Heath Heath Heath

[yb]

I come across this interview on the Batman forum, Heath talked about his experience with portraying Dylan and the Joker, enjoy:

http://latinoreview.com/news/exclusive-heath-ledger-on-playing-the-joker-3297

[louisev]

yeah but us Heathens have already seen every inch of him already, haven't we, in that cliff running paparazzi shoot from Brokeback?  Nothing new there, unless he had some piercings or tats since!

[Ellemeno]

I come across this interview on the Batman forum, Heath talked about his experience with portraying Dylan and the Joker, enjoy:

http://latinoreview.com/news/exclusive-heath-ledger-on-playing-the-joker-3297

Betty, I could watch that video over and over and over.  Thank you so much! 

I think that's a new tattoo he keeps massaging.  Can anyone tell what it's of?

[Ellemeno]

I just found this:

IESB Exclusive: Heath Ledger Talks the Joker!   
          
Written by Silas Lesnick 
Saturday, 10 November 2007
IESB sat down with Heath Ledger this afternoon in New York to discuss his role in the new Todd Haynes Bob Dylan biopic, I'm Not There. We'll have the full video interview up soon, but Ledger briefly discussed his upcoming role in The Dark Knight.

If I had any doubt about Ledger as Joker, it vanished as soon as I saw him in person. His hair was grown out for the role and his eyes darted around the room, never quite making contact with mine. At his side was a clothespin that he handled the entire interview, pinching his fingers as he spoke. It wasn't hard to believe that at any moment he would leap to his feet and kill everybody in the room.

IESB: You're going right from I'm Not There where you have to put your spin on a character set up by other actors and right into Batman where the Joker has been done by not only Jack Nicholson but Cesar Romero, etc as well as the comics. Does it compare at all?

LEDGER: I really don't know. It's like chalk and cheese. My preparation process for this and my process for the Joker are completely different. I mean, for the Joker I locked myself away in a hotel room for six weeks. I just formulated a voice and a posture and found a real psychology behind the Joker. I really put a lot of work into it. And the experience also on a production scale, by the way, is obviously a completely different shoot. Batman is just such a machine. It's huge and I've never worked on anything that big. And the movie is going to be surprisingly good! It's far exceeded my expectations.

IESB: Were there any specific comics you based your version off of?

LEDGER: Well, The Killing Joke is the one that's being passed around and Arkham Asylum kind of. But I really tried to read the comics and put it down. You know, I was a big fan of Jack Nicholson - still am - his portrayal of the Joker was perfect for Tim Burton's world and if Tim Burton had come to me and he was doing the sequel and he asked me to play the Joker in his movie, I wouldn't do it. I couldn't. Because you couldn't touch what Jack Nicholson did. It would be a crime. When Chris came to me, I'd already seen Batman Begins and I really liked it. Because I'd already seen it, I already knew the world, which he had created. I instantly knew of an angle. I instantly knew a way into this character. A way to create a character to fit into this world and so it was fairly immediate. I've got straight away the fact that we're both on the same page in terms of where we want it to be. But I guess we have to wait and see. I haven't seen any of it yet.
Stay tuned to the IESB as we post our complete exclusive interview with Heath Ledger in the upcoming week.

http://www.iesb.net/index.php?option=com_ezine&task=read&page=1&category=2&article=3691

[Ellemeno]

Another:

Heath Ledger Says His Joker Has ‘Zero Empathy’
Published by Josh Horowitz on Saturday, November 10, 2007 at 4:32 pm.
Even as filming continues on “The Dark Knight,” Heath Ledger is reflecting on the character he has finished portraying. “It’s the most fun I’ve had with a character and probably will ever have,” Ledger told me today with a mix of wistfulness and relief. Relief because as the Oscar nominee said, “It was an exhausting process. At the end of the day I couldn’t move. I couldn’t talk. I was absolutely wrecked.”

So who is The Joker we’ll meet next summer? “He has zero empathy,” Ledger said, adding that one of the goals for this character was to scare the crap out of audiences next year. Asked about the inspiration for the performance and Ledger cited nothing less than classic Kubrick. “‘A Clockwork Orange’ was a very early starting point for Christian [Bale] and I. But we kind of flew far away from that pretty quickly and into another world altogether.”

