I HAVE LEARNED A LOT ABOUT HEATH LEDGER WHILE MAKING YOUTUBE TRIBUTES OF HIS MOVIES

I have two projects going for youtube videos. One is for Darfur and one is for my other passion: Heath Ledger. I am waiting for some collaboration with Mohamed Suleiman for the Darfur video project, so I started the one for Heath a couple of days ago with some focus. I have spent a week working on thinking of a song I could use for it. But the real journey for a song is finding one that won't be banned in the USA or Germany. So I test them out by uploading an incomplete video with a song and make it for private viewing only and wait for the consequences of walking on the wild side of copyright issues.

I have been making Heath Ledger youtube videos from his movies since July 2, 2009. Including the one I am working on currently, I will have eight. This is my first time of working on: Ten Things I Hate About You. I really only watched it about a week ago although I bought it a long while ago. I just thought it too fluffy when I saw bits of it with a trial watching when I took it out of my local library statewide system.

I spent the entire night last night searching for the right music for this project. Three times I worked on loading and reloading videos at youtube with a song I wanted and three times one country banned my selection. That would be Germany. And I couldn’t possibly leave Germany out, especially because of a wonderful Heath fan, Johanna, who is from Germany. So, this morning when darkness had turned to sun rising, I raised both hands in joy and brought them down with a jolt while making two fists and saying an emphatic “Yes!!” and with such glee. I got up and quick-stepped around the house.

And old 1975 Pointer Sisters record that had reaped me benefits with the new “machine” I bought a week ago to turn my old long playing records into mp3s delivered the song to me. It takes some doing to figure out how to use the thing. And never do the scratches go completely away, but the song was going to work, even though it was my fourth choice.

My first three choices that Germany rejected are:

1 The Weakness in Me (from the scene in the movie where Heath walks on the other side of the book rack from Julia Stiles by Joan Armatrading - WMG
2 Fire by the Pointer Sisters - Sony Music
3 She’s Been Good to Me by Mark Anthony - Sony Music

I really wanted Fire and badly. And still do. But not even karaoke could save me….no good renditions there. And Bruce Springsteen had no recordings of it on itunes. One of his songs has worked for me on youtube. But come to think of it, that video has recently developed into a banned one in Germany, although for a long time it was not banned anywhere. The best version of Fire is the Pointer Sisters version in my opinion.

But a bonanza happened when I searched after my first success while searching song after song and cd after cd of karaoke songs. So now I have two songs to work with. A great unidentified singer (as all vocal lead singer versions of karaoke are) sings one of my favorite songs, which Otis Redding introduced me to… Rock Me, Baby.

I wrote this on my youtube sidebar, while crossing my fingers for the song that finally worked: “Ho, Hum....4th try for music to pass Germany's banning of music.

Should use the song - All Night Long !”

I haven’t tried uploading a test yet of the karaoke version of Rock Me Baby, but karaoke songs have always passed the youtube testings in the past for me.

This video isn’t completed and may be a two parter, but I am having a ball working on it.

When you can go without sleep and still can’t tear yourself away from the project, you know you are in your passion. Doing what you love.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What I have learned by doing edits of these movies is a great deal. I have learned about editing, music selection and importance, benefiting from my creative disappointments of not doing a great job, the frustrations of copyright laws and all that entails. And most appreciatively, I have learned about Heath and his acting ability. I looked up when he did Ten Things and what he did for the next few movies and was astonished at his quick improvement. In Ten Things Heath is good and is adorable. But it is truly astounding how he developed in such a short time to greatness. He was born April 4, 1979 (my dob is April 2) and apparently made Ten Things when he was 19.

When I edit the movies for these little Youtube renditions as contributions to his fans around the world, I notice things that I would not have noticed if I had never worked on the movies with the repetition of watching two or three seconds of him and working with those two or three seconds. For example, in Ten Things, he ratchets back a lot and puts his hand in his hair a lot. I did similar things in the play that I have up here at youtube. For me, I cringe when I see myself be so repetitive with particular movements and know I would have learned to improve that, just as Heath obviously did in each new film.

He was young and only had himself as an acting coach. It is simply stunning to see his transformation not only as each of his characters, but in his transformation as an actor. He seemed to grow up between two or three movies from a beginning talented actor to an actor in a class all his own. And sometimes he grew so fast it seems ten years went by from Ten Things (release date: 1999) to say Monsters Ball (release date: 2001). Just unbelievable.

