Terry Gilliam talks to Steve Pratt about the legacy of Heath Ledger, who died during the making of The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus.

WHEN Heath Ledger died in January 2008 midway through filming The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus, director Terry Gilliam couldn’t conceive how the fantasy adventure could ever be completed.

“It was a terrible time,” he says. “And frankly I was just devastated by the loss of such a great guy. The film didn’t really come into it at that point.”

Gradually, encouraged by his collaborators including producer daughter Amy, he began to accept that finishing it would be a fitting tribute to Ledger even though, at first, he couldn’t see how it could be done. When Ledger died, the British end of the production had been completed, with weeks of shooting planned on sound stages in Canada.

“I just thought ‘it’s over’. I was fatalistic about it, I didn’t know what to do,” says Gilliam. “And I didn’t seem to have the energy to want to do anything, but I was surrounded by others who were determined that I carry on and make it happen.

“I’ve always said that making a film is like climbing Everest – you have a good team around you, so that when one falls, the others stay together and lift the whole thing up and you get there. It was like that. My daughter Amy just wouldn’t let go.

“The ideas started floating around and eventually we decided to do what we did. Also the money was running out. If we hadn’t pulled something out of the hat quickly, it would have gone. And I suppose the rabbit was Johnny Depp.”

The actor was a friend of both Gilliam (with whom he made Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas and the uncompleted Don Quixote) and Ledger (whom Gilliam directed in The Brothers Grimm). Depp became pivotal in getting the film up and running again.

Gilliam thought of using different actors – Depp was joined by Jude Law and Colin Farrell – to portray various incarnations of Ledger’s character, Tony, in some of the fantasy sequences in the film.

“The fact that the guys – Colin, Jude and Johnny – pulled it off is what is extraordinary,”

says Gilliam.

“There was no rehearsal, they just dove in. And that’s why I was calling friends of Heath to get involved, because that connection was there and they all did a brilliant job.”

There are many references to death in the film, making it a poignant reminder of Ledger’s early, tragic death. “The references were all in the original script, which people don’t understand. They all thought we had written this stuff after Heath had died and no, we didn’t change any of the words,” says Gilliam.

“And that to me is what’s so kind of scary and spooky – why was it so prescient? It seemed to be all about death, it’s so much of it.”

The director is convinced that, had Ledger lived, they would’ve teamed up many times in the future. “Heath was a brilliant actor and he was getting better every day,” he says. “And just watching him rise was incredible. And I think that’s the thing, as well as losing a close friend, it’s just the waste of this incredible potential.

“I just think there was nothing stopping him. He was going to be the best, just the best. He was already right up there, but he had learned to play more. The stuff that just came out of him daily on the set was incredible. With every take, it was just this constant surprise.

That’s what is so awful, the loss of that talent.

“I could see that he and I were going to be doing a lot of films together because he just got it he got what I was about, I got what he was about. Suddenly, that’s it, he’s gone and I lost a partner.”

Gilliam’s already thinking about his next movie, another attempt to film Don Quixote, which last time came to an end a week into filming because of the illness of a leading actor.

“I’m working on it right now,”

he says. “I’m seeing some actors this weekend. Who knows who it will be and whether we will get the money and all that, but we’ve started.

“Tony Grisoni and I have rewritten the script. And now we’ve just got to put a cast together. And Johnny (Depp) isn’t going to do it. He’s signed up for everything and I’m not going to wait. Normally, I would but I’m just getting too old and I’m going to die soon and I want to get a couple more under my belt before the grim reaper catches up with me.”