When I brought up Sid Vicious as another reported influence on the character, he confirmed the punk rocker was on his mind. “Yeah, I guess so,” attested Ledger. “There’s a bit of everything in him. There’s nothing that consistent.”

Ledger quickly added with a smile, “There are a few more surprises to him.”

http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2007/11/10/heath-ledger-says-his-joker-has-zero-empathy/

[Ellemeno]

From an article on I'm Not There:

"The philandering, mid-Seventies' Dylan, played by Heath Ledger, and re-christened Robbie, is perhaps the most enigmatic, and the most intriguing, presence in the film. This is the Dylan who wrote 'Blood on the Tracks', and the plaintive broken-hearted ballad 'Sara', perhaps the most naked cri de couer he ever wrote."

http://www.scenta.co.uk/Music/1709121/who-does-bob-think-he-is.htm

[southendmd]

yeah but us Heathens have already seen every inch of him already, haven't we, in that cliff running paparazzi shoot from Brokeback?  Nothing new there, unless he had some piercings or tats since!

True enough, Louise, but in "I'm Not There", it's intentional, and more flattering.

(I don't know how many takes he had for the jumping sequence, but I know from experience that the water in the Bow River is c-o-l-d.)

[Ellemeno]

I originally didn't post anything about this here, because it's negative, and not really about Heath.  But I feel like Heath is indirectly addressing it in one of his interviews above, in the positive things he says about Nicholson's Joker, so here goes.  It's an interview Jack Nicholson gave recently:

MTV: What do you think of another actor, Heath Ledger, playing the Joker in next summer's "The Dark Knight"?

Nicholson: Let me be the way I'm not in interviews. I'm furious. I'm furious. [He laughs.] They never asked me about a sequel with the Joker. I know how to do that! Nobody ever asked me.

MTV: It was never brought up?

Nicholson: No. It's like, in any area, you can't believe the reasons things do or don't happen. Not asking me how to do the sequel is that kind of thing. Maybe it's not a mistake. Maybe it was the right thing, but to be candid, I'm furious.

MTV: I'm surprised to hear you sounding competitive about a role like that.

Nicholson: Well, the Joker comes from my childhood. That's how I got involved with it in the first place. It's a part I always thought I should play.

MTV: Will you see the new film?

Nicholson: I'm not inclined to watch it because of what I said. But if it's a good movie, I'll catch up with it somewhere. I don't think they ever really captured Tim Burton's spirit [since he stopped being involved]. They kind of drove the franchise into the ground. Tim Burton's a genius. He had the right take on it. That's why I did the movie. I did the movie based on a single conversation with him. We both come from the cartoon world originally. We had similar ideas. Tim said [the Joker] should have a humorous dark side to him. [Burton is] one of the great moviemakers. I think the world of him. He's the most unassuming man. And he doesn't feel pressure. That's what I love about him. Once he's in there, he's smiling making the movie. That's it!

http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1573617/20071106/story.jhtml

[Ellemeno]

A little odd:

Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams Putting Their Daughter First
November 9th, 2007 by Claudia

Gotta hand it to these folks, in a celebrity world where separation and divorce and children are synonymous with the word *ugly*, Michelle Williams and Heath Ledger are trying to take the high road. They are trying to make things as easy as possible for their daughter Matilda by making her bedroom at Michelle’s in Brooklyn identical to Heath’s in Soho.

They are having them designed exactly the same so when she wakes up in Heath’s place she won’t feel displaced.”

To me they’re not only making a statement to their daughter that she has a safe place no matter where she goes, but they are also giving a pretty strong message to the world as well. This is one of those things that seems a little weird, but honestly, what celebrities do with their vast amounts of money is always weird to me. I think the important thing here is that Matilda’s needs are coming first, which is NOT common in the Kingdom of Celebrities.

http://www.bestcelebgossip.com/2007/11/09/heath-ledger-and-michelle-williams-putting-their-daughter-first/

[Meryl]

Thanks for all that great info, Elle.  Paul, I'm so jealous!  You know how to make a weekend in NY count!