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Batman And The Joker Do Entertainment Weekly

Posted by taylor blue on July 3, 2008
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The Batman and The Joker are Entertainment Weekly’s cover boys…with all the hype of The Dark Knight I think it was a great choice. Inside the pages Christopher Nolan (the director) has nothing but praise for Heath Ledger and the role he played in the movie.

On Heath’s commitment to his character: ”The guy had serious nuts. What I needed was someone who wouldn’t be afraid of the comparison with Jack Nicholson. And then I saw Heath’s incredible performance in Brokeback Mountain. Such a lack of vanity. This was an actor who wasn’t afraid to bury himself in his character — to a massive extent.”

On having the same vision for the The Joker as Heath: ”We had the same take on the character. We didn’t have a script yet, but we had ideas. The idea of anarchy as an absolute. The idea of chaos as the most frightening thing to society. The idea of a motiveless criminal, somebody who just wants to watch the world burn.”

On Heath spending months working with a voice coach fine-tuning the Joker’s cackling cadence: “He tried to articulate to me what he was doing with his voice, but it was sometimes hard to understand. He talked about ventriloquist dummies, the way their mouths moved, the way their voices wouldn’t appear to come out of them. He said he wanted the voice to have a mocking quality, a sort of disconnectedness.”

On Heath splattering makeup across his face throughout the film: ”He started applying the makeup himself — just to see what it would look like if he put it on with his own hands. We talked about how streaking the paint could get across the idea of corruption, of decay.”

This role of The Joker would have changed Heath no matter what…and seeing him come alive again on the movie screen will be moving. Laughing and crying…amazing and terrifying…good and bad…

photo and source