A Tribute to Heath Ledger

[MadPanda]

Well, the forces of kindness and decency will yet have their vengeance.

One of the kids in my voice acting class is planning a movie-and-booze wake for Mr. Ledger.  We're going to drink Fosters and watch all of his movies back to back.

[Sabby]

Horay!

[Apple of Eris]

Now I might feel bad when I mock his portrayal of the joker in comparison to jack nicholsons awesome version of the joker. *sigh*

[Lancis]

today I witnessed a show called "The Soup" a show that revels in the dirt in Hollywood today the host flat out said witha  picture of heath behind him "We have never mentioned him much on this show, but thats because he was a decent human being."

To hear a smut jockey say such is great and shows the true character of the man if the only ones with anything bad to say dont really matter.

[Elvi]

Bloody hell.....
How many times does this happen, it really is very, very sad....

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080206/tts-uk-ledger-6409add_2.html

[Trieste]

For fuck's sake...

Medical experts said it was highly unlikely a single doctor would have prescribed such a mix.

"If someone has an overdose death with that kind of toxicology report, it's usually an indication that they were either doctor-shopping or purchasing medications either on the street or on the Internet," said Andrew Kolodny, a psychiatrist at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn.

Irresponsible. Uncalled for. Shame on him.

It's unlikely that all of that would be prescribed together, unless Ledger is like 98%* of Americans (yes, including imports) who don't finish their prescriptions and save them for when they feel they need them. Especially with many doctors wary of prescribing relaxtants and painkillers, if you don't need to take that last percocet, you're not going to throw it away. You're going to tuck it in your medicine cabinet and save it for when you feel you need it.

Same with just about every other prescription.

It's also a bit easier to get whatever you want prescribed when you are in the entertainment industry. Unless you want to be known as "That doctor who wouldn't prescribe Heath Ledger painkillers so he could get on with filming his next flick." Yeah, right.

And I'll note he had NyQuil in his system when he was reported to have had pneumonia. Who wouldn't? Give me a break. It's ridiculous. It was a mistake, there was nothing shady about it. He did not commit suicide. It was an accident. Let him rest and let his family bury him. Jesus fucking christ.

*Note: Figure may be plucked from thin air, or possibly my ass, and used for the purposes of making a point. Using this figure for any other purposes than that of making my point are strongly discouraged and may cause nausea, vomiting, faintness, dizziness, severe headaches, numbness of the brain and acute homosexuality.

[Elvi]

It's sad that it is so easy to 'pop another pill' and you're right Trieste.
In a place where you don't have to pay a huge sum for drugs, it's far easier to hand them back to the doctor or pharmacy for disposal. (We have just done that very thing, getting rid of things that we no longer take or need.)

In this case however, I think it's more a very sad case of depression mixed with exhaustion, mixed with pressure of work.
Again, another has fallen by the way side, simply because he tried to cope with it all by himself.

Cases like Heath's get plastered all over the media, cases like Fred Smith from number 38, don't.

If anything should be learned from this, it should be don't mix your own medical cocktail, know what you're taking and stick to the dossage.

[NightBird]

Cases like Heath's get plastered all over the media, cases like Fred Smith from number 38, don't.

That's for sure. My Dad was a prescription drug addict for more than twenty years (70s to 90s), taking benzodiazepines, mood elevators, anti-depressants, narcotic pain-killers, and antihistimines in various combinations through those two decades. And contrary to that doctor's opinion, they were ALL prescribed by the same doctor. It's just more fashionable now to say that doctors don't do such things, and far less likely that the situation with anyone less than famous will lead to any significant oversight or later review unless an egregious pattern develops and comes out through lawsuits or some such.

But even then, the most likely cause of Elvis Presley's death was a drug allergy that a dentist overlooked.

[rainshadow]

Medical experts said it was highly unlikely a single doctor would have prescribed such a mix.

"If someone has an overdose death with that kind of toxicology report, it's usually an indication that they were either doctor-shopping or purchasing medications either on the street or on the Internet," said Andrew Kolodny, a psychiatrist at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn.

There's a case going on here in my home state (Kansas) that has shut down a clinic because the Doctor there and his wife have been charged with over-perscribing medication. Something like 56 people have died over the past few years of overdoses from that particular clinic... so it's possible, however unlikely, that Heath actually got such a perscription from an irresponsible (or flat out criminal) doctor.

Here's the tribute I posted on another forum for Heath the day after his death. I thought I would share it because this man was one of my favorite in Hollywood. I real treasure with a great passion for his work... and it really showed on film.

He got his start with the fantasy TV series Roar, but he really became one of Hollywood's bright young silver screen actors, with a face the ladies swooned over and men wanted to punch because of the swooning. He was well on his way to becoming one of the premeire actors of his generation. With Ledger's role in Brokeback Mountain, he's certainly done it all, from the memorable to the controversial. Probably playing the comic world's most recognized villain in this summer's Dark Knight, but the films I'll remember him most for are his roles in The Patriot and A Knight's Tale, primarily because those are the roles that for me most play on my imagination. I sit back and really wonder what it would be like to be the characters he portrayed in those two films.

Hollywood died a little inside yesterday afternoon.