Thoughts on Heath Ledger and Brad Renfro

Well, it has been an interesting couple of weeks going into 2008. January actually provided us with one really good movie in “Cloverfield,” and the Oscar nominations were announced and many (but not all) got their die from the Academy. However, much of that has been shadowed by tragedy. We lost a couple of actors who left us with some great work, and yet they also left us way too soon. It’s a reminder of just how unfair life can seem.

Like all of you, the death of Heath Ledger was such a shock that it seemed almost unbelievable. I kept hearing people talk about him while I was passing the halls of my cubicle dungeon, and I wondered why people were talking about him so much in the first place. Then one of my colleagues who was sitting right across from me found out that Heath had died, and my eyes were wide open. I immediately checked out the CNN.com website, and saw it right there on the front page. I was shocked and infuriated all at the same time. How dare we lose another young actor so soon! I haven’t felt that strongly about any actor’s death since Christopher Penn died about a year ago. I remember talking about it with a friend of mine, and we both agreed:

“This blows!”

When it comes to the death of celebrities, we almost always remember where we were when we got the news of their demise. My dad keeps telling me that the day John Lennon died was the saddest day of his life. It was so senseless what happened to him, and like many others, my dad had just about every vinyl record made by the Beatles (he has since upgraded to CDs). I remember reading about River Phoenix’s death in the newspaper while my mom was talking to me about something (I don’t remember what). Seeing that, I couldn’t speak for about a minute. I refused to believe at the time that his death was drug related, thinking that River would be too smart to fall into that pit of self-destruction. Shows you what I knew back then.

Heath Ledger’s and Brad Renfro’s collective deaths will now be forever burned into my conscious mind for as long as I live. The tragedy of two young people gone at such a young age is something that seems impossible to get completely over. Many complain that lots of people die young and don’t get anywhere near the same amount of publicity. As a result, many see this as saying that these two actors are way more important than anyone else. I say bullshit to that, and I don’t think anyone else out there wants to put a lesser meaning on those who have passed in the same manner. It’s just that we can’t help but feel this way about Heath and Brad because whether we knew them personally or not, they were a big part of our lives whether we wanted them to be or not. We felt like we knew them, even if their personal lives are really none of our business.

Heath’s death feels especially tragic in that he was an actor who had finally come into his own thanks to his astounding performance in “Brokeback Mountain.” This was a performance he must have been impatiently waiting to give. He had spent the last couple of years beforehand sabotaging his career with several crappy movies so that he could break out of the teen heartthrob that the studios wanted to sell him as. But like Johnny Depp, he didn’t want to be seen as a product. With “Brokeback Mountain,” he managed to break out of that mold forever, and we were eager to see what he would do next.

Ever since laying eyes on his interpretation of The Joker in this summer’s “The Dark Knight,” I have no doubt that his performance will be nothing short of astonishing. While Jack Nicholson’s version of The Joker in Tim Burton’s “Batman” was a hoot to say the least, you already got the sense that Ledger’s take is more than likely to stand on its own. Now that Heath has died, watching his performance in that movie will seem all the more eerie.

It was hard to find the words how I felt about all of this. It seems clear now that there was an obscene amount of presumption on the part of the press in assuming (but not knowing) how he died. We are in no position to make assumptions on anybody’s death until we have all the facts. Just because there were sleeping bills and a rolled up $20 dollar bill next to bed seemed license enough to see Ledger as another actor who got caught up in a world of drugs that ended up destroying him completely. I don’t typically read the news as much as I used to, and that’s mainly because I don’t believe much of anything that is told to me anymore. I try to reserve judgment when it comes to situations like this because what I end up thinking about it ends up saying more about me than anyone else. That also goes for anyone who rushed to judge Heath in an unfair manner.

My guess is that Heath died of a sudden heart attack. I hear he was having trouble sleeping to the point where he was getting about 2 hours of sleep a night while making “The Dark Night.” I have heard some say that you can’t die from insomnia, but there has got to be a point where the body just gives out and can’t take anymore. The same thing happened years ago to comedian Robin Harris who you remember from Spike Lee joints like “Do The Right Thing” or “Mo Better Blues.” He went without sleep for days and days, and then one day he went to sleep and never woke up. Now there was another talented man who went before his time.

Now some may have seen Brad Renfro’s death coming from a mile away, but I doubt that. Granted, he had become more famous for his run ins with the laws and for his substance abuse problems than anything else. But if you peel that back a little, you will find a very strong film actor who was no flash in the pan. Many may know him best from “The Client” which is one of many John Grisham adaptations made back in the 1990’s, and he was plucked from obscurity by Joel Schumacher to be cast in the role of a young boy who witnesses a murder. It was a strong debut, and he did a lot of great work after that.

Another strong performance from Brad was in the movie “Apt Pupil,” a Bryan Singer movie that was an adaptation of a Stephen King novel/short story. I actually didn’t care for the movie that much, but the performances were very strong regardless. Brad more than held his own with Ian McKellan as a high school student who discovers that he is living right near a man who was a member of the Nazi party, and who participated in the execution of many Jews in the death camps. Renfro never shied away from portraying the darker aspects of a character who was just a young teenage boy who proved to be wise beyond his years.

But the performance I remember him best for was in Larry Clark’s “Bully.” It was no surprise that this was a very controversial movie, as it was directed by the same man who helmed the highly controversial “Kids,” a movie as brilliant as it was psychologically damaging to sit through. Here, Brad played a high school dropout named Marty who has no real direction in life, and who is endlessly harassed by his “best friend” Bobby Kent (Nick Stahl) who has been treating Marty like his kicking toy since he was a little kid. It’s a very raw performance by Brad, as he plays a kid who has nothing around him to really challenge him as an individual, and who eventually finds a desperate solution to his problem by taking the life of the supposed friend who never stopped abusing him. You despised Marty for what he and his friends for what they did, and yet you feel the tragedy of the character for not knowing a better solution to his problems. Brad totally immersed himself into the character to where you couldn’t tell if he was acting or not.

Brad continued to do a lot of great work in independent movies like “Ghost World” and others that were not seen by many upon their initial release. Who knows what he could have done had he lived.

Seeing Brad and Heath leave us so suddenly is frustrating beyond all repair and infuriating as hell. Hopefully, history will look on them kindly as two young actors who did great work and who left indelible marks in the world of cinema that are not easily forgotten. Their loss is felt deeply and will not be easily forgotten.

Rest in peace Heath Ledger and Brad Renfro.