The defamation trial featuring Johnny Depp and Amber Heard opened this week. And Virginia hasn’t seen so many media hounds since the dogfighting arraignment of Michael Vick.
Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard
Frankly, I couldn’t care less about this trial. However, ignoring it would be tantamount to ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room. After all, I’m not just a social critic; I’m a Virginia resident too.
Unsurprisingly, the allegations are sensational, egocentric, dramatic, and petty. Precisely what you’d expect, given everything we know about these two A-list celebrities.
Depp is accusing Heard of making up lies about domestic violence out of spite to ruin his career. He’s demanding $50 million in damages. Heard is accusing Depp of physical abuse and even sexual assault—with a liquor bottle, no less. She’s demanding $100 million in damages.
Depp comes across like OJ
The video evidence of Depp’s drunken rages suggests Heard is lucky this is not a murder trial, with her as the victim. She had the Washington Post publish her account of her domestic abuse. He claims that caused severe harm to his career.
But Depp’s most compelling roles in recent years have all been in court proceedings like this one. And they invariably featured him as a sloppy, spendthrift drunk who abuses women. These roles have left an indelible impression. And Hollywood studios are well aware that moviegoers would struggle to see him as anything else.
Meanwhile, reliable accounts from fellow Bahamians portray him as an actor who takes method acting to extremes most people would find intolerable. So it’s hardly surprising that Heard found it emotionally and physically abusive to live 24-7 with a drunken ‘Captain Jack Sparrow.
It’s also self-evident that Depp boozed and drugged away his days as a Hollywood leading man. Indeed, this trial might have succeeded in typecasting him for character roles as a villain. Except that he looks like a pitiful, old fool, paying lawyers millions just to have young Heard play him like a fiddle on the world stage.
He looks so full of hot air these days that he appears to be ballooning into a Marlon Brando version of himself. That’s why – spoiler alert: Depp will lose this case.
After all,
- the truth is an absolute defense to any claim of defamation;
- a UK court has already found, based on these same facts, that Depp is a wife-beater; and
- we can all see the undeniable truth in Heard calling him an “old fat man.”
Of course, Heard could have also called him a willful and spiteful fool. Because only that explains Depp’s quicksand legal strategy of wasting money trying to ruin Heard’s reputation by muddying his own.
Finally, I’d be remiss not to mention that, six years after filing for divorce, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are suing each other in a similar, mutually destructive fashion. I lampooned their all-too-predictable split in “Brangelina Divorce: Who or What Will Angie Do Next?” September 23, 2016.
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