Jude Law, Colin Farrell and Johnny Depp.
Sure, it’s called PERSON of the week, but I think special exception needs to be taken this week. The three actors who took over the late Heath Ledger’s role in Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus have opted to donate all their earnings from the film to Ledger’s daughter Matilda.
“This doesn’t happen very often … where there’s a tragedy like this, and very famous, very successful actors suddenly say, ‘OK, we’ll do whatever it takes to help’,” says Terry Gilliam, of the decision which he describes as ‘heroic.’
“They came, they allowed the movie to be finished and they didn’t take money — it goes to Heath’s daughter. That’s extraordinary and wonderful … and we’ve got a movie full of wonderful people who did extraordinary things to help.”
This only goes to show the amount of respect and admiration these men had for Ledger’s work, and it’s great to see such selflessness.
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August 19th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Spence said:
Sure you make an exception for a bunch of rich white men who don’t really need any more money and who give their unneeded money to a little girl who is never going to need any money as her mother is a rich white woman but you refuse to make an exception for a dog riding rodeo monkey?
But seriously, I’m unimpressed by this. It is far from “heroic”, there are far more children out there that could do with the money and far better causes. I get the whole tribute to Heath thing, but hardly person of the week material. What about the ugly little Chinese girl who couldn’t sing at the opening ceremony because she was too ‘unappealing’, surely she deserves more kudos than three rich white men. She was ostracised by her government and replaced by a better looking version of her self and she managed to keep her mouth shut, what a trooper!
And at the risk of being really unpopular on this site, I’m getting a bit sick of all the people out there who think Heath Ledger was such an amazing actor. Sure, he was fantastic as the Joker, but that was by far his best performance. Other than that there was like Two Hands and Brokeback Mountain, and did anyone even see that? Let’s remember this is the guy that made Casanova, A Knights Tale, Ned Kelly and The Brother Grimm (I don’t care what anyone says, It was a shit movie, people are only pretending to like it now cos Heath died, it was carp OK, and Heath and Matt Damon were crap in it, easily Gilliam’s worst movie). NED KELLY! Did you guys see that, he was TERRIBLE in it. And don’t even get me started on The Order.
I think everyone needs to calm the fuck down with this all hail Heath Ledger crap, especially the fanboys, let’s face it, if it wasn’t a Batman film, all of you would have forgotten it by now. It’s exactly like that Chaser song about dead celebrities and how all their flaws are forgotten once they pass away, i think it was called the eulogy song. He was good, hey, he was even great, but seriously, only in like 2 movies.
And what the hell was with the movie getting rated better than The Godfather? For shame, have you forgotten your roots? Where is your loyalty to Vito, Micheal, Sonny and Hagan? All performances better than Ledgers by the way. But I digress…
Three actors donating what must be small change to an already wealthy white girl hardly counts as anything more than perezhilton feel good story of the week crap that he only posts when he gets sick of drawing cocks all over everything. I thought MG was above that, clearly I was wrong.
August 19th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Spence said:
P.S. Jude Law and Colin Farrell are twats!
August 19th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Seph said:
Whiplash the Monkey was the worst suggestion for a person of the week ever.
The ugly little Chinese girl misses out because she is far too ugly for this website.
Heath was a great actor. Yes, he picked some poor roles, but seeing him in films like Brokeback Mountain, Two Hands, Lords of Dogtown and Monster’s Ball, how can you hold that against him? Just because he made a few bad films makes him a poor actor? That’s stupid. Brando SUCKED in the Score, Johnny Depp SUCKED in From Hell, but they’re great actors. For the record, I really enjoyed Heath in The Brothers Grimm, terrible as that film was. I also liked A Knight’s Tale, it was fun if entirely historically inaccurate.
Nobody’s hailing him, and you shouldn’t try to demerit him by saying he was only good in two movies. John Cazale was a fantastic actor, but hey, he only made a few movies so it doesn’t count, right? Speaking of which, my loyalty to Godfather never wavered. Don’t associate me with those morons at IMDB cheating the vote system. The Godfather will always be a better film than The Dark Knight. Also, nobody’s forgetting Heath’s bad roles. I’d rather bore my face out with a drill than sit through Ned Kelly or The Order ever again. He makes a couple bad choices and isn’t entitled to room for improvement? Interesting.
If you don’t think this is Person of the Week material, then that’s fine, that’s your opinion and we’re all about freedom of speech. I only remind you that Jude Law, Colin Farrell and Johnny Depp got paid for a job. They’re keeping none of the money. Essentially they’ve just laboured long hours over an entire shooting production for free. At at the very end of the day, it’s still an option five million times more appropriate than a monkey on a dog.
