Johnny Depp - From Dark Shadows to The Ghost Ship?

"Johnny Depp to play Lawrenace Curator and his great grandson, Rod Curator, in THE GHOST SHIP!"

It's a Hollywood headline I'd love to read.

 

Those who know me know I love Johnny Depp. He's proved himself an actor of unsurpassed talent and originality. The best of our time. Examples: John Dillinger in Public Enemies; the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland; Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean; Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Willie Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And that's just a few since he first starred in Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984. 

Now comes the newly released Dark Shadows, and coming next year (2013), we'll see him as Tonto in the Lone Ranger. He is evil, kind, ugly and gorgeous. (The movie actor I got giddy over last was the young William Shatner in Star Trek.)

I haven't seen Dark Shadows yet - I'm waiting to see it with family - but I've read the reviews and the disappointing box office stats. I reserve judgment, but I can't help but wonder if the critics aren't missing the concept.

The original Dark Shadows television daytime soap, which first aired in 1966, was cheesy and campy with disparate plot lines that left a viewer wondering. With over 1200 episodes, the directors attempted to bring them together in subsequent episodes, but usually they continued to defy continuity and logic. If the movie, which was released May 11, follows the same style as the TV show, then I would venture to say it was a successful revisit to Barnabas Collins and his cast of ill-assorted creatures. However, if the reviewers want a vampire movie like Breaking Dawn, that would not be Dark Shadows.

Now for Mr. Depp's roles in the movie of my novel, The Ghost Ship. His first would be that of Commander Lawrence Curator, the ghost who meets a vulnerable young woman on the beach and takes her back in time to sail on the ghost ship. His quest is to learn why the five-masted schooner was scuttled on a beach in The Graveyard of the Atlantic.

After Lawrence and Ann Gavrion experience the scuttling, Ann is left to wash ashore and meet Rod Curator, Lawrence's great grandson - the second role for Mr. Depp. Rod's a rather surly young marine biologist who has lost his wife and doesn't believe a word Ann tells him about her voyage with his great grandfather.

Perfect roles for adventurous Johnny Depp. 

About Dark Shadows, I'll report back with my own review.

Gerrie Ferris Finger

THE GHOST SHIP

WHISPERING

THE LAST TEMPTATION

THE END GAME

HONORED DAUGHTER

WHEN SERPENTS DIE

WAGON DOGS

Novellas: HEARTLESS, MERCILESS

 

A GHOST SHIP IN THE GRAVEYARD OF THE ATLANTIC

I am a journalist and author.

While reporting on the moving of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and the building of the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Cape Hatteras on The Outer Banks, I heard fabulous stories, some legends, some true and mythic. The Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoal is all of them in one mystery.

One morning after a storm, I went down to the shore and saw the bow of a shipwreck that had been uncovered when the sea surged outward. Standing there at the black bones, I felt a sizzling inside my own bones. That ship was a small coastal schooner, but I wanted to know more about The Ghost Ship. I interviewed an elderly gentleman whose ancestor was in the Coast Guard and was one of the men who boarded the Carroll A. Deering during the investigation. He said his cabin was constructed from some of her timbers after she was declared a danger to navigation and dynamited.

So began my novel.

I'm the author of six novels. THE END GAME is an award-winning traditional mystery, available in hard cover and Kindle.

THE GHOST SHIP available at: http://tiny.cc/9hrsy

Gerrie Ferris Finger
http://www.gerrieferrisfinger.com

THE GHOST SHIP - Blending history and fiction

A famous tall ship and an adventurous woman...what they could do for the world

     What if you could go back to 1921 and climb aboard a great five-masted schooner on her maiden voyage?
You’d be a witness to history; you’d be on her decks when her keel smashed into an Outer Banks shoal. You’d get to know the villains who caused the tragedy. Was it pirates, Russians, rumrunners? Or something else?
Would you dare?
Ann Gavrion did and her life was never the same.

THE HISTORY:
One cold, foggy morning in January, 1921, a five-masted schooner in full sail plowed into Diamond Shoal in the infamous Graveyard of the Atlantic. Known to history as The Ghost Ship, her officers and crew were not on board and their bodies never washed ashore. The only living thing on board was a six-toed cat. Also, her anchors and lifeboats were missing. Six agencies investigated the mystery, but it was never solved.

THE NOVEL:
Ninety years later, Ann Gavrion travels to Cape Hatteras to get over the loss of her fiancé in an airplane crash. She meets the enigmatic, yet charming, Lawrence Curator on the beach.
Behind her she hears the cries of villagers. “Shipwreck!”
A surfman runs up and shouts that the missing schooner, her sails set, is aground on the shoal. Ann recognizes the enormous ship from a photograph she’d seen the night before.
So begins her journey back to 1921 with the man the Navy sent to investigate the grounding of the great ship.
When Lawrence and Ann solve the mystery, Ann must return to her world. On the very beach where she’d begun her voyage with Lawrence, she meets his great-grandson, Rod. Exhausted, wet, she spills an account of her fabulous sea adventure. He calls her a charlatan and accuses her of using his famous ancestor to write a first person account of the tragedy for her magazine.
How many times, how many ways, must she prove that her voyage was real to Rod and the unbelievers of the world?

Available at: http://tiny.cc/9hrsy

Gerrie Ferris Finger
http://www.gerrieferrisfinger.com