Alright, the Vanity Fair article on Heath Ledger written by Peter Biskind (“Easy Riders & Raging Bulls”) is out there and lots of it is going to cause a stir. Most of it comes from the rather outspoken Terry Gilliam and “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” cinematographer, Nicola Percorini — both of them good friends with Ledger.
But let’s stick to the ‘Parnassus’ stuff for now and specifically getting Johnny Depp to step in for Ledger after he died of an accidental overdose in January of last year. Apparently it wasn’t easy in the least and while Percorini and Gilliam don’t quite trash talk Depp, the actor probably wouldn’t love the way he was speaking about his handlers and team.
The story starts out with Pecorini and Gilliam flying out to L.A. to show him footage of ‘Parnassus.’ Pecorini said, “Johnny was really impressed by the footage of heath, which played a role in him moving his ass. He was in the position of being the saving angel, of rescuing Terry, avoiding another Terry disaster.”
While Vanity Fair doesn’t say it outright, the beginning of the story of salvaging the film starts out with a sentence that reads, “At that time, the director hoped he would need only one [actor], Depp, to replace Ledger.” And then it goes into a long and detailed account of how scoring Depp was next to impossible because of his new stature and his handlers, lawyers, team, etc.
Amy Gilliam, the filmmakers daughter and a producer on the film, was tasked with the logistics of getting Depp on set and it was difficult to say the least. Gilliam said, his daughter “got stuck with dealing with the complexities of what it really means to get johnny post-‘Pirates’ anywhere”
Amy Gilliam recalls, “[Depp] was emailing back to say, ‘Yes, yes, I’ll do it’, but everyone from his agents, lawyers, to his sisters (who run his company) were all saying the opposite.”
“I don’t think a lot of his handlers were happy,” Gilliam the director said. “Our friend is an empire now. In the heart of these layers and layers of people around him is still Johnny. But the layers are there and so you have to peel the onion away. That’s the sad thing about success.”
And then the article goes on and on, really detailing just how hard it was to get Depp, presumably because the filmmakers talked about it at length.
Pecorini worked as a cinematographer on “The Brave,” Johnny Depp’s directorial debut from 1997 starring Marlon Brando that has never received a proper U.S. release and is said to be terrible (a friend of ours saw at TIFF in ’97 and concurs). Percorini said dropping by for wine at his house back then, but now, it’s near impossible. “A lot of people in his entourage saw coming to Vancouver as a burden. They were coming up with stupid excuses.”
Wrangling the actor took weeks and they would bumrush his house to try and see him to no avail. And what isn’t outwardly stated, but seems to be the case is, Depp’s other commitments are what really created the need for three actors in “Doctor Parnassus” (in fact Colin Ferrell and Jude Law are only mentioned once in the extensive article and it’s in the opening graph of a piece that’s probably more than 4,000 words long). More evidence that this is true? According to this article, Gilliam only had Depp for a measly day and a half shoot. Also, apparently Colin Farrell has the most screen time of all the Ledger stand ins according to an EW article from a few weeks ago. It really feels like Depp was the starting point and then the filmmakers had to then make major adjustments, but it really doesn’t feel like it was a three actor idea to begin with.
But we guess it turned out. Gilliam was worried that because he was so intensely preparing to play Dillinger in “Public Enemies,”, he wouldn’t get the part, but because, “He is so good, because he was so prepared, he was utterly brilliant,” the filmmaker said.
The alleged “Gilliam curse” is brought up in the feature and the article notes there was lots m more crazy bad luck on ‘Parnassus.’ The producer Bill Vince died of cancer on June 21, 2008 and Gilliam was hit by a car in London’s Soho and had to go to the hospital with a broken back.
As of this writing, “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” still has no U.S. distribution, but presumably the filmmakers are still hoping to release this film in the fall as that’s when it’s getting released across Europe. [ImaginariumofParnasuss]
