From The Blood Of Brando

“Most of the successful people in Hollywood are failures as human beings.” ― Marlon Brando

The novelty rock band actor Johnny Depp joined call themselves The Hollywood Vampires. This collaboration might be more apropos than Depp even realizes. As a longtime favorite actor in Hollywood Depp is already born from a chosen lineage that for a lifetime has passed down the traits and the trademarks of a head Nosferatu. Vampires pass down a dark heritage of grief, harm and heartache all built upon a legacy of blood. For seven decades now in Hollywood there is one man who has remained the nexus from which virtually every other male actor who followed arose from, giving birth to the male movie star that we still know today. Legendary Actor Marlon Brando reconstructed the terrain of acting beginning in 1950 when he hit down like a thunderstroke onto the theater and motion picture landscape. Brando was a star almost overnight. Likely no other actor ever became that successful and that famous that fast. His impact was so colossal that today Brando is comprehensively regarded as the single most influential actor of his generation and credibly respected throughout most rational realms as the greatest actor that has ever lived. Brando radically altered the conventional method of playing a role and undoubtedly no film or theater artist ever aroused and conceived as many predecessors as he. This is predominantly true of male actors who exuberantly tracked Brando’s footprints. Brando reworked the collective psyche of the American Male Actor. Study him. Worship him. Copy him. Strive to be him. He sunk his teeth into a legion of actors who trailed him, and they were so infected by his seductive bite that they even continue his blood legacy in the film industry today. What The Beatles were to rock stars who followed them Brando is that times a hundred to male movie stars. Brando’s influence doesn’t stop at male actors. He’s influenced and inspired a legion of actresses, writers, directors, even producers and audiences. When he changed the course of acting, he also changed the course of filmmaking and the content of films. He changed what films could be and what they needed to be to better hold and assist in expressing his new type of acting. This new brand of filmmaking and acting known as the method approach became the gold standard in Hollywood. The shadowing of Brando started very early on even with many of his contemporaries, most notably James Dean. Dean ferociously imitated Brando’s acting and also what Dean imagined to be Brando’s way of life and his attitude toward the business of movies. Brando and Dean’s utilization of method acting was freshly intense to audiences in its truthful conveying of a hyper reality of emotions that seemed to be actually happening to them in every intense moment. It was a technique that relayed much more of a sensation into the audience than the classical acting method and exhibited more complex feelings while laying down a thicker framework that more deeply demonstrated the current and more youthful and sensitive human condition that was dying to express itself and see itself expressed back on screen. Other Brando contemporaries like Paul Newman, Jack Lemmon, and even classical actors like Laurence Olivier, who up until Brando came around was considered the greatest ever thought of Brando as a wholly genius. Another contemporary of Brando’s Peter O’Toole was regarded by critics as to be channeling his performance through Brando who was originally wanted for the role that ended up going to O’Toole in Lawrence Of Arabia. Paul Newman was checked by film critics for “doing Brando” in a number of his early roles. In step with the craft of acting Brando also reshaped the concept of what the superstar male actor's life was and could be. Of course, Brando’s lifestyle involved being a compulsive, narcissistic, egomaniacal, self-involved philanderer and also wealthy beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Superstar actor Jack Nicholson, who began his career in the late 1950’s entirely venerated Brando and followed in his career and lifestyle path including demanding huge paydays for just a few days of work. Hauling in a king’s ransom of accolades and golden statuettes while his personality revealed an explosive temper, contempt for the press, a penchant for maintaining a secluded lifestyle while still managing nights of hard partying and committing notorious acts of womanizing and adultery. Like most of the Actors who would eventually fill up his coven, after he was done with himself women were Brando’s biggest obsession. Brando’s countless affairs are overwhelming. He fathered fourteen children with a multitude of women. In his own words Brando frankly described what he felt was his sexual quandary “I don’t think I was constructed to be monogamous” Brando said, “Men are propelled by genetically ordained impulses over which they have no control to distribute their seed into as many females as possible.” Brando unquestionably followed his impulses in this area. The intense aspiration to so thoroughly plant his seed flung Brando enthusiastically into countless sexual dalliances and entanglements with numerous women. It also led to cruelty, and much pain and despair. Brando planted his seed literally and emblematically with the legion of children and actors who grew after him in the fertile soil he left behind personally