As I watched the cast of Nine on Oprah today, I was reminded of Daneil Day-Lewis’ SAG Award winning speech where he dedicated his SAG award to Heath, January 2008:

…………………………………………….

…………………………………………….

Daniel Day-Lewis honors Heath Ledger

Uploaded by k010102

While watching the actors on Oprah, today, I felt so sad, that we never got to witness Heath up on that stage accepting his award. So sad, that Heath couldn’t possibly know what he has touched and how he has touched so many of us. So very deeply and passionately.

It was and is an honor and a privilege to see Heath honor the art of acting in each one of his heartfelt endeavors.

Bowing to Heath

..........................

..........................

for what he allowed us to see in ourselves through what we saw and see in his work even now.

My tributes have included

A Knight’s Tale

Brokeback Mountain (banned from viewing in USA)

Candy

Ten Things I Hate About You

The Four Feather

The information below is from www.imdb.com

Personal Quotes

"I only do this because I'm having fun. The day I stop having fun, I'll just walk away. I wasn't going to have fun doing a teen movie again.... I don't want to do this for the rest of my life....I don't want to spend the rest of my youth doing this in this industry. There's so much I want to discover." - Vanity Fair (August 2000)

I prefer to date older women because they don't try to act older like younger girls but because they try to act younger.

"It's a little uncomfortable doing love scenes in armor, but, you know, when the heat's on, the heat's on." - "Access Hollywood" (1996), August 2000.

[about the paparazzi] "Most of the time you don't even know they're there. Now, that's the scary thing. It's really strange and invading, but I'm still working it all out. I try to not let it bother me. I really try and find the humour in all of it. And if I want to swim naked in my pool, I'm still going to do it. I certainly don't want to feel that I have to change everything in my life that I do to cater to them. I just won't let it happen." - National Post, May 2001

"I don't have a technique. I've never been a believer in having one set technique on how to act. There are no rules and there is no rulebook. At the end of the day, it all comes down to my instincts. That's the one thing that guides me through every decision professionally. Socially, also. That's my technique. Yeah, you read through the script 100 times. I guess I have little characteristics about myself. Sometimes, most often than not, once we start shooting I won't look at the script at all until we finished shooting. It's kind of like it's been imprinted in my head during rehearsals. You just let it go." - Reel.com, May 2001

"I'm the worst auditioner, really, really bad. I mean, you're being judged and I'm just so aware of it that it consumes me. I can't relax, I'm tied in knots, so the voice is very taut and tense. You're so aware that you're acting 'cause you're sitting across from this lady with a piece of paper who's going, ''I'm. Going. To. Shoot. You. If. You. Don't. Blah, blah, blah,'' in this emotionless voice. It's foul. I hate it." - EW.com, May 2001

People just love to bash LA. People say it's so pretentious, so arrogant, so this and that. But it's truly a wonderful place. You don't have to go to the places where that stuff goes on. You don't have to go to Beverly Hills, you don't have to go to the parties. You can live up in the Lower Canyon and live such a perfectly healthy, beautiful, fun life with all your friends. You can drive two hours one way and be at the Joshua Tree desert, two hours one way you're skiing at Big Bear. Sure, it can get full-on and that's why it's good to get out. But it's too easy just to say, "Nup, I hate it. I'm not living there anymore. - NW Magazine, March 2000

[about growing up with his mom and his sisters] I learned respect for women, and patience. You grow up with all those women around you...you learn to wait your turn. - Cosmopolitan, June 1998

I never studied acting in Australia. I never had an empty stage and black pajamas to run around and express myself.

"The challenge was to capture the stillness of him. I have kind of semi-frantic, nervous energy. Harnassing that was something I thought I'd have to work out. Shooting in the wilderness, the stillness became like this innate quality." -on his character "Ennis" in Brokeback Mountain (2005).

Brooklyn seems to me the closest thing in America to Europe. The neighbors and locals are beautiful people. It's like a village.

She's my soul mate and we couldn't love each other any more than we do already. We're like two peas in a pod. [On his girlfriend and the mother of his daughter, Michelle Williams].

"Matilda is adorable, and beautifully observant and wise. Michelle an I love her so much. Becoming a father exceeds all my expectations. It's the most remarkable experience I've ever had - it's marvelous." [On daughter Matilda and being a father]

My life right now is, I wouldn't say reduced to food, but my duties in life are that I wake up, cook breakfast, clean the dishes, prepare lunch, clean those dishes, go to the market, get fresh produce, cook dinner, clean those dishes and then sleep if I can. And I love it. I actually adore it.

