A little treasure trove of goodies from Terry Gillliam’s “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” starring Heath Ledger in his last onscreen role.
After Ledger passed away from an accidental overdose midway through filming, Gilliam thought to abandon the project, but was eventually coaxed to soldier on for his star and cast three leading men in his stead: Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law (all three actors donated their salaries to Ledger’s daughter Matilda, though they probably waived their normal fees and worked for scale).
While we’ve seen tiny, poster-collaged images of them before, this is our first, albeit small (and blown up; click here for the small, un-blown-up version) image that comes from French magazine scans on a Johnny Depp fansite.
The same site has a new, heretofore unseen image of Heath Ledger as his character Tony from the film, plus another shot of Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) and Anton (Andrew Garfield) on their traveling Parnassus stage trying to entice passersbys to come by and have their fortunes revealed (and minds blown).
Note, USA Today says that after Depp, Farrell and Law stepped in to fill out the void of Ledger, the script was tweaked to make the proper adjustments, but we don’t know if that’s necessarily true. In the screenplay, Ledger’s character jumps through a magical mirror three different times and Gilliam has spoken many times how the conceit he created spontaneously was to hire three different actors for those scenes which makes sense. We’re pretty sure Ledger died before any of the dream sequences were shot (since he shot in London and all green screen shooting was done in Vancouver after he passed) and EW recently confirmed that Depp, Farrell and Law only appear in the dream sequences. So, it’s conceivable that when Ledger jumps through the mirror and changes into any of the aforementioned actors, the fact that he’s changed is unspoken. Even if the script has been tweaked, perhaps a line of dialogue to note the metamorphosis, it’s extremely doubtful that the changes were major. We’ll see soon enough.
And some will see even sooner than others: ‘Doctor Parnassus’ doesn’t screen until May 22 at Cannes, the penultimate day of the festival, which is late. However, according to Anne Thompson, Sony Pictures Classics – who seem to have a bead on the film – will be screening it in New York before it reaches Cannes, presumably later this week, early next week.
Considering some of us won’t be there during Cannes (hint: us) when the film screens, someone want to send us an invite to the Big Apple screening? Yes, we laughed at that, too. Never going to happen.
Stakes are high at the Cannes Film Festival which kicks off tomorrow. Success can mean the world, failure can put an early nail in your coffin. “Cannes is a world stage, and if you’re going to do something big and full of risk, you might as well go on the trapeze without a net,” Harvey Weinstein told USA Today yesterday. “And there’s no better place than the world’s biggest circus for movies.” Amen, brother.
Btw, is Cannes scaling back this year because of the global economic crisis? According to THR, yes, most definitely.