and professionally. The mindset that Brando and his brethren have of conquering as many women as possible and getting what they want from as many women as they can doesn’t equally apply to the women. The women must be loyal and serving and if not, they are discarded like yesterday’s teen beat magazine. Girlfriends and wives are expected to behave properly and as property. An actress who had a relationship with Brando for nearly ten years Rita Moreno explained in detail the toxicity and the abuse she received at the hands of Brando “He was a bad guy when it came to women. I was such a different person then. I had all the makings of a doormat.” While still in a relationship with Moreno Brando pursued other women, marrying Anna Kashfi in 1957 and Movita Castaneda in 1960 and fathering children with both of them. Not long after a reconciliation, Moreno found out she was pregnant with Brando’s child, but his reaction was not at all what she expected. “To my shock and horror, Marlon immediately arranged for an abortion,” recalling that he arranged for someone else to pick her up after the procedure, which was illegal at the time. But things hadn’t gone smoothly. Moreno soon found out the fetus was still inside of her and had to be removed surgically at the hospital. Instead of sympathy, Brando expressed anger that the person who performed the abortion had wronged him. Brando then jet set off to Tahiti to make his next film Mutiny on the Bounty, where he began another affair this time with co-star Tarita Teriipaia. “Seeing him with yet another woman was all too much.” Moreno stated. When he returned home, Moreno swallowed a bunch of his sleeping pills in one gulp. “I went to bed to die,” she wrote in her book ‘Rita Moreno: A Memoir.’ “This wasn’t a revenge suicide, but a consolation, an escape-from-pain death.” And if it weren’t for his assistant finding her and rushing her to the hospital to get her stomach pumped, her fate may have been completely different. Looking back, she said “It was humiliating, and I was letting him step all over me. I wanted to get rid of myself because I didn't think I deserved to live.” Brando conveyed no possible recourse for Moreno or ever showed any remorse for what happened to her. In fact, he seemed to enjoy it on some level because Brando was in love with the fact that women hunted him like wild game and then threw themselves into dangerous despair because they couldn’t let go of him. In Brando’s autobiography “Songs My Mother Taught Me” Brando gleefully and arrogantly writes about his voracious sex life and the women who were so infatuated with him. While jubilantly professing his many sexual encounters with women Brando admits that many of them were complete strangers who randomly showed up at his house. Brando rejoices in telling stories of how women found him to be so attractive and irresistible. Including one particularly mentally disturbed woman he writes about who Brando found one day inside his house and Brando says she actually thought I was God. Brando took advantage of this mentally ill woman by having sexual intercourse with her and assuring her that he was God, and that the sex was all okay. Brando thinking he’s God, the woman might not have been as crazy as he thought. Brando may have not thought he was God, but he put himself up there pretty close as a deity in the heavens when it came to women. Brando was cruel to women all through his life using them to fulfill his needs and then abandoning them when he was done. Brando’s treatment of women and ideas about them was either art imitating life or life imitating art. It’s up for debate but much of it can be found within his work. In a Streetcar Named Desire. The role that first put Brando on the map Brando stakes his claim that he is the man, and the inferior women surrounding him as the head of the table better never forget it. Like Brando the men of his acting brethren play sensitive and tough simultaneously, masculine, and feminine. It’s really a tactic of whatever works, works. It’s a honey trap for adoring female fans. In 1994’s Don Juan Demarco, which Brando and Johnny Depp joined forces in order to give women “the pleasure they so desired from them.” The two actors play characters who supposedly love women so much that it can’t even be understood by another human being. The movie is really about men’s fantasies about women or more correctly their misunderstandings of women and the fantasies they have about themselves. Men who claim to be hopeless lovelorn romantic devotees of women often hide a duplicitous agenda and are actually fervent haters of women in many ways and don’t really know women that well. They don’t want to know the genuine matters that make a woman the person she is. They don’t actually care what she thinks or really cares about. They’re in love with a fantasy that’s enamored with them. The women have to be a character to be loved because they actually hate a real person that they can’t control. This torn up heartthrob and pained Casanova act is something Brando and Depp both radiated throughout their lives. Many of Brando’s film show an even more disturbing abuse and neglect of women as respected human beings. Brando was infamously involved in one of the most controversial movies and scenes in film. In his 1972 film Last Tango In Paris Brando’s character rapes actress Marie Schneider’s character using a stick of butter as lubricant. The criminality