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Feb. 4, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
19:45
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I just wanted to drop by.
I had a number of requests to talk about this particular issue, and I will.
It is Johnny Depp's lawyer says Amber Heard's perpetrated serial violence.
She fires back with abuse claims.
So I guess for those of you who don't know, Pirates of the Caribbean is a pretty popular franchise, I suppose.
Johnny Depp is considered to be, I guess, one of the greatest actors of his generation.
I've always found him to be a little opaque, a little, I don't know, as the phrase says, emotionally unavailable and not spectacularly...
I mean, I prefer, I guess, my actors with a little bit more meat on the bone and a little bit more passion or fire in the belly.
I guess I'm an old Brando fan, although, of course, his life was horribly messed up as well.
But Johnny Depp is a guy who's now in his 50s.
Amber Heard, I guess, back when this recording came out, was a grand total of 27 or so years old.
And they were married for, what, two years?
And there were accusations, of course, of abuse and Thank you.
stuff.
Johnny Depp has made I don't know how many countless tens of millions of dollars and appears to have lost pretty much all of it or he's suing his managers for supposed theft of his money or mismanagement of his money or something like that.
So anyway, so what's the story?
Johnny Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard are both standing by their accusations of abuse toward each other after studio after audio recording surfaced of the then couple arguing about physical altercations.
The audio shared by the Daily Mail and confirmed to USA Today by Depp's lawyer Adam Waldman as a real recording from 2015 includes Heard and Depp discussing an incident that got physical.
The two debate to the degree to which Hurd injured Depp.
At one point, Hurd tells Depp she was hitting him.
Babe, you're not punched.
I don't know what the motion of my actual hand was, but you're fine.
I did not hurt you. I did not punch you.
I was hitting you. You know, if you're in that kind of relationship where you're really debating whether it was a hit or a punch, it's time to get out.
At another point, Depp can be heard saying, I do not want to leave you.
I do not want a divorce. I do not want you out of my life.
I just want peace. If things get physical, we have to separate.
Heard replied, she couldn't promise that she would, quote, be perfect.
I can't promise you I won't get physical again.
God, I expletive sometimes get so mad I lose it.
I can expletive promise you I can do everything to change.
In a statement to USA Today, Waldman noted that Heard, quote, recorded her conversations, quote, with Depp.
You know, it's kind of a funny thing out there in the world at the moment.
It's a strange and funny thing that...
You know, in the past, if you wanted to record someone, you had to have a recorder.
You had to wire yourself up.
You had to say, you know, speak into the pen that's sticking out of my pocket or whatever was going on.
Now, of course, everyone has...
The recording ability in their cell phone, and the cell phone is right there on the table, and what do you do?
Do you say, well, I'm happy to have this conversation, but you're going to have to hand me your cell phone, and I'm going to have to take the battery out?
In which case, they could just have some backup cell phone, or it could in fact be the pen on the table.
Everyone can be recorded at any time.
The surveillance state, which I guess George Orwell thought would be a little bit more vertical, turns out to have been rather horizontal.
And you know, it's kind of an unfair thing, obviously.
It's kind of an unfair thing.
When you know that you're recording someone and they don't know that you're recording them, right?
Because you can be all kinds of nice and positive and peppy and neutral and not lose your temper and so on, knowing that the other person who doesn't know they're being recorded is going to not know that and therefore their behavior is going to be worse.
So it's a little bit lopsided from that standpoint for this kind of public stuff.
So, it's just strange that every time you sit down with anyone, they could be recording you.
And it's one thing, you know, in the past, recording people was tricky, but broadcasting it was tough.
Now, of course, anyone can record you in just about any situation and can broadcast it on social media, on the internet, and just about everyone can hear it.
So, it's kind of strange this way to have the lid lifted in these private rooms.
I guess it's a good thing that wasn't around when Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were having their who's afraid of Virginia Woolf midnight screaming drunken fests.
But anyway. So the lawyer, his lawyer says, the first confessional tape she made reveals a conversation any real abuse victim will recognize all too well.
It exposes that Ms. Hurd perpetrated serial violence against Mr.
Depp and then concocted an elaborate abuse hoax to cover it up.
Ms. Hurd gives a motive for her violence.
Mr. Depp was always trying to split...
To escape her abuse.
And that's a tough thing too. Like if you're being abused and you want to withdraw, it tends to enrage the abuser because the abuser wants to keep you captured and dependent and subjugated and controlled.
And so if you try to get out, I mean, it's no more dangerous time to leave an abuser as far as I understand it than, well, right after an abuse when you try to leave, that's the most dangerous time with your abuser.
So... It's very, very tough.
In a statement to USA Today, Heard's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, did not address the audio recordings, but did not deny the allegations of physical abuse, but argued that Heard was also a victim of abuse.
