The Warfare of the Roses, a 1989 black comedy primarily based on Warren Adler’s bleak novel of the identical title, was a monetary hit even because it concurrently attracted and repelled critics just like the late Robert Ebert. The film, which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner because the titular Roses, was “a black, indignant, bitter, unrelenting comedy,” Ebert wrote on the time, “a struggle between the sexes that makes James Thurber’s work on the identical topic look virtually resigned by comparability.”
Should you discovered your self pondering of the late critic’s phrases as you watched Depp v. Heard, the Netflix docuseries in regards to the 2022 libel trial between former husband-and-wife Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, you are not the one one who noticed parallels between the 2 doomed {couples}: “College’s Out” singer Alice Cooper says he instructed Depp the couple ought to work out their variations by remaking the favored movie.
In accordance with Cooper, who for 11 years has collaborated with Depp as a part of rock band Hollywood Vampires, made point out of the reboot thought in an interview printed immediately within the UK newspaper The Instances. Although Cooper says Depp “by no means talked” about his stormy relationship with Heard, whom he met in 2009 throughout manufacturing on The Rum Diary, the rocker was in a position to glean from exterior sources that the pair’s relationship went from loving to poisonous over the course of their 2014-2016 arc from engagement to divorce.
“I mentioned, ‘I’ve an ideal thought. You and Amber do a remake of The Warfare of the Roses. Who wouldn’t go and see that?’” Cooper says he instructed Depp, who misplaced a U.Okay. libel case in opposition to the The Solar newspaper after it referred to him as a “wife-beater” however received a U.S. libel case in opposition to Heard after she referred to herself as “a public determine representing home abuse.”
The trial between the pair was a bitter one, not not like the plot of the Danny DeVito-directed movie. Within the case of Roses, a rich and once-happy couple threaten and kill one another’s pets, bodily assault each other, and injury their shared residence. Whereas Depp and Heard reached a $7 million divorce settlement after Heard filed a restraining order in opposition to her partner, the Roses confronted a much more depressing destiny, each killed by a fallen chandelier throughout a very nasty combat.
Based mostly on Cooper’s account, Depp tried to maneuver previous Cooper’s cinematic suggestion by turning the dialog again to the band. “He laughed. Then it was, ‘What songs are we doing?’” Cooper mentioned. “Johnny is an effective guitarist and in a means he would have been happiest doing that, enjoying facet of stage in a band and never having to cope with the extent of consideration he will get.”
