Thread by @SeekerOTL

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Heath Ledger’s Joker is one of the greatest movie villains ever.

How did he bring to life such an unforgettable character?

And was it worth the price?

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By all indications, Ledger’s upbringing was privileged and his family loving. He was born into a prominent family in Perth, Australia.

The Sir Frank Ledger Charitable Trust is named after his great-grandfather.

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His father was a race car driver who started his own engineering firm.

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Ledger attended the prestigious all-boys Guilford Grammar school. He was a bit of a rebel, a popular one, even with his teachers.

He excelled on the athletic field and, not surprisingly, on the stage.

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Ledger left school at 16 and moved to Sydney to pursue acting roles.

After some early success, Ledger moved to Los Angeles and his star began to rise with his appearance alongside Mel Gibson in The Patriot.

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Ledger’s father has said the role that most resembles his son in real life is his portrayal of a sensitive prison guard in Monster’s Ball. A character incapable of hurting anyone.

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How, then, was Ledger able to so convincingly portray a psychopathic madman?

Ledger’s strategy was to immerse himself into the character. To become the Joker.

For weeks, he locked himself, alone, into a hotel room and found the character’s voice.

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The vocal inflections Ledge adopted sound very similar to Tom Waits in an 1979 interview the singer gave in Australia.

Judge for yourself.

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While I’m convinced that Wait’s did influence Ledger’s vocal delivery, neither Waits’ persona nor his music is violent in the least.

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Ledger had to dig deeper for the darker aspects of the Joker.

He read several different comic book presentations of the Joker, especially Grant Morrison’s The Clown at Midnight and Arkham Asylum.

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In addition to writing comics, Morrison is a practitioner of magick, to include attempting to summon demons while dressed as a woman.

rollingstone.com/culture/cultur…

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Ledge kept a diary that he used to get in the proper mood (very dark) to play the character, including a list of things that the Joker would find funny: “AIDS, landmines, geniuses suffering irreversible brain damage, brunch, and sombreros.”

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Also found in his diary are several pictures of Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) from Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.

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Alex is a hooligan who, along with his fellow gang members, commit acts of assault, rape and eventually murder...and enjoying themselves immensely.

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Alex infamously performs “Singing in the Rain” as he assaults a man in his own home (and rapes his wife).

“The Kubrick Stare”

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A Clockwork Orange was banned in England in response to “copycat acts.” Ledger’s Joker also *possibly* inspired an imitator as well:

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in 2021 James Holmes walked into a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, shooting and killing 12 people and wounding dozens more during the opening night of The Dark Knight Rises.

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In subsequent interviews with psychologists, Holmes claimed he was not inspired by the Joker. He only chose the movie because he knew the theatre would be packed.

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Indeed, there isn’t much evidence to suggest he was fixated on Batman or the Joker. In comparison, he admits to playing the video game Diablo III for “100 hours” in the days leading up the shooting.

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But it’s difficult not to compare his appearance in selfies in the days immediately prior to the shooting with the Joker and not see a resemblance.

Holmes purchased lenses, he called them “possession glasses,” to heighten his menacing appearance.

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In the wake of the massacre, Warner Bros pulled the trailer for the movie Gangster Squad from theaters. The trailer featured armed men firing through a movie screen.

The line between fantasy and reality are blurred.
ew.com/article/2012/0…

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Ledger had complete control over his own makeup. No doubt he was partially influenced by Brandon Lee’s ghostly makeup in the 1994 revenge fantasy, The Crow.

reddit.com/r/interestinga…

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Lee died on the set of The Crow after an actor shot him with a gun that was supposed to be loaded with blanks. Doctors found a .44 bullet lodged in Lee’s spine.

More blurred lines.

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Another influence on Ledger’s choice of makeup was the video for the song Hosannas from Hell by Killing Joke

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The lead singer of the group, Jaz Coleman, claims extensive knowledge of the occult. Coleman believes Ledger wasn’t properly prepared for the “energies” he invoked.

loudersound.com/news/killing-j…

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Most people remember The Dark Knight as Ledger’s last film; however, his last role was actually in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

Ledger died during the filming and several actors, including Johnny Depp, played versions of his character in his absence.

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Ledger’s first appearance on screen is a startling shot of him, with occult symbols etched on his forehead, hanging from a bridge in London.

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The image of Ledger hanging from a bridge is an obvious reference to the hanging of Robert Calvi from London’s Blackfriars Bridge in 1982.

I covered that suspicious death in a previous thread on the P2 Masonic Lodge.

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At its core, The Imaginarium is about the blurred line of reality and fantasy, and how much more appealing fantasy is to reality. A common theme of Heath Ledger’s last days.

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In the movie, Dr Parnassus is an immortal man who long ago made a deal with the devil for eternal life and a magic mirror that allows people to escape the humdrum world for a world of their imagination.

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Dr Parnassus also made a deal for eternal youth that will cost him his daughter’s soul on her 16th birthday. If Dr Parnassus can free five souls in his Imaginarium before the devil can corrupt 5 more, then his daughter soul will be saved.

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The Devil, named Mr Nick, is played by none other than Tom Waits, the singer whom Ledger partly based his portrayal of the Joker on.

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The type of wager Dr Parnassus makes with the Devil is often referred to as “Faustian. It’s a story that has been told many times over the centuries: Dr Faust enters into a deal with the Devil for worldly gain in this life, but it will cost him his immortal soul.

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On his blog, Crazy Days and Night, in the aftermath of Ledger’s death, Enty wrote that Ledger was haunted by “inner demons” in the last months of his life. Weighing on his mind the most was the dissolution of his relationship with the mother of his young daughter.

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Perhaps to escape the pain in his life, Ledger retreated from reality and slipped deeper into the role of the Joker.

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Jasun Horsley (to whom I owe a great debt for drawing my attention to this subject), in his book “16 Maps of Hell: The Unraveling of Hollywood Superculture, asks this question:

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“is it so far-fetched to imagine Health Ledger (or James Holmes) was ‘possessed’ by the spirit of the Joker, and so entered into a liminal realm where he could no longer find himself?"

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The liminal is a threshold, gate or doorway between two worlds.

Or, in case of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, a mirror.

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In January 2008, Heath Ledger was discovered unconscious in his New York City apartment by his masseuse. Inexplicably, she called one of the Olsen twins before calling 9-1-1.

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When paramedics arrived, they were unable to revive Ledger. It was later determined he died of an overdose of prescription pills.

Since there was no suicide note left, the death was ruled an accident.

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Of course, there has been much suspicion cast on Ledger’s death. Everything from suicide to ritual sacrifice has been suggested.

But everyone who knew Ledger agrees that he was suffering from acute insomnia.

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His immersion in the role of the Joker had left him drained, both mentally and physically.

Yet, he could not sleep.
people.com/movies/the-dar…

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As someone who has suffered from insomnia in the past myself, I tend to believe his death was accidental.

As a movie star, Ledger had no problem obtaining prescription pills to help him sleep.

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He built up a tolerance that required higher and higher dosages to stop his mind from racing.

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Ledger grew desperate to avoid that time of night between midnight and dawn. The time of night the great director Ingmar Bergman called the “Hour of the Wolf”

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"It is the hour when most people die, when sleep is deepest, when nightmares are more real. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their deepest fear, when ghosts and demons are most powerful.”

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Regardless of how or why Ledger died, it’s a real tragedy we lost such a great actor, and an even greater one than a little girl lost her father.

Heath Ledger gave one of the greatest performances ever as the Joker.

But was it worth it?

END