BY DENNIS KING

NEW YORK – It’s hard to tell if the two stars of the action-comedy “21 Jump Street” are more in character as cops or as teenagers as they come barging into a press conference for their new movie in full Southern California police gear – embroidered LAPD polos, baggy blue shorts and high-top Converse sneakers sans socks.

Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum

Portly Jonah Hill and buff Channing Tatum make a strong case for arrested adolescence as they lope onto a stage to face the entertainment media at a press day hosted by Columbia Pictures at Soho’s tony Crosby Street Hotel.

Hill, just coming off an Oscar nomination for his dramatic role in “Moneyball,” seems ready to have some fun with this long-in-the-making project on which he stars, serves as executive producer and co-writer of the story with screenwriter Michael Bacall.

Tatum, currently appearing in the soft-hearted romance “The Vow” and a veteran of action movies (“Haywire,” “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra”) but a stranger to comedy, seems a little more tentative about this whole loosey-goosey improv business.

Their oddball partnership on “21 Jump Street” represents a radical reimagining of the late-1980s Fox TV show (which featured the fresh-faced Johnny Depp in a breakout role) about a youthful squad of undercover LAPD cops who pose as high-schoolers to bust crime on campus. In the film, Hill plays the nerdy Schmidt and Tatum portrays the cool jock Jenko, who form an unlikely friendship at the Police Academy and then are assigned to the secret Jump Street unit to infiltrate a local high school.

Hill said he spent five years working to get the film into production, and once he overcame some initial doubts he became convinced that he was onto something special.

“Honestly, when this first came to me it was a dramatic script, and I was really against it. I did not want to make a TV show into a movie. I thought it sounded really lazy and stupid and eye-rolling and unoriginal and all of those things,” he said. “But, really, there’s like a ‘Back to the Future’ element that everyone involved understood.

“The idea of reliving your high school years, and what would that be like, and what is funny about that, what is sad about that,” he said. “And what if you think you have all the answers and you go back and you have none of the answers? And that, to me, is a really, really strong idea for a movie.

“And what if that was like a ‘Bad Boys’ meets a John Hughes movie?” Hill said. “That was what got the train moving, so whether it was called ‘21 Jump Street’ or it was called ‘Narcs’ or it was called ‘Two Cops Go Back to High School,’ I didn’t really care. That idea was what captivated me and made me want to move forward.”

“Have you seen the show in a while?” Tatum chimed in. “You know, it’s pretty funny and cool. I was a fan of the show. I watched it every single Friday. But I don’t really think you have to call this thing ’21 Jump Street,’ but I’m glad they did because I liked the show. And we paid some good homages.”

While Hill is an old hand at comedy, Tatum is widely viewed as a handsome hunk more at home in action fare. So how did he hook up with Hill?

“I got a phone call from Jonah when I was in Toronto shooting a movie, and I wasn’t sure why he was calling me,” Tatum recalled. “But he told me about his passion for ‘Jump Street’ and how long he’s been working on it. And they sent me the script over email. It seemed like one of the most fun scripts I’d read. And I just said, ‘Alright man, if you promise me that I’m going to be funny then I’ll sign on.’ And he did, he really held my hand all the way through it, and they created a great stage for you to be safe to fail and not feel bad if you didn’t know your way into a joke. Like, I know that there should be something funny in here, but I don’t know how to do it. And everybody helped me out with that.”

Hill, Tatum

A key element in making the comedy work is the Mutt-and-Jeff chemistry between Hill and Tatum. How did the actors develop that?

“We went for milkshakes and hung out a lot,” Tatum said with a shrug.

“Everyone asks if we knew each other before, and it’s funny because we had only met once five years before at a restaurant,” Hill said. “We didn’t actually meet, we just waved at each other. And that was the only experience we had until I called him up on the phone.

“I gotta say about this guy, in every really good movie you get to be surprised or shocked by something someone does,” Hill said. “And I think Channing walks away with this movie because you’ve never seen him do anything like this before. I think he’s the funniest part of the whole entire movie. And the second I called him and he was down to do the movie, I saw why I wanted him, which is that he is fearless.

