Another article about Candy:
2006 CALGARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
HARD CANDY
Jim Slotek
Sun Media
September 27, 2006
It turns out heroin and sex have one thing in common, at least in the world of movie censors— penetration is a no-no.
“I did one scene they didn’t end up using,” says Heath Ledger of the junkie-romance Candy, which has its Alberta premiere September 28 at the Globe Theatre.
“It was near the end of the movie when I inject again (after being clean). There was a shot that we had, a tight shot of my arm, and I slipped the needle in and pulled back until you saw the blood, and then they went off it onto my face.
“I actually injected. It had water colour and sugar in it.
“And then we found out that was the difference between a (Mature) rating and an R. The penetration. When it looked like it was going in and it didn’t really go in, that was okay.”
Based on a best-selling novel by Australian Luke Davies, Candy is the story of a junkie poet (Ledger) and his artist girlfriend Candy (Abbie Cornish) and their descent.
Ledger was at TIFF last year with another tragic romance you might have heard of called Brokeback Mountain.
Ledger followed it with the romantic comedy Casanova.
“That’s why I had the energy to be dark again, because I’d been in Venice drinking too much wine and eating.”
By way of research, he says “Abbie and I went to this narcotics users association in Australia, and we met a guy who’d been addicted to heroin for, like, 20 years. He took a prosthetic arm with veins and blood bags and showed us how to find the vein.
“I’ve smoked pot before, and I know what it feels like to be high. But I’ve never been addicted to anything other than cigarettes.”
Candy is the first Australian movie Ledger has been in for eight years — a long time to bury his Aussie accent.
“I’m constantly looking for material in Australia … It’s so liberating to perform without an accent. But all the good writers and filmmakers in Australia get swept up and go to Hollywood.
“So we’re kind of left with the very fresh and up-and-coming filmmakers.”
Candy marked a hiatus of another sort as well. It was the last movie Ledger would do for 18 months — a paternity leave he breaks when he starts filming Todd Haynes’ Bob Dylan-inspired surrealist movie I’m Not There with Michelle Williams, his fiancee and mother of their 11-month-old daughter Matilda.
Come January, he starts playing the Joker, in Christopher Nolan’s next Batman film The Dark Knight.
“It’s definitely going to stump people. I think it’ll be more along the lines of how the Joker was meant to be in the comics, darker and more sinister.”