Behold, the current must-have accessory for all the most grimly murderous dictators – a pet American idiot. Not just any American idiot, obviously. You need a male, mid-50s to early-60s, ideally fire-damaged by a recent career setback, who just wants to see the best in you for coins. In short, you need someone of the … calibre, would you call it? … of Tucker Carlson or Johnny Depp.
The past week or two has seen the formal reveal of two of these new dictator-pet acquisitions: Vladimir Putin’s kind offer to rehome the stray former Fox News host, and Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s generous response to the question How Much Is That Deppy in the Window? Answer: a rumoured seven-figure tourism promo deal and forking out for one somewhat indifferent period French film. I know. Pets are very reasonably priced, not to say embarrassingly cheap.
So let’s start with Johnny Depp, the joint subject of a most eye-catching Vanity Fair article headlined “Inside Johnny Depp’s epic bromance with Saudi Crown Prince MBS”. Yes, yes – please take us inside it. Although we reserve the right to leave at any time without being dismembered. The safe-word is Raytheon.
According to the article, Depp first came into contact with the Saudi ruler while working on a precariously financed French film, last year’s Jeanne du Barry. Having secured Saudi funding, the movie’s producers required their star to meet MBS’s cousin – a guy called Prince Badr – who also serves as some kind of cultural bagman. I’m getting huge Ribbentrop energy, but perhaps he’s adorable. Anyway, one thing led to another, and within months Depp was revelling in all-expenses-paid trips and face-to-face time with MBS, listening to his excuses about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and making “a genuine connection”. Hey – the heart wants what it wants. Likewise the wallet. According to Vanity Fair, “both men knew how it felt to suddenly go from golden boy to outcast”. And certainly the fates can be very cruel.
As can movie financing. Seriously, why spend years waiting for your producer to patchwork together some shaky funding from the French film foundation, plus a lottery grant, plus an endowment from the Trudi Styler Cinema in Peril fund, plus fifty quid from Unesco, plus some crappy Belgian tax credits? You have something really important to get made, in which you get to crossly overturn a small occasional table in Versailles – all while wearing a feathered tricorn hat. How DARE “the market” deny the culture this future gem? How dare people think your god-given right to pretend to be someone else for money should depend on such shifting sands? Why not just go to Daddy Bonesaw and get his chump change in five seconds? And listen, MBS’s “Red Sea Film Fund” wants nothing more than to finance a film about a French courtesan. Given that the finished movie contravenes about 437 of his country’s decency and modesty laws, I guess something about Du Barry’s life just spoke to MBS. Maybe the fact a woman gets her head cut off.
For his part, Depp responded to Vanity Fair’s request for comment on his new alliance with a lengthy statement claiming to have “experienced first-hand the cultural revolution that is happening” in Saudi, “from emerging young storytellers radiating fresh ideas and works of art to a blossoming film infrastructure and a newfound curiosity for innovation”. Attaboy.
In terms of the old quid pro quo, do remember that Depp has in recent years been saddled with what euphemism forces us to style “expensive legal setbacks”, followed by “expensive legal victories”. He reportedly has an endless array of luxury properties to maintain, including a French village he was trying to sell, and a private Caribbean island. A private island – of course. Has anything good ever come of a white man owning a private Caribbean island? (Don’t write in, Branson, even though I’m using your letters to make a papier-mache sculpture of you carrying a woman in the course of a promotional stunt. I call it “The Ally”.)
But let’s move on to Tucker Carlson, who recently went all the way to Moscow to interview the Russian president in hardcore lapdoggy style. There is a grim sort of poetic justice to the fact this televised fawnathon took place just days before Putin’s likely murder of Alexei Navalny, which itself seems to have occurred around the time Tucker was filming imbecilically approving videos in a Russian supermarket. Did you see the one where he seems to think he has discovered a cutting-edge Russian invention in the form of supermarket trolleys you need to release with a coin? I love that it reveals how much Tucker’s producer hates him, willingly allowing his super-rich boss to stray into elite self-parody by lauding something freely available to US citizens in Aldis and airports for quite, quite some time now.
In related news, then, a word on pet cruelty. At this stage, Depp has yet to feel the sharp end of an emerging young storyteller radiating fresh ideas. But Tucker’s claim to have been in Moscow doing hard journalism was excruciatingly factchecked by Putin himself, who, shortly after the interview aired, appeared on TV with a smirk to lament the fact Tucker didn’t ask any “tough questions”. How mean. A Tucker should be for life, not just for propaganda Christmas.
Finally, a bizarrely blame-free social media post about Navalny by Donald Trump suggests the Russian president still has old dogs who pee on the rug/Moscow hotel mattress. In fact, speaking of going to the mattresses, the prospect of that particular dictator-hound throwing down for Putin is more grotesque by the day, and the very strongest of arguments for a no-pets rule in the White House.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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