Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Heath Ledger Remembrance Forum
Heath Ledger - News Accounts
Phillip Dampier:
We're currently in the "news blackhole" with this story. Entertainment media usually defines this as a time between the initial breaking of the story in the press and the period before the next big development, which in this case will be the funeral and/or the drug testing results from the autopsy.
Friends, this period always means the same thing - we're now squarely in the Spec-U-Plex, where anchorpeople bring in other media people, pundits, and gossip reliant media to endlessly speculate, first about Heath's untimely death, followed by speculation on why early reports were right or wrong, followed by speculation on secondary figures "involved" (Mary Kate), and then when things get really drawn out, they start to speculate on why they are all speculating about the story. You'll know when we've reached that moment when they start interviewing each other about how other forms of press got the story all wrong.
It's called killing time - enough to keep the viewer/reader's attention held at a time when they are hungry for details, but feeding them junk food journalism along the way.
If you're offended by all this, they figure when the drug test results are made public, all will be forgiven.
My guess is that once this has been released, depending on the findings, the media will quickly move off the story until the next film that has Heath in it readies for release, when the studio will then exploit Ledger for maximum cash potential - "see his final role." It's all very unpleasant.
So I'd beware of virtually all of the speculation stories, the 15-minutes of famers claiming to have done this or that with Heath, and the wolf packs of pile-on journalism, because as we've seen from the countless media reports I've posted on the video thread, they get the story all wrong quite a lot, and amazingly just pick up where they left off, supposedly guilt-free, when they are proven wrong.
Verona:
Amen, brother.
louisev:
It is curious to watch this all unfold, because rarely have I ever followed a sensational news story about a celebrity death so closely. I have ignored the news media, particularly television - for over twenty years.
That is what makes it a bit difficult to tell whether people just invent out of whole cloth. A woman who might have shared drinks and a night together with Heath once, embellishing the tale for a few dollars more, or a reporter encouraging the embellishment to the point of fiction.
The frustrating part of it is - we may never find out the actual truth, and those who know the truth - may never tell us.
Mikaela:
--- Quote from: MaineWriter on January 29, 2008, 04:19:29 pm ---Very true, good points all.
But maybe a lap dancer who went to grammar school in Brighton (hell of a description, isn't it?) is seeking her 15 minutes of fame. So pathetic...
L
--- End quote ---
Seriously, that story was just so...far out. I mean, just the s tyle the tabloids use in writing this kind of sleaze, in order to make the "ordinary bloke" readers bond with the girl in question:
--- Quote ---Katie, a former grammar school girl from Birmingham
--- End quote ---
LOL! That gave me a good laugh.
And the way they write the sex part - as if presenting the rejected script for one of the more explicit romance paperbacks .... ::) ::) Although that bra thing lends realism to the whole thing... or not. ::)
I fully believe that tale is fabricated. There is nothing in that "interview" that you couldn't boil together and dish out after having read the tabloids and seen the news the first couple of days after Heath's death (which easily gave the impression he was a junkie on par with Amy Winehouse) >:(, and googling him and finding out a bit about Michelle and Matilda etc. and getting hold of the last pics from the "Parnassus" filming the same way. The looks of the Heath she describes seems to fit those images exceedingly well. If I was a sufficiently evil bitch I could have come up with that story based on that same information.
She's probably based the story on some other random guy picking her up. Would make it easier to include sufficient "realism". This lapdancin' gal is totally after some bucks and those 15 minutes of fame. And she made up a tabloid tale to prove it.
No, I'm not so delusional that I think Heath was a saint or anything, though I don't want to speculate on his private life. If it turns out this woman tells nothing more than the truth I'm not changing my view of Heath one bit. He was human, like the rest of us - that's that. But this whole tale bears too much of a fabricated-to-fit-the-tabloids mark. >:(
Sorry folks, I guess I'm just so furious because unfortunately it seems that the first frenzied and totally erroneous media coverage - and this kind of add-on sleaze - stick around in peoples' and certainly journalists' minds as the truth, to be reproduced whenever they mention Heath later on. Just saw a notice in one of the Norwegian papers about the current status - ie. about Heath being buried in Australia.... By way of background intro, the paper saw fit to comment that Heath "was found with pills all around in the flat of M-K Olsen." ::) ::)
HerrKaiser:
The obscene manner by which the press allows themselves to gather "stories" and then publish the rubbish is part of the misguided use of "free speech". Yes, free speech should mean the ability to say the unpopular and inappropriate, but the movement toward feeling OK with crying fire in a crowded theatre when there is no fire or crying wolf when there is no wolf has become more and more accepted in the last years. Very unfortunate.
Look at the way in which the media fabricates, twists, embellishes, etc, stories about celebs in all walks of life--entertainment, sports, politics, big business, etc. And often, the stories do not need a "shread" of truth. Sadly, these bottom feeders are now sucking the last ounces of news sweat out of Heath's essence before THEY will determine he is no longer a headliner.
It's about money, not truth or important-to-know.
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