"Public Enemies" looking for extras for Aurora shoot

Apparently the casting company for the Johnny Depp film "Public Enemies" is looking for more extras when the crew moves about 85 miles away to Aurora in April 5 and 6.

Males need to be less than 6-foot-2 with a jacket size no larger than 44, while females need to be shorter than 5-foot-8 with a dress size no larger than 10

Those not matching the size requirements are asked not to audition.

Joan Philo Casting, (312) 924-1840.

Johnny Depp's Gift To Sophie

The family of Johnny Depp fan Sophie Wilkinson is hoping Johnny can wake up their 17-year-old daughter. The teenager has been in a coma since an accident five months ago, when a truck collided with the car she was in.

Sophie’s father, Andrew, wrote to the Pirates of the Caribbean star, asking for help.

“We are looking for the key to wake her up, so we wrote to Johnny and he said he would do the recording in the voice of Jack Sparrow,” he said.

Depp was so moved by Mr. Wilkinson’s letter that he recorded the message, and said that he would also try to visit her in the hospital.

Public Enemies Filming Crown Point

Shooting continues at Crown Point in front of the Old Lake County Courthouse and jail.

Public Enemies Takes A Break

Johnny Depp has left Columbus, WI. for the Easter weekend, he's scheduled to be back on location in Crown Point, IN on Monday, March 24

Public Enemies Day 3 - Darlington

The Lafayette County courthouse was closed to the public Wednesday for day 3 of Filming the movie "Public Enemies". Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton will greet the cast and crew of "Public Enemies" at 11 a.m. Today at the Columbus Visitor Center, which was converted into a bank to be "robbed" earlier this week.
(Click on the Title for more photos)

Public Enemies Day 2 - Columbus

Nice photo shot on Day 2 of Filming in Columbus. Thanks to all these guys who are out there getting these shots. Next stop Darlington?, with Christian Bale and Marion Cotillard. (Click on the Title for more info)

Public Enemies - First day of Shooting

First look at filming on the set of Public Enemies, picture of Johnny Depp and Michael Mann driving in downtown Columbus Monday during the filming of the movie.

Picture courtesy of Madison.com (click on title for more pictures)

Johnny Depp to Portray Eccentric Artist 'Dali'.

According to some news paper reports, Johnny is so desperate to play Dali he is holding auditions for screenwrites to write him a screenplay about surrealist painter Salvador Dali.

Currently Al Pacino will play artist Salvador Dali in "Dali & I: The Surreal Story," with Andrew Niccol directing which is due to open 2009. The movie will cover the life of Dali through the eyes of Lauryssens, a young art dealer who knew Dali and his wife Gala.

Johnny Depp's Gift To David Hasselhoff

Johnny Depp has delighted David Hasselhoff by presenting him with the barbers chair used in his movie Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street.

The former Baywatch star was stunned by Depp's kind gesture after the Pirates Of The Caribbean star learned of Hasselhoff's battle to get his own antique barber's chair back from his ex Pamela Bach's Los Angeles home.

Latest News - Heath Ledger Role

Johnny Depp has agreed to take part in the movie "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus". Heath Ledger was cast to portray a mysterious outsider,named Tony.

Storyline: In the present day, immortal 1,000-year-old Doctor Parnassus (Plummer) leads a traveling theater troupe that offers audience members a chance to go beyond reality through a magical mirror in his possession. Parnassus had been able to guide the imagination of others through a deal with the Devil, who now comes to collect on the arrangement, targeting the doctor's daughter. The troupe, who is joined by a mysterious outsider named Tony (Ledger) embark through parallel worlds to rescue the girl.

Bryan Burrough: From Page to Screen

Another interesting article by Bryan Burrough Vanity Fair, talking about how his book Public Enemies went from Page to Screen Bryan Burrough: From Page to Screen
by Bryan Burrough March 12, 2008, 11:59 AM

From time to time, just about every Vanity Fair writer has a chance to sell rights to an article or a book to Hollywood. In most cases, you sell the rights—if you’re lucky, that means a new refrigerator—you get a few weeks of dinner-table gossip out of it, and then wait. And wait. And wait. And then after a year or two the whole thing melts into nothingness. I don’t know the figures, but Hollywood must buy 100 rights for every movie that actually gets made.

A movie based on my book, “Public Enemies,” which the director Michael Mann is set to begin filming next week in rural Wisconsin, had an unusually circuitous route to the screen (and it’s not there yet.) All the way back in 1999, when I first stumbled upon the idea of a project tracking John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson and all the major Depression-era bank robbers, I thought the subject was too big to be a single book. Instead, with a friend’s help, I pitched the idea as a miniseries to HBO. To my amazement, they bought it.

