We wrote about that Heath Ledger Vanity Fair article by Peter Biskind a week or so ago when the scans from that piece made it online and we had to transcribe a bunch of quotes — what a pain, but it did seem to reveal that Johnny Depp’s crazy handlers and busy schedule were the reason Jude Law and Colin Farrell were also called in to help salvage “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.”
But the full, 5,000 word piece — which some recently called, “celebrity porn“— is now online. Whatever you want to call it, it’s a pretty fascinating read, but man ‘Parnassus’ director and cinematographer Terry Gilliam and Nicola Pecorini, really go to town on Ledger’s ex- Michelle Williams.
Justified or not, you’d think these guys, out of respect for their deceased friend, might want to speak of such things off the record or not to journalists. Family and friends are obviously reading, but these two are not holding their tongues at all (and they were fairly candid in their remarks about Depp and the difficulties surrounding his people, which include the actor’s sister). In fact, they sound genuinely angered on Ledger’s behalf with some fairly disparaging remarks.
You’ve probably read some of the pre-quotes that came out via People, US Weekly, etc., but you get the full force of it all only in the long-ass Variety feature. Here’s some highlights which gives some larger context.
Yes, Pecorini, Gilliam and Ledger became fast friends. Gilliam and Pecorini are as thick as thieves and evidently “come in a package.” According to Nathan Holmes, Ledger’s former assistant, who became Johny Depp’s assistant after his death, said the bond between director and actor became very tight, very fast. “Terry was to Heath what Tim Burton is to Johnny [Depp]. They struck up a fantastic friendship.”
Ledger Made Parnassus happen: Evidently, ‘Parnassus’ couldn’t get financing until “Heath gave it wings” a source told VF, something that Gilliam couldn’t disagree with. “We couldn’t raise a thing,” relating how indie producers in L.A. told him, “No, we don’t get the idea.” The director tried to entice them with a future he could already foretell, but was still cloudy to the suits at the time. “Do you understand what’s going to happen in the summer of 2008? ‘The Dark Knight’ is going to come out. Heath is going to be the biggest star in the world,” Gilliam would try and tell execs to no avail.
On Michelle Williams: This is where is starts to not only get ugly, but rather presumptuous on their parts. “My impression was they they had nothing in common. They didn’t fit. They kept two separate lives. She never mingled with his friends,” Pecorini told VF. Evidently the 2006 Oscars were around the period when things went wrong (both Williams and Ledger were nominated for “Brokeback Mountain,” neither won). He was apparently anti Oscar hub-bub, she was all for it, the ‘Parnassus’ director claims, something that caused a divide between the couple. “The whole machinery started growing up around them,” he said. “That was the moment when it changed, when he realized, ‘Uh-oh. We perceive the world differently.’ He didn’t care about things like those awards.”
Presumably, you’ve already read quotes like this one where Gilliam and Pecorini encouraged Ledger to take the gloves off when it came to Williams and her lawyers who were after custody of their child Matilda. “He was trying to be decent and graceful, give her whatever she wanted—the house, every fucking thing. But once it started going south, it went very quickly. He was overwhelmed by lawyers, and there were more and more of them, as if they were breeding. I said, ‘This is bullshit. Heath, just end it. Get out—it’s bad. You’ve got to just walk away from it.’ The stakes kept going up. He wouldn’t listen to any of us.”
It just feels weird these two speaking on behalf of Ledger while he’s gone. Clearly they weren’t privy to everything that went on between Ledger and Williams. Even Biskind the writer of the article says, their version of the relationship “seems incomplete.” He write in the piece that their bitching sounds a “little like the boys complaining when the wife-to-be comes along and breaks up the old gang.”
This quote won’t likely please anyone either and in fact it’s something the cinematographer has said more than once. Pecorini on the Dark Knight: “I know it wasn’t something he believed in. It was just for fun” (One of Ledger’s agent insisted that Ledger was “excited by the role, and proud of the job he had done”).
Now, not sure if either Pecorini and Gilliam have publicists. Gilliam for one seems to work pretty much on the fly and without handlers, letting his daughter take care of a lot of his business, but if anyone from their camp is reading this stuff, they might wanna tug those guys on the shirts and say, “Guys, you really need to cool it here, this is really not making you guys look good.” And you kind of wonder why Gilliam is so outside the Hollywood system. Loose cannons don’t tend to do well within that mechanism and sure, everyone loves Gilliam for that very reason, because he’s outside the system. But maybe just a tiny bit more respect and perspective for a situation you might know all the 100% details about? Though it just seems both guys need a P.R. course.