of the scene is that Director Bernardo Bertolucci and Brando thought of the idea on their own without involving the young actress. “The sequence of the butter is an idea that I had with Marlon in the morning before shooting it,” Bertolucci has confirmed. “I’d been, in a way, horrible to Maria, because I didn’t tell her what was going on because I wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an actress.” “I wanted her to react humiliated,” he said. “I think she hated me and also Marlon because we didn’t tell her.” “To obtain something I think you have to be completely free,” he said. “I didn’t want Maria to act her humiliation, her rage, I wanted Maria to feel the rage and humiliation. Then she hated me for all of her life.” Schneider’s detailed revelation about the incident only came to light recently. “Marlon said to me: Marie don’t worry, it’s just a movie, but during the scene even though what Marlon was doing wasn’t real I was crying real tears.” She said “I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci. After the scene, Marlon didn’t console me or apologize.” In his autobiography Brando recalls that the scene was thought up as an alternative to something else that had been planned because as Brando says it was a freezing day and “His penis shrunk up to the size of a peanut and he felt humiliated in front of the crew” making Bertolucci unable to film him in the nude. Whether it was in the name of art or not it’s hard not to make the link of an angry man with a little penis taking his frustrations out on a woman because instead of him having to expose his sexual organs which would be the focus of the scene, he and the director decided to abuse the woman instead and turn the humiliation onto her. Brando was and continues to be lauded for his performance in Last Tango In Paris at an almost preposterously renowned level. Even though the film itself has lost a lot of shine as far as accolades are concerned, his performance in it is still widely believed to be one of the premiere and iconic works by an actor ever put on film. Mostly because other actors and filmmakers loved how Brando bared his soul in front of the camera. Many actors felt it was a performance that captured an artistic reveal of who Brando really was almost to the bone and inside his real character. If Last Tango and Streetcar Named Desire are in his real character, then by any sense of logic so was the abusing of a woman element in the performances. Part of what Brando showed in many films was his personal ability to abuse women and get what he needed and walk away never looking back. The fascination and affinity Actors who followed him have for Brando might be tied to the way he was revered, admired, and celebrated largely by women, not to mention by his ardent fan bases, by film critics, by journalists, by movie historians, and by masses of movie audiences. All the King’s men want a piece of that no matter any possible harsh consequences even if it’s just for a little while. Brando had great contempt and rancor for the press with whom he played many mind games. This is another trait as a grand elder that he passed down to the next generations. Brando was noted for his unprofessionalism and selfishness on the set of his films. Often showing up late or not at all. Making everyone around him wait because he was the most important thing. Producers and Directors shamefully facilitated Brando’s conduct by putting him on such a high pedestal above everyone else. Often letting him operate by a separate set of rules and rearranging other people’s schedules and lives for him. Constantly pursuing Brando for roles even when he said he was done with acting and didn’t want to work anymore. Giving in to Brando by paying him outrageous fees for only a few days of work, often times a million dollars a week. Giving Brando extra perks and rewards that nobody else received. The rule was everyone else needed to be on time, but Brando could be late. This permitted and encouraged Brando to see just how much he could get away with as he continued this process well into the twilight of his career as the next wave of filmmakers and actors continued to enable it. When they let Brando get away with what he got away with they set a precedent for other actors who followed to want to get away with the same. That behavior and getting away with it became a silent clause in the contract, part of the pay. It’s still a part of it all today. Brando’s magnetism was an alluring factor in why so many young males needed to be him. Desperately coveting that kind of appeal and eagerly accepting that type of adoration. Many of these actors were not popular in childhood and in school and weren’t popular with girls as Brando admittingly wasn’t either. Many of them were shy and they gravitated toward acting as a way to overcome their shyness and get all the attention onto them and get noticed. It’s like having an opening line to use on any girl who’s watching and may be interested yet still having them to be the ones to take the biggest risk by making the first move. It’s the ability to get a date by not having to do much. Many of them feel lost in life with no direction and no idea what they want to do with their lives. They have childhoods disconnected from their families even their parents and they find a new family in the movie business. The bench of Brando’s chosen bloodline is a deep one that spans generations. Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Duvall, Sean Penn, Charlie Sheen, John Cusack, Rob Lowe, Robert Redford, Matthew Broderick, John Travolta, Matt Dillon, Ben Affleck, Alec Baldwin, Matt Damon, Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts, Robert Downey, Jr. Kevin Spacey, Richard Gere, Mel Gibson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Edward Norton, Jude Law, Shia Babeuf, Brad Pitt, are just a few high-profile examples among a whole passel of actors from generations past who demonstrably tracked Brando’s path. The ultimate example and almost certainly the actor who mimics Brando’s approach to acting and the manipulative conducting of his career the most is Johnny Depp. Possibly because Depp unlike Christopher Reeve worshipped at the altar of Brando and perhaps more than any others. Working with Brando on films on two occasions Depp also grew to be very close and friendly with Brando and rooted himself in Brando’s good graces. More so than the others in the family. Just like James Dean, Depp mimicked Brando’s acting technique and his lifestyle, his approach to working, his tactic of dealing with the media and his approach to his personal relationships with women can be tied to Brando as well. Brando didn’t invent the mass womanizing of Hollywood starlets, but he certainly became the modern-day vanguard. Actors like Laurence Olivier, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole, Oliver Reed, Richard Burton may have been hard drinkers and womanizing night animals, but they were also often married to one woman, had some healthy relationships including with their children. They also showed up on time and played nicely with other actors and lived somewhat normal lives, not putting themselves above everyone else in the company. They were also raconteurs and able to tell interesting, fun-filled, breezy stories while having blustery conversations that were mostly available and pleasant. Brando’s interviews were almost always somewhat depressing and cold, withdrawn, highly uncomfortable, erratic, met with clumsy confrontation and just plain weird. Brando’s goal every time seems to be an attempt to passively aggressively confuse or embarrass the interviewer in order to control them and the Interview. Over the years Depp has adopted many of Brando’s eccentricities and devices. Depp has mastered the art of media manipulation and publicity to garner a township full of adoring and even crazed fans who are able to ignore the evil that he does and even conduct some of the evil for him as they did when they ruthlessly attacked his ex-wife Amber Heard during his court case and after. Like Brando Depp claims not to seek attention and the wish to keep his personal life confidential yet like Brando Depp has always chosen the highest possible profile relationships with the most famous actresses or supermodels of the day. The tall tale told of Depp over the years is that somehow, he stuck a finger in Hollywood’s eye while waiving off their plans for his career and blazing his own trail. This is a carbon copy of a fiction that always claimed for Brando. Yet Depp’s career like Brand’s has always been conducted within the studio system of Hollywood and Depp and Brando both demanded huge paychecks for their art. This Dalai lama renegade persona they both implored was just a way to have their cake and eat it too. It’s a strategy that worked for Brando and Depp. Play like you’re such an eccentric genius that you can’t be bothered with convention because you’re so special of an artist and people will give you things. Feign that you suffer so much for your work and don’t really care about money or fame. Being a victim of the Hollywood system and of the press is partially what endears parts of their audience to them. Of course, it’s all just a strategy to get what they want and have things their way. Depp, like Brando, is also an artist in the theater of duplicity. Depp might dress like someone you’d see living on the street near the sunset strip, but he owns over a dozen multimillion dollar residences all over the world and spends $30,000 a month on wine alone. He dropped $5 Million dollars just to have his friend the late Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes ridiculously shot out of a cannon in Aspen, Colorado. Depp spends time on a mega yacht with the owner who just happens to be Saudi Arabian Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman. For a guy trying to carry the persona of such a rugged individualist and a rebel, Depp is one of the most demanding and pampered actors in Hollywood. Depp has a security team bigger than Beyonce’s. According to a source familiar with Depp’s contracts, “Celebrities have security, but not teams doing overlapping, 24-hour shifts like Depp’s.” In addition to a personal sound technician to manage his earpiece needs “so he doesn’t have to learn lines,” and you can add that to another characteristic Depp snatched from Brando who also refused to learn his lines. Using the excuse that it made him more spontaneous when the real reason was as Brando’s director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now Francis Ford Coppola unashamedly blurted out for us all to hear is that “Marlon Is lazy and simply does not want to take the time to learn his lines.” Lately Depp has mutated into the shell of Marlon Brando with fervor. Too much carousing, consuming too many women, too many drugs, too