Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Heath Ledger Remembrance Forum
Heath Ledger in his own Words
souxi:
--- Quote from: Snavel on February 19, 2008, 03:08:54 pm ---I feel so angry about his passing today, I feel I could kick something or scream at somebody... :'( >:(
--- End quote ---
I know what you mean hun. I often look at his picture, (this will sound crazy) and tell him off!! I say to him....."why didn,t you look after yourself you silly bugger?" "why did you have to die and leave us?" Then I watch a clip of him and smile and I can,t be mad at him any more. It,s that killer smile of his, it does me right in every time. Then I feel sad, really really sad. Why did he have to die? ffs, it,s just so bloody awful and it,s not fair. :'( :'( :'( :'(
Delmardeb:
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:'( :'( :'( :'(
I am still sad and angry and wish that Heath was still here!!! I do agree with you Toycoon about this incredible movie and Heath and Jake (incredible actors) bringing us all together. Heath's legacy will continue to live on and on. Snavel- if you have to scream, just do it. If it'll make you feel better, do what you have to do. I feel your pain. :(
TOoP/Bruce:
--- Quote ---Toycoon: I had to post this magnificent video for the song, "Morning Yearning" by Ben Harper and directed by Heath Ledger.
--- End quote ---
Thank you for posting the Ben Harper video! It's a nice addition to this thread! (And yes, what a beautiful man Heath was...)
--- Quote ---Artiste: Did you find something about Heath NOT wanting to do the BM movie in the FIRST place??
Maybe you know that?
Hugs! Love your work, please keep on placing Heath in his own words!!
--- End quote ---
There is a story out there somewhere that Heath was going to take a pass on BbM, but that Naomi Watts (Heath girlfriend at the time) convinced him he should do it. I do not recall that the story mentioned why Heath was going to pass on it, but actors pass on many projects for many reasons (both personal and professional) and no one should read too much into it. I don't ever recall seeing a direct quote from Heath about it.
--- Quote ---Snavel: I feel so angry about his passing today, I feel I could kick something or scream at somebody...
--- End quote ---
I understand. It's all part of the process of dealing with grief. Some of us are just at different stages. Although Heath's death did have a profound impact on me, I have tried to find ways to deal with it by choosing positive ways to deal with the loss. In starting this thread, I am making a choice to try to celebrate his life, rather than dwelling on his loss. It is a necessary step for me in order to assimilate what he meant to me, and incorporate it into my own life. In that way, we are all interconnected, and we live on through the lives of others. You are not wrong to feel what you feel, and the feelings you have are real.
I am not a religious person. I have no great faith in an afterlife. I believe that we come from nothing, and we return to nothing. It is the way for all of us, though I think it wrong to obsess on it. To me, that makes life very precious indeed. I celebrate life, because we don't get second chances. I hope you can get to a place where you can let the anger go, and embrace and celebrate that which the absence of has hurt you. To appreciate someone who has gone too early, it helps for me to try to find a way to help to part of that person's life journey continue even without them.
That is why I started this thread...
ptannen:
http://ebar.com/arts/art_article.php?sec=film&article=465
Behind the mask of masculinity
Two-day tribute to Heath Ledger at the Castro Theatre
by David Lamble
Our cinema church is in session for two days as the Castro hosts six screenings of Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (Feb. 24, 25) while fans of the film grieve the inexplicable demise of its Oscar-nominated lead actor, Heath Ledger.
Perth-born, a man of the West (Western Australia), the lanky one-time teen idol (10 Things I Hate About You) would publicly disavow any serious trajectory to a career that began with a puppy-dog cute 17-year-old crossing the Outback to test the waters of Sydney TV. An early job popped up in the Olympic tryouts series Sweat. Interestingly, Ledger opted to play a gay cyclist, figuring that the role might catch the eye of American casting agents.
Ledger courted critical dismissal with performances that seemed to skate across the surface of his talent, hiding his depth of commitment to his art. The producer of the Revolutionary War epic The Patriot cited his graceful depiction of a young soldier's harrowing transition from adolescence to adulthood: "There's a natural nobility about him, standing toe-to-toe with Mel Gibson."
