Heath Ledger: The Dark Knight now has a Seal of Immortality

[Johann]

The current film industry lost a man yesterday whose star was on a huge rise.

The media reports sleeping pills as a possible factor in Ledger's sudden death and if so, that makes it even more tragic. I read he was having trouble sleeping while working on intense films like "The Dark Knight" and "I'm Not There". Pretty tragic to lose him now, just when he was becoming a REALLY big star. I feel sad about him, even though I wasn't a huge fan. Something tells me when Nolan's film rolls around this summer I'm gonna be one of his biggest.
All I could do today at work is wonder what his Joker is going to be like.

I suspect it will be an immortal performance.
Sadness for Warner Brothers, sadness for Ang Lee, sadness for all who worked with him, I gather.

You were seriously good stock, Heath.
Now you're up there with James Dean.
Peace brother.

[Chris Knipp]

This is how I'm ending my year's end best list comments:

Early 2008 has brought the tragic loss of Heath Ledger—an event that has made even Daniel Day-Lewis weep. The young Ledger was only just beginning to become clearly an important actor. His unforgettable and deeply moving performance in Brokeback Mountain will be his lasting monument.

I could also say he had other sweet and fresh and beautiful performances to his name, and particularly the contrasts of Casanova and Skip in Lords of Dogtown. As N.P. Thompson wrote (http://www.moviesintofilm.com/lordsofdogtown.htm)"Heath Ledger’s Skip Engblom isn’t the main character in Catherine Hardwicke’s Lords of Dogtown, yet Ledger makes Skip, the hostile, irascible owner of a surf and skateboarding shop in Venice, California, circa the mid-1970s, impossible to forget."

A.O. Scott compared Ledger to Brando in Brokeback Mountain when he originally reviewed it, and Scott wrote a fine tribute to him for the Times. But perhaps the finest tribute was that of the great Day-Lewis.
"I didn't know him," Day-Lewis said. "I have an impression, a strong impression, I would have liked him very much as a man if I had. I'd already marveled at some of his work, and had looked forward so much to seeing the work that he would do in the future." If Day-Lewis marveled at some of his work, you better believe that work was fine.

[Johann]

Yes indeed.
Thanks Chris.

Have you seen the new trailer for The Dark Knight?
Apparently you can only see it in the previews of the IMAX screening of "I Am Legend" but it's online and it blows my head off.

It's gonna be the best film of the year, I swear.
When that Bat-cycle or whatever the fuck it is skids out after Batman passes the Joker...wham bam thank you ma'am!

This new direction for the Caped Crusader is totally fine by me.
I read that Jack Nicholson is furious that he wasn't asked to play the Joker again. I hate to say it but Heath Ledger just might make you forget that Jack was the Clown Prince of Crime.

[Chris Knipp]

I have read that publicizing the new Batman film is going to be a big problem with Ledger's passing.

It is sad if true but not altogether surprising that Nicholson may not be called again for some roles. His brand has been overexposed.

[Johann]

Maybe so.
Jack would've been awesome as the Joker again, especially with this bold new take, but man, after seeing that trailer ad nauseum, I KNOW they found their man in Ledger.

C'mon, watch that fuckin' trailer- Heath is bone chilling as the Joker.

www.atasteforthetheatrical.com

[Chris Knipp]

Maybe being bone chilling in The Joker was part of what took Heath to such a dark place he was having trouble sleeping--but I don't want to go into that Tabloid stuff. Time will tell how his life may have led to his tragic and doubtless accidental death.

As most may know (and this link may not last) Daniel Day-Lewis has paid tribute to Ledger several times, most notably at present in accepting the Best Actor prize at the SAG awards, when he gave an astonishingly detailed, sympathetic, sincere, and articulate description of Heath's performance in Monster's Ball and of how moved he was by Ledger's "unique" and "perfect" job in Brokeback Mountain:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=5nPOza5RZk0 I knew DD-L was a great actor but I used to think he might be kind of weird as a person. This speech and other recent ones tells me he is really a good guy, a mensch, and that's very nice to know.

