Hello, Dali: Depp to Star as Artist?

Johnny Depp as Salvador Dali–truth or rumor?

Slashfilm is reporting via The New Zealand Herald that Johnny Depp is in the market for a writer who can produce a screenplay about Spanish Surrealist artist Salvador Dali. Actually, the Herald says he is “auditioning” screenwriters, which is a word you don’t usually hear applied to writers. Auditioning? Do they all come in with their laptops and a headshot, and then cold write a scene about Salvador Dali? I find this all to bizarre to contemplate. But perhaps some kind of severe audition process is necessary. After all, a “source” says that Depp is “open to working with anyone – from housewives to pensioners – if the script is right.”

The Herald article quotes Peter Rawley, supposedly a producer of the film, in reference to the fact that there are two other Dali projects in progress (Al Pacino in Dali and I and Peter O’Toole in Goodbye Dali):

“Film-makers somehow pick up on the vibe. But three films is nothing, at one stage, we counted up to nine.”

Depp is pretty busy with Public Enemies just beginning to shoot (I know they’ve been looking for extras in Wisconsin, but don’t know if principal photography has started). He also is one of the group filling in for Heath Ledger with a few scenes in The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassuss. Also somewhere on his schedule the oft-postponed Shantaram and the Hunter S. Thompson story The Rum King. So it’s unclear when he’d be doing this Dali film, what with them auditioning the huddled masses and all to find a script.

I don’t know. I can imagine Johnny Depp being drawn to Dali as a role–he was an artist who also excelled at self-promotion. He also had an awesome ‘stache.

Salvador Dali

Dali’s most best-known artwork is probably The Persistence of Memory (or the Melting Clock picture).

 But he also is famous for creating some “dream sequences” for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1945 film Spellbound.

So I can see Depp wanting to play this part, but so far this seems completely unprofessional. Auditioning screenwriters? A producer whose last credit is something from 2003 called Spy Sorge? Depp has an image as an eccentric, but that’s mostly due to his diverse selection of roles. He didn’t get this far by getting involved with shaky projects and nonprofessionals. So I’d like to see it, but I remain a skeptic.