yeah it is, the guy has a little girl and everything

The actor Heath Ledger was found dead Tuesday afternoon in an apartment in Manhattan, according to the New York City police. Signs pointed to a suicide or an accidental overdose, police sources said. Mr. Ledger was 28.

of course this isnt as shitty as his passing but this in turn has completely killed Terry Gilliam's next film "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus". He was a key character in the film and despite having finished alot of their location shooting with Ledger, none of the greensceening has been done yet. Meaning...they had a good chunk shot already but also a fairly large chunk needing to be shot still. With him gone, the production is basically shutdown which is a damn shame since for one, its Gilliam, and secondly all the people working on this are out of a job and in a possible economiic dilemma.

yeah I also thought what a shame for that production

Jack Nicholson has hinted he warned tragic Heath Ledger against taking on the role of The Joker in the new Batman film. Ledger, 28 - who was declared dead at 3:30pm at his Manhattan apartment on Tuesday - publicly declared himself exhausted and sleep deprived in November following the grueling shoot for The Dark Knight. He also revealed in an interview with the New York Times he'd resorted to taking sleeping pills - an overdose of which is believed to be the cause of his death - in a desperate bid to catch up on rest. And Nicholson, who famously portrayed the menacing Joker in Tim Burton's 1989 movie Batman, implied to the waiting crowd outside plush London restaurant The Wolesley on Tuesday night he spoke to Ledger about his role in The Dark Knight - and warned him about the pitfalls of taking on such a demanding challenge. When asked by the London crowds for his reaction to Ledger's untimely demise, a defeated Nicholson simply replied, "I told him so." Batman Begins prequel The Dark Knight is due to be released in July.

Nicholson's remark seems so callus to me. Even if he were thinking it, shouldn't that have been the kind of comment to keep to himself? It's not like Ledger broke his leg or something...

That is another part of Ledger's untimely death, the production aspects as well as the others it effects. I also heard on the news the other night that though filming was complete on The Dark Knight, they still had some post-production voice overs, etc., to complete.

yeah I thought the comment was kinda cold but who knows its the press you can never know he might have said it in a different manner

yea it really depends on the context of how he said it, could really be seen either way.

also i cant say im really effected anyway directly by his death, but this in addition to the countless many that have passed in the last year makes me think something is up....at least for the film industry.

if you dont know what im referring to, both Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni passed away July last year, literally within days of each other. It was a huge shocker since not only did we lose one, but two of the greatest filmmakers ever to live. Earlier the same year, Jean Baudrillard also passed away. Although he was more of a philosopher, his ideas had immense influence in many fields including that of film. Such science fiction works as the Matrix were heavily based upon his ideas. Probably the most pivotal figure in film to pass away this past year is also one that went by with likely the least attention, that being Jack Valenti who was both a prime film exec in the early years of its history, and also the creator of the MPAA.
Theres many others, and of course those not in film (Alice Coltrane, Bo Yibo, Boris Yeltzin, Kurt Vonnegut, Bobby Fischer, etc..), but overall i think the above paints a pretty clear picture.....

brad renfro died days before heath ledger too...although his death didn't have that much of a buzz like Heath Ledger's did but he was a good actor and just finished a movie too himself called "The Informers". He was 25.

it seems Depp may takeover Ledgers role in Gilliam's film.

on IMDB it only says this regarding the movie

Although it was initially reported following Heath Ledger's death that writer-director Terry Gilliam would abandon his latest film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which Ledger was making at the time of his death, it now appears that Gilliam may go ahead with the film after all, using computer-generated images of Ledger. In an interview with People magazine, Imaginarium costar Christopher Plummer, remarked, "Fortunately, because the film deals with magic, there is a way perhaps of turning Heath into other people and then, using stills and I think they call it CGI." Plummer said that Gilliam plans to dedicate the movie to Ledger.

This is really fucked up. I dont know how many people heard about this but thought Id post it. off of wiki:

"Montel appeared in an interview on Fox News Channel's Fox and Friends, and was asked to discuss Heath Ledger's death. He used the interview to point out that TV networks had continued to extensively cover Mr. Ledger's death while ignoring the deaths of 28 US soldiers in Iraq since the beginning of the year. Montel expressed sympathy for Mr. Ledger's family and remorse for his passing but also encouraged the three interviewers to recognize the absence of coverage for the US soldiers killed in Iraq. The interviewers sought to point out that their audience wanted celebrity news and it was more interesting than soldier deaths. Montel suggested that US news networks had the capacity to lead the country's attitudes by placing more importance on US deaths in Iraq than the deaths of celebrities. Montel noted that he had awoken that morning very saddened by the unknown names of those slain in Iraq and was further saddened when he could not find their names on the web.

Three minutes into this awkward segment on Fox, one host cut off Montel in order to go to a commercial. Montel did not return after the break.

Four days later, after 17 years as a television host, Montel lost his job."


Now I've never been a fan of the guy at all, pretty much indifferent really but I have alot of respect for his capacity to speak his mind and most probably kill his career in the process.

For those interested, the interview is here:

Damn, that's jacked.

That's pretty incredible. In a bad way.

Its kind of funny, cause I always thought of Montel as a typical media whore, but I guess he really takes himself seriously if he was willing to do this.