[oscar jubis]

Now that sufficient time has passed since Heath Ledger's tragic death, it's perhaps appropriate to comment on its effect on maverick filmmaker Terry Gilliam. You tell me, but I cannot think of any other active director whose trajectory is this...cursed. It seems like obstacles great and small are always appearing out of nowhere to thwart his film projects. Of course, there are the familiar conflicts with producers and financiers common to many visionary filmmakers. That's not what I'm talking about here. You can learn about his struggles to complete The Man Who Killed Don Quijote in the documentary Lost in La Mancha. What finally derailed that project was Jean Rochefort becoming gravely ill a couple of weeks into the shoot. Now it seems that Ledger's death might cause Gilliam and producers to shelve The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Ledger and Gillaim got along splendidly during the making of The Brothers Grimm and remained friends thereafter. It's been reported that, upon hearing news of Ledger's death, Gilliam abandoned the Vancouver set of Imaginarium, flew to London and has refused to comment.

[Chris Knipp]

I was thinking of that too. Poor Gilliam. I don't know how he goes on. And this is one more terrible blow. By the way David Edelstein has a good piece on Ledger recently. Maybe it's a bit long to run here, but since this is a memorial thread on Heath, I will.
Apart from the loss to his family, the saddest thing about the death of Heath Ledger is that he was still unformed. He wasn't a great actor, but he was a good and hugely appealing one, and he could have become great; he was nakedly desperate to measure up to the stardom that was thrust on him so suddenly.

Ledger was unlike most of today's leading juveniles (Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Hartnett, Shia LaBeouf), who are light- middleweights with a feminine side. He was beefy, with a deep voice that was always more engaging, more musical, when he didn't have to pretend to be American. I always thought of hi (this is a fantasy) as an affable high-school jock who's voted student-council president and lands the lead in the spring musical (maybe Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls) and gets by on charm; but who smokes a little too much dope and drops acid and comes to realize that charm means little in the universe's vast scheme. So he broods and pushes himself and is perpetually unsatisfied; and grows as an artist, but at a cost to his autonomy.

Those of us who were, yes, charmed by Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You and A Knight's Tale were stunned to see his work in Monster's Ball. As the son who can never please his father and who finally, in a frenzy, shoots himself in the heart, he was so raw that he was difficult to watch. He wasn't classically trained, and he couldn't take refuge in craft or use the Method to harness his emotions. He wanted to push the boundaries like Johnny Depp, but he lacked Depp's self-protective nuttiness.

Ledger never completely transformed--not even in Brokeback Mountain, in which his gay Marlboro Man Ennis Del Mar was more of a brilliant impersonation than a flesh-and-blood human being. But there was something hypnotic about his cowboy lockjaw and uncanny low tones. Ledger made Ennis's whole life subtextual; he made you feel the unbridgeable gap between his mythical affect and the emotions that he didn't dare unleash.

In life, Ledger probably had license to act out too much. Film actors are fragile creatures, and if that sounds patronizing, well, it's meant to: I am their patron, and so are you. In return for celebrity and its attendant privileges, we ask our movie stars to stay beautiful and, even more important, to stay open, to drop the kinds of defenses that keep us all from imploding. It's no wonder most of them self-medicate like mad. Heath Ledger's work was inspiring, but his death is a reminder of what a dangerous art this can be.

--NEW YORK MAGAZINE
* By David Edelstein
* Published Jan 25, 2008
Link: http://nymag.com/movies/reviews/43335/

[oscar jubis]

I enjoyed the piece. I do wonder how the writer became convinced that "most of them (movie stars) self-medicate like mad". He must be both an insider and a pollster to write that with conviction.

[Chris Knipp]

"Self-medicate like mad" is a loose statement with some probable justification, but too much sweep. Rather than focus on that I'd emphasize what comes right before it and right after it, which may be obvious to some of us, but is worth being aware of:
In life, Ledger probably had license to act out too much. Film actors are fragile creatures, and if that sounds patronizing, well, it's meant to: I am their patron, and so are you. In return for celebrity and its attendant privileges, we ask our movie stars to stay beautiful and, even more important, to stay open, to drop the kinds of defenses that keep us all from imploding. . . .Heath Ledger's work was inspiring, but his death is a reminder of what a dangerous art this can be.

[oscar jubis]

What I found most amazing about "self-medicate like mad" is the "most of them" that precedes it. I mean: how does he know?

[Chris Knipp]

He doesn't.

[Johann]

His death has been determined as an accident.
My heart goes out to his father Kim and family.
You lost a shining sun of a son.
It hurts. BAD.


