Author Topic: Heath Ledger - News Accounts  (Read 1144805 times)

Offline Soluki

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Re: Heath Ledger - News Accounts
« Reply #220 on: January 29, 2008, 04:30:09 pm »
This man was not a saint.  I defy any of us to say that we have nothing that we would NOT want to come out under similar circumstances.  Mr. Ledger was  human being, nothing more, nothing less.  He, like all of us had failings.  As Mainewriter said, there is more than likely a kernel of truth to this story (and many of the other stories).  I may not choose to believe all of them in their entirety, but what I do take from them is that this man was a good but flawed human being (like all of us), talented, good looking, and perhaps tragic.  Who among us can say that we aren't or haven't been respectively tragic in our own lives?

I grieve for the loss of potential, however it was lost.  I grieve for the changes that potential could have brought to this world, but remember;  There is the same potential in all of us.

Offline Kelda

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Re: Heath Ledger - News Accounts
« Reply #221 on: January 29, 2008, 04:52:28 pm »
Yeah the people has been known to print more than a fe kiss and tells which turn out to be apack of lies - yes some are true - but this girl - how could she - the guy is dead for gods sake - if you need the money you could have still got a deal without all these sordid details...

There probably is some grain of truth in it - but to do as much drug taking as he supposedly did, would we not have had an inkling before now?

And Leslie - thanks for giving people a heads up - I should ahve probably have done that.
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Offline Fran

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Re: Heath Ledger - News Accounts
« Reply #222 on: January 29, 2008, 04:57:38 pm »
I don't feel it's true. That woman has the word liar all over her face. Some newspapers are sadly hungry for any story about Heath Ledger since there's nothing else to report. The topic it is still hot yet there's no news. The family has banned the media from the burial service and all memorial services so they have their reporters fishing for any story about Heath that could sell, and I am sure a lot aren't bothering in checking the veracity. Something tells me that this one in particular is not true. I think it is possible Heath did drugs. If he hung out with the likes of Mary Kate Olsen or Helena Christensen, he probably did drugs. Those two are known cokeheads. But this story in particular strikes me as bullshit.

And Heath had been renting a house in North London, not staying in hotels -- per the interview with Sarah Lyall that took place shortly before the release of I'm Not There in November.


Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: Heath Ledger - News Accounts
« Reply #223 on: January 29, 2008, 06:55:32 pm »
from New York Magazine:

Intelligencer

Among Us



(Photo: Ben Watts/Corbis Outline)

If Heath and Michelle’s life in Brooklyn seemed like a wonderful dream, it was ours, not theirs.

By Samantha Hunt Published Jan 27, 2008


I t was a friend from Berlin who first pointed out his house to me. “That’s where Heath and Michelle live.”

“Really? How do you know?”

She looked at me sideways, unsure whether to believe me. “How do you not know?”

I could easily name the Brooklyn streets where Marianne Moore, Truman Capote, and Walt Whitman had lived. But this sort of celebrity? Of course I knew who he was. In fact, after seeing Brokeback Mountain, heart aching, I’d combed through the magazines at the supermarket checkout—a thing I’d not been compelled to do since the days of Scott Baio. I was looking for a way back to Wyoming, looking for Ledger’s photo. I just hadn’t known—until that moment—that he lived down the street from me.

Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams chose Brooklyn. They chose to do their laundry, take out their trash, change their baby’s diapers among us, in this place where so many end up washed up after the early, damaged days of youth, after dating bad men and drinking too much. To settle down (not to say settle, exactly). They could live wherever they wanted, but they chose Brooklyn. Ledger donned all that was good and laid-back about living here as if it were his best role, the most independent film yet, and we his happy extras.

When Brownstoner.com initially reported that Ledger and Williams had bought a home in Boerum Hill, one commenter posted that “roughly half the couples in the neighborhood with babies could be them.” But that’s not true, of course. They’d bought a fantastic corner brownstone. It was huge. There was a garden, soaring windows, an unheard-of three-car garage. The house shimmered as if they had a bit of Wyoming hidden behind that fence, loads of fresh air, mountains, horses, and gorgeous, gay cowboys who were, just then, saddling up to go give Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner hell. We imagined Ledger’s life. We lived it for him, and we didn’t even have to ask permission, because he was a celebrity. Here they could play at being regular people. They could go grocery shopping without having the clothes ripped from their bodies. We wouldn’t even sneak quick cell-phone photos of their child. We would keep our cool. We were that mature. We lived in Brooklyn now. The faked privacy we offered afforded these movie stars the casual grace that belongs to the rest of us, the ability to curl up inside their Brooklyn roles like Method actors, just a couple of hipsters in our little village. And in that, didn’t they became the proof that we were all living our dreams?

At the very least, for a brief moment, we could stand next to the fire of their beauty, the breathlessness of their youth and glory, while we pretended to ignore them at Bar Tabac.

Death returns Ledger from a star back to a son, a partner, a father—those relationships that actually matter. As fans, we are incidental. Still, the loss is compounded here because we’d gotten used to pretending he was like us. We thought he was safe. We thought he was ours. How did he slip back to Soho, where his brownstone and his baby meant so very little to death?

There are no cowboys on Dean Street. The magic of the movies is dampened here. Having admired Ledger from afar, having brushed shoulders and shopping carts with him, we are left wondering what it was we thought we saw flickering behind those brownstone walls

http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/43332/
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Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: Heath Ledger - News Accounts
« Reply #224 on: January 29, 2008, 07:00:29 pm »
from New York Magazine:

In fact, after seeing Brokeback Mountain, heart aching, I’d combed through the magazines at the supermarket checkout—a thing I’d not been compelled to do since the days of Scott Baio. I was looking for a way back to Wyoming, looking for Ledger’s photo. I just hadn’t known—until that moment—that he lived down the street from me.



I'm just sayin'.

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Offline Phillip Dampier

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Re: Heath Ledger - News Accounts
« Reply #225 on: January 29, 2008, 07:11:59 pm »
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.
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Offline Verona

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Re: Heath Ledger - News Accounts
« Reply #226 on: January 29, 2008, 07:16:49 pm »
Amen, brother.

Offline louisev

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Re: Heath Ledger - News Accounts
« Reply #227 on: January 29, 2008, 07:47:03 pm »
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.
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Offline Mikaela

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Re: Heath Ledger - News Accounts
« Reply #228 on: January 29, 2008, 07:54:48 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


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

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."  ::) ::)

Offline HerrKaiser

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Re: Heath Ledger - News Accounts
« Reply #229 on: January 29, 2008, 08:44:18 pm »
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.