Military Books - Military Times

Hollywood is another Depp’s kind of ‘Town’

Yep, he’s related to that Depp.

But Daniel Depp, Johnny’s older half-brother, knows his way around Hollywood, too. As a screenwriter, he has seen Tinseltown’s backlots and back alleys. The good, the bad and the ugly.

That insider’s view comes through in his first book, a crime thriller called “Loser’s Town” (Simon & Schuster, 290 pp., $25). It’s the first in a series starring David Spandau, a stuntman turned no-nonsense PI who has to deal with every kind of Hollywood type. It ain’t easy. Or pretty.

Depp, 55, says he didn’t ask his famous brother, 45, for much insider information.

“I told him I was going to write a detective novel about Los Angeles,” says Depp, a Kentucky native raised in Florida with Johnny, with whom he remains close. (They have the same mother; Johnny’s father adopted Daniel.) “He said I should go for it.”

The Depp brothers (with Paul McCudden) wrote the screenplay for the 1997 film “The Brave,” which starred Johnny and Marlon Brando. (The brothers also co-run a Hollywood production company, Scaramanga.)

Daniel Depp’s Hollywood novel, however, is hardly a complimentary view of the industry. The title, which comes from an old Robert Mitchum quote, sums that up. Depp says he can’t remember “if I had the story first or the title first, but I think it’s a very accurate description.”

Of L.A., he says: “We’re at the very edge of the landmass. There’s nowhere to go unless you jump in the drink, which is the next logical step.”

Hollywood is the perfect setting for a novel, he says, because so many people go there to follow their dreams.

Despite the portrayal of Hollywood as a cynical town, the movie industry is taking a look at the book. (Rights have not been sold.) Is there a role for his “bad boy” brother in there somewhere? “I don’t want to think about any of that right now,” says Depp, who just finished the second Spandau novel. “I’m not so horribly anxious to do it. I like writing books.”

Depp, who has written a couple of unpublished detective novels and says he has been “floating around” between California and France, had planned only three titles in the Spandau series. “But if people like it, I’ll just keep writing,” he says.

That’s good news for his publisher. “This has breakout potential. Daniel is one deeply cool writer who has a dark, funny streak to him. Part Robert Parker and a little bit James Ellroy,” says Simon & Schuster publisher David Rosenthal. “It’s very noir. It’s nasty and fast-paced. And none of it goes where you expect it to go. The book transcends a lot of the normal conventions of the detective genre.”

As for the Depp name recognition, Rosenthal says he’d have bought the book “even had he not had a well-known brother.”