Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, let me kindly present my case.
Before this trial began I was not fully aware of the true fame that Johnny Depp had achieved.
That is because I watched Johnny Depp’s career evolve from the beginning. I’m a little older than Johnny Depp.
Actually, what I said isn’t true. Technically I didn’t see Johnny Depp’s career begin because I never watched the television show 21 Jump Street.
I’m not a big television watcher.
I like movies.
I remember his early movies, Edward Scissorhands, and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.
Those were good movies, and I enjoyed his performances.
I really enjoyed his performance in what I call the Peter Pan movie. I can’t remember the real name of that movie. I just call it the Peter Pan movie.
I never understood why he didn’t want to make more classy movies like that.
Of course, he did make other movies that were more sophisticated, but he made what I thought were too many quirky movies.
I thought those quirky movies tended to typecast him.
Generally though I like him as an actor.
I must confess though that there is one movie of his that I do not care for.
And that movie is the movie that everybody loves him in: Pirates of the Caribbean.
I loathed that movie. And still do.
I didn’t understand his performance. Why couldn’t he just say the flipping lines? Why did he have to sway back-and-forth every time he spoke.
I was irritated by that.
Of course, I am in the minority. I recognize that. This one movie of his that I despised everyone else loved.
It’s fair to say that Pirates of the Caribbean pushed him into a stratosphere which few stars enter.
Pirates of the Caribbean pushed him into Elvis orbit.
After that movie, Johnny Depp couldn’t be a regular person anymore. There is fame and then there is fame.
Mr. Depp soon was not able to do the things that you and I take for granted.
He couldn’t go down to the corner convenience store. He couldn’t shop in a supermarket. He couldn’t even get on a regular flight to go across the country.
If he needed something at the store, he had to hire an assistant to do that for him.
Gradually he became isolated from regular human existence. He became entrapped within his living mausoleums in Los Angeles, the Florida Keys, and France.
Slowly he evolved into an aging, bloated, drug-addled Elvis Presley.
He hated it. He said so at his trial. He came to detest his own name, Johnny Depp. He saw it as a commodity.
To assuage his pain and isolated existence, he did more drugs.
From time to time his dying body was transported from Los Angeles to his private island, to his French villa and back again via shielded limos and private jets.
This was not helpful nor healthy for Mr. Depp.
You can hear it for yourself when you listen to him wailing in pain on his private jet.
You can learn it for yourself when he shows up hours late to a movie set costing the studio enormous sums of money.
You can see it for yourself in his slamming of cabinets as he searches for another bottle of wine.
He called his wife unspeakable names.
His yes men, no doubt accustomed to this behavior, sat back and accepted it as normal.
They understood from talking to Mr. Depp over the years that he had embedded demons.
These demons were revealed to us on the witness stand by Mr. Depp.
It was heartbreaking for me personally to hear him recount what his childhood was like.
I empathize with him.
While my mother was never as physically and psychologically abusive as Mr. Depp‘s mother was to him, I must say that my father‘s behavior toward me bordered on abuse.
I remember as a child hiding under the bed from my father who was trying to spank me.
I would grip the bedsprings and move from side to side as my father moved around the bed.
My mother was never psychologically abusive to me. She never called me names, and she always praised me.
Nevertheless I’m positive that I inherited my attention deficit disorder from her.
She was unpredictable in her moods. She would go from loving one minute to angry the next.
My father was under stress at his job and so was likewise unpredictable.
I remember my father walking through the kitchen slamming cabinets. To a child that is terrifying.
I knew what Mr. Depp was talking about when he stated that you never knew if you were going to get hit or not.
I walked on eggshells in my youth, and I am sure that Mr. Depp did as well.
What this produces within you is a deep-seated insecurity.
We are all different, and my experiences are not the same as Mr. Depp’s, but the results are similar.
Mr. Depp carried forward a deep-seated insecurity in life.
To assuage that pain, he reached out in the same manner that I reached out. He became attracted to physically beautiful women.
There can be no question of that. One only needs to look at the movie stars that Mr. Depp was involved with. They are all incredibly physically attractive women.
He sees them as 10s.
Mr. Depp needs that.
He sees an incredibly attractive woman as a magic salve, a commodity that will heal his internal psychological wounds.
This is not healthy because a woman is a person with needs and desires.
Mr. Depp does not see a woman as a person, but as a commodity. This is reinforced by our society that objectifies women in just this manner.
When Mr. Depp has a beautiful woman holding onto his arm, he is in heaven. All his his childhood pain goes away. What he has standing next to him is the loyal mother he never had.
The problems begin when the magic salve exerts her independence and dares to offer a contrary opinion.
This Mr. Depp cannot permit. His mind will not permit this.
His woman must be perfect; she must be totally available for his needs; she must not offer any contrary thoughts.
A career separate from him is out of the question.
Mr. Depp does not look at a relationship in the manner of: What can I do for you?
In his mind the woman exists for him. What can you do for me, he asks.
The relationship is about him. That’s why he is contracting with her. Mr. Depp views Amber Heard and his other girlfriends and wives in the same way that he views his personal assistants. They work for him.
This does not make for a healthy relationship.
He cannot have his woman be anything less than perfect. If she goes out and selects a role that cheapens her, he calls that a role for a whore.
If she becomes older, as she inevitably will become older, her potency as a magic salve diminishes, and he simply trades her in for another younger more beautiful girlfriend.
Until that point, he becomes more and more controlling of his woman. He becomes jealous, paranoid and unhappy. This causes him to use more substances. The substances make him even more vulnerable to delivering psychological and physical abuse.
In time, the magic salve, the woman has enough and threatens to leave him.
This is the ultimate betrayal for Mr. Depp. This is the point at which he begins to strike out and physically abuse his girlfriends and wives.
I don’t think Mr. Depp remembers the physical violence at all. I think by this point he is too drug-addled to have any kind of memory.
When he says that he has never physically abused a woman, I believe him that he believes that.
When he strikes out at his girlfriends and wives, he is striking out against his mother for not loving him in the way that she should have.
His mind will never permit him to believe that he would hurt his mother. He loves his mother. He needs his mother.
This is where we find ourselves today.
Mr. Depp in trying to heal his inner pain and tormented soul has completely transformed himself into an isolated, drug addicted, overweight, nearly washed up movie star entrapped in a series of living mausoleums, modern-day Gracelands, surrounded by sycophantic yes men and mercenaries who will do his bidding for a paycheck.
Amber Heard is not a perfect person, and she has her demons as well. But the principal part of this trial is not about the perfection of Amber Heard. It is about weather Amber Heard unfairly maligned Mr. Depp. As we have seen, Mr. Depp was his own worst enemy. He didn’t need any help at all.
Sincerely,
Archer Crosley
Copyright 2022 Archer Crosley All Rights Reserved
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