Out of His Depp

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES | REVIEW

by James Killough

Without knowing the exact insider gossip behind the release of The Rum Diary, I can only take a somewhat educated guess as to what’s created this mess at the Mad Hatter’s tea table.

Has to be botox. HAS to be.

The film has three credited financing companies, but I imagine there is a fourth: Johnny Depp himself, a longtime friend of Hunter S. Thompson’s, who no doubt magnanimously overpaid for the rights to the novel, and wants to see his money back, which is why his has thrown his considerable weight behind the film’s PR: a Vanity Fair cover article; pieces he wrote himself for The Daily Beast and others; and a rather forced, not-very-funny “viral” video with Ricky Gervais. Otherwise, Depp has suffered a mild psychotic break and actually believes this piece of absolute tripe is worthy cinema.

The Joy of Stalking

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

Alan Cumming has a new site up dedicated to obsessions, itsasickness.com.  I would say it celebrates passions more than obsessions in the truest sense of the word, and I am hanging on the truest sense because the site does have “sickness” in its title.  And sick obsession reminds of the time I went truly mentally ill and stalked a former lover.

Knowing Alan as I do, he probably means sickness as in the recent colloquialism “That is so sick,” like it’s a really good thing.  In the video up on the site right now, Zoe Kravitz is obsessed with a green dragon plushie costume, with how it makes her feel empowered.  This isn’t my particular experience of people obsessed with plushie.  The plushophiles I’ve met are rather lovable, extreme introverts who like to dress up as cartoon characters and have kinky sex.

Zoe Kravitz vogues plushophile lite in Williamsburg for itsasickness.com.

I had a brush with plushophilia and diaper fetishists back in the early Noughties through a friend, Gene, who also had extreme social anxiety disorder (SAD).  Gene was one of a trio of people who would trigger the mnemonic that gave rise to my play Hatter, the film version of which Alan Cumming has been attached to, just so you follow my meandering train of thought.  Gene had some hilarious stories about “furries”