‘Stuff’: the Johnny Depp-directed short film featuring rock royalty
When he wasn’t busy with his day job as an actor, Johnny Depp had a habit of living the rockstar lifestyle in more ways than one, whether it was hitting the road to tour with his band or partying the night away in a haze of substance-induced excess.
The fallen A-list superstar has been featured on songs by a wide array of artists, ranging from Oasis and Iggy Pop to Aerosmith and Marilyn Manson, the latter of whom is the godfather to his daughter Lily-Rose. He also plays in Hollywood Vampires alongside Alice Cooper and Joe Perry, has recorded music with Jeff Beck, counts Paul McCartney and Keith Richards among his friends, and generally lives up to the stereotype that hellraising actors and musical wildmen aren’t too far apart.
Depp has also dabbled in directing on occasion, although his first title at helming a feature didn’t go to plan when The Brave ended up being locked away in a vault, never to be released in the United States following negative reactions to its first screening, while a documentary short he filmed alongside Butthole Surfers frontman Gibby Haynes was never made widely available, either.
In the 1990s, Depp was part of the eclectic supergroup P alongside Haynes, Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones, and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea. Even though the subject had left the group the year previously, the star partnered up with Haynes to direct a short documentary focusing on Flea’s former bandmate, John Frusciante.
At the time, the supremely talented guitarist was working on solo material and dealing with a crippling heroin addiction, making the 12-minute Stuff a tough watch. Depp and Haynes had originally tracked Frusciante down for no other reason than to hang out, but they ended up so shocked by the conditions he was living in that they decided to capture it on film.
In the axeman’s home, there are vintage guitars scattered all around, images and disconnected phrases scrawled on the walls, rubbish littered as far as the eyes can see, and mirrors and surfaces daubed over with paint, painting the troubling portrait of a gifted creative caught in the throes of a disease they were clearly struggling to free themselves from.
Stuff aired once on television as part of the Dutch series Lola Da Musica and was released as a promotional VHS but wasn’t the subject of large-scale distribution. That was definitely for the best because Frusciante’s existence was troubling, to say the least, at the time, and that extended into the tragedy that befell a member of Depp’s inner circle.
Haynes acknowledged that P were playing a set at the Viper Room while River Phoenix was having seizures on the ground outside, shortly before he died from heart failure brought on by a cocaine and heroin overdose. Frusciante could have easily suffered an identical fate, considering the two were reported to have been on a drug-addled binge together in the days leading up to Phoenix’s passing, with Stuff standing out as a stark reminder of where he had to claw himself out from.