I Got The Clap!
Heath Ledger died. News flash.
At the press screening for The Dark Knight
in Los Angeles, an event filled with ‘luminaries’ from the television
screen, print media, and online world there was a round of applause by
a majority of the crowd at the end of the film when Ledger’s name
popped up.
It was so industry of them. I mean, what if word trickled back to Christopher Nolan or the webmaster for LedgerPhanatics.edu? Then what?
Whatever.
I have long found applause in a movie theater to be of little to no
value unless, and ONLY unless there filmmakers are in the crowd because
you are directly giving them a sense of your appreciation for their
work as artists. If they fucked up and the movie is worse than fear,
the silence is your way of reminding them that two hours of your life
you have have spent building Playmobil playsets has been wasted.
Applause
does nothing. If you love a movie, recommend it to everyone you can and
see it a few times more on your dime. Buy the DVD, the novelization,
and get the Happy Meal [I still cherish my Irreversible
bobblehead]. I think the people who worked hard to make the film would
rather you spread the word than bring your hands together with manic,
percussive force.
Heath
Ledger’s death sucks. Could have been avoided, but sucks. The guy was
supremely talented, a great guy to speak with [I interviewed him for A Knight’s Tale and was thoroughly impressed with him], and he rocks every moment of screen time he has in The Dark Knight.
But
to have people get up and clap, especially the press… it just feels
fake. A courtesy. Something to do because to not do it would be
disrespectful? Bullshit. It is human nature to see the sadness in
Ledger’s story and want to react to that when his penultimate credit
appears. He did a great job establishing a character we’ll surely see
again and now we’ll have to settle for someone else, he had untold
brilliant performances ahead of him. These are all certainties.
Write
another eulogy. Spread the word as best you can. Clapping to me is
hollow. Applauding a performance only counts when the people being
praised are in the room, and the one person involved in The Dark Knight who was most certainly not in the room was the one being applauded. Just doesn’t feel right to me.
– Nick Nunziata claps on the inside. It has the same effect.
Before
I go, here’s the latest thing I’m adding to the blog. Each day I blog I’ll
have a song, a piece of artwork, a photo, a Mary Worth, or something to
further justify your click and to give the trolls a little more ammo.
Today,
a photo of an amazing house I took in Abingdon, Virginia during the filming of Grizzly Park:
