Python's promise to keep Ledger's final legacy alive
When Heath Ledger died suddenly last year, the film world lost one of its brightest stars. For Terry Gilliam, the loss was more devastating than anyone could imagine. Tony Earnshaw reports.
Heath Ledger was dead. For Terry Gilliam, mid-way through shooting sprawling fantasy, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, the news was like a dagger to the heart.
And as the wider world reeled in shock, Gilliam was forced to contemplate the very real possibility that his film would collapse.
Looking back on those awful few days in January 2008, Gilliam never falls into enacting the clich "the show must go on".
Ledger was more than just the leading man; he was a close pal. And in his dying, he brought Gilliam to the very brink of calling a halt on his project.
"I just thought 'It's over,'" he recalls with genuine sadness.
"I was fatalistic about it, like 'f*** it. I don't know what to do.' I didn't have the energy to want to do anything. It was a terrible time and, frankly, I was just devastated by the loss of such a great guy. The film didn't really come into it at that point."
Gilliam had walked this particular road before. Ten years earlier he had watched as another dream project, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, crashed and burned as his lead actor was hospitalised and, eventually, had to leave the film.
It was all captured in vivid, brutal fashion in the documentary Lost in La Mancha. A decade on, it looked as if history would repeat itself. Another disaster, another missed opportunity, another magical movie lost to the world.
More important to Gilliam was the shock passing of Ledger at the ridiculously young age of 29. The former Python was bereft. Yet he allowed himself to be bullied – his word – by his daughter, Amy, a fledgling producer on the movie and by his cinematographer Nicola Pecorini, both of whom refused to give up hope.
"They said 'this is ridiculous. We're going to finish this film.' And I said 'Amy, you don't know what the f*** you are talking about. You are a novice at this game; I don't see how to finish it.'
"But then ideas started floating around and eventually we decided to do what we did. And also the money was running out. If we hadn't pulled something out of the hat quickly, it would have gone. And I suppose the rabbit was Johnny Depp."
What Gilliam did was inspired. He re-cast the elements of Ledger's unfilmed scenes – he had completed location work in London but studio sequences in Canada were still to be shot when he died – by employing new actors to provide new interpretations of different parts of Ledger's character's personality.
Thus it was that Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell joined the cast to shore up the film and help make Ledger's final performance material. It was, in short, a touch of genius.
Only later did Gilliam realise how close to the wire he and his film got. The movie's financiers were preparing to pull the plug. No-one could figure out how to save the picture.
It wasn't a case of employing some fancy special effects wizardry a la Oliver Reed in Gladiator to resurrect the character; too much remained to be filmed.
It looked like Ledger's final moments on the screen would be consigned to the vaults – just like those of tragic River Phoenix, who died while filming Dark Blood in 1993.
Remembers Gilliam: "I only found out afterwards. At the time I was in my own world."
Depp's wholehearted agreement to step up and help was the magic bullet that saved the patient.
There are those who believe that Gilliam and Ledger – who previously worked together on The Brothers Grimm in 2005 – would have partnered again. Gilliam is convinced, and there is the inference that Gilliam and Ledger would have become a collaborative double-act in the style of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp or Martin Scorsese and his new muse Leonardo DiCaprio.
Gilliam smiles a wan smile.
"I could see that he and I were going to be doing a lot of films together because he just got it. He got what I was about, I got what he was about. And suddenly, that's it: he's gone and I lost a partner.
"I think we would have done a lot together but I'm on my own again. Every day I think 'what would he have done here? What about that?'
"I would have loved to see the film that he would have made had he lived. I don't know what it would have been like – everybody is now in love with what we've got – but I still think about what we were going to do."
His next project will be Don Quixote. He dusted off the script and will re-cast without Johnny Depp, whose diary is full for years to come. Gilliam, 68, is pragmatic about its prospects.
"I want to be shooting it next spring. I'm not going to wait. Normally I would, but I'm just getting too old. I'm going to die soon and I want to get a couple more under my belt before the grim reaper catches up with me."
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (12A) is released today. See page 16 for Tony Earnshaw's review.
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