I was sitting in a programming meeting today. It was around 4:45 or so, and two of my colleagues at the other end of the table was showing his blackberry to someone else. A few minutes passed, and she showed hers back to him, and one of them said, “Heath Ledger was just found dead.” It took everyone in the room by surprise … nothing unique there. When we got back to our main office later, apparently everyone there had been doing nothing but refreshing TMC and The New York Times and wherever else they could read the latest gossip.
Who knows what happened to Ledger. His family in Australia now seems to say that he had been suffering from pneumonia for the past couple weeks. A friend of mine sent me a passage from a newspaper story a couple months ago in which Ledger discussed the emotional difficulties he encountered from playing The Joker in Christopher Nolan’s Batman sequel The Dark Knight, which opens this summer. Apparently this version of the character is so disturbed and demented that it played a part in Ledger having trouble sleeping, and so he would find himself taking a sleeping pill or two just in an attempt to get more than one or two hours sleep in a night. There have been other reports that he took his recent break-up from Michelle Williams especially hard.
I would ask “who cares?” if I didn’t know that in our society everyone does. I don’t ask that question to be crass or insensitive because I don’t ask it in terms of “Who cares about Heath Ledger?” Rather, I mean, “Who cares how he died?”
Obviously … still everyone. But at the end of the day, Ledger’s death — like so many other talented people before him, including Brad Renfro just last week — whether purposefully self-destructive or completely accidental is just one thing: sad. Was it suicide? Did he accidentally take too many sleeping pills because he just wanted to sleep? Was he using any other drugs again recently? All these questions will likely be answered one way or another in the next few days, but that doesn’t stop 100 rumors from being thrown out to the world before being retracted (or not) simply because people find some sort of joy even in some form of sadness. Ledger got to lead the high life — and now, he flew too close to the sun. Or … he didn’t. He just made an accidental and fatal mistake.
Ledger had, at least to my mind, come a long way over the last decade of his consistently growing stardom. Even in something silly like 10 Things I Hate About You, he had a compelling screen presence. That grew into a significant acting talent, exposed beautifully in Brokeback Mountain, and, if one could base such a thing on a trailer (which one can’t, but I’m going to anyway), his looks and posture and facial expressions alone make his Joker look like it’s going to be something special. As an enormous Batman Begins fan — a film which I still consider to be the best of 2005 — I eagerly anticipate Nolan’s sequel, and Ledger is one of the main reasons why.
It’s just sad, in all definitions and connotations. And yet, whenever something like this happens, I wonder, “Why and how him?” Not because I’m wishing it was someone else instead, but simply because of the curiousity and seeming randomness of it all.
I always flash back to that night in 1993 when I was driving down Sunset Blvd on my way home, noticing a crowd of people on the sidewalk in front of The Viper Room. An ambulance coming from the other direction turned through the intersection in front of me. I had no idea what had happened, and continued driving home. The next morning, I was at a press junket when a friend came up and told me that River Phoenix had died, and putting two-and-two together, I suppose I drove by as he lay dying.
Two years earlier, at the same hotel, in the same ballroom, I was at a different press junket for the film Soapdish. Robert Downey Jr. was there. Robert Downey Jr. was running around the room. Robert Downey Jr.’s eyes were bugging out of his head. Robert Downey Jr. was definitely on something. Robert Downey Jr., 17 years and multiple rehabs and court trials later is still here with us and starring in what should be one of the bigger films of this summer, Iron Man. And I’m happy for that. High or not, he was a really nice guy that day, and he’s an incredibly tired actor. But … how? How has he, and others with similar substance abuse problems, managed to turn back just before reaching the sun.
And really … other than providing cautionary tales to all of those who don’t pay attention to the warnings anyway, does it matter? The film world lost a talented member of its club today. More importantly, his two year old daughter lost a father. It doesn’t matter whether he committed suicide or overdosed on recreational drugs or accidentally overdosed on sleeping pills, because at the end of the day, he’s gone without being able to use his talent to contribute anything further, and any way you look at that, it’s just sad.
Out of Focus 