Esquire Magazine Keeps Heath's Ledger

Margaret B. Jones
Misha Defonseca
Ishmael Beah

What do these people have in common? Well, all three were not drug selling gang soldiers living amongst wolves. But that’s not all. All three are liars, too.

As it turns out, none of these authors did even one of those three. Despite claims to the contrary, Jones did not run drugs for the Bloods of Los Angeles, Defonseca was not rescued from the Holocaust by wolves, nor was Beah actually a child soldier. All three were recently revealed to have lied in their memoirs. And an upcoming piece in Esquire Magazine may be catching up on the fad.

In this month’s Esquire, Lisa Taddeo jots down a controversial fictional diary entry entitled “The Last Days of Heath Ledger.” In the piece, Taddeo conjures up the last few days before Ledger’s surprising death including details of who he spoke with (Jack Nicholson in person, Michelle Williams on email, Mary-Kate Olsen on the phone), what he ate (steak and eggs, banana-nut muffins), where he hung out (The Beatrice), what he wore (a ski mask), and whose music he listened to (Nick Drake).

The penultimate part of the story (as if banana-nut muffins wasn’t epic enough) comes in the last section entitled “The Final Curtain,” where the ventriloquist Taddeo has Ledger explain:

What I'd ask of you, out of respect, not for me--I'm deaf and blind to it now--but for the living I left, is to leave it alone. Don't investigate my last few days, because these could be your last few days. Play your own part. And don't tell me what I did. I didn't play the piano or fuck Lindsay Lohan or fill my goody bag to the brim at the Venice Film Festival. In fact, I'm not really sure I did too much that you personally should remember, beyond make a beautiful little girl, the one thing every guy wants to be able to say he did. So that's it, my final unedited shot: Matilda. She is what lives on. The rest is just bullshit.

Is it ironic for Taddeo to investigate Ledger’s last few days and voice the thought that the rest of us shouldn’t? Well, it depends if you know what irony is. If you do know the definition of irony, then yes- it is ironic.

Why write the controversial piece? Taddeo answers it herself, at the start of the piece:

It becomes theatrically important, after you die, what your last few days are like.

Theatrically important, eh? I wonder if Esquire may have done it because it is financially important, too…I bet there’s more money lying around the Esquire offices for banana-nut muffins nowadays.

[Esquire]
[NY Post]

Vampires and Zombies Welcome Arthur Lemay to the Undead

We agree with Arthur Lemay. A 50th reunion is a great time to pull a prank on your former classmates. We don't, however, think his prank was a very good idea.

In a ruse Mark Twain might have concocted, Lemay, a retired management consultant from Northern California, circulated his own obituary on a Harvard '59 e-mail listserv last month, then sat back and watched classmates' reactions.

"Arthur knew he was dying as early as September of 2007," began the death notice, which was signed by Lemay's wife and posted in late January. Ascribing his death to kidney failure while vacationing in the Caribbean, it contained descriptive touches such as: "He loved to play roles: the agent provocateur, the crazed right-winger, the insane bomber..." According to his wife, Lemay also left behind five postings intended to be shared posthumously. "Communications from the grave," she called them.

That's when the responses started to pour in on their communal list serv. Some former classmates talked about the great respect they had for Lemay. Some even left tributes to him in the form of famous lines of poetry. Once some messages started to pop up explaining what a pain others found Lemay to be, Lemay revealed the hoax to his classmates.

"I have to eat humble pie and admit it was very silly and stupid of me to do this," wrote Lemay, promising to be less confrontational in future postings. Or, as he put it, to become a "more philosophical person who has genuinely buried the old Arthur."

He also said the death of a close friend, coupled with a near-death experience of his own, had given him the idea for posting the obit.

Although many were aghast over Lemay's prank, still a few found it fitting to think philosophically about Lemay's death and undeath. In truest Harvard form, comparisons were made to both literature, old popular culture and poetry to help understand attribute Lemay's inspiration. As we believe Thomas Edison once put it, "Pranks are 10 percent inspiration, 90 percent resurrection."

[Boston Globe]

Fictional Death Is Permanent Death, Even in the Star Trek Universe

Death, the final frontier. Or is it? Let's boldly ask what no man has asked before: if your character dies on screen in a "Star Trek" movie, can you be in a later "Star Trek" movie? J.J. Abrams, who is directing the latest one, says no. William Shatner, whose Captain Kirk died in 1994's "Star Trek: Generations" (but is not picked in this year's DP), disagrees:

"The mistake I made was thinking I could make it a spectacular death with what they had written," says the actor, who then dreamed up a story line to bring Kirk back: Spock snatched Kirk's DNA. Shatner wrote the novel The Return in which Kirk is resurrected, and he says it could work in the new film.

Abrams responds, "You and I could come up with dozens of ways, but every way that we came up with felt like it was transparently fan boys trying to get Shatner in the movie."

Personally, I think Shatner should take his own advice.

[TrekWeb]

Thatcher If You Can: When She Stops No One Knows

Ever wonder what the death of Margaret Thatcher would be like? We know some of our roster owners think about it regularly. Well, so has one playwright.

Producer June Abbott said: 'We were worried about the title at first, but this work puts Baroness Thatcher's death on a par with events such as the death of Kennedy or of Princess Diana. She provokes such emotion. Ever since I have told friends we are doing this play, I have had to sit for hours listening to the views of people who are still either for or against her.' Abbott said Green's play is funny and looks at the way Thatcher polarised opinion. 'It is about how people are affected by her death in different ways. None of them talk about whether they were for or against her.'

Green says his work is not overtly political. Instead, he says, it is a response to the strongly worded public promises to celebrate Thatcher's eventual death that have been made in the past by left-wing figures such as the actor Ricky Tomlinson or the singer-songwriter Elvis Costello. 'It will be interesting, when she does die, to see what society makes of it,' he said. 'But this play is not an essay or a polemic. I would not even characterise it as anti-Thatcher.'

While we can't tell the living Thatcher what life would have been like had she never been born, one man has attempted to predict what life would be like after her death. Perhaps this minor glimpse into the future will give the Thatcher a newfound perspective on life this season. And depending on reviews of the performance, this may wind up keeping her around for some time longer than she had planned to stay.

[Guardian Unlimited]

Fictional Deaths Are Deaths, Too!

I know that people have come to expect Best-of's, Top 10's, and other year-in-review stuff from their favorite sites and blogs. The problem with that here at BDPE is that the end of the year is the time when almost all our efforts go into getting the next year's pool up and running, and who can find the time to recap the year that was? So, with a lack of year-end goodness from us (for now), enjoy this list of the Top 7 saddest TV deaths of 2007. For the record, fictional characters are not eligible for Death Pool.

Spoiler alert: If you're still catching up on, well, anything, read with caution. There's a lot of stuff listed there.

[Buddytv.com]