Megan Stielstra's Blog

If you ask most women my age why they’re in love with Johnny Depp, they’ll say 21 Jump Street, and while I did tear this photo out of Tiger Beat magazine and tape it to my wall (along with every other pre-teen girl in the Eighties) we didn’t have a TV when I was a kid so I never saw the show. For me, the real Depp-love started with Cry Baby, this deliciously campy John Waters rock musical: he sings like Elvis! he tattoos a single blue tear under his eye! in prison! Rikki Lake in leggings and 50’s neck scarves!

Later, I loved him for Edward Scissorhands, Benny and Joon, Finding Neverland, the WINONA FOREVER tattoo with the NA lasered off so now it says WINO FOREVER which is totally badass and, most recently, because I read an interview where they asked if his little daughter knows what he does for a living and he said, “She thinks I’m a pirate.”

So get this: for the past couple weeks, Johnny Depp has been in Chicago filming the new Dillinger movie and living in a trailer in the Aragon parking lot.

My balcony, FYI, overlooks the Aragon parking lot, which means I could throw water balloons at Johnny Depp if I wanted to, which I don’t, because I’m sure he’s very nice. And busy. And I don’t want to, like, ruin his concentration. Or his hair. ‘Cause Dillenger wore a lot of hair gel. On the other hand, maybe Johnny Depp would LIKE a good water balloon fight. Sometimes I like a good water balloon fight, who’s to say just ‘cause he’s all famous and busy that he wouldn’t, too? In which case me and my balcony would be happy to oblige.

Anyhow, my neighborhood has been taken over by teenage girls skipping school and camping on the sidewalk, extras getting made up to look 1929, and giant trucks of gear. Tons of gear. Tons of trucks. There was no parking anywhere, the streets were lined bumper to bumper: lighting trucks, prop trucks, camera trucks, set trucks. They replaced street lights with ones from the 20’s, whipped out old school benches, brought in old cars, painted over the surrounding shops to look period authentic, painted over the white bike lanes in the middle of the street, darkened the fancy technical lighting in the Aragon sign and brought it back to only light bulbs. I’d come home from work to a different era entirely.

And to Depp fans sitting on my front steps.

One night, at ten thirty p.m. after shooting all day in the Bridgeview Bank on the corner of Lawrence and Broadway, Depp came out to meet the fans. They lined everybody up, and Depp and his bodyguard walked down the line and greeted them all one by one.

(Depp's in the middle there. In a big hat. Squint, you may see him better)

Here are some things that I’ve learned living next door to a celebrity:

1. Christopher and I really need to invest in a better camera if we’re going to be photographing celebrities from our balcony. In the dark.

2. Johnny Depp is nice to fans. That’s nice.

3. That even though we fantasize sometimes about moving away, to somewhere quiet, with a lake, where we wouldn’t have to work so hard, maybe—or at least not so fast—I love love love living in the city. Not because it’s Johnny Depp outside my window (‘cause truth be told, I fall in love with fictional characters, not actors. It’s Cry Baby Walker I want, not Johnny Depp), but because there’s always something happening: so much life and energy and momentum. I don’t know I could ever give that up.