I'm not good at future planning. I don't plan at all. I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow. I don't have a day planner and I don't have a diary. I completely live in the now, not in the past, not in the future.

[On playing "The Joker" in The Dark Knight (2008)] The Joker, so far, is definitely the most fun I've had with any character. He's just out of control -- no empathy, he's a sociopath, uh, a psychotic, mass-murdering clown. And, uh, I'm just thoroughly, thoroughly enjoying it. It's just exceeded any expectations I had of what the experience would be like.

[On his choice of film projects] I feel like I'm wasting time if I repeat myself. I can't say I'm proud of my work. It's the same with everything I do: the day I say 'It's good' is the day I should start doing something else.

[On walking down the red carpet] Like diving into an Olympic pool, swimming the length underwater, then emerging gasping for breath. It's so noisy that it's quiet, you can't hear; the flashlights are so blinding that it's dark, you can't see.

I start to get bored, not with the choices I was making, because I didn't really have a choice. The choices were being made for me -- I was being thrown into projects. So I kind of put the brakes on that. In a sense, I destroyed my career to rebuild it again.

I like to do something I fear. I like to set up obstacles and defeat them. I like to be afraid of the project. I always am. When I get cast in something, I always believe I shouldn't have been cast. I fooled them again. I can't do it. I don't know how to do it. There's a huge amount of anxiety that drowns out any excitement I have toward the project.

I never had money, and I was very happy without it. When I die, my money's not gonna come with me. My movies will live on - for people to judge what I was as a person. I just want to stay curious.

Salary

Ned Kelly (2003)	$50,000
The Four Feathers (2002)	$2,000,000
A Knight's Tale (2001)	$3,000,000
10 Things I Hate About You (1999)	$100,000

Heath's titles of works

· The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) .... Tony
... aka L'Imaginarium du Docteur Parnassus (France)

· The Dark Knight (2008) .... The Joker
... aka Batman: The Dark Knight (USA: informal title)
... aka The Dark Knight: The IMAX Experience (USA: IMAX version)

· I'm Not There. (2007) .... Robbie
... aka I'm Not There (Germany) (USA: poster title)

· Candy (2006) .... Dan

· Casanova (2005) .... Casanova
... aka Femur (Philippines: English title)

· Brokeback Mountain (2005) .... Ennis Del Mar
... aka Souvenirs de Brokeback Mountain (Canada: French title)

· The Brothers Grimm (2005) .... Jacob Grimm

· Lords of Dogtown (2005) .... Skip
... aka American Knights (Philippines: English title)
... aka Dogtown Boys (Germany)

· The Order (2003) .... Alex Bernier
... aka The Sin Eater (Australia) (Singapore: English title) (UK) (USA: working title)
... aka Sin Eater - Die Seele des Bösen (Germany)

· Ned Kelly (2003) .... Ned Kelly
... aka Ned Kelly: Public Enemy No. 1 (Philippines: English title: poster title)

· The Four Feathers (2002) .... Harry Feversham

· Monster's Ball (2001) .... Sonny Grotowski
... aka Le bal du monstre (Canada: French title)

· A Knight's Tale (2001) .... William

· The Patriot (2000) .... Gabriel Martin
... aka Der Patriot (Germany)

· "Roar" .... Conor (13 episodes, 1997-2000)
- Sweet Bridget (2000) TV episode .... Conor
- The Cage (2000) TV episode .... Conor
- Daybreak (2000) TV episode .... Conor
- Traps (2000) TV episode .... Conor
- Tash (2000) TV episode .... Conor
(8 more)

· Two Hands (1999) .... Jimmy

· 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) .... Patrick Verona

· "Home and Away" (1988) TV series .... Scott Irwin (unknown episodes, 1997)

· Paws (1997) .... Oberon

· Blackrock (1997) .... Toby

· "Sweat" .... Snowy Bowles (26 episodes, 1996)
- Episode #1.26 (1996) TV episode .... Snowy Bowles
- Episode #1.25 (1996) TV episode .... Snowy Bowles
- Episode #1.24 (1996) TV episode .... Snowy Bowles
- Episode #1.23 (1996) TV episode .... Snowy Bowles
- Episode #1.22 (1996) TV episode .... Snowy Bowles
(21 more)

