The Reluctant Whore

Heath Ledger is at the center of the marketing campaign for Batman, the Dark Knight in which he played the Joker and it’s not surprising at all.

Posters for the film, which premieres in June, feature Ledger looking through a frosted glass window with the words “Why So Serious?” scrawled on the wall in blood behind him and the authenticity of the creepiness of the whole thing is something a legion of PR directors couldn’t have worked to establish. For one thing, you can’t even tell it’s actually him which means you have to make the link yourself and then it all downloads instantly. It’s really quite effective use of his death for marketing purposes.

Even though the performance was always going to be pretty outstanding because Heath Ledger was finally quite a remarkable actor, it seems unlikely that it really would have ended up being, as Michael Caine was quoted as saying about him, “the most murderous psychopath you've ever seen on the screen."

Ledger talked about how the intensity of playing a murderous sociopath on screen was causing him anxiety and his emotional state at the time of his overdose was quickly traced back to his drug use, recent divorce, general sensitivity and the intensity of the role he was playing. Warner Brothers shrewdly did nothing to hype the links between his death and the performance they’d be selling later in the year by simply placing a black ribbon image on the website for The Dark Knight.

See, check out how much creepier it is to watch Heath Ledger in this promo. I mean, clearly it's impossible to compare the experience but you do fid yourself examining every nuance of his performance because his disturbed nature is just that bit more real.

Now, they basically just have to sit back and let the actual horror do the work for the filmed horror. People are going to flock to this film because of this. Much more than ever would have before. [source]