Thread by @carriecalista

A 🧵 of Johnny's worst answers.

#DARVODepp

In another time and place, Johnny Depp's performance on the stand in his VA defamation trial against ex-wife Amber Heard would have been the stuff of late night comedy. The blood fingerpainting, the corpse lust, the pretentious monologues would have been seen for what they are.

A fading Hollywood A-list actor's attempt to regain his glory by creating a stage show about a woman ruining his life would have been seen for what it is: pathetic narcissism.

Lucky for him, a combination of #MeToo fatigue, lockdown domestic stress, and an audience hungry for a redemption story allowed him to pull off a character assassination of the woman he abused.

He was aided and abetted by a clueless corporate media, comment section manipulation, and the deafening silence of the same white feminists who three years before had rallied behind Christine Blasey Ford, a woman who had far less evidence than Amber Heard did.

Just how bad was his case? This man literally admitted on covert audio that he headbutted his wife. He was caught trashing a room and yelling. And he claimed that, in a moment that defied physics and logic, she had thrown a bottle and severed one of his fingers.

Even Donald Trump didn't believe Johnny's finger story. And, yet, Johnny and his weasel lawyers prevailed in convincing a seven-person civil jury that there was no evidence of physical abuse.

He did this by a single strategy: blame the woman. Pretty much everything he said involved blaming either Amber or his mother, Betty Sue, for his actions. His entire life is one big reaction to the women in his life, apparently.

It reached such a misogynistic fever pitch that I expected lawyer Rebecca Meyers to pull out this photo and ask how eight-year-old Amber had caused this 1994 arrest, one of several in Johnny's history.

In addition to the evidence squarely supporting Amber, Johnny gave a long string of ghastly, logic-defying answers. This thread will examine them.

Let's start small. After testifying that Amber had thrown a handle of vodka at him and severed his middle finger (without noticable damage to the rest of his hand), Johnny was confronted with a series of contemporaneous texts in which he told people he had chopped his finger off.

This is how he explained why the language he used didn't mean that he had done it himself:
youtube.com/clip/Ugkx2EgV5…

The point he's trying to make -- badly -- is that his language choices don't reflect the particularities of the incident. But even still he is not making sense. "I chopped my finger off" is the active voice. It is used when the subject ("I") is doing the action ("chopped").

The passive voice --"My finger was chopped off" -- could be used to deflect blame away from Amber without naming her. So he literally could have kept the secret with a grammar choice. He seems to almost be on the cust of understanding that.

It may sound like I am nitpicking grammar. My larger point is about his lack of effective preparation. What he could have said was, "I meant that my finger was chopped off, not that I had chopped it off myself."

Regardless of language choices, it still doesn't make sense why he lied to people in his inner circle about what happened. Taking the blame for self-mutilation does not do much to help keep the story undercover.

Not knowing that this would eventually be nitpicked by lawyers, Johnny had no need at the time to deflect from his blood writing rampage by blaming Amber for it. He used the language that way because he cut his own finger.

In the dash to cover up Johnny's Australian destruction, several cover stories were concocted. (None having to do with Amber, incidentally.) Johnny's story changed a few times. Here he fumbles through whether the finger was smashed in an accordion door or cut with a kitchen knife

youtube.com/clip/UgkxAR17m…

Note that he breaks character there. Throughout the trial he speaks in a mannered, avuncular tone about "Miss Heard." Grappling with the two stories about the injury, he slips up and calls her by her given name, maybe for the only time in the trial.

The team also concocted a story that Johnny had injured his finger go-karting. This detail was left out of the VA trial, perhaps because UK Justice Andrew Nicol had used it as supporting evidence of Johnny's team's complicity in public lies to protect his reputation.

One brilliant Twitter poster posited that maybe Johnny, a dilletante artist, had lopped his finger off while blood painting because he was inspired by van Gogh and his ear.

Others have speculated that he probably doesn't remember himself how it happened.

Speaking of Australia, many of Johnny's squirmiest answers came when he was asked about his sobriety during that time. In August 2014, Johnny had detoxed off opiates originally prescribed after an injury on the Pirates of the Caribbean 4 set.

Under direct, he claimed that he had been sober for eighteen months before a fight with Amber caused him to take a few shots of vodka in March 2015.

Here is a clip of him four months before at the Hollywood Film Awards.

youtube.com/clip/UgkxqZl1l…

He also denied that he was using any drugs during that weekend. His texts tell a different story.

Somehow despite trashing a house, lying about drugs and alcohol, painting in blood on walls, and chopping off his own finger, Depp and his weasels managed to make this weekend all about Amber.

One of the saddest aspects of this case is that Amber shows clear signs that she was trying to protect Johnny by minimizing what was happening. These texts show both how early the abuse started and how her intimates weren't getting the full story.

Three years later she captured similar behavior on video and sent it to her friend Io.

In an ordinary case, jurors would conclude that they are seeing an example of domestic violence. Instead they believed this pathetic response from Johnny in which he focuses on the fact that he was illegally recorded.

youtube.com/clip/Ugkxh7uBN…

Despite all of this playing out in court, online message boards were full of people talking about how credible and sainted Johnny was. They saw this evidence and concluded this:

To be continued...

