Just a couple days ago, flipping past E!’s unabashedly
whorish entertainment news show on television, I came across a quick-hit report
— designed to serve as a teaser lead-in, so that Ryan Seacrest could peddle
footage of the erstwhile pop princess’ latest shopping excursion, or whatever —
in which the Associated Press essentially confirmed that they’d already worked
up the bulk of their obituary on Britney Spears, saying something to the effect
of, “We of course wish Britney nothing but the best in these difficult times,
but we have to be prepared.”

I was pretty bowled over at the time (why would E! fish for
this rather callous and insignificant nugget, and why would the AP even confirm
it?), but this bit was among the first thoughts that came surging into my mind
when hearing about Heath Ledger’s tragic death in New York on Tuesday.

The difference between this misfortune with Ledger and something
like the recent passing of fellow actor Brad Renfro (apart from their
respective profiles) is a matter chiefly of expectation — reflected and
refracted in peculiar ways, both privately and publicly. Almost everyone I came
across and talked with about the event on Tuesday, or read a blurbed reaction
from, expressed considerable surprise in addition to the more standard sympathetic
compassion. I know I did: “What?,”
I asked, upon first hearing the news.

It’s always such a big jolt when a death like this doesn’t
match the air-quote public persona of the star. True tragedy, and certainly
fatal accidents (which this event is leaning more and more in the direction
of), don’t happen to people like this; money and fame protects them, right? It
gives them all sorts of buyout clauses and extra chances? The truth is, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes there is a
plane crash, or an automobile accident. Sometimes there is an accidental
overdose of prescription medications. Sometimes there is an undetected heart
condition, or cancer. And that gives us mental pause, because celebrities are America’s
own royalty.

It’s not merely grappling with a cultural loss that feeds
shock and astonishment; we expect and accept, often with a shrug, the deaths of
high-profile actors, directors, musicians and the like. They wash over us,
however lionized they are (even I couldn’t tell you with any degree of
confidence about the death dates of artists whose work I tremendously respect),
until retrospective reminders at the Academy Awards or some other televised
event remind us. We presume, too, the deaths of certain performers given to histories
of excess (John Belushi, Anna Nicole Smith, Chris Farley, the aforementioned Renfro) long before
their actual passing. Ergo, I guess, the locked-and-loaded obituary for Spears,
and no doubt Lindsay Lohan. But when it happens to celebrities seemingly out of the
blue, like John Ritter or Aaliyah, or now Ledger, we don’t know what to do.
Conspiracies or other outlandish theories crop up; rumors run rampant.

So, in the hours following the Ledger story breaking, and
into the next day, cable news channels — because simple expressions of
disbelief can only fill so much airtime — still struggled to make the death fit
into their preformed narrative templates about “Hollywood
lifestyle.” Rich evidence of this abounds, whether in the mis-reportage about
the apartment in which Ledger was found being Mary-Kate Olsen’s (ooh, link him
to another celebrity), the $20 bill “folded in a suspicious manner” (now
confirmed as free from any drug residue, an ordinary Andrew Jackson), or awards
prognosticator and professional opinion slinger Tom O’Neil waxing enthusiastically
and imaginatively on CNN as to the encoded meaning of Ledger’s personal hygiene
during an interview from several months prior.

As the surprise and sadness from his death fades, the
challenges facing two projects still in production in which Ledger appears — July’s The Dark Knight,
from Warner Bros., and director Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus — will of course come
into starker relief, and keep news of his death in the public realm.

Gilliam in particular has a heartrending history of
unusually rough financing and production problems, so much so that it’s even
been lampooned by The Onion. A half-decade ago, his attempt to film The Man Who
Killed Don Quixote was beset by bombing at a nearby NATO range,
once-in-a-generation flash floods and the herniated disc of his lead actor,
resulting in 2002’s Lost in La
Mancha, a documentary of darkly comedic devolution.

For Warner Bros., the stakes are even bigger. The follow-up
to their hugely successful and critically embraced franchise reboot, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight is a tent-pole
summer release for the studio, and Ledger’s dark, seemingly twisted take on the
homicidal Joker was at the forefront of their marketing campaign, which will
almost surely now see an overhaul.

Still, whatever is done, Ledger’s death — its suddenness and
seeming inexplicability — will almost certainly continue to shade and color
perceptions of these projects, even after the unfathomable particulars are
scientifically explained. As of now, pending final a toxicology report, only six
types of prescription medications — including an antihistamine, and pills to
treat both anxiety and insomnia, which Ledger had previously said he started
suffering during production of The Dark Knight — were found with Ledger upon his death. For a
country so preoccupied, in aspirant-protective fashion, with its celebrities,
that’s cold comfort, and an unsatisfactory answer. For the full, original op-ed feature piece, from FilmStew, click here.