Esquire has published a piece of “reported fiction” called “The Last Days of Heath Ledger,” in which GOLF Magazine editor (!) Lisa Taddeo, writing in the voice of Ledger from beyond the grave, imagines how the actor spent his final days before overdosing on prescription medication in January. Inspired journalistic risk taking or tasteless garbage? Well, Glenn Kenny won’t honor this “loathsome stunt” with the compliment of a link. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Wells, repeatedly justifying the story as an ancestor to Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, essentially accuses his commenters who find it distasteful of hating: “All bold ideas are tut-tutted by the tut-tutters.” Tut. Tut.
I tried to read the story in order to make up my own mind, but I couldn’t get past the third sentence––something about the idea of a writer imagining a dead celebrity talking about how often he masturbated before his accidental death got blocked by my puke filter, I guess. If you are of stronger constitution, you’ll find it here.
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