Esquire has published a piece of “reported fiction” called “The Last Days of Heath Ledger,” in which GOLF Magazine editor (!) Lisa Taddeo, writing in the voice of Ledger from beyond the grave, imagines how the actor spent his final days before overdosing on prescription medication in January. Inspired journalistic risk taking or tasteless garbage? Well, Glenn Kenny won’t honor this “loathsome stunt” with the compliment of a link. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Wells, repeatedly justifying the story as an ancestor to Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, essentially accuses his commenters who find it distasteful of hating: “All bold ideas are tut-tutted by the tut-tutters.” Tut. Tut.
I tried to read the story in order to make up my own mind, but I couldn’t get past the third sentence––something about the idea of a writer imagining a dead celebrity talking about how often he masturbated before his accidental death got blocked by my puke filter, I guess. If you are of stronger constitution, you’ll find it here.
I’ve been playing a little catch-up on the Phil Spector trial, and I came across two very different stories, each connecting the legendary rock producer to a Hollywood myth.
The first story, posted by The Shamus (AKA The Artist Formerly Known As That Little Round Headed Boy) at NewCritics, is more or less a review of a new biography written by the last journalist to interview Spector before the shooting incident that landed him in court. The Shamus describes that interview as particularly evocative of Spector’s overall state of mind:
You get the sense of a man desperately trying to get through each day without slipping over the edge, a rock
