Arizona Dream (1993): The Johnny Depp Film America Almost Never Saw

Some movies disappear because they failed. Arizona Dream disappeared for the opposite reason: it was too strange, too long, and too European for the American market that financed it. The result is one of the great lost films of the 1990s — a dreamy, funny, heartbreaking fable with Johnny Depp, Jerry Lewis, and Faye Dunaway — and it is exactly the kind of title Gotta See DVDs exists to keep in circulation.

The Film

Depp plays Axel Blackmar, a young New Yorker who counts fish for a living and dreams, vividly, of Eskimos and flying fish. When his uncle Leo (Jerry Lewis, in one of his finest late performances) summons him home to Arizona to work the family Cadillac lot and stand up at Leo's wedding, Axel drifts instead toward Elaine Stalker (Faye Dunaway), a widow building a flying machine out of scrap and longing, and her stepdaughter Grace (Lili Taylor), who plays the accordion and calmly plans her reincarnation as a turtle. Vincent Gallo rounds out the dream as Paul, an aspiring actor who reenacts famous movie scenes — including the crop-duster sequence from North by Northwest — with more nerve than budget.

Director Emir Kusturica, who arrived with a Palme d'Or for When Father Was Away on Business and a Cannes directing prize for Time of the Gypsies, films it all as a waking dream: fish drift through the sky, Cadillacs stack toward the moon, and Goran Bregović's score — including Iggy Pop singing "In the Death Car" — hums underneath like a half-remembered song. The film took the Silver Bear Special Jury Prize at the 1993 Berlin International Film Festival.

Why It Vanished

American audiences barely got the chance to see it. The U.S. release was delayed and then cut — the American version runs roughly 119 minutes against the European cut's 142 — and the film slipped away with almost no theatrical footprint. For years, the only honest way to see Kusturica's full film was to hunt down an import. Twenty-three minutes of a dream is not a trim; it is a different movie.

Our Edition

Our listing carries the fully uncut European version — 142 minutes, in English (with Portuguese subtitles on this print), also known in some territories as Arrowtooth Waltz. Like every disc in our library, it is a DVD-R copy produced from the master print we hold, clearly labeled as a copy and guaranteed to play. If you have only ever seen the shortened American cut — or if you know this film only by reputation — this is the version Kusturica actually made.

Get Arizona Dream on DVD — $19.99, and remember: every third movie in your cart is free.