The Dark Night

Sorry I’m late. Last night I stayed up way too late with a bunch of 20-year-olds watching the Batman movie in a small town cinema. We went on Keegan’s dinnertime endorsement: “It was ten out of ten out of ten.” Which I think meant a hundred out of a hundred or maybe even a hundred out of ten.

If I gave the film any tens, they would all go to Heath Ledger.

Let’s get something straight. I am no longer easily swayed by teen heartthrob types. I find very few Hollywood actors “dreamy” with the coincidental exception of Christian Bale (Batman) who may have my panties any time he damn well pleases. (Although, we heard that he is up on assault charges...for smacking around his mother and sister of all people. Way more horrific than dying pointlessly of a drug overdose at the zenith of one’s talent.)

Which brings me back to Heath. Holy mind-blowing performance, Batman. This man transformed a two-dimensional comic book character not into a two-dimensional comic book movie character like Nicholson (sorry, Jack). Not into a creature like Gollum, although running through his performance was something deliciously sub-human and reptilian. He rendered The Joker into a twitching, lip-licking, hilarious-yet-frightening, super-intelligent psychopath – a believable psychopath. One I could watch all day.

And one I will never get to see again because the person who created this nutcase stuffed too much shit up his nose and killed himself.

As pointless, stupid and wasteful as Ledger’s death seemed in January, it is so much more tragic now. The man was masterful. He was a true artist. I wish his last film had been some sweeping epic with an Oscar-soaked soundtrack just so he could get the posthumous respect he deserves. Because, trust me, I’m not generally a person who spends my morning writing about superhero movies. Unlike the gaggle of geeks behind me in the theatre who almost came to blows debating which ‘Final Fantasy’ was the best. Whatever that is.

Who knows why Mr. Ledger blew himself up with drugs. Maybe he couldn’t reconcile the transcendental art form of acting with the seven-layer dip of Hollywood bullshit he waded around in. Maybe his mean Daddy told him he’d never amount to anything. Maybe he just really liked to party, dude.

The point, I think, isn’t why he offed himself (because addiction is a form of suicide in my mind). But when. He didn’t die during a career tailspin of movies of the week and guest appearances on Friends. He died just as he was reaching the big time, no, the Huge Time. His heartbreaking Brokeback Mountain performance. Followed brilliantly by Casanova (to keep his mainstream appeal). And then the movie that 20-something guys have been jizzing their pants about for a year, The Dark Knight. The movie that makes villains officially cooler than heroes and would A-list him so fast his head would spin.

And...he’s dead.

Dear old Heath is actually hurting my heart today, and he’s a golden, shining, horrifically extreme example of something every single one of us does. This, dear readers, is self-sabotage at its finest.

We take a step down the road to our dreams and then we run shrieking in the opposite direction. We don’t write that fourth draft and send it off. We miss the deadline on an important workshop. We skip the audition with the big director. We burn down everything, however fragile, that we built just to prove ourselves right: it’s too late, I can’t do it, I’m not good enough.

I have been doing it since returning from Paris. Rather than taking this time to actually write, I’ve been lying on the couch, drooling and complaining about not being in Paris. I’ve told myself that it’s my house or my relationship that is holding me back from my dreams. I’ve allowed myself to get blown about and distracted by every little thing that’s come up, using every little thing as an excuse not to write.

It’s probably a self-worth thing. It usually is. We don’t believe we’re worthy of being who want to be or doing what we want to do. Some misguided force keeps us schlepping to jobs we hate 50 hours per week in the name of Normal, Grown-Up, Responsible, Mortgage, Whatever. The same misguided force tempts us into turning on the TV, firing up the bong, refilling the wine glass and turning off that voice inside that wants so badly for us to rise above this mediocrity we call our lives.

We cower in our comfort zones because getting up early to write is hard and auditioning is scary and standing on a red carpet with the cameras flashing is embarrassing. But, what is harder? Setting the alarm an hour earlier or sitting on your porch at eighty-five (hell, even at thirty-five) wondering what would have happened if you showed up that day. Or, in Heath’s case, drowning in a puddle of your own humiliation-scented vomit.

Today, Heath Ledger offers me strange inspiration. In a ‘what not to do’ kind of way, he’s made me feel brave. Poor Heath has shown me the tragic end of the Sabotage Story. Because those things I do to sabotage myself will only get stronger. They will get worse. That’s the thing. Heath Ledger didn’t start out doing seventeen lines of whatever he killed himself with. He started by ‘just taking the edge off.’

The strange thing is, that edge – that feeling of discomfort and even misery – is telling you something. That feeling is the feeling of change and transformation. It’s a feeling, not to dull out or avoid, but to sit in squarely. To soak in, even, until it hurts so bad you have no choice but to send off that story, show someone that painting, play that song you wrote.

This sounds so stupid, but today it is my truth...I’m doing it for Heath. Well, not for him, I guess, but because of him. To let a talent that incandescent go down in flames that pathetically is a waste. It’s not an option. Even if my light is half that bright, I have to let it shine. We all do, really.