‘The Dark Knight’ Facts on the Joker
Only three more days! The excitement is mounting for the year’s biggest movie starring Heath Ledger and Christian Bale! Here are some more facts about the Joker:
Director Christopher Nolan and co-writers Jonathan Nolan and David S. Goyer decided not to explore the origins of the Joker in order to portray the character as “absolute.”
It’s Sir Michael Caine’s opinion that Heath Ledger beat the odds and topped Jack Nicholson’s Joker from Batman (1989): “Jack was like a clown figure, benign but wicked, maybe a killer old uncle. He could be funny and make you laugh. Heath’s gone in a completely different direction to Jack, he’s like a really scary psychopath. He’s a lovely guy and his Joker is going to be a hell of a revelation in this picture.” Caine bases this belief on a scene where the Joker pays a visit to Wayne Manor. He’d never met Ledger before, so when Ledger arrived and performed he gave Caine such a fright he forgot his lines.
The Joker make-up was composed of three pieces of stamped silicone, which took less than an hour to apply to Heath Ledger on each day of shooting. Ledger described it as “new technology which is much quicker to apply than regular prosthetics;” he felt he was not wearing any make-up at all.
Heath Ledger’s sudden death on January 22, 2008 prompted immediate speculation as to the state of this film. Late the same day, Warner Bros. released a statement declaring that Ledger had completed all his scenes and post-production work, thus making the Joker the actor’s final completed appearance in a film.
So sad, I hope he gets the Oscar.
Source: IMDB.com
POSTED BY: Nick Wolfwood
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Indeed. Me too. I hope he wins. Having experienced the perils of ‘poly pharmacy’ it makes me angry when doctors hand out drugs like sugar pills, drunk on the power this gives them and not thinking about what a drug will do in a certain situation especially in concert with other drugs. Also, his death is a warning (esp. to guys who tend to take prescription drugs without questioning). It was unbelievable how many drugs that shut down the central nervous system he’d been given! RIP Heath.