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Seasons Go
And this part: Now, admittedly The Thing Called Love, although a decent little movie, was not a Batman movie; and superhero mythologies, savior mythologies, do tend to tap latent religiosity. (Craving, yearning.) But much of the difference, I would postulate, can be seen solely as a measure of the increase in media rapacity over fifteen years, and commensurate increase in public rapacity. The difference, to put it another way, is the measure not of a bigger star, but of a bigger spotlight. Item: Anna Nicole Smith, a Marilyn Monroe wannabe, dies of (wouldn’t you know?) a drug overdose a year earlier, and the media, as if to make up for their laxity in 1962, carry on as if she actually were Marilyn Monroe. How much more could the media have done for the Real Thing? Item two: a summer ago, the public seemingly couldn’t get (or be given) enough of Lindsay Lohan, for reasons founded on mug shots and pantyless paparazzi shots, and yet practically no one got in line to see her in Georgia Rule or I Know Who Killed Me. These were not event-movies, but even so. You might have thought, or I anyhow might have thought, that the mug shots and paparazzi shots were of interest in proportion to the interest in her movies. But I, or we, would have been mistaken. They were of interest, quite precisely, out of proportion. Tangible evidence, should any be required, that there really are no movie stars anymore, only celebrities. (If Brad Pitt is going to do The Assassination of Jesse James, he might as well be Dermot Mulroney. If Angelina Jolie is going to do A Mighty Heart, she might as well be Julie Delpy. No one is going to come.) For all practical purposes, mug shots and paparazzi shots will serve as well as movies. And please don’t bring up James Dean as a point of reference for Heath Ledger. James Dean was a movie star. They were extant then. I urged earlier that we not pretend The Dark Knight would have been as big without a dead Ledger, and for certain it would be worth our while to isolate and separate the Ledger factor if we want to talk about the movie per se as distinct from the cultural phenomenon. But in truth the entire phenomenon, movie included, smacks powerfully of pretending. Working ourselves up, convincing ourselves, deceiving ourselves. (Craving, yearning, again.) A large part of all that pretending is making believe that the late actor’s performance is a great performance rather than only a grandiose performance: the Oscar drums begin to beat. (Related item from outside the movie world, though not outside the celebrity world: we have to pretend that John Edwards was within a hair’s breadth of the Presidential nomination in order to spice up the commonplace tale of his extramarital dalliance.) I can’t, and I didn’t, go along. I honestly fail to see how anyone can feel any kind of excitement in The Dark Knight, much less keep it going into the light of day. Some of the rest had an air of "religion".— September 5, 2008 3:59 p.m.
Seasons Go
Oh and this part ": Had it been Christian Bale who perished beforehand, as opposed to (allegedly) assaulting his mother and sister in the midst of the promo tour, would The Dark Knight have been exactly as big? (Surely Ledger commanded a somewhat more ardent following.) Had it been Robert Downey, Jr., would Iron Man have been bigger? Or would Hancock, had it been Will Smith? These questions are unanswerable, and probably, in polite society, unaskable. My own preferred point of reference would be the unhypothetical River Phoenix, who died under mysterious circumstances (meaning mysterious drug influences) on the street outside a Hollywood nightspot in 1993 at the age of twenty-three, half a dozen years younger even than Ledger. In my memory, Phoenix was at that time an arguably bigger figure than was Ledger at the beginning of this year. And yet Phoenix’s just completed The Thing Called Love, by Peter Bogdanovich, got no added bounce (it never made it to San Diego), and his posthumous Silent Tongue, by Sam Shepard, went straight to video.— September 5, 2008 3:58 p.m.
Seasons Go
I was referring more or less to this section of the article that souned more like a personal attack on Heath and Dark Knight. The question we might hash out on solider ground is that of how big was Heath Ledger. Granted he had made a splash in Brokeback Mountain — a right-place-at-the-right-time cannonball — and he already had been established as something of a hunk. Still, the subsequent Casanova hardly convened a sizable congregation, and Candy barely got an airing. (I missed it altogether. Did it play in San Diego?) Before Brokeback, there was no gathering flock to be discerned around The Brothers Grimm, The Order, The Four Feathers, A Knight’s Tale. He was pretty much just another pretty face, first brought to wide attention as a sacrificial lamb to Mel Gibson’s masochism in The Patriot. It’s a marvel what a drug overdose can do.— September 5, 2008 3:56 p.m.
Seasons Go
Oh and I fogot to mention...this movie is based off of a comic book (or has a basis in comic books) which obviously isn't based on "reality". Most of the themes in Batman (and its characters) are fantastical. of course The Dark Knight is going to have its "ya right' moments. That is the beauty of action movies, anything is possible. If you want reality, that is what Dramas are for.— September 4, 2008 9:40 p.m.
Seasons Go
(I think most people with common sense realize that Heath's death, unfortunate and untimely, without a doubt, served as serious advertisment for the Dark Knight movie. Of course it banked more than expected because of this tragedy. Most likely it would have done very well in theaters even if Heath was alive today. But, the Joker was played exceptionally well and like never before. Ledger gave this character, loved by millions, a new image. I have been waiting for this movie since before Heath died. He made me want to see it. His death made the movie legendary. One thing that this movie has done (and would have done even if Heath was living) is embrace a wider range of people...fans, that he hadn't before. His role as the Joker attracted an audience that Broke Back Mountain nor 10 Things I Hate About You didn't attract. As an actor, he is being recognized by people who probably hadn't seen him act before and the acting in this movie is sensational! Not many actors I have seen could have pulled it off like that. Heath, not Heath's death did that. Though your article is very well written and most of what you said is true....it seems a bit "petty" almost cruel. Andrea— September 4, 2008 8:01 p.m.