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The other day I saw where Johnny Depp, the guy from that pirate movie who lives in France because he doesn‘t like us common, unenlightened American swine, had his movie set trailer decorated like an Arabian palace. I understand he was doing a sequel to Willie Wonka and the Chocolate factory. Good film. Apparently Willie had a brother named Charlie who was in the candy business too. Anyway, he said he had the trailer all done up in Persian rugs, incense burners and one of those dome things on top. Like the one at Notre Dame, only pointy. I think they even threw in a couple of Siamese cats to give it that exotic look.
I have to confess I wasn’t listening that closely. That was until they gave the price tag for these shenanigans.
$410,000.00
Mmmhmm. You heard me right. Four hundred and ten thousand smackaroos! At this point Johnny had my complete attention. This fellow had spent the equivalent of the yearly budget for my home town to turn a mobile home into a rolling Taj Mahal complete with KOA hookups. ( That’s Kampgrounds of America if you happen to live in a high rise) And Why did he do this? He needed an escape from the grueling work on his movie shoot.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m old enough that I was shocked to discover that Depp wasn’t the heir to the Dep hair gel empire. One too many P’s my kids tell me. I watched that pirate movie and couldn’t follow the plot because I was so engrossed in my discovery that Keith Richards had had a son and I wasn’t aware of. After hearing this bizarre news bite about poor Johnny’s need to get away however, I found myself trying to total up all that I had taken in.
I wanted to be fair. As I noted previously, I had seen his pirate movie and I also saw a clip from the Charlie movie. It takes an actor of incredible range to go from looking like one of the Stone’s offspring ( pirate movie) to one of the Three Stooge’s offspring ( Charlie movie). Give Johnny Depp credit. The young man is good at what he does. Still, I need a GPS to follow how a guy grows up in the U.S., moves to France to escape his birthplace, goes to England to film a movie about a place that doesn’t exist, then has to have a portable palace created so that he can escape England AND the imaginary land of Oompa-Loompas
( which, if you ask me moved from OZ. To escape what, I’m not certain).
I don’t know why all of this is so fascinating to me. Maybe it’s because it isn’t Johnny I’m bewildered by. I think it captures my imagination because I know exactly how he feels. Not about leaving America for France and all that. It’s the escape part I understand. I guess everyone feels like getting away from things every once in awhile. I enjoy writing. It takes me away from the sameness of my daily life. My wife likes to read novels that take her to exotic places ( I monitor this activity. I have on more than one occasion inadvertently “misplaced” one of her novels. I have a policy regarding this “literature”. If the guy on the front cover has no buttons on his shirt, the novel gets “misplaced“.) My daughter’s like to put on their headphones and listen to their favorite singers. My son prefers for me to lecture him. Nothing makes him daydream quicker than that.
Sometimes I think our sanity is directly connected to escapism. It’s as inherent to mankind as over-eating at Thanksgiving. We all need an escape sometimes. God knows. That’s why I think HE suggests we get alone with HIM on a regular basis. I have this little place beside my old stereo in my bedroom closet. Sometimes, when the world is closing in on me faster than a sales clerk in the men’s suit department at Sears, I take my bible and my flashlight and I sit down behind my old stereo in the closet. It smells a little like moth balls in there, but I don’t mind. After all these years, my time in the closet is still the greatest escape I know. I’ll admit there are no Persian rugs, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
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