Before Night Falls
Arizona Dream
Finding Neverland
What's Eating Gilbert Grape
Donnie Brasco

Hell, even if it was a Burton affair, it takes gobes of balls to try and do a big budget musical these days not aimed at teenage girls ('highschool') or post menapausal women and their gays (mama mia, chicago). Don't believe me? Ask Jon Turtorro what happened to Romance & Cigarettes. Even the bizzare "this movie premise is horrible and should never work but it somehow does" Don Juan was a risk that paid off; it could have been a total cluster fuck but he dove into making it believable.


I'll never fault either for doing cash grab type movies, so long as they seem engaged in them (Depp is far more invloved with the Jack Sparrow character than, for example, Smith seemed in Wild Wild West), it allows them to do other things they believe in; for Depp, it's bringing to light more of Hunter S Thompson's work, and bully to him for it.

And another thing, FL, I'm not sure how old you are to remember this but Johnny Depp was the Zac Effron of the late 80s and early 90s; he was a heart throb to the 'nth degree, which still explains much of his present day appeal. But when 21 Jump Street was launching Fox past medicority and he was on the cover of every teeny magazine around, he could have done the total teen heart-throb, Michael J Fox cash grab pander shit and just rode out his celebrity; but making a John Waters film? Edward Scissorhands? Zac Effron doesnt make those type of gambles.