After Ledger's brief but memorable turn as the suicidal son from a family of racist Southern prison guards in Marc Forster's Monster's Ball, co-star Billy Bob Thornton noted, "Heath and I seem to have exactly the same sadness." In a brilliant touch, father and son are shown, in different scenes, fucking the same female prostitute, from the same camera angle, and in the same sleazy Louisiana motel. In just under a half-hour of screen time, Ledger's scarred loner passes through similarly perilous dramatic beats as his emblematic Brokeback character.
Repeated viewings of Ledger's beautifully tortured Ennis Del Mar reveal a man who has no language to express feelings he doesn't know he possesses until saddle buddy Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) makes the first move in their pup tent one cold night. Two years ago, during a phone chat from the Brooklyn flat he was sharing with girlfriend and fellow Brokeback cast member Michelle Williams, Ledger walked me through Ennis' head as he confronts an unspeakable passion.
"The first time Ennis and Jack get together in the tent, I wanted Ennis to be on the verge of just beating Jack up, because violence was pretty much the only form of expression Ennis had allowed himself. So the first time that Jack and Ennis confront each other, I wanted it to be somewhat explosive, when instincts and passions come into play. I wanted for it to be quick, over and done. Then there were more intimate moments where I wanted to flip the coin a little, to show a sliver of kindness, a small moment of Ennis being more vulnerable for the first time in his life, and actually allow himself to be guided deeper into love. It was important to show that for the tragedy of the story, but also to help portray this beautiful love."
"It was one of the most beautiful screenplays I've ever read. I was certainly drawn to Ennis as opposed to Jack. His silent complexities, there's a huge battle within him, and there were so little words to express this, so I knew there would have to be a thorough investigation into his character. There was a brilliant short story from Annie Proulx, incredibly descriptive, essentially it was a biopic. It was clear how we had to play it. It was going to be the most masculine person I'd played, telling a story which hadn't been told before."
"I think innate conservatism is a part of his genetic structure, the beliefs and fears of his father that have been passed on through him. I see this battle within him; the other half of his battle is that he hasn't recognized it as a battle. I had to capture it in his walk, or his inability to express love; I wanted his words to fight their way out; but while I'm playing Ennis in front of the camera, I had to pretend that I didn't know that this is occurring.
"Half the problem with today's society is that we like to label situations and people, and the term gay is just there to segregate a type of people. It has been overused and abused, and our point is that gay people, straight people: there are people at both ends of that title. Ennis and Jack are just two human beings who fall in love, so whether they're gay or not, I really couldn't care. The story is about two souls who connect."
02/21/2008
white_angel:
This is a part of his speech at Santa Barbara..
Sometimes you must scream out loud to discover a whisper.
In my opinion this is the most beautiful acceptance speech I've ever heard.
In his speech you will read one of the most beautiful quotation and principle.
Sometimes you must scream out loud in order to discover a whisper.
Heath's speech at the Santa Barbara Film Festival:
"... Thank you very very much for this and it's extremely generous of the Santa Barbara International film festival to be honoring my work so far, and I really am sincerily touched by this gesture."
"I guess... where's my sheet of paper thing... I guess I'd like to take the shine away from myself for a minute and acknowledge the directors who have helped and continue to help me understand what it means to be an actor (and here he goes to mention all the directors that he'd worked with up till then). I truly feel that if anything, I should be honoring them tonight. I'm grateful that these directors have given me the opportunity to discover that to be an actor has nothing to do with the way you live your life and the choices you make while living, but rather the way you live and the choices you make in between "action" and "cut". And these directors gave me the opportunity to be bad, to make mistakes, and to study and learn from my mistakes. Fortunately or unfortunately I was never exposed to the safe environment of an acting school and a black pair of pyjamas, no I didn't have a black room to experiment in, to privately dance within my dances on the film. And these directors trusted me and offered me their film set and their friendship as the safe environment for me to study and make discoveries on. So I apologize for the bad discoveries made along the way, but I do stand by the theory that in order to evolve and further yourself as an actor, you have to be fearless enough to allow yourself room for error. Sometimes you must scream out loud in order to discover a whisper. So I thank all these beautiful minds and... (I missed a part here) for putting up with my screams, and I thank everyone for their patience in waiting for me to find the whisper within the words. And here's to making more mistakes."
Clear audio of Heath voice"
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20173623,00.html
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