How Johnny Depp made his Hatter mad ... and what's 'futter-wacking'?

Thursday, February 25, 2010

How Johnny Depp made his Hatter mad ... and what's 'futter-wacking'?

We love when Johnny Depp plays a weirdo, and the weirder the better—a dude with scissors for hands, a sun-fried pirate—and give Depp a character with the word "Mad" in his name and he could go anywhere. But as the Mad Hatter in Tim Burton's upcoming Alice in Wonderland, Depp said he actually imposed some restrictions on himself.

"The great challenge [was] to try to find this guy and not just be a rubber ball you heave into an empty room and watch it bounce all over the place," Depp said in a press conference over the weekend in Hollywood. "Just to find that part of the character, but also a little bit more of history or gravity to the guy."

Depp, in bizarre whiteface makeup, plays the character from Lewis Carroll's Alice stories.
Doing a little research, Depp found out why old-time hatters actually did go mad. It wasn't just an expression. "There's the whole hatter's dilemma, really, which was where the term 'mad as a hatter' came from," Depp explained. "The amount of mercury that they used in the glue to make the hats and everything was damaging."
Carroll knew this, too, and he buried hints in his text, which Depp uncovered behind passages. "Like, 'I'm investigating things that begin with the letter M,'" Depp quoted. "That took me through a whole stratosphere of possibilities, and doing a little research, [I] discovered that the M is mercury."

So what does this all mean? It means that the Mad Hatter contains the full spectrum of emotion that any bipolar patient has, Depp said. "He can go from one second being very highfalutin' and a lot of levity, and then straight into some kind of dangerous potential rage, and then tragedy," Depp said. "It was interesting. Trying to map it out was really interesting."

It wasn't just the Lewis Carroll legacy or the actual plight of hatmakers that Depp explored. He also had his own legacy of memorable movie characters to keep in mind, and his Mad Hatter couldn't be too much like Edward Scissorhands or Willy Wonka. "Especially because I've played English a number of times, I've used an English accent a number of times, so it becomes a little bit of an obstacle course to go, 'Oh, that's teetering into Captain Jack-ville' or 'This one is kind of teetering over into Chocolat or Wonka.'"

Depp went to great lengths to make sure the Mad Hatter looked and sounded different from any character he's ever played before. He also moves like no one else. The Mad Hatter does a dance that could exist only in a surreal Wonderland, moving his legs and feet in unnatural rhythms. They call this futter-wacking.

"The happy dance was something that Tim had a very curious vision for," Depp said. "I can futter-wack with the best of them."

Futter-wacking is no freestyle exercise. The movements were carefully choreographed, even more so than a standard dance number. "We had to treat that like a stunt," he said.
Alice in Wonderland opens March 5.

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Enjoy The Prologue From My Upcoming Book.. "Strolok"............by R.Goldberg

"WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOUR RACE WAS TARGETED FOR EXTINCTION?"

The Sun is a powerful force in our Universe. It brings us light, warmth and a promise of a galaxy beyond the stars. Often we associate massive flashes of light with the reflection of our Sun's light bouncing off of another surface.

This is not always the case though, especially if you believe that we are truly not alone in the Universe. When we witness things that we can't readily explain we sometimes turn our heads and shrug our shoulders in a display of apathy.

A display such as this occurred on Friday January 29, 1982 at the Crater Lake National Park just outside of Chemult, Oregon. The snow had been falling steadily for a period of four days. The winds had been whisking about at 40 miles per hour.
Then there was one of those unnatural flashes of light. This created an eerie silence as a lanky boy, just nine years old, seemed to appear from out of that flash. If he had walked to this point there would have been a distinct trail in the newly fallen snow.
There was no trail and as a matter of fact the only tracks in the snow were the ones that outlined his feet where he was standing.

He began to trudge through the snow wearing what could only be described as dark brown long johns. He seemed dazed yet, at the same time, very clear about the direction that he was travelling. This boy with no identity or name seemed to be on a mission that would take him to places he had never been before.
His main goal was to reach Chemult, Oregon and he had no intention of stopping until he accomplished this. As strange as it seems the extreme cold seemed to have little or no effect on him at all.

Why Chemult? What was so special about this town located at an elevation of 4,758 feet above sea level in a frozen winter wilderness in Oregon?

The town of Chemult was first opened to the local traffic in 1926 and here in 1982, with its population of only 241, offered little in the way of comfort for a nine year old boy who was all alone. This journey, although prompted by something deep inside of him, did not provide a feeling of comfort and yet he had hoped that he would at least experience a feeling of accomplishment once he reached the town.

The wind was getting stronger and he noticed a small piece of yellow paper tattered and torn from whipping about in the snow. He only stopped long enough to
pick up this paper..........it read:

.....With the winter season here there was a lot of fun to have. Travelling miles of open trails on snow mobiles skiing or simply hiking, but there are dangers of doing so. Please remember safety first. Do not travel alone and be sure someone knows where you are and where you are going before travelling our trails, and please read the safety rules and codes of ethics before hiking the trails...

Nightfall was near and he had already walked 38 of the 40 miles needed to reach Chemult. He was just off of Route 97 when he spotted an old barn just about 200 feet NE of his present location. Making his way to the barn he went in and found it to be totally deserted, it was a perfect place to rest for the night.

Morning had arrived and once awake the boy started to look around the barn in the daylight light to see if there was anything that was lying in the barn that he could use to assist him on his trek.

Over in the far corner of the barn he found an old metal locked box that had long been forgotten. It was all rusted out and the key was nowhere to be found. After several failed attempts to open the box the young boy closed his eyes, sat back on his tired limbs and placed the palm of his right hand on top of the box. All of a sudden a dull red glow appeared from his right palm and the box lid flew open. Strangely enough once the red glow disappeared all that remained was a faint thin black outline where the outside of the red mark had appeared on his palm. Inside of the box he found several items all of which were unfamiliar to him and it was obvious that they had been there
for a very long time.

The contents included a tattered passport with the picture missing, a pocket knife, a compass, an antique pocket watch with a broken crystal, a time-worn souvenir porcelain coffee mug with the words; "Atlanta, Georgia, The Peach State, A Perfect Place to Live", on it and a frayed map of the Metro Atlanta Area It was difficult to make out the name on the passport but with a couple of light brushes with his fingers he saw the name Jason Tredmore. This is now who this boy would become.

Sci-Fi Blast

Thursday, February 25, 2010