Manjoyment Monday: I Miss Him

Last week I sat down and watched a movie with my Dad. He had gotten The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus from NetFlix and neither of us really knew anything about it except that it was Heath Ledger's last movie.

Let me just throw this one out here. Ever since 10 Things I Hate About You I've loved Heath Ledger. I thought he was a tremendous actor, looked nothing like all the "pretty boys" of Hollywood that every other girl swooned over, and one day I hoped he'd give me a tambourine.

As he was in more and more films I respected his acting exponentially. The Patriot, Casanova, Brothers Grim, and of course his chilling portrayal of the Joker in Dark Knight - words can't even describe the incredible job he did with that part.

I still remember going out and buying the Vogue that he was on the cover on just so I could read more about his career. This photo was in one of those spreads:


That was right around the time he was filming A Knight's Tale because I remember them talking about him riding around on set. I enjoyed the way he tried different parts in different genres of movies. I've never seen them but I heard fantastic things about Brokeback Mountain and Monster's Ball. All around he was a great actor and I seriously believe it when they say he would have been the greatest actor of his generation.

The day I heard he died was a sad day indeed. I remember folding laundry with my mother and listening to a news report about how RENT was closing on Broadway (which upset me enough) and then there was an urgent report about how Heath had been found dead in his apartment in the City. That officially killed it, right there.

Horrible. Day.

But back to Doctor Parnassus...

We sat there watching it and were like...ummm...huh? We had no expectations for it nor did we know anything about the plot line and it was super intriguing. We couldn't stop watching it even if we wanted to.

The first time Tony (Heath's character) steps into the Imaginarium my Dad turned to me and said, "I can't believe Johnny Depp didn't play this character, he would have been perfect for it." And then as if the Imaginarium heard him, Heath Ledger turned into Johnny Depp.

It wasn't until the second time he was in the Imaginarium and Heath turned into Jude Law that we realized what was going on. At that point I was really interested in what the heck was happening and hopped over to IMDB to figure it all out. Once I read a little more about it I remembered that not only had it been Heath's last movie, but he had died in the midst of filming it. It suddenly made so much more sense.

Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell all stepped in after Heath's death to finish the movie for him. The producers, directors and staff actually decided to make a few re-writes and complete the film using other talented actors as stand-ins.


The result was phenomenal. I'm not saying it's my favorite movie ever. It was written and directed by Terry Gilliam so it was a little weird to begin with. The best I could describe it was Monty Python meets Tim Burton with a dash of Toon Town. But overall the way they wove the footage together if I hadn't know Heath had died in the middle of filming, I wouldn't have noticed. It wasn't disjointed at all, it was marvelous.

I thought it was also great how Jude, Johnny and Colin not only stepped in to finish Heath's work but they also gave all of the money they made off the movie to Matilda Heath's daughter. While we were watching some bonus footage one of them said basically: "We thought if Heath had finished the money would have gone to her anyway and we wanted to support her future."

So totally sweet. So unexpected. So strange a movie.