Denise Does Johnny

Pirates 5 Re-shoot in Vancouver, BC Canada (part 1)

A tale with quite an incredible ending.

First a brief back story…..

About 13 years ago (at age 12), our daughter,  and a high school buddy decided to pick up a camera and make countless movies (one day hoping to make it their career). Coincidentally, it was also the year of the first installment of POTC (summer of 2003). I won’t lie that the Pirate franchise has truly played a huge role in our family …. but besides the obvious, one of the roles was inspiring a passion in film for our daughter and foreseeing a future in the industry. Not only did our daughter dress up with me to attend many gigs, events and charity fundraisers as a Mom/daughter (Jack/Will~Angelica) duo, we also spent a lot of fun Mom/daughter (pirate/pirate) time filming and re-enacting scenes from POTC 1 – 4 that were doable depending on our surroundings and locations.

So here’s the actual story……

Each time a new POTC installment was announced to be made, I joked to my family saying: “The Production should really come here to BC Canada to film at least parts of it….after all we have many islands, we have white sandy beaches…OCEAN surrounds us, Victoria has a downtown that looks like old England…..”, but I knew darned well that would never happen… we’re Canada after all. From that, our daughter would comment: “How wonderful it would be to work on Pirates as a crew member. I would give an arm and a leg to be on board that production” …. but when installment 2 and 3 came and went, that was about the time she had just finished High School. No chance there. Of course everyone thought that was it for Pirates, until Disney announced POTC 4. This time it landed on the year of our daughter’s graduation from Film School. So again, no chance. After 4 was released, we thought “now” the franchise was done. In the meantime, our daughter climbed her way up the steep “film” ladder and now has a pretty impressive IMDb at a young age along with a Leo nomination for the end of May. Then Disney announced POTC 5. Again we joked … “wouldn’t it be wonderful if you got to be on set this (most likely), final installment?” But when we learned it was being filmed in Australia…. okay, nice dream.

But then….. bizarrely…. as luck would have it…. POTC 5 had a lot of re-shoots to finish up. With our low Canadian dollar and the lead actress, who was on set “Maze Runner”, (also being filmed in Vancouver), the POTC Production “did” indeed come to Vancouver, Canada. With so many productions happening here in BC (hence the nickname, “Hollywood North”) with studios full and all crew employed, not only did our son in law score a position on set POTC 5, so DID our daughter. Her words were, “I can now scratch being on set POTC off my bucket list”.

So the old saying “dreams do come true” ~ in many cases it is true. If you work hard enough and believe hard enough you shall succeed. Even though our daughter was only part of a “re-shoot”, she was still a part of the billion dollar franchise and the inspiration that initially pushed her into a film career she has always dreamed of.

People thought we were “NUTS” …. well looks like “nuts” paid off.

So who would have ever thought that after 13 years of admiring from afar, our daughter could actually say: “I stood on the Black Pearl”.

On the Way Home From a Johnny Depp Gig…

On the way home from the SAUVAGE gig, I had the most hilarious and rewarding circumstance happen to me while driving on the way home.  Even behind the wheel I try to maintain character by sitting and manoeuvring like a guy, mostly for this very next reason:  I was in heavy traffic on the way home and was at a dead standstill several times.  At one point a car full of young ladies driving in the left lane (as I was in the right), had spotted me and as I looked over, the shocked expressions on their faces pretty much said it all.  The traffic in my lane started to move and I was now several car lengths ahead of them.  At that moment, a most interesting thing happened.   As I Looked in my rear view mirror (and might add that I had the biggest chuckle), for what I saw were 4 arms reaching out of the window of this little Nissan, each clutching a cell phone in their hand waiting to see if they would drive past me again.  As traffic slowed down in my lane, they caught up to my vehicle. I looked over, smiled and waved and all 5 girls in the car giggled with glee.  It was obvious they were video taping what they thought was Johnny Depp.

Seasonal Banners

Many of Johnny Depps’ characters I have portrayed are fun to recreate into a Season Greetings.  Here are a few of my creations.

HALLOWEEN – Sweeney Todd is an appropriate character for the gory season.

THANKSGIVING – I found the Tonto character fitting for this holiday season.

CHRISTMAS – Jack Sparrow, Mad Hatter and Willy Wonka worked for this Holiday.

NEW YEAR’S – Jack Sparrow was an obvious candidate for this festivity.

Signing Body Parts of Fans

Having signed several children’s shins, arms and foreheads last year and this year at the Ladysmith Pirate Days,  I was amused to stumble across a photo of Johnny Depp, (while filming POTC 5:  “Dead Men Tell No Tales”) several weeks later after my event, to be doing the very same thing…. in this case signing a woman’s tatoo of Captain Jack Sparrow on her shin.  

Hmmmm….. could I be impersonating like thoughts possibly?  Maybe?  Perhaps? Just a thought…..

Mistaken For The Real Johnny Depp

A post on Facebook caught my eye and it drew me to a Johnny Depp Facebook page. There I saw that the administrator had shared the following post from the page of “Nights with Alice Cooper”:

“HAPPY THURSDAY from your night-ghoul Alice Cooper! Listen to his little program this eve for a Cooper’s Cover AND TRIVIA on Pink Floyd, a This Day in Rock honoring the death of Stevie Ray Vaughan, PLUS, a special Vinyl Siding from Ruby Starr! Plus, it’s a NEW Hollywood Vampires song from Coop, Joe Perry and Johnny Depp, plus email requests from actual listeners like YOU !”

It is always an honour to be mistaken for the real celebrity you are trying to mirror, now as part of his new band HOLLYWOOD VAMPIRES, with Alice Cooper and Joe Perry.

“This has to account for something, aye?”

“Oh Canada!”

As a Canadian from British Columbia, Canada I wish everyone a safe and wonderful Canada Day 2015!   Savvy…. eh!

Celebrating ‘Canada Day’ pirate style