With his planned next project, Shantaram, delayed by the strike, Johnny Depp has found something else to pass the time – he’ll star in a new Michael Mann film. The movie, Public Enemies, is about the great American crimewave of 1933-34, when larger than life hoods like John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd forced the FBI to kick it up a notch, transforming the agency completely.
Depp will be playing bank robber John Dillinger, a man whose penis was supposedly huge and is kept in a jar at the Smithsonian*. Dillinger was one of the more beloved of the public enemies of the time, renowned for his grace. J Edgar Hoover however hated the shit out of him – a third of the FBI’s 1934 budget was dedicated to catching Dillinger.
Mann wrote the script, based on the book by Bryan Burroughs. Mann himself had a number of projects in the hopper – Edwin A Salt, a terribly titled movie that would reteam him with Tom Cruise, was the assumed forerunner – but things change quickly in Hollywood, especially when a strike is happening. Public Enemies start filming March 10th in Chicago.
*This is not true. Well, the part about being kept in a jar. I don’t know about the size of his johnson. Snopes has a pretty great photo that could explain why he is considered one of history’s best hung men.