For those of you who don't know, Heath Ledger was in the middle of working on a movie for director Terry Gilliam when he was found dead in his NYC apartment earlier this week. The Australian born Ledger was only 28 years old but he leaves behind one Academy Award nominated performance and a legacy of some of the most dramatic and daring work to be put on screen by anyone in a long, long time. Terry Gilliam is no stranger to unexpected tragedies during the making (or in some cases: un-making) of his movies. Watch the exceptional documentary film Lost in La Mancha about the disasters that befell him and his crew while trying to bring his story of Don Quixote to the screen. That movie would have starred Johnny Depp in his second pairing with Gilliam. The first being the epic Hunter S. Thompson trip-movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The new movie Gilliam and Ledger were working on was to be called The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and it had something to do with multiple worlds (a favorite subject of Gilliam) and time travel (another recurring theme in his work). I was reading how they had shot everything with Ledger up to a certain point in the film when his character enters a so-called fantasy world. They were about to begin shooting green-screen effects with the other-worldly talented Ledger when it was reported that he had died. Aside from the obvious feelings of grief and remorse for Heath and his family, Terry must have felt like he had been here before.
The obvious question was: What happens now with the movie? Do they re-shoot? Do they re-cast? Do they scrap it altogether? The film began shooting back in December and was virtually at a half-way point in terms of one of the two worlds depicted in the film having already been completed. Ledger's character was to now enter some sort of portal and emerge in a totally different world. What to do? Enter Johnny Depp. Perhaps it was Gilliam who contacted Johnny and asked him if he would be interested in stepping-in and filming the fantasy scenes that Ledger would have completed had he lived. Perhaps he felt that Johnny might still owe him a role after his infamous Don Quixote debacle. Johnny is after all in between projects at the moment (he is set to star in Michael Mann's new John Dillinger gangster project filming later this year) and it would not take long (in relative movie terms) to film the remaining scenes in Gilliam's film. This would mean that Heath and Johnny would essentially be playing the same part. One character -- two actors. Heath in the "reality world" and Johnny in the "fantasy world". It's some heavy, high-concept stuff. But if anyone could pull a stunt like this off it would be Terry Gilliam. When I first heard this news, I thought it would be a fitting tribute to Heath Ledger to have his final work on film be completed and not tucked away into an editor's scrap drawer for who knows how long. Maybe forever. And I think it would just be a thrill to see Gilliam pull this off -- especially after Quixote and the not-so-private battles he waged (and lost) with Miramax executives over the final cut of The Brothers Grimm movie (also starring Heath). Frankly, I'm rooting for Mr. Gilliam. His last film, Tideland, was a true return to form for him. And nobody seemed to care about it. One thing I can promise you now is, if Gilliam can pull this next trick off, everyone will be watching. And maybe, just maybe, he will finally get his dues. The fate of Doctor Parnassus is still up in the air as it has yet to be announced whether or not Mr. Depp has officially signed on. I hope that he does. It would be a fitting tribute to the legacy of a young actor who died way too young, and way before his time.
In a truly strange endnote to all this, I read in the paper the other day how Jack Nicholson had recently commented on Heath's death. Heath's last completed film to be released this year is The Dark Knight (the second Chris Nolan Batman film). Heath of course is following in Jack's footsteps as the Caped-Crusader's arch-nemesis The Joker. It has been released that Heath was having a lot of problems sleeping following his stint as the psychotically evil Clown Prince of Crime in Nolan's dark film. He was taking sleeping pills and possibly other drugs to help with his extreme fatigue and insomnia. It's no secret that these drugs may have directly caused his untimely death. Does Jack offer his sympathies along with the rest of a stunned industry of colleagues and admirers? No. This is all that he says: "I warned him."
Strange indeed.