“He was just jumping in, and he’s fearless as a person and fearless as an artist,” Hill continued. “And that’s why he’s great in this movie, because he didn’t put a wall up and say, ‘oh man, I’m scared and maybe I shouldn’t do this.’ He was like, ‘whatever you guys want, just promise me that I’ll be funny.’ He’s just honest and raw in every scene. And that’s why we became friends because we both are down to kill ourselves for our movie.”

“Thanks, buddy,” Tatum said with a wry grin.

“Now you guys are supposed to, like, roar into applause,” Hill said to the scribbling journalists.

“Nah, it was easy to get along with this guy,” Tatum said. “I think it’s really nice when you can actually see a friendship come through the screen, and I think you can actually feel it.”

Lastly, as if addressing the 2,000-pound elephant in the room, one nosey journalist asked about a certain cameo in the film that should earn huge laughs.

“Who?” Hill said. “We, umm, don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Not to give away the surprise, the journalist persisted, but whose idea was it to include the cameo?

“We don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hill said.

“If there were a cameo, that would be pretty neat,” chimed in co-director Phil Lord.

Finally, Hill laughed, “You’re wasting your time if you’re going to keep asking about that.”

Stephen J. Cannell

BY DENNIS KING

NEW YORK – You might think the guy who co-created the 1987-91 Fox TV series “21 Jump Street” would look askance at a bunch of youngsters turning his iconic cop show into an irreverent, R-rated action-comedy movie.

But the late, prolific, groundbreaking writer-producer Stephen J. Cannell was nothing if not a good sport, and to hear star Jonah Hill and co-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller tell it, he was on board with the cheeky, big-screen updating of “21 Jump Street” from the word go.

During a press conference for the film hosted by Columbia Pictures as Soho’s Crosby Street Hotel, the stars and directors sang Cannell’s praises and speculated that the Emmy Award-winning producer would have been happy with their fast-and-loose homage to the series.

“21 Jump Street” stars Hill and Channing Tatum as mismatched pals and undercover cops assigned to pose as students to ferret out drug dealers at a local high school. The TV series is perhaps best remembered for launching the acting career of Johnny Depp.

Cannell, who died in 2010 at age 69, was reportedly considering his own film adaptation of “21 Jump Street” when he was first approached by star-producer-writer Hill (who co-wrote the story with Michael Bacall) to secure rights.

“I was nervous that he wouldn’t be psyched about a movie being made,” said Hill. “But not only was he excited about our movie being made, one of the times we were hanging out with him he was trying to get me to make a movie based on another one of his shows. He was just like down for his legacy to live on, and he wanted to get it into the zeitgeist again.”

Lord and Miller said they were also touched that the famed writer-producer was so supportive of their first live-action film. The two directors had previously been known for the work in animation, notably the feature comedy “Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs.”

For his part, Cannell is a bonafide legend in the TV industry, having garnered six Emmy wins and racked up a roster of hit series that includes “The Rockford Files,” “Greatest American Hero,” “The A-Team,” “Hunter,” “Hardcastle & McCormick” and, of course, “21 Jump Street” (which he co-created with Patrick Hasburgh) among others.

“I think he was excited that his show was going to be reinterpreted,” said Lord. “That was the thing that was most refreshing about him. He was psyched to see it grow and turn into something new.”

“It’s a shame he never got to see the finished product,” added Miller.

“But he was such a nice person,” said Lord. “You’d go to his office and he’d have those Emmys lined up back there, and it was like those end cards you see from all his shows. And he had that beautiful lion’s mane of hair.”

“He was a very handsome man,” laughed Hill.

“He was a gorgeous man,” Miller said. “Very impressive. He was always wearing those black cowboy boots, and he was just a great guy and a very supportive person. And when you think about the company he built and the number of people that he employed and the tables that he helped put food on and how much he cared about everyone who worked for him, it was really inspiring just to meet him.”

“Stephen was awesome,” said Hill. “He was a really nice guy. He was also like the King of Pasadena. He was like the most popular guy in Pasadena. Good guy. He’s missed, very much.”