So, just to level set: if you are a man and looked like this at some stage of your life, the VA criminal justice system favors you. That is one takeaway.

One of the bizarre revelations of this trial is that, despite his dreamboat looks, Johnny Depp is deeply insecure. He literally believed Amber didn't love him. He was still attractive when they met, too. Color me surprised.

But just when I'm about to fall for his wounded boy persona, I am reminded of what a hypocrite he is. First, his insecurities about Amber's infidelity persist despite the fact that he cheated on Amber within a week of their wedding.

He also complains about Amber's educational ranting. This is rich given how often he interrupted cross examination to school Ben Rottenborn on certain topics. He told him, despite the drug texts, that he had no capacity for drugs because of his detox experience.

He also slowed down the proceedings to inform him that an audio clip of Jerry Judge on the Boston-LA flight couldn't be accurate. It's one of Rottenborn's best moments.
youtube.com/clip/UgkxYmbFW…

And he schooled the jury on how an accidental headbutt is possible.

youtube.com/clip/UgkxR2H-b…

In the UK trial he had been caught by surprise by the following clip after he denied headbutting her. He changed his testimony in preparation for VA.

youtube.com/clip/Ugkx58SQA…

Look at Amber's reaction as Johnny makes a joke about the Sweetzer video. He is the one who coined the term "mega pint" in the UK trial, but he acts here like it's a Rottenborn invention.

youtube.com/clip/UgkxxLVS1…

This is not the last time Johnny will show significant memory lapses to Rottenborn, but it's decidedly more calculated than the later Molly text cross. I'm not sure what his mind game is, but Amber's reaction makes me think it's dark.

youtube.com/clip/UgkxSu6ZG…

Rottenborn touches on the weight class issue.

youtube.com/clip/UgkxPF9an…

Johnny is quick to deflect when he is confronted with his vile language. Watch what he does when he has to read a text about wishing death on Amber.

youtube.com/clip/UgkxUzJcA…

"I'm not sure I sent that," he says about a text in which he imagines Amber's rotting corpse in the back of a Honda Civic. He will do this again when confronted with a text about forced sex.

It is worth noting that Johnny is quick to deny the appearance of dark impulses. When confronted with his alter ego, he goes into quick denial. He'll do it again with the Molly text, even suggesting that it was doctored by Rottenborn.

Trigger warning for this exchange.

youtube.com/clip/UgkxKcqAw…

The pettiness of this exchange makes me think Johnny is losing his icy cool right about now. (And apparently it was OK to insult lesbians in 2013. News to me.)

youtube.com/clip/UgkxT0CY4…

"Just the way it was worded." The jury bought this logic from him but balked at the pledge/donate language. He is framing her for physical abuse.

youtube.com/clip/UgkxvmhHm…

Johnny going into full-on self-pity mode. He just accused her of physical violence for an event he probably doesn't even remember and morphs into victim mode.

youtube.com/clip/Ugkxqe9K-…

To be continued...

After a history of arrests and tabloid stories, Johnny claims that the 2016 TRO caused all of his negative press.

youtube.com/clip/UgkxCsOPK…

He then admits that "of course" he had numerous negative stories prior to May 2016 but needs to hear about them with more specificity. Judge A limits the scope.

youtube.com/clip/Ugkx9J3Fv…

Johnny blames Amber for all the hit pieces. The first one mentioned doesn't track, though: it's from November 2014. He seems to deny being drunk at the HFA.
youtube.com/clip/UgkxMdk4l…

Johnny appears confused about how a journalist knows what she's writing about.

youtube.com/clip/UgkxN59Un…

Under redirect, Johnny claims to have been shocked by Amber's Dec 18 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post because it had been a solid two years since the events happened.

youtube.com/clip/UgkxE_k2t…

But in fact Johnny had spoken to British GQ the previous month when he said "they'd have to fucking shoot me" to stop talking about the 2016 TRO. It was Johnny, not Amber, who had broken their mutual gag order.

Here's what he said.

Johnny goes emo to talk about the pain of not being able to speak out.

youtube.com/clip/Ugkxggxfr…

But in fact he had just spoken out the month prior in a lengthy, flattering piece done at his estate in the south of France. Props to Amber for keeping a straight face during this portion. He is blatantly misstating the facts.

It was a glorified puff piece.

Johnny attempts damage control on why he texted Paul Bettany that he wanted to burn Amber and fck her corpse. He did not offer this excuse in the UK trial.

youtube.com/clip/Ugkxa8rZu…

To further distance himself from his corpse rape comment, Johnny attempts to blame Amber for their vitriol in the text by claiming she had reduced Bettany's teenage son to tears during a visit. There is no contemporaneous evidence to support this.

youtube.com/clip/UgkxakpLV…

His other Bettany text, in which he described a bender on a Boston-LA flight during which he spewed insults and kicked her, had to be excused as well. Here he blames both Betty Sue and Amber for what he said.

youtube.com/clip/Ugkx-M-CN…