Gilliam Previews Heath Ledgers Final Film

Terry Gilliam appeared in Comic-Cons mammoth Hall H on Thursday afternoon to discuss his forthcoming movie The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus forthcoming meaning no specific release date yet, although one may be announced very soon. Its a Gilliamesque fantasy grotesque, lush, Brueghelian about an immortal doctor with an anachronistic, traveling theatrical troupe and a magic, reality-transforming mirror, whos bound to give up his daughter to the Devil on her imminent sixteenth birthday. As Gilliam joked at a press conference a little later, This is my Fanny and Alexander, or my Amarcord. This is a compendium of all the things I used to be good at.

(Click here for photos of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, New Moon Avatar and more movies at Comic Con 2009)

Unlike a lot of other filmmakers whove appeared at Comic-Con, Gilliam has a direct connection to comics in the mid-60s, he started his career working with the great cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman. And the clips and trailer he played, while they didnt exactly clarify the story, showed off the movies stellar cast, including Tom Waits (the living god as Gilliam called plays the Devil), Christopher Plummer (as Parnassus), and Verne Troyer (yes, the Mini-Me guy), who plays Parnassuss henchman Percy and joined Gilliam at the presentation.

But, not to mince words, the biggest selling point of Dr. Parnassus is that its Heath Ledgers final movie. Ledger, who played a slippery, masked supporting character named Tony (named after Tony Blair), died partway through filming. Everybody is basically waiting to see Heaths last performance, Gilliam noted, but I want you to understand that this film is basically Dr. Parnassuss film. Still, many of Ledgers key sequences hadnt been filmed yet, so friends Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law all stepped in to play transformed versions of Tony in other scenes.

I dont think its ever happened before that a main actor dies, and three A-list actors come in and take over his part. It tells you how much they cared about him, Gilliam said. It was unbelievably brave and foolish. There was no time to prepare. We had Johnny for one day, three and a half hours. He just came in and did it. Id shown them some clips of some of the stuff that Heath had done. I didnt know that it was going to work, but it did.

Theres so much luck involved with this movie. Theres a magic mirror Tony goes through, and hes wearing a mask. It wasnt even in the script. It just kind of happened. Each one of the choices that were forced upon us improved the film. Ive been saying Heath co-directed it he forced me to do all these things differently, to make a better film than I was making.

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