I still haven't seen Brokeback Mountain or The Brothers Grimm OR I'm Not There- all of which I anticipate are brilliant. Ang Lee, Terry Gilliam, Haynes- Heath worked with the best. I remember when A Knight's Tale came out and all the posters plastered everywhere had Ledger's handsome face on them and I was wondering "Who the hell is this guy? Some no-talent pretty boy that the studios "discovered"? Somebody who's completely meaningless that they think we all should idolize?"

I now know what a gifted man he is/was and it really is a tragedy to lose him. He was all set for a legendary career and he was cut down. Sad start to 2008..

He had fucking talent.
His films are to be cherished.
The Dark Knight is already classic, already a Masterpiece.
Just seeing the trailer tells you that.

[Chris Knipp]

Ledger was taking painkillers OxyContin and hydrocodone; anti-anxiety drugs Valium and Xanax; and sleep aids Restoril and Unisom. Only Unisom is over-the-counter. I thought Ambien had been mentioned but maybe it was Restoril. He hadn't taken an overdose of any one, but the combination, maybe complicated by his having pneumonia, was lethal. Yes, it was accidental, but it was an accident that should never have been able to happen, because he was taking a combination of drugs no sensible doctor would ever have permitted a patient to combine.

[Chris Knipp]

Nathan Lee is the film critic whose words about Brokeback Mountain most moved me. His appreciation (http://www.sfweekly.com/2008-01-30/film/appreciation/) of Heath Ledger (found online in LA Weekly) is also a fair and right one.
What I want to say about the death of Heath Ledger is ... nothing. No speculation on why he committed suicide, if he committed suicide. No comment on the chronology, the circumstances, the known facts or lurid details of his passing. No outrage at the ghoulish gathering outside his SoHo apartment, no interest in who may or may not have owned it, not even my revulsion — violent as it is — that New York Magazine no sooner posted news of Ledger's death on its Web site than it also offered a link to a broker's listing for a loft in the same building, as if this were just another colorful chapter in the story of Manhattan real estate.

No one saw it coming, everyone says, as if it would be any of our business if we did.

Ledger's most recent performance belongs to a movie about the artist besieged by critics, cultists, acolytes, and skeptics; inundated with intrusions, expectations, adoration, and disillusionment. As the dissolute actor in I'm Not There (how doleful, how morbid that title now becomes), he contributes a bittersweet, reproachful shade to this kaleidoscopic reflection on the necessity, and consequences, of reinvention, an epic contemplation on the thrill, and toll, of a life spent heading for the exit.

What is there to say? His rigorous, wrenching turn in Brokeback Mountain, instantly accepted to the uppermost pantheon, now abides in the ethereal company of Mike Waters, narcoleptic angel of My Own Private Idaho. Like River Phoenix' lovesick hustler, Ledger's Ennis Del Mar is a milestone not only of acting but also of representation. His forthcoming role as the Joker will be what it is (and we can best respect his memory by letting it play out as free as possible from studio temerity and maniacal punditry), but Ledger's legacy will always rest on the sad shoulders of a performance that belongs equally to the history of acting and cultural consolation. Again this is what Nathan Lee wrote about Brokeback Mountnain in Film Comment's January-February 2006 issue; I copied it out for my review in The Baltimore Chronicle: (http://baltimorechronicle.com/2006/021306Knipp.shtml)
On the one hand 'Brokeback Mountain' isn't very queer. In his mania to be tasteful, Ang Lee drains much of the flavor to be found in Annie Proulx's source story. The filmmaking is flat as a postcard, enervated in the editing, with a score that couldn't be cornier. On the other hand, the one that's lubed up with saliva, could 'Brokeback Mountain' be any queerer? Sure, we don't actually see Ennis Del Mar bareback Jack Twist, and those hair-raising kisses are much too brief. Critics of all orientations have complained that the movie isn't gay enough, doesn't show enough sex. Okay, then name me a movie on this scale, with comparable pedigree, that is and does. 'Brokeback' rebukes the tradition of sexless homos in mainstream culture. And that matters--up to a point. The larger point is love, and we haven't seen anything this tenderly bent since the campfire scene in 'My Own Private Idaho.' And by 'we' I mean the many millions of 'mos on the planet who've just been given, in no uncertain terms, the epic romantic tragedy straight people have taken for granted all their lives."

[Johann]

I just read that Heath was "obsessed" with the character of the Joker, and that he drew on several things to hone his performance: Alex from A Clockwork Orange (a most excellent choice of inspiration if you ask me), Sid Vicious (!) and he worked a long time on his posture and his voice. He did not want to sound like Jack Nicholson's Joker. (Another wise choice).

