Johnny Depp.org

What we have here is the product of two men. After his screenplay for “Seven” was produced, Andrew Kevin Walker’s retelling of this Washington Irving story was sold and promptly sat on the shelf for a few years. Director Tim Burton, after a long string of artistic and commercial successes, had a pair of setbacks. His cinematic adaptation of the “Mars Attacks!” trading cards was all sight-gags, and no soul. Recently, he spent a year in pre-production on a Superman movie, only to have Warner Bros pull the plug a couple of months before filming would begin. In a no-brainer, the director and the script found each other. There are two things that make this the perfect Burton project. The first is the latest addition to his gallery of beloved outcasts, Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp)- by Ron Wells for Film Threat.

In this version of the tale, Crane is not a schoolteacher, but a New York City constable in 1799 (though still a foppish girly-man). At this time, superstition and piety still rule the populace. After a childhood trauma, Crane has rejected both in favor of science and reason. When attempting to apply both to police work, the would-be forensic scientist is ridiculed and sent upstate to apply his “detecting” skills to a series of murders in a small village called “Sleepy Hollow”.

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Brooding Johnny muses on his motley career and reinventing Ichabod Crane for Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow – by Rob Blackwelder.

Blackwelder: You’ve said you patterned the character after Roddy McDowell, Angela Lansbury in “Death On the Nile” and the old Sherlock Holmes. How did you use those influences to create Ichabod?

Depp: It’s funny, because what happens to me when I read a script, when something grabs hold of me, I start getting these flashes of people or places or things or images…With “Sleepy Hollow,” I was (after) the kind of drive that Basil Rathbone had as Sherlock Holmes, but what’s going on behind that is total and utter confusion. Basil Rathbone knew exactly what he was talking about. He hit in on every note. Ichabod would (seem to) hit it, but he would miss it, in fact.

With Roddy,…he had this very ethereal quality (I wanted), and (with) Angela Lansbury (it was) the energy, the sort of righteousness that she had. I haven’t even seen “Death On the Nile” since I was very young, but she was this force, she was this presence. So those are the ingredients and you just sort of mash then all together and see what you come up with. It’s always dangerous when you try that stuff. With Ed Wood, it was this sort of blending of Ronald Reagan, the Tin Man from “The Wizard of Oz” and Casey Kasem.

Copyright Contactmusic.com Ltd 2005

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