From the book of terrible ideas comes Lisa Taddeo's account of Heath Ledger's last days. Published in the April issue of Esquire, on stands next week, "The Last Days of Heath Ledger" is a first-person diary of lunching with Jack Nicholson and partying at the Beatrice Inn in the final days before the actor's death.
Except it's not true.
The Times Tim Arango reports editor David Granger – who "didn’t understand what the fuss was all about" when Ledger died – always intended the piece to be a work of fiction, not an assignment to report the facts that turned up empty. (Taddeo, an associate editor at Golf Magazine, does include some facts, like Ledger's enjoyment of "banana nut muffins from Miro Café.")
Though a quick look through Esquire's history reveals this stunt fits in with the magazine "record of journalistic tomfoolery," we can't imagine the Hollywood elite are going to care too much for it. And we all know what happens when the press tries to exploit celebrity death.
What kind of consciousness cooks up stuff like this?
Totally out of order and strnage.
What kind of consciousness? A creative writer kind. I did not find this story in Esquire to be offensive. It has a pathos which is usually lacking in the heroic writing which makes up the typical eulogy, and it is about the King Lear in all of us, a poor forked naked beast which is mortal man. Or as Sondheim put it in "Here's to the Ladies who Lunch" — "Everybody dies." Heath played Everyman in the last act.
She did not write about Heath Ledger, the son, boyfriend (!), father or superstar "dating" supermodels. She wrote about Everyman encountering Mortality. Caught in midstride, as it were, whether hit by a bus or a bad interaction of prescription drugs.
There were far more tacky "tributes", innuendos, etc. Outright lies. Tearing down for the sake of proving one's own superior character.
All I could think of when I walked near Heath's neighborhood the day before he died ( a place I almost never go to), was that it was so bitterly cold, I feared for the lives of homeless men sleeping on the sidewalk. I actually checked up on one the day after to see if he was still alive. It had me terribly concerned. Who could have imagined that it was not those men who would not make it through the night?
Send not then to know for whom the bell tolls, eh? I guess the homeless men already know that each day may be your last, so live.
I agree with Diane. I didn't find the piece offensive or out of line. I saw it as a piece of fiction based on a particular real backdrop. But the details, the actual meat of the piece is pure fiction. I think the fact that people find this disgusting is because they become morbidly attached to celebrities' lives and deaths.