BY DENNIS KING

Johnny Depp’s swaggering, royally daft Captain Jack Sparrow of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” voyages is certainly a quirky and theatrical scoundrel. But no one can accuse his many big-screen pirate predecessors of being shrinking violets either, and a rogue’s gallery of famous movie buccaneers offers up some outlandish scalawags that are every bit Sparrow’s equal in charming villainy.

There’s more to a good movie pirate than parrots, peg legs and eye patches, and the best of them incorporate some unique characteristics that set them apart from the scurvy crowd. For his part, Depp has said he modeled many of Sparrow’s devil-may-care mannerisms on Rolling Stone rocker Keith Richards.

So what distinguishes your favorite movie pirates?

Here are a few of our best-of-the-worst and what makes them special:

Captain Blood (“Captain Blood,” 1935) – Errol Flynn is practically synonymous with the word “swashbuckler.” In this jaunty Technicolor bit of swordplay – from director Michael Curtiz, based on the classic sea-going tale by Raphael Sabatini – Flynn’s wrongly imprisoned doctor turned Robin Hood pirate sets the standard for athletic swagger.

Long John Silver (“Treasure Island,” 1934) – Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure tale of buried pirate booty was filmed a score and more times, but no one embodied the squinty-eyed charm of the one-legged Long John Silver better than the scurvy Wallace Beery, who lead Jackie Cooper’s young Jim Hawkins astray in Victor Fleming’s classic version of the story.

Jackie Cooper, Wallace Beery

Mike Fink (“Davey Crockett and the River Pirates,” 1956) – Not all pirates ply their trade on the high seas, as the keelboat marauders of this Walt Disney frontier adventure prove. In burly Mike Fink, self-proclaimed “King of the River,” veteran actor Jeff York showed us a bullyboy pirate who could wield a cudgel as lethally as a saber.

Morgan Adams (“Cutthroat Island,” 1995) – History tells us there were plenty of real-life female pirates – from The Red Lady to Anne Bonney – but in Gina Davis’ buff and sexy Morgan Adams we got a distaff pirate for the age of women’s lib. Under the direction of her then-husband and action maven Renny Harlin, Davis gave us a buff yet distinctly feminine brand of pirate derring-do – call it “swishbuckling.”

Steve the Pirate (“Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story,” 2004) and John Blutarsky (“Animal House,” 1978) – Delusional piracy has reared its scurvy head in a couple of movies not primarily concerned with pirates. For buccaneer buffoonery, check out Alan Tudyk’s Steve the Pirate as the only member of a ragtag dodgeball team who, through some undefined neurosis, feels compelled to dress like a pirate. And who can forget the final scenes of the classic frat house farce when John Belushi’s Neanderthal Bluto swoops in like a marauding pirate, kidnaps a sorority girl and speeds away in a Caddy convertible? Arrgh, and double arrgh!

Alan Tudyk

The Dread Pirate Roberts (“The Princess Bride,” 1987) – Cary Elwes was probably the sweetest pirate ever as the young apprentice Westley, who in Rob Reiner’s hip fairy tale film became the latest in a long line of black-clad swordsmen to inherit the mantle of the Dread Pirate Roberts. But, when he finds his true love, the precious Buttercup, and is partially paralyzed in a fall from a cliff, Westley’s pirating heroics take on some very dark and quirky aspects.

Captain Red (“Pirates,” 1986) – Walter Matthau took over the role of the gnarly Captain Red from Jack Nicholson, who ironically tried to hold up writer-director Roman Polanski for an outrageous salary to play the role. Nevertheless, Matthau comported himself quite colorfully and deviously as the mutinous old scoundrel who, along with his love-struck first mate Frog, conspires to steal a golden throne that the Spanish had plundered from the Aztecs.

Captain Yellowbeard (“Yellowbeard,” 1983) – Leading a riotous crew that features several of his Monty Python mates, Graham Chapman took up the sword as the notorious “pirate’s pirate,” Yellowbeard, known for terrorizing the high seas and “often forcing his victims to eat their own lips.” Lots of zany Pythonesque antics ensue in an adventure that features Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong as zonked-out Spanish Conquistadors and bug-eyed Marty Feldman in his final film role.

