Excerpt: One clue, offered by the Los Angeles Times as evidence of the actor’s downward spiral, was a clip from an interview with Ledger in December about his role in I’m Not There. The interviewer claimed Ledger “was clearly slurring and unfocused,” but viewers would find a video of a disappointingly lucid Ledger, discussing his view that biopics run the risk of defaming their subject: “Because you’re assuming too much. I think this movie avoids it gracefully by not assuming to know who Bob Dylan is. He’s kept in the shadow … It’s preserving his mystique.”
When Todd Haynes met Ledger in 2006, the actor was already struggling with similar questions about the art of biography, having taken a two-year sabbatical from acting to write a script about the life of singer-songwriter Nick Drake.
“Trying to squeeze this complex, beautiful, and mysterious subject into the confines of the traditional biopic he found reprehensible and kind of cruel,” says Haynes. “He was starting to approach it through a more allegorical method, where it was going to be about a woman traveling on a train ride through Europe—which Nick Drake I think did do—and he was going to have Michelle play that role.” Now, the idea that Ledger had spent two years trying to get inside the head of an artist who suffered from depression and insomnia and died at 26 from an overdose of a prescribed antidepressant has become one more detail to be used as either tragic irony or psychoanalytic insight. from New York magazine here...
Linsay Lohan photo taken by Bert Stern, who took Marilyn Monroes last pictures in this same setting and props.
“Here is a woman who is giving herself to the public,” Lohan said, about the Monroe photos, when we spoke the next day by phone. “She’s saying, ‘Look, you’ve taken a lot from me, so why don’t I give it to you myself.’ She’s taking control back.” Like any tabloid veteran, Lohan understands the potency of a photograph, and that the best way to respond to a society that views you only as an image might just be on its own terms. New York magazine article here...
