The Heath Ledger Roundtable Discussion |
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| Written by Joe Lipsett, April Yorke, and Kevin Johns |
| Thursday, 31 January 2008 19:00 |
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KEVIN: I'd like to start off with where we all were when we heard the news, and what our initial thoughts were.
The Four Feathers
Three days earlier, I’d had a bunch a people over for my birthday, and we watched I'm Not There. Afterwards, despite Cate Blanchett's soon to be Oscar winning performance, it was Heath Ledger that I was really jazzed to talk about. He was one of those actors who really won me over in recent years and whom I was increasingly impressed with. So, Saturday I'm telling everyone how great he is, and Tuesday I'm looking up at the poster for his upcoming summer blockbuster and finding out that he is dead. Like I said, it was a shock, but it was a familiar shock. It brought up those same feelings I had last year when Hunter S. Thompson killed himself. And, for me, it all goes back to one of the most seminal moments in my youth: the death of Kurt Cobain. Whenever these moments happen, whenever people that I looked up to or respect as artists die like this, there is always a sense that The System has won, that MY side has just suffered a loss. These artists... they effect our lives in so many complex and multilayered ways. You just sort of take them for granted, and then suddenly they are dead. JOE: I first heard the news of Heath's death when I came home that evening. I was making dinner, and I turned on the radio for company. They announced the shocking news in between songs. I immediately searched the internet for more information, or to possibly disprove what I had heard. At that point, there was virtually no information aside from the fact that his body had been discovered in New York and there were drugs present. 
Brokeback Mountain
It wasn't until the following day that I realized there's a huge discrepancy between male and female celebrity in North America. In addition to Heath and Renfro, Owen Wilson also tried to commit suicide last year, but in each case there seemed to be no advance warning that there were problems. Naturally, you read stories in magazines about how celebrity romances are going, or if a star has been playing with too much nose candy, but you rarely see covers of US or People declaring "Male Celebrity Bulimia on the Rise" or "Jake Gyllenhaal Suicidal". Instead, we get stories about Paris, Britney, Nicole, Ashley et al. – as though these wildly spiralling party girls are more relevant than their male counterparts.
The simple fact is that Heath's death will now be parlayed into fifteen minutes of fame across magazine covers and then he'll be forgotten, except by those of us who appreciated his work and feel as though the entertainment industry has lost an extremely talented rising star. It saddens me because it makes me wonder what else he might have achieved, but it also fills me with despair that those shoddy yellow journalists will fall over themselves for the next two weeks to remind us of how important he was, as though his greatest achievement was dying young. APRIL: On Tuesday, January 22, at approximately 6 pm, my mom called while a friend and I were cooking dinner. "Are you watching the news?" she asked. 
A Knight's Tale
Joe, I'm glad you brought up Renfro. I thought of his death earlier this month, too, when news of Ledger's death came out. He hasn't had a hit in years, and his passing will never get the press that Ledger's death is generating. His drug problem started a lot earlier, and it seemed a lot more likely that it would best him in the end. Ledger had only recently confessed to using sleeping pills. I just hope he's not our generation's James Dean, as you predict. His body of work deserves better.
KEVIN: Speaking of his body of work, you both mention Brokeback Mountain. I imagine Brokeback will be the role that Ledger is most remembered for, and the film's cultural significance is only going to grow with time. One of the things that I find most extraordinary about that film (besides being a beautifully shot, brilliantly acted and an utterly heartbreaking narrative) is the era in which it was made. Ten and twenty years from now, people are going to look back and say, "Wow, they made that movie at a time when the political milieu in America was waaaay to the right." I mean, I don't think Brokeback would have had the impact that it had if it’d been made in the mid-90's. Maybe I'm just looking back on the decade of my youth with rose coloured glasses, but it seems to me a movie focusing on a homosexual relationship just wouldn't have been that big a deal in the more liberal nineties. But dropping it right in the dead centre of Bush's regime created such a huge impact. That film was everywhere. It was one of those movies whose images and characters became instantly iconic, and I think Ledger's performance was a big part of that. The fact that an actor like Heath Ledger had the courage to make Brokeback Mountain in the middle of The Age of Terror says something about him as an artist. JOE: And not just make that film; he actively sought it out because he considered it such a great role. This after how many other more established actors saw the content and took a pass because it was "too controversial" and too "leftist”? I think that was one of his most interesting attributes: hit or miss, Heath never shied away from interesting, provocative material. He seemed to enjoy risky projects, especially if there was true talent working behind the scenes (such as directors Ang Lee or Terry Gilliam). APRIL: While he was always outspoken about his role choices, you're describing latter day Ledger. I still remember him from his teen heartthrob days, when 10 Things I Hate About You launched him (along with now Indie It-Boy Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in Hollywood.
