Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
Did Anna Nicole die again?
Posted January 23, 2008 at 7:53 am by basilAs best as I can tell, Anna Nicole Smith died again.
Only this time, she was a he … and went by the name Heath Ledger.
Now, my intent is not to minimize the life and legacy of Heath Ledger … or even Anna Nicole Smith … but honestly, it’s Heath Ledger.
It wasn’t Laurence Olivier … or even Laurence Harvey. Or Steve Lawrence — who is still alive, by the way, and more talented than Heath Ledger and Anna Nicole Smith put together ever were.
If Heath Ledger hadn’t appeared as Ennis in Brokeback Mountain, what would he be known for today? Other than being found face down, naked, in a pill-strewn room?
Hmmm. Now I see why the media is reporting this like another Anna Nicole death.
Wonder if Larry Birkhead will claim paternity of Matilda Rose.
But seriously, if not for the homosexual cowboy role, what would Ledger be remembered for? His role as Fr. Alex Bernier in The Order?
C’mon.
Look, it’s a tragedy. Someone died young.
It happens.
And it’s not worth all the air time and ink spent on it.
So, why am I spending time on it?
Good point.
I’ll stop now.
January 23rd, 2008 at 11:00 am
No one will remember you. Your rude and inappropriate comments on the recent death of Mr. Ledger repulse me.
May God help you as no one else could do.
January 23rd, 2008 at 11:19 am
You are a very selfish, self-centered person. Let the family grieve, for shit’s sake. Geez, we know he wasn’t the best actor on this earth, but he was human. Have some respect. He knew more people than you. Lighten up you jackass!!
January 23rd, 2008 at 11:28 am
Heck, Osama Bin Laden knows more people than I do. So that proves nothing.
I’m thinking I’m not the one that needs to lighten up. I seem to be taking Heath Ledger’s passing a lot lighter than you are.
Yeah, he was human. And a fair to middling actor. But he’s gotten more press at his passing than the more talented actors I mentioned got at theirs.
It’s perspective. And Heath Ledger … as well as Anna Nicole Smith … and Diana Spencer, for that matter … have received more press from their passing than they deserved.
Yeah, he was human. But so were all the homeless that starved or froze to death last night across this country.
You want to get all worked up about something? Go feed or clothe them. Put your anger to some good use.
January 23rd, 2008 at 12:52 pm
If you want the chance to talk about celebrity scandals, check out celeb attorney/author John Mayoue at Barnes & Noble in Columbus. He’s having a discussion and book signing at 7 pm on Feb 6. I’m sure there are some confidentiality issues preventing him from talking too much about clients Marianne Gingrich, Jane Fonda, P. Diddy, Chris Rock, etc, but it still may be fun to pick his brain, especially in light of Britney’s upcoming custody hearing (and she’s truly one who gets too much press).
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:03 pm
That might be interesting! I need to check that out.
And, yes, I hate to think of the press she … as well as Paris Hilton … would get should they shuffle off this mortal coil any time soon.
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Well, don’t worry! When you die noone will know so we won’t have all this press then. We’ll save ink on you.
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:44 pm
I don’t even know Peter Noone.
And I’d be surprised if he knew me.
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Dude, you’re right on. It’s a media feeding frenzy when someone dies “tragically young”. And then they become immortalized and idealized far beyond what they would have been had they lived to a ripe old age. Look at James Dean ffs. He did only 3 movies yet he is still a hollywood “legend”. If he were an old man now, no one ( yes I mean “no one” and not the illustrious Peter Noone
) would think much of him likely. Compare Marilyn Monroe to Elizabeth Taylor. One is a fovever-young iconic face and the other is a dried up old hag that people don’t give a shit about. Heath Ledger was a talented actor, but his untimely death is no more tragic than any other.
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:14 pm
I don’t mean to mitigate or gloss over Heath Ledger’s death–death is intrinsically tragic. Pakistani leader Bhutto died recently; 250,000 in Darfur; 2,500 Americans in Iraq. Its all in what we value.
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Jen: Well said. Much better than I could.
Sarah: Dead (so to speak) on target.
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Thank you Basil…but it wasn’t said better than you could. What you said was on point, correct, and witty at the same time. Not an easy thing to accomplish..it was what motivated me to read yours all the way through. There are COUNTLESS blogs out there, but most of them aren’t worth the pixels they use (let alone ink
) You are both insightful and funny. Bravo!
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Your kind words are much appreciated.