With the stroke of a pen, I found myself not only a screenwriter but an executive producer, along with Robert DeNiro’s Tribeca Films, of what was being billed as a major television event. I had no idea what to do. I didn’t know the first thing about screenwriting. The only thing I knew about television was that Law & Order aired on Wednesdays at ten. Still, I plunged forward, buying up a stack of screenwriting texts and starting research on Dillinger and Bonnie & Clyde and their peers. About six months in, I realized the subject might indeed fit into one book, so I signed a book contract as well.

Needless to say, the book work went much better than the screenwriting. My scripts, I suspect, were very, very bad. Ishtar bad. HBO and Tribeca, bless their hearts, brought in one screenwriter, then another, to take over the writing, while I dived headlong into book work. It took another year or two, but in time the whole TV project died quietly.

By the summer of 2004, “Public Enemies” the book was set to be published, and I did something I’d never tried. I asked HBO to return the movie rights. To my surprise, they agreed. And a few weeks after the book came out, the rights were promptly (re)sold to production companies representing Michael Mann and Leonardo DiCaprio. DiCaprio, I gathered, was interested in playing Dillinger. After one meeting with their representatives, I heard practically nothing for three years. When I thought about the project at all, I figured the whole thing had died—for a second time.

Then, out of the blue, I came into my office three months ago to find a friend had e-mailed me the front page of Variety. One of the lead stories reported that Johnny Depp had entered into talks with Mann to play Dillinger—DiCaprio had apparently dropped out—and that the movie project was not only still alive, it about to be “greenlighted” by Universal. It took a few weeks for it to hit me: After eight long years, it was really happening.

Film1 Rembrandt 2008 Awards For Pirates

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End came out tops on Monday evening at the Hotel Arena in Amsterdam for the Film1 Rembrandt Awards. Johnny won for Best Foreign Actor. Keira Knightley won Best Actress and Best Foreign Film went to Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. The Film1 Rembrandt Awards is the only awards voted by the Dutch public.

Mann & Depp At Dillinger Homestead

Mann and his Dillinger, Johnny Depp, stopped by the old Dillinger homestead in Mooresville, Indiana, where they chatted with the outlaw’s nephew, Jeff Scalf, and poked their way through the home where Dillinger was raised. From Bryan Burrough: Behind the Book, Not the Camera Vanity Fare

Bryan Burrough: Behind the Book, Not the Camera

Here is a great article by Bryan Burrough talking about Public Enemies on Vanity Fair

Bryan Burrough: Behind the Book, Not the Camera by Bryan Burrough March 7, 2008, 1:08 PM

There’s always a slight tension when you sell a book to Hollywood, especially a nonfiction book. The author wants his story told intact; the nonfiction author wants it told accurately. A moviemaker, though, has to have his own storytelling priorities, and these may or may not be the same as the author’s. And when the book, one I wrote called Public Enemies, tells the story of legendary American gangsters like John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson, there’s every reason to believe those priorities will diverge.

Because, let’s be honest, Hollywood has a poor track record of telling these stories accurately. Bonnie and Clyde, while one of the best movies ever made, was far more interested in portraying Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker as romantic anti-establishment Robin Hoods than what they really were: white-trash spree killers. Dillinger, who will be the focus of the Public Enemies movie the director Michael Mann is now preparing to shoot in rural Wisconsin, hasn’t fared any better. I only dimly remember the 1945 Lawrence Tierney Dillinger, and, thankfully, I never saw the 1990s-era Dillinger starring, of all people, Mark Harmon.

The Dillinger most people remember was John Milius’s 1973 movie, starring Warren Oates as Dillinger. A terrific film, I grant you, but it had little basis in fact. Both the hippie princess Michelle Phillips, as Dillinger’s hard-living girl Billie Frechette, and stolid Ben Johnson as the F.B.I.’s Melvin Purvis, were woefully miscast. The story itself ignored most every fact of Dillinger’s career. Milius was more interested in the look and feel of Dillinger’s Depression than accuracy.

Which is the main reason I was so pleased when Michael Mann bought the rights to Public Enemies. (And not just because his check didn’t bounce.) Mann, whose reputation for historical accuracy arose from his filming of 1992’s The Last of the Mohicans, has rooted his screenplay in the facts of Dillinger’s life. He will film at the actual Little Bohemia lodge in northern Wisconsin where Dillinger, in his most famous gunfight, shot it out with the F.B.I. And at the real Crown Point jail in Indiana where Dillinger staged his most famous escape.

Just the other day, Mann and his Dillinger, Johnny Depp, stopped by the old Dillinger homestead in Mooresville, Indiana, where they chatted with the outlaw’s nephew, Jeff Scalf, and poked their way through the home where Dillinger was raised. The French actress who will portray Billie Frechette, Marion Cotillard, meanwhile, has been spotted at the Wisconsin Indian reservation where Billie grew up, interviewing women there in hopes of picking up Frechette’s vocal inflections.

I’ve read the Public Enemies script and, no, it’s not 100 percent historically accurate. But it’s by far the closest thing to fact Hollywood has attempted, and for that I am both excited and quietly relieved.