· "Ship to Shore" .... Cyclist (2 episodes, 1993-1994)
- Stranger Than Fiction (1994) TV episode
- Worthy Opponents: Part 2 (1993) TV episode .... Cyclist

Heath ~

Date of Birth: 4 April 1979,

Location of birth: Perth, Western Australia, Australia

Date of Death: 2 January 2008, in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA (accidental overdose of prescription drugs)

Birth Name: Heathcliff Andrew Ledger

Nickname: Heathy

Height: 6' 1" (1.85 m)

Mini Biography

When a young, hunky 20 year old heart-throb Heath Ledger first came to the attention of the public in 1999, it was all too easy to tag him as a "pretty boy" and an actor of not much depth. He has spent the past five years trying desperately to sway this image away, but this has indeed been a double-edged sword. But that comes much later in his story. Heath Ledger was born on the fourth of April 1979, in Perth, Western Australia. As the story goes, in junior high it was compulsory to do one of two electives, either cooking or drama, and as Heath could honestly not see himself in a cooking class, he tried his hand at drama. Heath was talented, there was no denying that. However, the rest of the class did not acknowledge his talent, possibly out of jealousy. When he was 17, he and a friend, decided to pack up, leave school, take a car and rough it to Sydney. Heath believed Sydney to be the place where dreams are made, or at least, where actors can possibly get their big break. However, upon arriving in Sydney with a purported 69 cents to his name, Heath tried everything to get a break. His first real acting job came in a low budget movie called Blackrock (1997), a largely unimpressive cliché; a teen angst film about one boy's struggle when he learns his best mate raped a girl. He did not have a large part in this movie. In fact, it was a very small one. The only thing of notice in his role is you get to see him get his lights punched out. After that small role, Heath auditioned for a role in a TV show called "Sweat" (1996) about a group of young Olympic hopefuls. He got offered one of two roles, one as a swimmer, another as a gay cyclist. Heath accepted the latter because he felt to really stand out as an actor one had to accept unique roles that stood out from the bunch. It got him small notice, but unfortunately the show was quickly axed, which led him to look for other roles. He was in "Home and Away" (1988) for a very short period, in which he played a surfer who falls in love with one of the girls of Summer Bay. Then came his very brief role in Paws (1997). Paws was a film which existed solely to cash in on guitar prodigy Nathan Cavaleri's brief moment of fame, where he was the hottest thing in Australia. Heath played a student in the film, involved in a stage production of a Shakespeare play, in which he played "Oberon". A very brief role, this did nothing other than give him a small paycheck, but nothing to advance his career. Then came Two Hands (1999). He went to America trying to audition for film roles, showcasing his brief role in "Roar" (1997) opposite then unknown Vera Farmiga. He could not find any American roles but then Australian director Gregor Jordan auditioned him for the lead in Two Hands (1999), which he got. An in your face Aussie crime thriller, Two Hands (1999) was outstanding and helped him secure a role in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). After that, it seemed Heath was being typecast as a teen hunk, which he did not like, so he accepted a role in a very serious war drama The Patriot (2000).

What followed was a stark inconsistency of roles, Ledger accepting virtually every single character role, anything to avoid being typecast. Some met with praise, like his short role in Monster's Ball (2001), but his version of Ned Kelly (2003) was an absolute flop, which led distributors hesitant to even release it outside Australia. Heath finally had deserved success with his role in Brokeback Mountain (2005), for which he was nominated for an Oscar and a BAFTA. Ledger was found dead on January 22, 2008 in his apartment in the Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo, with a bottle of prescription sleeping pills nearby. It was concluded weeks later that he died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs that included painkillers, sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication.

IMDb Mini Biography By: James Briggs.

>:>:>:>:>:>:>:>:>:>:>:>:>:>:>:>:>:>:>:>:>:>:>:>:>:>:

Help us get "The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus" in our local theatres in the USA. It is our last chance to see Heath on screen in a new film. Don't let us be left out. Go to this link to DEMAND IT!

My most recent uploaded video for Heath fans:

HEATH LEDGER ~ FEVER

Sung by Bobby "Blue" Bland

Thanks to the movie people connected with I'm Not There and Bobby "Blue" Bland for allowing us to enjoy and promote your work for free on youtube.

Forgive any errors in this post. I have to get back to my video and find some sleep. So I can't come back time and time again as I typically do when I reread and reread and find errors with my editing. And please forgive all the varied fonts.

Click the post title and go to a tribute page of the director for the wonderful Heath Ledger movie The Four Feathers. Well worth the click and time.