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Kelly Loudenberg’s Followers (4)
Kelly Loudenberg
Website
Genre
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Hollywood Vampires: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, and the Celebrity Exploitation Machine
by
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published
2025
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8 editions
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* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, click here.
“Neither was Amber an “everywoman.” She was a Hollywood celebrity with money, an armored truck and driver, a revolving door of lawyers, PR wizards, and media connections at the ready. Her existence was totally alien from the day-to-day lives of most domestic-violence victims. This doesn’t mean she couldn’t also be a victim of abuse—but she wasn’t a stand-in for other survivors. Society tends to use celebrities as vessels to carry every social examination, every social problem, every social ill. But celebrities aren’t the norm they aren’t representative of anything except celebrity.
Amber said time and time again that she chose to speak up about Johnny’s abuse for those who don’t have a voice. But Amber hadn’t assumed a central role in the #MeToo movement on her own; she was aided and encouraged by powerful institutions like the ACLU and the Washington Post, which viewed her as an apt representative for the latest cause célèbre, betraying their own detachment from everyday victims. Throughout the trial and its aftermath, many sectors of the media held the line on this narrative, trumpeting Amber as a martyr for the movement and selling her experience as exemplary and relatable. In their analyses of the trial as a systemic failure and “the death of #MeToo,” they failed to see their own complicity in constructing a myopic, unrelatable notion of social justice.”
― Hollywood Vampires: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, and the Celebrity Exploitation Machine
Amber said time and time again that she chose to speak up about Johnny’s abuse for those who don’t have a voice. But Amber hadn’t assumed a central role in the #MeToo movement on her own; she was aided and encouraged by powerful institutions like the ACLU and the Washington Post, which viewed her as an apt representative for the latest cause célèbre, betraying their own detachment from everyday victims. Throughout the trial and its aftermath, many sectors of the media held the line on this narrative, trumpeting Amber as a martyr for the movement and selling her experience as exemplary and relatable. In their analyses of the trial as a systemic failure and “the death of #MeToo,” they failed to see their own complicity in constructing a myopic, unrelatable notion of social justice.”
― Hollywood Vampires: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, and the Celebrity Exploitation Machine
“Johnny had nicknames for nearly everyone on the opposing side: Elaine Bredehoft was “Breadsticks”; Benjamin Rottenborn was “Rotten Egg”; Adam Nadelhaft, another lawyer on Amber’s team, was “Nadelcock”; and Elon Musk was “Mollusk.”
― Hollywood Vampires: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, and the Celebrity Exploitation Machine
― Hollywood Vampires: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, and the Celebrity Exploitation Machine
“He said the jury noted these kinds of contradictions throughout Amber’s case—contradictions that accumulated week after week. They decided her story wasn’t just not believable, it was unbelievable, he said. “There are so many inconsistencies between what she said, what the pictures told and the story that was being prosecuted. There were so many holes in the story, it was hard for us to believe any of it.” The jury was made up of two women and five men. Tom said the women on the jury were tougher on Amber than the men.
One male juror, whose name and juror number are unknown, spoke to Good Morning America soon after the verdict. He said Amber’s emotional testimony didn’t add up and they believed her to be the aggressor. “All of us were very uncomfortable . . . she would answer one question and she would be crying and two seconds later she would turn ice cold . . . some of us used the expression ‘crocodile tears.”
― Hollywood Vampires: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, and the Celebrity Exploitation Machine
One male juror, whose name and juror number are unknown, spoke to Good Morning America soon after the verdict. He said Amber’s emotional testimony didn’t add up and they believed her to be the aggressor. “All of us were very uncomfortable . . . she would answer one question and she would be crying and two seconds later she would turn ice cold . . . some of us used the expression ‘crocodile tears.”
― Hollywood Vampires: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, and the Celebrity Exploitation Machine
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