A Boy's Own Story

Never saw Brokeback Mountain. Couldn't bring myself to it --even the ads seemed dated and corndog, and I would rather read the entire oeuvre of Edmund White again (even A Boy's Own Story which I often called A Boy's Own Boring Story --- this is not to disparage Edmund White (his later novels are fantastic) or any number of gay cowboy novels I've enjoyed over the years. (Yes, there are several.) But I loved Heath Ledger in a movie called Candy where he stars with the luminous Abbie Cornish (the little missy who "stole" Ryan Phillipe away from Reese Witherspoon) as a couple madly in love with each other, madly in love with heroin, a going down slow kind of couple. I'm a sucker for this plot, the love triangle involving a deadly habit that becomes the whole story. The father figure in the story says it best, When you can stop, you don't want to and when you want to, you can't. Heath plays his part brilliantly, a sick worried man waiting on his man, a sad person who pimps out his beloved girlfriend and eventual wife for drugs, who reaches the bottom and can't stop the slow freefall. So much of the movie rests on his performance! And he's trying to write in the movie. Like Poe Ballantine says in his essay "Blessed Meadows For Minor Poets," if you want a really lucrative career try fiction writing. If this fails, go to something more practical and easier like selling encyclopedias door to door or shoehorning oxen.

Now Heath has left this world for reasons yet unknown, probably an accidental overdose on medication for pneumonia and sleeping pills. His last days were haunted by playing the Joker in the Batman movie, a scary terrible part according to his interviews, the part of a psychotic clown that Jack Nicholson brought to us so many years ago. But according to reports, Heath's clown was different, not charming like Jack's, not winning us over, but truly ill. He wanted to create something new and turned down a number of fluff parts that didn't suit his idea of himself. Like so many iconoclasts, he didn't take the easy road. Dying alone couldn't have been easy either. By the time paramedics brought his body out of his apartment, a crowd had formed to see his final, albeit unwilling, performance, yelling, There he is, still wanting a piece of him right up until the end.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"I only do this because I'm having fun. The day I stop having fun, I'll just walk away." Heath Ledger

Cocktail Hour
Drinking upcoming movie suggestion: Cassandra's Dream is out this weekend!

Benedictions and Maledictions
Rest in peace, Heath Ledger!