Black Louie (“Three Little Pirates,” 1946) – Being a pirate in a Three Stooges short must have been a thankless task. But journeyman actor Robert Kellard (billed as Robert Stevens) got to sport a very cool pirate name and throw knives in this typically wacky tale in which Moe, Larry and Curly play garbage scow crewmen who are castaway in time and end up in the 17th century thieves den of Black Louie, where they’re forced into a knife throwing contest to save Larry’s hide. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

BY GENE TRIPLETT

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – Acting can become a lonely artistic endeavor when it comes to doing voice work for an animated film. Each of the  cast members usually work separately and alone and at different times, sitting in a recording studio booth, reading their lines from a script, doing without the luxury of playing off of other live, warm actor bodies in front of them.

Well, under the direction of Gore Verbinski, that problem was solved during the making of the trippy animated animal fable/Western, “Rango.”

Voice stars Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Ned Beatty, Harry Dean Stanton, Bill Nighy and all the others who played the good, the bad and the ugly creatures populating and surrounding the desert town of Dirt were brought into a studio together, given whole or partial costumes and props to work with, and were actually filmed as they were allowed to play out their roles together, bouncing their performances off one another as if they were making a live action movie or putting on a play together.

“The process that we did, Gore created this sort of atmosphere that was really, truly ludicrous, I mean ridiculous, it was like just regional theater at its worst,” Depp, the voice of chameleon hero Rango,  said during  a recent press conference  at Beverly Hills’ Four Seasons Hotel.

“And somehow –not the idea of motion capture — but emotion capture, you know, certain gestures, body language, movement, something you might have done, you know, with your eyes, all those guys, you know, these animators took it and put it in there. So I mean, it was very strange. I mean, for Harry Dean Stanton to walk up to me one afternoon — because I’ve known him for a million years — and he walks up to me  and says, ‘This is a weird gig, man.’”

Isla Fisher, the voice of a beleagured rancher named Beans,  said the unusual process worked for her.

“I think the characters had humanity because we were interacting with each other, and more chemistry, and so it felt more organic and real. What do you think, Abigail?”

 Breslin, 14, who plays a cute little rodent girl named Priscilla, said, “You know, when you’re in just like a booth, by yourself, it’s like very isolating, and you don’t really, like, have anything to sort of play off of except like one take of one line, and then like a beep … I think that it was, well, for me at least, a lot more fun. Although I did wear a wig, like a black wig, and I got a really bad rash on my neck from it, and so that was a little unfortunate.”

“And you were carrying a gun,” Fisher said. “Which was weird, to see Abigail with a massive gun.”

“It was so bizarre,” Breslin agreed, “because, like, there was actually guns going, and you don’t think that there are like firearms in an animated movie. And it’s, like, live.”

“Gore always travels with guns,” Depp said.

“Absolutely,” Verbinski nodded. “Keep people from going to sleep.”

“Yeah,” Depp said.

“But I liked doing this,” Breslin said. “And I don’t think that they do many animated movies like that. But I suppose I’d be in an isolated booth, too, if it was a cool movie.”

“But you’d still wear the wig and the gun and stuff,” Depp said.

“I’d still, I’d still come completely, full out in the character’s costume,” Breslin declared.

“That whole emotion capture, sort of live action record,” Verbinski said. “When I heard people say, ‘Well, it’s an animated movie, this is how they do it. They get a microphone and an actor.’ And I just thought that sounded so crazy to me. I’ve got Harry Dean Stanton and I’ve got, you know, Johnny Depp. I want to see them together. I mean, it’s acting, you know? It’s reacting … Otherwise it’s not going to feel honest.”

Listed on wimgo Movies under Adventure

BY GENE TRIPLETT 

 BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — If anyone could give voice to a timid, chronically lying, disaster-prone chameleon in a Hawaiian-print shirt, it would have   to be Johnny Depp.

When casting voice talent for animated characters, call Tom Hanks for the smiling rag doll cowboy, or Matthew Broderick for the regal young “Lion King.” Ray Romero is solid as a

bored, barely tolerant “Ice Age” mammoth, and Mike Myers is perfectly suited for a big green ogre with a Scottish brogue.

