I thought this was a very nice article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/movies/awardsseason/06carr.html?_r=1&ref=moviesDelicately Campaigning for a Star Now Departed
By DAVID CARR
Published: February 5, 2009
It's a Hollywood studio dream come true. One of the best young actors of our age turns in a bravura performance in one of the top-grossing films of all time and is rewarded with an Oscar nomination.
There's just one catch. One year to the day before he was nominated for best supporting actor in “The Dark Knight” Heath Ledger was found dead in a New York apartment. So how do you run an Oscar campaign for someone who is no longer with us?
Very carefully. Warner Brothers has managed to walk the line between elegy and ghoulishness, reminding the public and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that one of the great performances in 2008 was the last of Mr. Ledger’s career, but doing so without seeming to commodify his death.
There is a kind of institutional graciousness at work. Many Oscar campaigns are executed not because of the quality of the movie — see the campaign for “Seven Pounds” — but because A-list talent requires it. Mr. Ledger, though, has no needs on this earth; a victory will not serve as a career booster and fee raiser.
The movie did stupendously in theaters ($532 million domestically and counting), and it continues to do well as a DVD; an added laurel or sticker connoting Oscar recognition will not alter that math. Still, it seems right. If this body of work is all that we as moviegoers will have from Mr. Ledger, probably best to hold this performance dear.
Warner Brothers entered the Oscar season with big hopes for “The Dark Knight.” The studio, and many who follow the Oscar competition, felt that the movie, a sequel to “Batman Begins” from 2005, had a legitimate shot at best picture, a rare feat for a franchise film based on a comic book series. “The Dark Knight” was not just a popcorn movie. With its noirish visual template and mordant take on human motivation, critics flocked to its corner and elevated it beyond its cartoonish origins.
The film was conjured by the British director Christopher Nolan, whose pedigree derives from “Memento” and “The Prestige.” But the singular achievement that the put “The Dark Knight” into a higher orbit was the glory of Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker.
The New York Times critic Manohla Dargis clearly liked the movie but was completely smitten — as were we all — by Mr. Ledger’s version of the Joker.
“No matter how cynical you feel about Hollywood, it is hard not to fall for a film that makes room for a shot of the Joker leaning out the window of a stolen police car and laughing into the wind, the city’s colored lights gleaming behind him like jewels,” she wrote last July when the movie came out. “He’s just a clown painted on black velvet, but he’s also some kind of masterpiece.”
It is exactly this image, with a make-up-smeared Mr. Ledger meeting the wind and speed with canine glee, that is one of the more oft-seen print ads in the trade press this season, where everything and anything with a shot at an Oscar (and sometimes something without a shot) is offered “For Your Consideration.” It is a vivid image, but you don’t have to veer too far into semiotics to see that the man hanging his head out the car window is on his way to a reckless, chaotic death.
Is it wrong for us to stare, to reminisce, to regret? Hardly. Mr. Ledger’s death, which created a huge wave of public grief, was clearly a seminal moment in popular culture. The studio needed to navigate all those currents in releasing the film and in the Oscar ritual as well.
When the nominations were announced, the studio’s broader aspirations were not fulfilled — best picture and best director nods were not to be — but the film did receive eight nominations, including a best-supporting-actor acknowledgment for Mr. Ledger.
That left the studio with both an opportunity and some problems. Mr. Ledger’s death created a reservoir of sympathy and an opportunity for tribute from his colleagues. But it was unlike other instances in which the Academy was considering the work of someone had died.
Peter Finch, who played Howard Beale in “Network,” was on tour in 1977 promoting the film when he had a heart attack and died. He went on to become the first and still the only posthumous winner of an acting Oscar. Mr. Ledger’s death by accidental drug overdose was a terrible event that occurred before the movie was even released.
On a more practical level it meant he would not be a physical presence on the promotional trail. I worked the Oscar circuit in 2006 and watched Mr. Ledger in support of “Brokeback Mountain,” then a favorite for best picture, and can say he never was much of a campaigner. A polite, nice man, he had little aptitude or appetite for trite talk at parties or events, even when he was up for a best actor Oscar, as he was then. For “The Dark Knight” the studio has eschewed any R.I.P. allusions in its trade advertising, instead relying on a steady (and not frantic) visual presence of somebody now best known for his absence, showing him in various guises: the crazed man in the nurse’s uniform, the immovable object standing in the middle of the street.
The specter of Mr. Ledger has created a large overhang this award season. His performance was recognized with victories at both the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild ceremonies. And what would usually be moments for agent thanking and mom waving suddenly became something as solemn and reverent as an observance at Arlington.
“All of us who worked with Heath on ‘The Dark Knight’ accept this with an awful mixture of sadness but incredible pride,” Mr. Nolan said as he stood in for Mr. Ledger at the Golden Globes, adding, “He will be eternally missed, but he will never be forgotten.”
Sasha Stone, who blogs at Awards Daily (awardsdaily.com) and has been a ferocious advocate for “The Dark Knight,” said she thinks the noncampaign campaign has been effective.
“They had to walk a tightrope there, and no one really knew if they could,” she wrote in an e-mail message. “The studio didn’t flood the press with ‘Dark Knight’ ads, and they really could have.” (She remains, by the way, unconvinced that Mr. Ledger is a lock to win.)
Warner Brothers’ cautious approach — speaking of which, the company did not respond to a request for comment about the campaign — has served both the actor and the moment very well. When it came to the show part of the business, Mr. Ledger the person was always a bit of a ghost even when he was alive. On Feb. 22 when the awards are handed out, he will not be at the Kodak Theater, but his presence will be hard to miss.