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:10 pm
well, it’s not as if he were shot dead in front of his wife on his way home, in what could have been the greatest years of his life.
January 23rd, 2008 at 7:01 pm
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
January 24th, 2008 at 6:58 am
Hugs sweetie … thank you for saying this. The inappropriate attention for this person just blows my mind. I’ve never seen his movies and the IMDB lists his TV shows with appearenceson Leno ? uh?
I’m sorry the man is gone, but we have soldiers dying in a war against terrorists and their lives should be more honored than the wall to wall coverage of an actor’s sad death.
January 24th, 2008 at 7:50 am
Thanks.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I think one of the problems is that there are way too many TV shows like ET, etc, with constant hyping of all things Hollyweird! It is overkill! Crummy stuff that people used to try to keep to themselves is now shouted from the rooftop–there is no shame! If I never heard another word about AN that would be fine with me! When she was all over the news my mute button got a daily workout!
And the soldiers deserve much more mention!
January 24th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Unimportant…
2008 Unimportant Events Post (Thumbs Down)
……
January 24th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
“last night the wife said
oh boy when you’re dead
you don’t take nothing with you but your
soul, think”
– john lennon
January 25th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
BTW..my husband was one of those Iraq War vets you’re talking about. He’s now on permanent VA disability, so at least he came home alive, but not whole. And many of his fellow soldiers, some close friends, never came back. So….yeah. Our priorities and values as a society are frighteningly screwed up.
January 25th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Thank you both for your service.
January 25th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
You mentioned Laurence Olivier – all I know about him is that he is considered one of he greatest actors ever, but preferred to stick to plays rather than films. You mentioned Laurence Harvey and Steve Lawrence. I don’t know who the hell these people are. I had to look them up on Google. Heath Ledger is much more famous now than any of the people you mentioned, and his face is a lot more recognisable. What you are doing is like comparing the popularity of the cassette with that of the CD. They are from two different eras, you can’t compare. And by the way, it seems Steve Lawrence is a singer so how can you compare him to Ledger, who was an actor. And how the hell can you compare Ledger to Nicole Smith, who was a porn star? You seem to me to be a real dim wit.
January 25th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
You don’t know who Laurence Harvey was or who Steve Lawrence is … and I’m the dim wit?
You might not have these over in Malta, but here in the US, we have people talented enough to be singers … and actors. Steve Lawrence is one of those.
You seemed to be unable to click on the IMDB link I provided to Steve Lawrence’s entry. That or something kept you from actually looking at the information. Had you done some homework, you’d have noticed that Steve Lawrence has more acting roles listed than Heath Ledger. And I’m not counting appearances as himself, but acting roles, where he played a character. You know. Acting. What actors do.
No, he’s not a great actor. But an actor he is. As well as a singer.
Oh, the comparison to Anna Nicole Smith was primarily comparing how their bodies were discovered … naked in a pill-strewn room … and the ridiculous amount of coverage each received upon their deaths. No, she wasn’t a great actress, but was an actress. I never considered her a porn star. Yes, she posed nude in Playboy, but so did Joan Collins, and she’s not a porn star.
You didn’t seem to mind my comparing Heath Ledger to Diana Spencer. Unless you don’t know who that is. But she got way too much coverage when she died.
Anyway, thanks for visiting our little planet Earth. Come back again some time.
January 26th, 2008 at 1:50 am
Well, I turn away for a minute and you’re pissing in someone’s Cheerios again. Y’all, I saw Brokeback. It sucked almost as bad as “Queen of the Damned” and that is saying a mouthful, no pun intended. The fact the movie was even noticed was amazing to me, much less that anyone received Oscar nominations for it. Shows you the stupidity of Hollywood, though.
Basil, you did gloss over one small fact in your post. Hollywood actors today are morons for the most part and possess very little talent. As far as Heath Ledger is concerned, “Four Feathers” actually held my attention. There was not another movie that he was in that did.
It is terrible that young people are so self-absorbed that they destroy themselves, but this occurance is not a tragedy to me, it’s just par for the course for that type of person. Ledger is the soup of the day, albeit cold, and he paid the price for his actions, plain and simple.
And boy, don’t you just want to hug that Max Costa? Come here, Maxie, let me give you a noogie. It takes all kinds, I guess.
January 26th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Yeah, I know. Can’t leave me along for a moment, can you.
I must have shattered someone’s version of reality. Amazing world some folks live in.
January 26th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Did you have any idea that blogging about Heath Ledger would get so many comments? That’s odd.
