I’m not really sure what Terry Gilliam is smoking… but whatever it is, it must be some damn good stuff because he’s completely lost touch with the reality I live in. Here’s the deal… Gilliam is accusing Warner Bros of capitalizing on the tragic death of Heath Ledger in the promotion of their new film “The Dark Knight“. Here’s the word from Yahoo News:
the producers of Ledger’s second to last picture, The Dark Knight, are shamelessly capitalising on rumours that the late star will be awarded a posthumous Oscar for his role as evil villain The Joker.
He says, “That’s what Warner Brothers are saying, but they’ll do anything to publicise their film. That’s just what they do and you can’t get upset because it’s bulls**t. “They’re like a great white shark which devours whatever it can.”
Ok, I’ve got to chime in on this:
Shortly after Ledger died I both feared and EXPECTED WB to take full advantage of the situation and start plastering Ledger’s face everywhere and talking constantly about “Heath’s final completed film” and to basically use Ledger’s corpse as a mule to market the movie. And really… even if they did… would it have been all that bad? I mean, as long as they were saying POSITIVE things about him and not capitalizing dirty secrets of his or his shame or mistakes to promote their film I wouldn’t have really seen much wrong with that. But it doesn’t matter because that didn’t happen.
I’ve actually been very impressed with how WB has handled Heath’s death. I’ve never seen them mention Ledger’s passing in any of their official promotion, and the only time I hear the stars of the movie mention it is when they’re specifically asked about it, and let’s face it there’s no getting away from that.
No, as much as the big studio monsters are heartless and quite idiotic sometimes… you have to give the devil his due. I think the way WB has handled the passing of Heath Ledger has been nothing short of classy AND smart. So yeah… pass whatever Gilliam is smoking my way.