But when it comes to a nervous lizard lost in a desert landscape straight out of an acid-altered Hunter S. Thompson nightmare, Depp is your deftly deranged, fully qualified dude. After directing the eccentric actor in three “Pirates of the Caribbean” films, Gore Verbinski knew who should speak for “Rango.”

Besides, Verbinski said he likes working with Depp because “I like the way he smells.”

“I’ve been told I smell good,” Depp said. “I don’t look like I smell good.”

On this morning the actor was wearing a peaked black stocking cap over his long black curls, black horn-rimmed glasses that magnified his piercing eyes, and a black suit coat, all matching the goatee that framed the playful grin with the flashing gold tooth.

“You know, early on, some of the talks that Gore and I had had about the character, I mean, you know, talk about two grown men, you know, middle-aged men discussing the possibility of one of them being a lizard,” Depp recalled.

“So it starts off on a surreal kind of note, anyway. … Finding the voice, finding the character, it was like we talked about when people, people in life, when they have a tendency to exaggerate or lie or whatever, you always sort of notice that their voice goes up quite high, you know? It goes to another, a completely different register.

“Whereas, if I’m talking to you and speaking and babbling nonstop, and then suddenly I’m really nervous about telling the truth — you know, but I’m lying — so that’s kind of where it came from. Just this, you imagine the character to be incredibly sort of, you know, just really like a nervous wreck.”

Imagine, if you will, Don Knotts trying to convince a saloon full of bad guys that he’s a fearless killer in “The Shakiest Gun in the West” — one of the key inspirations for “Rango.”

That’s how Depp described his reptilian rascal of a character during a news conference at the posh Four Seasons Hotel, which was teeming with activity on Grammy Awards weekend.

This sand-blown, sun-parched animated fable from screenwriter John Logan (“Gladiator,” “The Last Samurai,” “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”) follows the comical, transformative journey of Rango, a sheltered chameleon and aspiring actor with a major identity crisis, who’s been living as a family pet until a highway mishap leaves him stranded in the middle of the desert.

He ends up in the gritty, lawless town of Dirt, which is populated by all manner of creatures large and small, all suffering from a severe water shortage and living in constant fear of a hungry, ever-circling hawk. When Rango, who’s been affecting false swagger, accidentally does the bird in, the critter citizens believe the less-than-courageous chameleon is the hero he’s been claiming to be, and promptly elect him sheriff.

And Rango quickly learns he’s hopelessly outgunned by a crooked mayor (Ned Beatty), his evil henchman Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy) and a whole gang of cutthroat outlaws in this spirited homage to the mythology created by Clint Eastwood’s “Man With No Name” trilogy.

“I mean certainly I was always a fan, as Gore I know was, of the great old spaghetti Westerns, you know, the Sergio Leone films,” Depp said. “But the one that always sticks with me, that I just thought was brilliant and perfect is ‘Cat Ballou.’ Lee Marvin in ‘Cat Ballou’. I mean, he just reinvented some form of acting there.”

Verbinski’s earliest spaghetti Western favorite was Leone’s “Duck, You Sucker” aka “A Fistful of Dynamite” from 1971, starring James Coburn and Rod Steiger.

“When I was very young — totally age inappropriate — I snuck in and saw that movie in the theater,” the director said. “And it felt like I was, you know, viewing some forbidden world.”

And speaking of kids, what did Depp’s children think of their father playing a lizard?

“They actually call me the Lizard King,” Depp said. “My children, they do. I’ve forced them to address me like that since they were tykes. Yeah. No, it was an odd sort of thing, you know? ‘Where you going, Daddy?’ ‘Ah, I gotta go to work.’ ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Well, I’m playing a lizard.’”

Depp, 47, then confided that his daughter and son, ages 11 and 9, respectively, “are far more interested in ‘Family Guy’ and Justin Bieber” than what their father does for a living.

“Are you a ‘Belieber’?” a reporter asked.

“A ‘Belieber’? Wow. I’ve actually never heard that one before,” Depp said, triggering a round of laughter from journalists. “That is my favorite. And you know what? Yes. I am a ‘Belieber.’ I am. And I shall remain so.”