The fact that a woman fights or talks back does not mean that she has not been the subject of repeated domestic violence and abuse.
The statement read, it's a myth to say, as Mr.
Depp apparently is implying, that if Ms.
Heard slapped him, then she can't also be a victim.
That's just not true! Oh my gosh.
Kaplan shared excerpts from Heard's formal discovery responses in the Virginia case from more than a month ago in which the actress said that she used her body and limbs and would, quote, throw objects in Mr.
Depp's direction to protect herself when Depp, quote, would violently assault her.
And that's marriage at the top, I suppose, right?
That's marriage when you have a huge amount of money and fame and, you know, they're both very attractive people.
Johnny Depp's looking a little weathered.
You know, when you're in a band called the Hollywood Vampires, I guess you are having a kind of rough time of it, I suppose, right?
And, gosh, it's just wild here how crazy this stuff went.
So this is from the Daily Mail.
Yeah, I know. Like, I'm sorry about that.
But anyway, and let's see here.
An alleged photo of Johnny Depp's finger after he cut off the tip has been included in Amber Heard's court filings against the actress.
Heard, 30 I guess now, claims that Depp cut off the tip of his finger in a fit of rage and then used his blood to write words on the wall accusing her of having an affair.
He wrote Billy Bob and Easy Amber, claims Heard after accusing the actress of having an affair with 61-year-old Billy Bob Thornton.
I don't know, maybe Goliath is the size of his penis, I don't know.
Billy Bob Thornton has called the claims completely false!
Depp, 53, was drunk and high on ecstasy, claims heard in court papers obtained by TMZ. Heard claims in court papers that Depp did not have the finger treated for 24 hours and doctors had to fashion a new tip using skin from his hand.
The injury shut down production on Pirates of the Caribbean for four weeks as Depp left the villa where he was staying for treatment in L.A. Yeah, this is what happens when you get into a divorce situation.
How does it roll? Well, it rolls that every conceivable horrifying thing that happened during your marriage gets splashed all over the planet for the world to see and ogle and be appropriately, of course, horrified by.
So, okay, is this prurient click-gelling?
No, I would say not.
I would say that this is a very powerful, Object lesson in what it takes to be happy.
I'm not playing the audio of this interaction.
It is a horrifying private moment, and those of us who have been skirting around emotional or psychological abuse recognize the escalation, the tension, the blame, the gaslighting, the diminishment of the other, and the...
Constant demands for proof that are then rejected as inconsequential.
We all know. We all know this, what's going on.
But why is it important?
Because this is hell, where these people are.
Like, where they're living... I mean, my God! My God!
That's hell itself!
There's a famous play by Jean-Paul Sartre, which is, of course, being French and existentially nihilistic and horrifying as hell.
I mean, still nothing like succession, but still.
And the play, I don't think it's really that important to put spoiler notices in for such an old play, but the play goes something like this.
Two people, someone dies, and they go to hell.
And they're trapped in a room with other people, and everybody is dysfunctional, everybody is crazy, everybody is abusive, and they all just pick at each other's psychological and emotional wounds and so on.
And the guy's like, well, if this is hell, where are the devils?
Where are the demons? Where are the torturers in hell?
And, of course, he realizes at the end of the play...
That the demons don't come.
The torturers don't show up.
They don't need to. The torturers are there in the room.
Hell is other people.
Now, of course, given that it's existential, it means that they're saying, or the underlying message of the play is, in general, hell is other people.
What is it, William Burroughs?
Portrayed in Barfly by Mickey Rourke said, I don't hate people.
I just seem to feel better when they're not around.
It's like, if you're in these particular circles, everybody, everybody is messed up.
Are you trying to tell me that the people who were making Pirates of the Caribbean had no idea that this guy was going through hell?
No idea he was going through hell.
And imagine just being able to act a semi-comic character like Jack Sparrow when you're going through this kind of horrifying situation at home where you're sawing off the end of your own finger and It ought to make a point.
What a nightmare. What hell itself.
Now, listen. Why is this important?
Because look at these two people.
You see them strolling down the red carpet and they look like perfectionist gods from another dimension of human excellence.
You know, he's obviously a little bit like Hobo dude of former high-cheeked-boned Navajo glory, but nonetheless, you know, he was in a relationship with the Winona Ryder, if I remember rightly, for quite some years, and he had the name Winona tattooed on his arm, and then when they broke up, he just shortened it to Wino.
And he has played this smooth-skinned Keith Richards character for quite some time, and you see them.
Beautiful. Wealthy, beyond most people's wildest dreams.
Famous. Talented.
I mean, she is a very pretty woman.
Nice figure. And, you know, she's got those weird...
N-dimensional eyes that kind of look like they're cutting through glass and rooting through your soul and all that kind of stuff.
