Letters to the Editor
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drugs
It is evident that drugs played some role in his death, accidental or otherwise. I have already had some sensationalist comments on CNN from a doctor " he was taking the highly addictive AMBIEN", etc.
I do have a question though. I understand he was a heavy smoker and I wonder if he was taking the Pfizer drug CHANTIX which has been implicated in numerous suicides and psychotic episodes. I think the public understimates the effect that some prescription drugs have on the mind.
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met him for a second
I was in the room during a photo shoot including Heath Ledger. He was very bright and intense and I can only imagine that was how he lived. He was probably sensitive too, like so most artists and actors. Since no one really know what happened in the end, we may want to reserve any judgement out of respect to his family and especially to his daughter.
Goodbye beautiful boy. I am sorry for your suffering.
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Why jump to conclusions?
The man was found dead in a room with (prescription?) sleeping pills. How many millions of Americans have the same thing in their bedrooms? Why does everyone assume that drugs HAD to be involved in his death? He could have died of a massive heart attack for all we know, or an embolism.
Leave the postmortem to the experts, you don't have a clue what you're talking about...stop fanning the flames of idle gossip!
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The agony
Of being young beautiful rich famous popular and talented.
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Sleeping Pills ...
... shouldn't be kept next to your bed.
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I don't know...
All I can say about this is, it's becoming way too easy for people these days to kill themselves "accidentally". What do you think he's doing right now, slapping himself upside the head? Calling himself an idiot for mixing pills and alcohol?
I don't mean to be disrespectful to the dead, but it seems to me that these days, with all the pills you can take, the alcohol, the drugs, wide-spread depression disorders, it's all you can do to NOT kill yourself.
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I'm in the minority
I don't think someone's death automatically elevates them to the ranks of the "great" actors, singers, whatever. I've always considered Heath a mediocre actor at best. It's only become taboo to say so because of his tragic death. What was once considered merely an opinion, nothing more or less, has become akin to spitting in his casket.
I know this is an entirely different situation since Kurt Cobain had genuine genius, but every time the "Top 100 Best Bands of the...." comes out with Nirvana at Number One, I can't help wondering that if say, Eddie Vedder or Beck committed suicide earlier in their careers, if they would have eclipsed Nirvana on the list. There's something abuot dying young tragically that the living just can't compete with, no matter if they are equally talented.
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Roar
I remember Heath first, not from a movie, but from the highly promising (and ultimately disappointing) and short lived "Roar" TV show in the late 90s. I didn't know who it was, playing the impassioned and flawed lead. Didn't find out until I saw him again in "Ten Things" and thought "I've seen that guy somewhere..."
If he was in a movie, I was more likely to see it. I liked his worked and I'm sorry that there will only be one other movie from him.
A couple of things on the comments, above: Where the hell else do you keep sleeping pills but next to the place where, I don't know .. you sleep? Ambien can kick in like a house afire, leaving your legs wobbly and your balance compromised. Also, it is habituating, but not addictive AFAIK.
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Anonymous @ 8:56
You are more cogent than others have been in the last year or so on Salon--see the horrible "let's face it and be honest" reactions to Anna Nicole Smith's death--but nonetheless suffer from their error: a sense that forthrightly mentioning the flaws of the recently dead somehow translates into brave, clear-eyed honesty, an integrity that the rest of us are too blinkered to allow ourselves.
Dead people get to go uncriticized for what your grandmama would have called "a decent period." Then you can sail in with all the critical acumen you can muster once more. But work on your timing.
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Asking too much, Gams
"with all respect to the dead, you really are stretching your personal admiration for his fine features into some sort of recognition of an imaginary parallel between his life and his death."
Never try asking Mary Williams to step out of herself for even a moment. Her feelings are the world's feelings. She can go through an entire movie review and talk about herself 5 times more than the film in question.
At least she went through this piece and replaced most of the 'I' statements with 'we' statements, even though she's obviously just talking about herself. What, *everybody* was star-struck?
Self-centered maudlinism aside (and really, that was a given for this "writer"), it'll probably do as comfort to other star-struck Ledger fans, whether they be 13-year old girls or other grown-ups with the emotional depth of 13-year old girls. But let's put this stuff in Broadsheet where it belongs, with the rest of Mary's output, shall we?
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Sad
I, too, am unreasonably sad about Heath Ledger’s death. Which feels strange and out of place, since if you’d asked me two days ago who my favorite actors are, I wouldn’t have thought to name him. Still, his death hit me harder than I would have expected. Maybe it’s because he was the one, in Brokeback Mountain, to deliver these words, “If you can’t fix it, you gotta stand it.” I could not have been the only one to hear that sentence and feel it fall down through me like a stone, as his death does now.
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I feel oddly sad about this, too.
Plenty of young people die tragically, including famous ones like Mr. Ledger. For some reason his death bothers me more than I expected. I suppose it's because I considered him just another adequately talented pretty boy actor in so-so movies, but his acting in Brokeback Mountain really moved me. The guy had gravitas. He even had me looking forward to The Dark Knight, which I otherwise would have ignored, given how pretentious the first Batman movie was.
Ah well. If it was a suicide, that just presents us with a mystery of how a rich and famous actor with a blockbuster movie about to come out was nonetheless troubled enough to kill himself. If it was accidental, then hopefully his death will spur safety improvements in the use and distribution of sleeping pills in our society.