August 19th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Seph said:
PS: I also find it to be a point of interest that your reaction to this is so negative whereas you’ve had no complaints in regards to some other POTW entries like Micallef or Gondry, who earned their wins based solely on the fact they they’re ‘pretty damn cool in their respective fields.’ But you go ahead and play the sad violin for that poor little ugly Chinese girl, because god knows, she needs all the loving attention she can get right now.
August 19th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Spence said:
My rant on Heath Ledger wasn’t meant to come off as against him, I like him, I think he was a great actor, my rant was meant to be more about all these people who are hero worshiping him these days for his role as The Joker. Even you can’t deny Seph that when Brokeback mountain came out people said he was great in it but it never went over the top like it has since The Dark Knight. My point is that since he has died he has been elevated to James Dean like status. I never once said he was a poor actor. I understand that actors make poor choices, my mentioning those movies I merely was reminding people that The Dark Knight wasn’t his only film, a fact that a lot of people have forgotten, I do not include you in that as I know you are aware of the good and the bad.
I think if you were honest, you would have to admit that many people are hailing him since his death, I did not mean on this site, but on a whole there are plenty of people out there who have become Heath obsessed. I think people have a tendency to become carried away when someone dies. Take Steve Irwin for example (I am and always have been an unashamed Croc Hunter fan - I own Collision Course) Just weeks before his death people all over the world were criticizing him as a bad father for dangling his child in front of a crocodile and getting to close to endangered whales, yet as soon as he died all that was forgotten and he was portrayed as the greatest environmentalist to have ever lived.
I accept that these three actors were paid for a job and then gave the money willingly to Matilda, and good on em (Farrell and Law are still twats, Depp is still awesome - despite from hell). But need I remind you that millions of people all over the world do free work and labor everyday for people and causes that would not be able to survive without it. Call me skeptical, a cynic or just a plain right lousy bloke, but to me it reeks of a publicity stint only Hollywood is capable of producing, although I doubt those actors meant it to be, Im sure that wasn’t their intention, it is still however being used to promote a film. I loved it when Heath Ledger won person of the week. I love Terry Gilliam and Johnny Depp. My main point, before I went off and ranted about fanboys latest obsession and my outrage at the Godfather being demoted (coincidentally, it is still at number 2, the Shawshank redemption is 1 and dark knight 3, the godfather was better than shawshank damn it) was that, for me, this isn’t as impressive as you other persons of the week, it was three guys donating money to a girl, something that occurs all the time, if it wasn’t for the fact that it is for Heath Ledgers daughter (or possibly the fact Depp is involved) it would not even have made it onto anyones radar.
Also, I doubt Whiplash is paid for his services either. Just saying is all. (I still love you)
August 19th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Spence said:
P.S. Leave poor little chinese girl outta this, hasn’t the ugly little commie been through enough? Didn’t really like the Science of Sleep either now that I came to think of it…
August 20th, 2008 at 1:41 am
Damo the Bo said:
*jumps out from behind a rock*
Terry Gilliam!?!?!?!?! What!??!?! How long has this been in the making? Why didn’t I know? Gilliam? Aaargh! Punctuation overload!
I need to know more….
August 20th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Seph said:
Hey Spence. Sorry if it seemed like I was having a dig at you or anything last night. Worst day at work, I was in a bit of a shit.
I know what you mean by dead celebrity worship, and I certainly see your point of view, it’s just I thought you were lumping me in the same category as those people (though obviously not the case, now.) The Steve Irwin point is a very good one.
I have to say though, the article does reflect how I feel on the matter. I think they’ve done an upstanding thing, and even though you do raise some legitimate points, (having enough money to do it anyway) it’s still a damn cool thing to do. (And hey, this has GOT to be more worthy of POTW than an average actor pointing on a horse -but we love Pierce-).
I’ll leave China Girl alone. Never saw Science of Sleep. (I love you too, man.)
Hey Damo, have you been under a rock amigo? Get yourself on the WORLD WIDe WEB and have a gander at this upcoming film. Question for both of you: Tideland any good? I ordered it through the local EzyDVD but it still hasn’t arrived yet. Am I in for a treat?
August 20th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Willbo said:
Whiplash is shit. Doesn’t even point to the distance to something fucking awesome when he’s on his dog. Poor effort.
August 21st, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Damo the Bo said:
Points on a dog… points on a dog…
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Seph said:
I see what you did there, Damo. I can’t wait til Slinky Cat album goes on sale. I’m going to try and get it signed!
August 24th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
spence said:
I actually have an advanced mp3 version of the album, and it lives up to the hype