much alcohol, too much celebrity and mostly just too much Depp. Brando managed to stay away from drug addiction, but he still overdosed on excess. Especially with food as he almost overdosed on himself, and Depp is careening down that path of self-exposure and destruction as well. Even Depp’s malicious lawsuit against his ex-wife Actress Amber Heard has Marlon Brando’s vindictiveness written all over it. Depp exudes more toxicity the older he gets, much like Brando. Brando filed an egregious $50 million lawsuit against the producers and the distributors of the 1978 movie “Superman” for allegedly violating terms of an agreement for the actor's services in the film. In addition to damages, the suit asked that the defendants be enjoined from showing the film or using “the name, acts, poses, appearances, performances, image, likeness, voice and/or other personal attributes” This was a remarkably spiteful, egomaniacal, and avaricious act by Brando considering that he agreed to play Superman’s father in “Superman” for a salary that even today remains unprecedented. Brando was paid $3.7 million and a 11.75% backend to play Superman’s dad Jor-El, for thirteen days work for less than twenty minutes of screen time. Like Brando Depp also turned against and walked all over the people closest to him and who helped him become a rich and famous star. The late Christopher Reeve who played Superman acknowledged that he was disappointed with his experience with Brando, saying the Oscar-winning actor who played his onscreen father was only in it for the money and it showed. “I don’t say this to be vicious, but I don’t worship at the altar of Marlon Brando, because I feel he’s copped out in a certain way,” Reeve said. “What happened is the press loved him whether he was good, bad or indifferent; that people just thought he was an institution no matter what he did, so he doesn’t care anymore.” Reeve said, in his opinion, Brando could have been a great beacon to younger actors, such as himself, but he threw in the towel. “I just think it would be sad to be 53, or whatever he is, and not give a damn, that’s all,” Reeve said, making it clear he would say the same to Brando’s face, Reeve added, “He could be a real leader for us.” When asked if it was exciting to work with Brando, Reeve replied: “Not really. No. I had a wonderful time, but the man didn’t care. He just took the Millions and ran.” Reeve may not have worshipped at the altar of Marlon Brando, but most other actors did, and Brando became a leader and a beacon for them in numerous respects on and off screen. Brando’s Superman payday became the stuff of Hollywood legend. Brando disciple Jack Nicholson hauled in a similar pay day a decade later to play the Joker in Batman. Including a chunk of the backend percentage like Brando and even a piece of the merchandising percentage which was unheard of at the time. Superman Director Richard Donner shared his experience with Brando. Saying he was forewarned about Brando and that “he hates to work, and he loves money.” Reeve said he was hurt because he “cared so much” and Brando was merely “phoning it in.” If Christopher Reeve was turned off by Brando phoning in performances only for the money and suing people out of anger. It begs the question of why the others like Depp weren’t. I can only imagine the reason is because what Brando did was appeal to their narcissistically cruel and self-centered natures. The Brando lawsuit was likely the kind of lawsuit Depp and fellow habitual litigator Tom Cruise would love to file themselves. Brando has even been involved in lawsuits after his death more than two dozen that his estate has been involved in since the actor’s death in 2004. The reverse Brando might be actor Daniel Day Lewis. Although he implored Brando’s use of method acting and probably even escalated it Day-Lewis learned to say something that Brando probably should have said more “No.” Day-Lewis specifically focused on quality over quantity. He said no to roles, and he said no to becoming a domineering media figure and caricature of himself which shadowed over his own work. Throughout his career Brando was cruel and even abusive to people, including his co-stars. Johnny Depp went from one assault charge to another as he was also sued by a crew member on one of his films for physical assault. Many Brando disciples like Depp have been involved in or sued for incidents of physical assault against men and women. In 1990 Brando’s Son Christian went on trial in Los Angles for murdering the boyfriend of his sister Cheyenne. After Brando’s son killed his daughter’s boyfriend his daughter Cheyenne then committed suicide. Christian Brando’s severe drug and alcohol abuse led him to an early grave after he was released from prison. The bloodline of Brando, whether it’s his actual children or the children of his acting legacy seems to frequently be met with violent conflicts, hateful outpourings, bleak times, and dark fates. James Dean died tragically in a car wreck at the early age of twenty-four trying to be the wild one. Mickey Rourke’s life after becoming one of the most talented actors of his generation has been almost a constant disaster of drugs, alcohol, charges of spousal abuse, physical assault, openly threatening other actors, producers and directors and ruining his career by spurning people who once helped him. Robert Downey, Jr. knocked on death’s door in the late 1990’s and almost walked