10 Things I Hate About You
And then he was everywhere: a Hercules-style TV series, a note perfect performance as Mel Gibson's idealist son in The Patriot, his face making up the entire poster for A Knight's Tale. But AKT wasn't the hit it was meant to be, and suddenly we just didn't feel the same way about Heath anymore. His tragic turn in Monster's Ball wasn't a big enough part to turn us around, and a series of fumbles (The Four Feathers, The Order) followed. It was only recently, in the year that his works with Lee and Gilliam came out, that Ledger seems to be back on sure footing, back to proving that our faith in him nearly ten years earlier hadn't been misplaced. The character Robbie Clark, from I’m Not There, is an anti-hero to be sure, but this summer will bring us his first villain. Only now are we beginning to see a range that will never be explored. KEVIN: His range is certainly what impressed me the most. From A Knight’s Tale to Brokeback Mountain to what we've seen of his performance as The Joker in the trailers for The Dark Knight… these are all completely different characters and he seemed to have approached each one with a totally different style. He was one of those actors who, despite the instantly recognizable features that you describe, was still able to disappear into a character. It wasn't just that he was an actor who was able to transcend his earlier popcorn work and start seeking out interesting roles with great directors that impressed me; it was the fact that he was someone skilled enough as a thespian to actually make those transitions fairly easily. I mean, who would have thought that the pretty boy from 10 Things I Hate About You would later star in a Todd Haynes directed experimental biopic about Bob Dylan?!! JOE: I think the thing we always touch on when a celebrity dies too early is the removal of promise. I have memories of watching Heath Ledger from back when I was a child and my sister became obsessed by him in the TV show Roar. The show was a mid-season (possibly even summer) show for Fox, and it didn't do well and was subsequently yanked. I remember that my sister and I used to talk about it like a discarded gem - the kind of show that joins a long list of other crowd-pleasers that never really caught on - but we always wondered what happened to that lead actor, who seemed so young to have such a dynamic presence.
I'm Not There
It seems that there are certain kinds of actors that stay in safe areas where they know they have dedicated followings, or they are familiar with the material and don't have to stretch themselves (I'm looking at you Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Lopez). I never felt Heath subscribed to that idea because he always seemed to pop up in the most random and out of place roles. He never really ended up repeating a similar movie. The two closest I can think of are 10 Things I Hate About You and A Knight's Tale, and that may just be because they were both marketed to teen girls. I liked the fact that he seemed willing to try any role, in any genre; if he found it appealing, he would go for it. It's not really surprising that this didn't always make him the most marketable of actors, and he never truly broke out, but I think that's one of the reasons his death made a mark beyond the obvious tragedy of how youthful he was: he was still a bit of an enigma, someone that most everyone knew, but few had any experience watching. Brokeback was obviously the film most people knew him for (and naturally this summer's giant blockbuster-in-waiting The Dark Knight), but to me he'll always be the guy from Roar, or the heartthrob in 10 Things... APRIL: See, that's just it. He had those earlier teen heart throb successes, but he wasn't going to let them define him. He wasn't a great actor, not in the to-be-remembered-for-all-time Marlon Brando way, but he was on his way to becoming one. It was worth paying attention to see what he would do next. As the audience, the collective whole that comes together to patron his art, that is the source of our tragedy. He was tall and deep-voiced and manly, and now it's all gone. It isn't that he was too young; it's that it was too soon. JOE: He had so much potential. I love Brokeback - it may well be one of my favourite movies from the past decade - but it was art house cred. The Dark Knight would have enabled Heath to move to a whole new level and, perhaps, become a character actor. Maybe that's why we all referenced his age; if he were older he would have reached those levels, but at 28?
The Dark Knight
As we bring this conversation to a close, I'm reminded that there is still one Heath Ledger movie for us all to see: The Dark Knight. What are the chances that a Batman film we be that final, truly astonishing performance that we were all waiting for?
JOE: Well, I think that from what the trailers have shown us, and Heath's own admission that he was having trouble removing himself from the character's psyche, we may very well be in for a dark, scary treat. It might be all the more disturbing if the parallels to the Joker play into Heath's own personal tragedy. We could be in for a very unsettling film going experience. I, however, am eager to see his final performance. I think it will prove to be a telling testament to his prowess as an actor. APRIL: I was already looking forward to The Dark Knight (either Christopher Nolan or Christian Bale would be enough to grab my attention, never mind when you put them together). I can't say that I am looking forward to it any more now that Ledger is gone. I do have some trepidation that the entire enterprise will become a referendum on Ledger as an actor. What if it fails to live up to our expectations? What will we think of him then? This one's already in the can. What becomes of Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus? Production is shut down, and a possible recast hangs in the air. We'll wait for The Dark Knight and have to learn to let the rest go.
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