And she has the RBS and she has the haughty Elizabeth Hurley looking down her nose at the misshapen lumpenproletariat that are all lined up Seinfeld-styled in the DMV trying to get things done while they strive from cloud to cloud of hysterical interstellar fame and glory and you feel like they never get touched by problems and they look flawless and so on.
And this is the life that they present.
This is the life of fame.
These people, these two people, I mean, he must have earned hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of his career.
And all the way back to 21 Jump Street, when he looked like, well, he looked so fresh-faced, he made a young Leonardo DiCaprio look like Mel Gibson slash David Letterman's later beard stages.
He looked so... I'm saying he looked like he needed to shave.
And he must have made hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of his career.
And in his 50s, you know, he should be enjoying the fruits of his labors.
He should be out there doing good things in the world.
He should be trying to help people.
He got hundreds of millions of dollars.
I don't know if it was tense, probably hundreds of millions of dollars.
But he seems to have the spending habits of a drunken sailor-embodied Nicolas Cage on a bender.
And what are they doing?
The two of them. Fame, beauty, wealth, talent, power, authority.
Are they taking all of the gifts that nature and the free market has bestowed upon them and trying to make the world a better place for its inhabitants?
They could go anywhere.
They could do anything.
They could support anyone.
They could lend their name to any course.
And what are they doing instead when they could do anything they wanted?
Well, they're sitting there, staring at each other, sawing off fingertips, beating on each other.
Drink, drugs, name-calling, massive, ugly, soul-bearing, soul-destroying lawsuits, divorces.
What does that tell you?
Well, if fame, money, beauty, and wealth were enough to make you happy...
Marilyn Monroe would probably still be bouncing around between the Kennedy boys.
I don't know. That's not going to do it for you.
This is the object lesson.
This is why we're so fascinated by famous people who turn out to have lives of utter degrading misery.
This is why it's so fascinating because don't we want that?
Don't we want... There was a cartoon when I was younger.
Which was two guys in a bar.
One guy turns to the other and says, hey man, how's your life going?
And he says, you know, it's not bad.
It's not bad. I mean, I'm not Sting, but it's not bad, right?
Because Sting was like the big sort of alpha, lean, wolf-faced soprano singer of my youth that everybody wanted to emulate and be by.
And of course, Sting found that kind of funny.
He said, look, I got my problems.
I mean, Sting's accountant stole a bunch of money from him too.
That's just like, man, you're a famous singer, man.
Billy Joel, Elton John, Marvin Gaye, Sting.
I mean, it's just a pillage fest.
A theft because they're just so excited to be out there doing concerts and they forget about all the numbers.
So that's the lesson.
You get the lesson, right?
It's not going to be enough.
You can be beautiful. You can be rich.
You can be famous. You can be talented.
You can be in demand. And you can be in hell itself.
There is no external solution to the problem of insecurity or unhappiness.
My mother felt her nose was too big throughout her life, so she got a nose job.
You know what it didn't do?
It didn't make her happy.
I mean, people, you know, notice that I'm bald.
Like, that's hard to see. And it's like, man, why don't you get some hair plugs?
Why don't you get some hair transplants?
First of all, my chest needs those nine hairs.
Secondly, it's not going to make me any happier.
Come on. It's not going to make me any happier.
Lose those 10 pounds.
Not going to make you any happier.
Win the lottery. It's not going to make you any happier.
Get your rocks off.
Not going to make you any happier.
Star in a massive international Hollywood blockbuster franchise like Pirates of the Caribbean.
Not going to make you any happier.
In Goliath, there's a terrifying scene where Billy Bob Thornton's character is trapped in a hell house and has to get a woman trapped there as well to basically stab their way out.
And I was reading that this was actually loosely based on some incident in Billy Bob Thornton's life where he ended up, what, married to Angelina Jolie and they carried vials of blood on each other's Was she secretly recorded talking about the Illuminati and I don't know what?
It's hell. It's hell up there.
We look at these people, their beauty, their wealth, their fame, their power, and we think, my God!
These deities stride from cloud to cloud, above us mere mortals.
But, of course, that's not the reality.
That's not the reality of the situation.
It's really not. The reality of the situation is that, not always, but very often, what looks like hell, sorry, what looks like heaven, is in fact hell itself.
And these people who look so beautiful, and come on, I mean, why did Johnny Depp want to be with her?
Because she's pretty. Why did she want to be with Johnny Depp?
Because he's high status. There is no path to happiness, save virtue.
There is no road to joy, except philosophy.
And you'll get beaten and scarred along the way.
But the destination is perfection.
Popularity in general, status in general, is a slippery slope.
To a little chamber called hell with no particular exit.
Just think about that the next time you see pretty people and envy them.
You could end up having so little self-regard that you could be 50 years old like J-Lo, half-fingering yourself, shaking your butt, twerking on a stage with children in front of millions of people.
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