Heath Ledger by John McShane

Author:John McShane [McShane, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784184933
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2015-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

A GRIMM LIFE

If Heath’s private life during 2003 and 2004 had been eventful in no way did this affect his film productivity during that time – quite the opposite, he was constantly flying around the world to take part in a remarkably wide range of productions.

Soon after meeting with Naomi Watts on the Ned Kelly set he was off to Prague again, this time to co-star in The Brothers Grimm, a fantasy film based on the lives of German brothers Jacob and Wilhelm, who collected and published European folk-tales in the early 19th century, which thrilled – and frightened – generations of children during the subsequent 200 years. Snow White, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and Hansel and Gretel were among the classics chronicled in their books.

It was far from a normal film biography, however. Given the director in charge of the project it could hardly be anything less than unusual. The man behind the camera as filming began in late summer 2003 was former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam. Heath excitedly said, ‘I’m a huge fan of Terry’s work and I’ve always been a Monty Python fan,’ adding, ‘We kind of brought a bit of Baron Munchausen-esque humour into it,’ with a reference to one of Gilliam’s earlier films.

He couldn’t compare The Brothers Grimm with any recent work from the director’s catalogue, however, as the Prague-based film was due to be his first release since the end of the 1990s. Following his days as animator in the Python television shows and films, Gilliam had built a reputation for being one of the most innovative directors around, but his films had a history of being anything but predictable and on occasions, plagued by off-camera problems. His credits included directing or co-directing two Monty Python films and such weird extravaganzas as Time Bandits, Jabberwocky, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and the highly-praised Brazil.

In between this list were a number of ideas that never came to fruition and, most famously, the film that accounted for that lull after 1998’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas starring Johnny Depp. For years Gilliam had wanted to make a film based on Don Quixote, the fabled Spanish fictional hero who travelled the land ‘tilting at windmills’ in his quest for truth and honour. The resulting £32-million The Man Who Killed Don Quixote collapsed due to the illness of the leading actor, Jean Rochefort, at the start of shooting and catastrophic weather that washed away the entire set. The project, which again had Depp on board, was scrapped and the nightmare subsequently captured in the documentary Lost in La Mancha.

All that was hopefully behind Gilliam, however, when shooting started in Prague, with Heath as Jacob (or ‘Jake’ as he was called in the film), and Bourne Identity star Matt Damon as Wilhelm (‘Will’, as he was referred to). Being a Terry Gilliam project this was never going to be an ordinary biography. His vision of the brothers transformed them from the linguist researchers they

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