over the threshold with his severe drug addiction and run ins with police. Sean Penn did time in jail for assault as has been filmed punching and spitting on photographers and has been a notorious womanizer who abandons women he’s dating almost as game when they reach the expiration date that he writes on them. Penn also played very well the Brando/Depp game of feigning being a sufferer for his art who wasn’t really interested in fame or money and was just a regular guy. A regular guy who was looking for so much privacy and normality that he decided to marry Madonna. Only the most famously paparazzi blitzed, and press hounded female pop star of her time. Penn, like Depp and Brando portrayed being a victim of the press to the hilt while using them to propel to stardom. Penn seemed to gather up Brando’s energy and become somewhat of a transmitter for him. Channeling Brando and inspiring a younger generation of actors like Brad Pitt, Heath Ledger, Joaquin Phoenix, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Shia LaBeouf, Ben Affleck, Ryan Gosling. Many of them have faced allegation of either abuse, sexual assault, physical battery, consuming too much alcohol and drugs and being egomaniacal personalities who are difficult to work with and unnecessarily confrontational and horrible to others. Tom Cruise seems to live a healthier life physically, but he also took Brando’s colossal ego, manipulation of the media and penchant for suing people and getting involved with the highest profile actresses while also being accused of abuse and using his church to swindle people out of as much money as possible. Some of Brando’s adherents just burned too brightly too quickly and met up hard and fast with a James Dean like destiny. River Phoenix another actor billed as the next Dean or Brando died of a drug overdose at the age of twenty-three ironically right outside the front door of Johnny Depp’s own nightclub The Viper Room in Los Angeles. Heath Ledger and Philip Seymour Hoffman who both at one point were considered the next Brando both died of drug overdoses after supposedly working too hard and suffering by getting too deep into certain roles. Val Kilmer who developed a Brando like reputation of being difficult to work with and making himself the most important person on the set life fell apart, and his health was decimated when he was diagnosed with mouth cancer and refused medical treatment because he thought he could heal it ala’ Tom Cruise with his brilliant Christian scientist mind. Alec Baldwin who admits having worshipped Brando as a young actor and followed in his footsteps by doing the role on Broadway that Brando first made famous in A Streetcar Named Desire is also renowned for assaulting photographers, verbal abuse of his daughter, and participated in an on-set shooting that led to the death of a female cinematographer of which Baldwin was charged with manslaughter for pulling the trigger of the gun. Actor Treat Williams who was tagged as another Brando and was the first actor to play Stanley Kowalski the character Brando created in Streetcar Named Desire, recently died in a motorcycle accident. Jude Law and Ben Affleck are among quite a few Brando disciples who seem to have had Brando’s “seed” predicament as both had very public blow ups in their marriages Law to actress Sienna Miller and Affleck to Actress Jennifer Garner after both like Arnold Schwarzenegger were caught having affairs with their children’s Nanny’s. Law’s acting reel is filled with scenes in films that could be easily labeled as homages to Brando if not complete rip-offs. If you look closely at all of these actors’ work, it’s inevitable that you’ll see some Brando somewhere sooner rather than later. Dustin Hoffman who declares Brando as his earliest inspiration and up until a few years ago had as much of a squeaky-clean image as one can have until he was accused of sexual harassment by a multitude of women. There are countless young actors today channeling Brando’s life on and off screen. Johnny Depp, the highest ranking of the Brando coven seems to still be leading the charge in women compiling, youthful Hollywood partying and reckless and vicious behavior even as he quickly approaches his 60’s and continues to follow a trajectory parallel to his idol Brando’s. Depp's rock band The Hollywood Vampires originally takes its name from a drinking club consisting of a group of 1970’s rock stars led by Alice Cooper and Keith Moon. The mission of the original vampires was to drink until no one could stand up. However, only in a false reality and an already undead existence can one continue that type of performance without a highly critical review coming down from mortality itself. It seems to be the exact same mission of many Actors. There is only so much partying and eating of the celebrity scenery and chewing of others and of oneself that a person can do without confronting extraordinary consequences. Even for someone who is purportedly one of Hollywood’s immortals. They may all live forever in a legacy sense but sooner or later they all fall down, forever. Johnny Depp and the rest of male Hollywood as we know it today come from Marlon Brando, and it should be entirely anticipated for them to be allowed to continue on the trail of which Brando first blazed and to expect another generation to chart the same course of their new head vampire until they all find their coffins. It’s in the blood.