Daniel Depp: LA story

Loser's Town is former bookshop-owner, screenwriter, producer and journalist Daniel Depp's debut, a funny and readable tour through the sleazy underbelly of Hollywood. Stuntman turned private investigator David Spandau is hired to help rising star Bobby Dye, who is being strong-armed by ambitious gangster Richie Stella. Spandau quickly discovers that Stella's drug racket is nothing compared to the ruthlessness of the Hollywood machine.

So far, so Elmore Leonard. But the book benefits from Depp's substantial experience of how that Hollywood machine works. Five minutes into the interview, he casually mentions that he finished the novel at his brother John's house in France. Yes, that one. Daniel is the half-brother of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" star and they co-wrote the screenplay to Depp's directorial debut, "The Brave" ("a turgid and unbelievable neo-western", according to a 1997 Variety review).

Depp explains that he gave his brother an early version of the novel, saying to him "regardless of what everybody says, it's not about you". "John was ecstatic about it when it got signed up," he adds. He is also quick to play down assumptions that the book would be full of easily recognisable caricatures of Hollywood stars and moguls. "It would have been a great opportunity to pay back some people but that wasn't on the agenda. Maybe it should have been."

Depp was born in Kentucky and he says he spent most of his childhood sneaking into cinemas to watch French New Wave movies. Before he started work in Hollywood, Depp ran his own bookstore selling rare books on western Americana and the history of California. He still misses it ("booksellers are all crazy" he says wistfully), but moved on to help set up production company Scaramanga with his brother in the early 1990s, An experience he summarises as: "I had to listen to writers pitch scripts that we liked but had to reject for one tedious economic reason or another."

Hooray for Hollywood

As with other mystery novels set in southern California, Los Angeles is as much of a character as the chancers and schemers in Loser's Town. "It's like Oz," says Depp. "Everybody is completely made up. Little Betsy Smith from Iowa gets a publicist and becomes Paris Hilton.

"I have a love/hate relationship with Los Angeles. I think if you are going to look at how the rest of the 21st century will pan out, look at Los Angeles. You first see here all the problems that people are going to experience across the rest of the country in LA."

He says that he always wanted to write, and having Loser's Town as a novel rather than a screenplay let him have greater flexibility. "I don't think this is grand literature but I wanted to write something entertaining," he says. "I love the genre. A lot of the best social criticism comes out of the mystery and thriller genre."

Simon & Schuster has a nationwide tour planned for Depp when the book is published in March. Depp says that he has been quite taken aback by the similarities between publishing and movie-making. "I imagined publishing to be much more laid-back and genteel. The nature of screenwriting is that it's really hectic and quite insane. It seems like 15,000 people have to have a say in what you are writing. I thought with writing a book you get to go away on your own but it turns out there's almost more fuss."

Depp says the next Spandau novel will look at an ageing actress being hassled by a stalker and will take in "the grand debauchery" of the Cannes Film Festival. Expect no characters using Keith Richards as inspiration for a pirate role.