Questions continued on other topics until, minutes later, Depp’s gaze was drawn to the doorway of the crowded conference room. The actor broke into a big smile and said, “Hey, man!”

And in strolled Bieber himself, causing quite a stir as he waved at journalists and moved quickly to the head table, shaking hands with Depp, Verbinski and “Rango” co-stars Isla Fisher and Abigail Breslin.

“You know I’m a big fan of you, so I had to come support you,” the 16-year-old singing star told Depp.

“Bless you, man, bless you,” Depp said.

“Awesome,” Bieber said. “I had to come say hi. I heard you were in the building.”

“Aren’t we all ‘Beliebers’?” Depp asked, as Bieber hastily made his exit in a shower of applause.

A puzzled-looking Verbinski, 46, leaned over and asked Depp about their unexpected guest.

“That was the Beatles,” Depp explained.

The lizard had been upstaged.

Travel and accommodation provided by Paramount Pictures.

Listed on wimgo Movies under Adventure

The character and background designs in the first animated feature from George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic appear to have been inspired by the unsettling grotesquerie of Ralph Steadman’s cartoons, which illustrated quite effectively the drug- and alcohol-fueled “Fear and Loathing” reportage of the late gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson in the pages of Rolling Stone.

In fact, the title character of “Rango” vaguely resembles Thompson somehow, albeit in the form of a chameleon with an asymmetrically-shaped head, crooked pencil-thin neck, frightfully bulging eye sockets and pinpoint irises. He is wearing a Hawaiian-print shirt, though, which Thompson often favored.

And our hero even speaks with the voice of Johnny Depp, who portrayed the gun-toting scribe in the film version of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”

But the star and filmmakers have stated publicly that any resemblance Rango bears to Thompson, living or dead, is purely coincidental. In fact, this nervous, chronic liar of a lizard owes more of an inspirational debt to the kind of pop-eyed wreck of a character Don Knotts played so well in such vehicles as “The Shakiest Gun in the West.”

Working from a hilariously quirky and inventive script by John Logan (“Gladiator,” “The Last Samurai,” “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”), Gore Verbinski, who’s directed Depp in three “Pirates of the Caribbean” films, fashions an homage to — and a poke at — the mythos created by the spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone.

Rango is a sheltered family pet who is doomed to forever “blend in,” as most chameleons do, which is at the root of his raging identity crisis and his burning ambition to be an actor. When a highway mishap during a long-distance move leaves him stranded in the middle of the desert, he ends up in the gritty, lawless town of Dirt, which is populated by all manner of creatures furry and scaly, walking and crawling, great and small.

The town suffers from a severe shortage of water and its citizens live in mortal fear of a hungry hawk that is constantly circling overhead. The mayor of Dirt (voiced by Ned Beatty), a rotund turtle bearing a strong resemblance to John Huston as Noah Cross in “Chinatown,” seems a bit sinister himself, and full of shady secrets.

When Rango, who’s been affecting false swagger, accidentally does in the hawk, the critter citizens believe the less-than-courageous chameleon is really the hero he’s been claiming to be, and promptly elect him sheriff.

And Rango soon finds himself hopelessly outgunned by the crooked mayor, his evil rattlesnake henchman (Bill Nighy) and a large gang of cutthroat outlaws.

It all seems too much for our wretched reptilian protagonist, who finally turns his long skinny tail and runs, until he encounters an all too familiar figure — the embodiment of the Spirit of the West — who persuades our hero his only shot at salvation is to rejoin the fray, and redeem himself in his own eyes and those of his new lady love, Beans (Isla Fisher), she of very large eyes and unknown animal species.

The gritty photographic realism and deep detail of this film’s artwork is fairly amazing to behold, and while it’s hard to determine the age range of “Rango’s” target audience, as the weirdness and humor seem more suitable to adults than children, it’s a story of good heart with messages of courage, determination and teamwork in the face of enormous adversity that people of all ages would do well to consider. And it’s also a lot of fun.