I'm becoming obsessed with this fucking movie!
July 18th can't come quick enough!
I'm totally psyched up for this film, Man.

I said in my review that Batman Begins was the Dark Knight for the Ages. Well, this one might just be.

Christopher Nolan is a huge fan of Stanley Kubrick, so to have that knowledge and the knowledge of Ledger studying Malcolm McDowell as Alex DeLarge, AND the knowledge that Wally Pfister has already said that this is gonna be one exciting moviegoing experience, this is the Year of the Bat.
Can't fucking wait yo.

Nolan also loves Radiohead.
Kubrick said that a director is an arbiter of taste, the one who must come up with the ideas.
Seems to me that Sir Christopher has ideas to spare.
Bring on that badass Joker/Batman shit NOW!

:)

[Chris Knipp]

Ledger also said in an interview I just saw that he had a great deal of fun playing the Joker; he said it was the most fun he'd ever had.

I just saw 10 Things I Hate About You, an 80s-youth-flick-style riff on Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew set in a Seattle high school. Heath is the Petruchio character who is hired to date Katerina (Julia Stiles) and then falls in love with her. This is a popular and pleasant movie but nothing very earth-shaking. Stiles is strong as the shrewish girl who finally bends. Heath is fine as the young hunk whom people are scared of but who's really nice. It's interesting to see Joseph Gordon-Leavitt in a young innocent role, given all the darker stuff he has been able to play since 1999 when this came out. I think this was just the kind of role Ledger was trying to get out of doing from then on. But it's a charming little movie; it's just that the themes and treatments are too familiar.

[oscar jubis]

Nice little movie. One can definitely do worse.

[Johann]

Check out this latest trailer.
This movie is gonna blow your socks off Baby

www.whysoserious.com/happytrails/trailer.htm

[Johann]

The imdb reports today that action figures of Heath Ledger's Joker
have completely sold out, after being available for the first time today. I've already secured a 12'' figure at Silver Snail comics (I put a $100 deposit on it to secure my totem).
Fans are snapping toys up believing that they are instant collector's items.

I was worried that the Ledger family would nix any plans for figures or resin statues but they agreed, and fans like me are very grateful.
What better way to honor his last *ICONIC* role?
I mean, being immortalized in plastic isn't the greatest thing in the world, but it means something substantial to Batman fans.

I am a fan now, Heath. You won me over BIG TIME here, brother.
I want to see complete fearlessness in The Joker, and you have delivered. I'm counting the days to July 18th Man...

[Johann]

Gary Oldman himself says that Heath Ledger is "remarkable" in the film, that he put his own signature on the role and he's "better than Jack".
How's that for a fucking compliment, Heath?! Fuckin' A Man!

You did a better job than Jack Nicholson.
Better than a Legend.
Not bad at all.

[Johann]

There's a huge debate going on youtube on some clips about whether or not the role of The Joker should be retired because of Heath's performance being so incredible.

Many have suggested that the only actor who could play the role (and possibly even surpass Ledger in intensity) is Daniel Day-Lewis.
I've ruminated on it and I don't know what Warner Brothers/Chris Nolan should do. Should The Joker be a defunct character?
Should they raise Ledger's purple costume to the rafters?

The Batman fan in me says no, because as mind-blowingly great as Heath was, the Joker is a main villain in Batmans' universe.
He is still alive at the end of The Dark Knight, and I think they had plans to do another movie (or more with Heath) but will his death cancel that?
Part of me says that there should be a moratorium on the character, just leave it alone for a while and part of me says get another actor like Daniel Day-Lewis to suit up and deliver some serious nastiness. I'd like to think that they could maybe come up with something where in tribute to Heath, Lewis would show up as the "REAL" Joker- that Ledger's Joker was just a patsy Joker, a pawn of a much meaner and nastier clown that we never saw in The Dark Knight but who was always there. A real "Man Behind the Curtain" trick- Nolan would be able to pull something like that off (we must never forget his masterpiece The Prestige).
Dark Knight had imposter Batmans, why not have the Joker as the ultimate imposter? Can you imagine the intensity of introducing Daniel Day-Lewis as the "Real" Joker, the maniac who orchestrated the whole "plan", with Ledger's Joker as his top Lieutenant, top Student?

It probably won't happen, but I can dream about it, can't I?