January 27th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
What’s really odd is that folks that think Heath Ledger and other actors are a big deal are allowed to vote.
Check that. That’s not so much odd as just plain scary.
January 28th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
I keep expecting someone to say Bush did it!
January 28th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
The nerve of Heath to die when he did… cutting into all that media coverage of Brittney Spears and the latest pretty-white-girl-who’s-gone missing.
January 28th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Linda: Any day now.
Cowboy Blob: Ah. Excellent point. If only I could turn on the news one time and actually see some news…
January 29th, 2008 at 12:16 am
First off, no, I don’t know who Laurence Harvey and Steve Lawrence are. At best, this shows my lack off knowledge of non-contemporary music/movie personalities. This does not make me a dim-wit. It just shows I tend to favour more well known public personalities. Secondly, your reasoning in and of itself makes you the dim-wit, as I described you in my first post. What I am trying to explain to you is that a lack of knowledge about something doesn’t prove your level of wit. If so, we’re a world of dim-wits, as a Harvard lawyer is pretty “dim-witted” (and here I’m using my teminology within your ill-applied context) when it comes to flowers – so does this give permission to a botanist to called him a dim-wit because he doesn’t know the name of a certain plant. Thirdly, congrats to you for taking the time to look up my IP (or whatever the hell you did), and find that I’m from Malta. I’m not sure if you ment to demean me by saying that we don’t have talented singers/actors here in Malta, but just in case you did, I’d like to bring to your attention the fact that Malta is a nation of circa 400,000 people, this making the probable incidence of a “talented” (I’m assuming you’re using talented in the American mass-produced Big Mac pop-star sense of the word) singer/actor very low (if you knew primary school probability you’d have understood this and not written anything as ignorant as what you wrote). On the other hand, the U.S., with a 300 million (and I’m making a wild recourse to an old statistic I read, meaning I haven’t bothered to check your population, so I may be wrong) population of McChicken Nuggets eating fatties, have a much higher probability of a “talented” (again, in the Big Mac mass production sense) singer/actor. Don’t bark up the wrong tree, you goddamn yank.
January 29th, 2008 at 12:56 am
Oh, Max. Now you be nice, or us horrible Americans won’t let you use our Internet!
Your problem isn’t that you’re from Repubblika ta’ Malta. Not at all. No slight was intended against the former member of the Commonwealth.
The problem is that you are of the MTV generation. You only know and appreciate what you see right now. You have no grasp of what is, what was, and what can be. You only know what you see, or what you’re told you see.
And, what’s the saddest, is that you don’t seem to realize how pitiful that is, and will never get better.
That’s one reason your “Harvard lawyer” analogy fails: he’s not dim-witted because he’s not a botanist. He would be dim-witted if he thought that flowers were unimportant because he didn’t have one in front of him at the moment.
Of course, if he thought like that, like you, he’d never have made it into Harvard in the first place. So, no, the “Harvard lawyer” scenario fails.
As for “talented,” I mean that someone with the ability to sing and act would be considered talented. Let me find someone else that does that.
Let’s see. Ice-T. Singer and actor. Very talented.
Ice Cube. Another singer/actor. Also talented.
LL Cool J. Again, singer/actor. Talented.
Madonna. Singer/actor.
Let me know if I find anyone that you’ve been able to sit still long enough to know about.
Regardless, I think you get my point. Singers are talented. Actors are talented. But those with multiple talents are … get this … more talented.
It could be argued that Olivier is more talented than Ice T. Or Steve Lawrence. Even though Olivier was “just an actor” and not a singer/actor. But Olivier’s talent was so great that he would be considered more talented that others who acted and sang.
Anyway, to my point of the post. I never said that Heath Ledger wasn’t talented. I said that he wasn’t important enough to warrant all the attention given him, particularly in relation to other, more talented actors that passed before his untimely death.
You seem to be of the feeling that, if you don’t know about it, then it’s not important.
Like I said, that’s just sad. You lack the capacity to seek out more, to understand the bigger picture, and to appreciate the past, the present, and the future.
It does make me feel better knowing that about you, though. I was worried that such ignorance was the domain of America’s youth. Malta seems to suffer from the same kind of cancer, based upon what I can tell about you.
And that’s just sad.
March 18th, 2008 at 6:32 am
You’ll be remembered as a callous cunt!
March 18th, 2008 at 6:56 am
“ky”? I wonder what that means you’ll be remembered as…