It has recently been reported on several websites that Terry Gilliam isn’t happy with the way Warner Bros. are acting surrounding Heath Ledger’s death and the release of The Dark Knight, accusing them of using his death as a way to promote the film. On the issue of Ledger’s possible Oscar nomination for his portrayal of The Joker (which has been put forward by several critics as well as co-stars Cristian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and Maggie Gylenhall) Gilliam is quoted as saying
“That’s what Warner Brothers are saying, but they’ll do anything to publicise their film. That’s just what they do and you can’t get upset because it’s bulls**t … They’re like a great white shark which devours whatever it can.”
Wow. This doesn’t sound like the same man who movie magazines and websites have been interviewing and reporting on since Ledger’s tragic death in January. At the time Ledger was working on Gilliam’s upcoming fantasy film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (due for release next year), filming had not yet finished and Ledger still had a number of scenes left. His death threw the film’s future into uncertainty but thanks to some script re-writing it has been possible, due to the nature of the film involving other realities, to use other actors (namely Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell) for Ledger’s character when not in the “real world”, which all scenes had been filmed for.
Until now I’ve had the utmost respect for how Gilliam has been handling the whole situation, I can only imagine how he must have felt when Ledger passed away, not only losing a friend (they had previously worked on Gilliam’s 2005 film The Brothers Grimm) but also possibly his picture but then he had his stroke of genius and has worked a way for Ledger’s final performance to be seen by the public. But now with this attack on Warner Bros. and TDK I am slightly less impressed. To me it seems that Gilliam is jealous. No-one is paying his film, the one with Ledger’s final performance, any attention while TDK, Ledger’s final completed performance gets all the headlines. But why would they? Gilliam is hardly a mainstream player these days, his last film, Tideland, about a girl who gets stuck in a fantasy land after the deaths of her parents was an extremely bizarre affair and other than The Brothers Grimm or things Pyton related that’s all he’s really done in the last 10 years since Fear and Loathing. Even if Ledger was still with us people would be talking TDK and Ledger’s performance and not The Imaginarium…, therefore the only person that appears to be using Ledger’s death is in fact Gilliam. Please, finish the film, it sounds very interesting, just don’t get caught up in some tasteless point scoring over Ledger in the process.
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