d love to do one, for sure. But I liked doing it like this, and I don’t think that they do many animated movies like that. But I suppose I’d be in an isolated booth too if it was a cool movie.
JD: But you’d still wear the wig and the gun and stuff.
AB: I’d still come completely, full out in the character’s costume.
DA: Johnny, probably the only real critics that you pay attention to are your kids. How do they feel about their dad playing a lizard?
JD: They actually call me the Lizard King. My children really do. I’ve forced them to address me like that since they were tykes. Yeah it was an odd sort of thing, you know. “Where you going, Daddy?” “Ah, I gotta go to work.” “What are you doing?” “Well, I’m playing a lizard.” It’d literally be that kind of thing — you drop your kids off at school, give them a kiss and it was, “Oh, yeah … now I’m gonna go be a lizard.” Or the things that I’ve done that my kids have been privy to, I mean, Willy Wonka and all, it doesn’t register. They’re just kind of, you know, they’re far more interested in “Family Guy” or Justin Bieber.
DA: How do you handle all the attention you get from fans, especially the women?
JD: Attention is a strange sort of being. The idea if someone appreciates your work, it’s always nice that someone appreciates your work. But I’ve never quite understood any of the other bits, you know. Where somehow you’ve been voted some thing for a magazine and it’s a complete mystery to me, you know? I wake up and I have to look at that head when I brush my teeth every morning and it’s weird. And it’s unpleasant at times. So yeah, I don’t know about the attention thing.
DA: Isla, can you tell us about creating the voice of Beans and if you feel like having to cover your accent so frequently in films made
it easier to do the characterization?
IF: I kind of imagine Beans, if Clint Eastwood and Holly Hunter would have a love child, that would be Beans.
JD: I’d like to watch that.
GV: Yes.
IF: If you were around. No, and then the physicality of the character had already been created; I’d already seen 20 minutes of the movie and some linear drawings. So I knew how she moved. Gore was with me every step of the way vocally, and he was very specific about what he wanted. And no one ever wants to hire an Australian, so I’m just used to never doing my own voice, ever. I mean, they do want to hire — oh, that came out wrong. They do want to hire Australians, obviously.
DA: How much of your characters did you get to see in terms of the artwork before you started playing with them?
AB: I saw a picture of Priscilla. And I would have done it based on the fact that she’s a glamour girl. So she’s kind of gorgeous. I thought she was adorable. So I would have done it based on that. But yeah, I thought all the characters were pretty cute — but in a strange way, odd, but you know, cute. They’re not like cuddly, you don’t want to hold them.