— Gene Triplett

MOVIE REVIEW

“Rango”

PG
1:47
3 stars

Starring: Voices of Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Ned Beatty, Bill Nighy, Harry Dean Stanton.

(Rude humor, language, action and smoking)

Listed on wimgo Movies under Adventure

BY GENE TRIPLETT
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Johnny Depp had just been joking with reporters that his kids were much bigger fans of Justin Bieber than their own father’s movies, when the Grammy-nominated pop phenom himself made a disrupting surprise appearance.
The scene was a press conference at the posh Four Seasons Hotel on Saturday afternoon, where Depp, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin and director Gore Verbinski were promoting their new animated film “Rango,” in which Depp supplies the voice of a gun-toting chameleon.
A reporter had asked the actor how his kids felt about their dad playing a lizard.
Depp, 47,  replied that his daughter and son, aged 11 and 9 respectively, “are far more interested in ‘Family Guy’ and Justin Bieber.”
“Are you a ‘belieber’?” the reporter asked.
“A ‘belieber’? I’ve actually never heard that one before,” Depp said, triggering a round of laughter from journalists. “That is my favorite. And you know what, yes. I am a ‘belieber’. I am. And I shall remain so.”
Questions continued on other topics until, minutes later, Depp’s gaze was drawn to the doorway of the crowded conference room. The actor broke into a big smile and said, “Hey, man!”
In strolled Bieber, causing a big stir as he waved at journalists and moved quickly to the head table to shake hands with Depp, Fisher, Breslin and Verbinski.
“You know I’m a big fan of you, so I had to come support you,” the 16-year-old singing star told Depp.
“Bless you, man, bless you,” Depp said.
“Awesome,” Bieber said. “I had to come say hi. I heard you were in the building.”
“Aren’t we all ‘beliebers’?” Depp asked, as Bieber quickly made his exit in a shower of applause.
A puzzled-looking Verbinski, 46, leaned over and asked Depp about their unexpected guest.
“That was the Beatles,” Depp explained.
The laughter from the press corps was uproarious.
Bieber was nominated for two Grammys this year — Best New Artist and Best Pop Vocal Album — and was set to perform Sunday night with mentor Usher at the Grammy Award ceremonies in Los Angeles.

This week, the most interesting DVD to appear on release lists is:

“21 Jump Street: The Complete Series”

Long before he was the moody, virtuoso actor often mentioned in the same breath with Brando and James Dean, Johnny Depp was a moody, struggling young actor looking for a break. That came when he was cast as a baby-faced undercover cop in Fox TV’s groundbreaking series “21 Jump Street,” whose full five seasons will be released in an 18 DVD collection on Tuesday.

Depp, along with Dustin Nguyen, Holly Robinson Peete, Peter DeLuise and Steven Williams, were cast in the series as young L.A. police officers able to pass as high school and college students in order to go undercover for special investigations. The series, created by Patrick Hasburgh and Stephen J. Cannell (“The A-Team,” “The Rockford Files”) and based on an actual LAPD squad, ran from 1987-91.

Over its 103 episodes, the series dealt with timely social issues and featured an amazing guest roster of established and up-and-coming stars, including Brad Pitt, Vince Vaughn, Jason Priestley, Josh Brolin, Christina Applegate, Bridget Fonda, Dom DeLuise, Rosie Perez, John Waters, Shannen Doherty, Thomas Haden Church, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and more.

Depp, cast as maverick detective Tom Hanson, saw his star rise with the series, but he had initially been reluctant to accept the role. He signed a six-year contract, but told friends he didn’t think the show would last more than one season. But, largely due to his matinee-idol presence, the show was a hit, and by the third season Depp was eager to leave and move on to lucrative movie roles coming his way.

Back stories abound about Depp’s restlessness and disenchantment with the series (he complained about scripts and often rebelled by arbitrarily changing his lines), and after the fourth season he was released from his contract and moved on to his strange, breakthrough, big-screen role in “Edward Scissorhands.”

“21 Jump Street: The Complete Series” is not rated and features 18 discs in a special boxed set. Total running time is about 78 hours. It’s being released by Mill Creek Entertainment.

- Dennis King