Here at IGN we occasionally like to showcase something from geekdom’s rich history — a pop-culture Time Capsule, if you will, that gives us a peek in to the past, perhaps providing a new appreciation for previous projects.
If you’d like, please check out the past couple of Time Capsules:
- George Lucas’ first day writing Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
- The Rock kicking Seven of Nine’s Borg butt on Star Trek: Voyager
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Heath Ledger totally tunneled inside himself, discovering dark pockets within his psyche, to play the Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight. It’s arguable too that Ledger’s performance as the chaotic clown with nothing in his pockets but knives and lint was gruesomely made even more iconic because of the actor’s untimely death. And even further still, this tragedy of 21st century cinema manages to birth a mini-mystery in its own right: Did Ledger base the bulk of his performance off of a 1979 Tom Waits TV interview?
For those who don’t know about Tom Waits, he’s a legendary ragamuffin singer/songwriter who looks like he knows the Hobo Code by heart and gargles gravel for breakfast. He’s what you get if you Google “dangling cigarette emoji.” He looks like a weekend dad’s weekend dad. And he’s created some of the most beautiful music ever recorded.
He’s also been in several notable films over he past 40 years, from Francis Ford Coppola’s Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club, and Dracula to flashy action fare like Domino and The Book of Eli. For a while, in the ’90s in particular, you couldn’t swing a dead cat at an arthouse movie theater without hitting a title that didn’t have Waits making a cameo (which is also a lyric from a Waits song).
Anyhow, before we introduce a little anarchy with this Joker rumor, watch the Waits interview…
Like… that’s pretty freakin’ spot on, right? It’s uncanny. This chain-smoking masterclass in “not giving a s***” was from The Don Lane Show, which was a successful Australian talk show (that happened to be hosted by an American). And Waits sauntered out like he was about to apologize to Harvey Dent for burning his face and killing his girlfriend.
The point of bringing up Waits’ movie roles was to segue into how he and Ledger actually starred together in 2009’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Sure, the movie came out after The Dark Knight (it was the film Ledger was making when he died), but both Ledger and Waits had both worked with director Terry Gilliam before. Gilliam — like Coppola, Jim Jarmusch, the Coen Brothers, and more — enjoyed the “seasoning” Tom Waits brought to his stories.
It’s not too much of a leap to think that Ledger might have known Waits before filming Doctor Parnassus, or at least been a fan of his music (Ledger loved Nick Drake, Ben Harper, going to Burning Man, etc). Also, as an Australian, Ledger might have been more aware of the Don Lane interview than the average “Who the f*** is Done Lane?” bear.
All we have to go on, naturally, is the striking similarity in voice and mannerisms exhibited by Waits on TV. But mild salsa fan theories are like gravity – all they take is a little push.
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Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.
Source: IGN.com Watch the Interview That May Have Inspired Heath Ledger's Joker