Lisa Taddeo...

writes about movies, movie stardom, Hollywood, and life in downtown New York in exactly the manner you'd expect of someone who covers golf for a living. Good call, David "the dumber the man, the louder he talks" Granger. Who is today quoted in The New York Times saying "“It’s an earnest effort [...]We’ve been trying to assign fiction [...]to make it topical, relevant. To go to writers with a headline or an idea.”

I certainly hope that whatever forces squelched the Entertainment Tonight/The Insider airing of a Heath-Ledger-at-a-party video will band together to make Esquire magazine regret the loathsome stunt that is "The Last Days of Heath Ledger," which I'm not going to link to.

Comments

[Sam Adams]

I got no farther than the phrase "theatrically important." Lisa Taddeo, the English language. The English language, Lisa Taddeo.

[Edward Ramirez]

I read the article and thought it was written incredibly well.....afterall, it did get published in esquire.....

[bill]

Esquire is a wretched magazine. I don't know why everyone is so surprised that they'd do something like this.

[Daniil]

Why is this striking such a nerve? I think it's a great idea, if not served very well by its execution. Are magazine writers not allowed to be creative? I think this is what the issue is here. What's the difference (besides the great chasm in skill) between this and what David Foster Wallace has done in the past? Or Max Apple? I don't get it. It's a piece of fiction. Is Heath Ledger beyond being fictionally portrayed? Are Esquire's writers only supposed to "report?" And who reads Esquire for it's journalism. It's not like it's 1969 and we're talking about Ramparts. Actually, the more I think about it, the more this piece reminds me of something Esquire would've published back in the days of Lois. Maybe they should have hired a better writer to do it, but I think it's a pretty gutsy move on Esquire's part and I hope more magazines run pieces like this.

[Glenn Kenny]

"What's the difference (besides the great chasm in skill) between this and what David Foster Wallace has done in the past? "

Well, the "great chasm of skill" is in and of itself quite enough. But then there's moral seriousness, which Wallace's work is (sometimes painfully) suffused with, even when he makes such putatively dicey choices as placing a magazine's offices in the Twin Towers, as in his short story "The Suffering Channel."

There's a difference between an organic piece of art that rises from a writer's consciousness and facility, and stunt fiction.

But you're right, that Taddeo's piece is something Esquire might have published in the days of Lois. After all, Lois put William Calley, surrounded by Vietnamese children, on the cover of Esquire back in the day.

[bill]

Among other things, this is striking a nerve because Esquire and Taddeo are using Ledger's death to sell magazines, and to dredge up publicity by being intentionally "controversial". There's nothing honest or thoughtful about any of this. It wouldn't surprise me if the idea was developed by the editors and assigned to Taddeo.

[bill]

I just clicked on the NYT link. Scratch my last post. Although, really, I still wouldn't be surprised...

[Daniil]

Heath Ledger died in a sensational manner; alone, high on a Presley-ish amount of pills, waiting to get a "massage." That this sensational aspect should be carried over into the aftermath of his death is both logical and par for the course. It seems to me that what people are most upset about is that it's Heath Ledger. Because he was hot and had an Oscar nomination, which should somehow exempt him from this kind of twaddle, and don't get me wrong, Taddeo's piece sounds as if it was written by the smartest girl in 9th Grade. Heath Ledger spent most of his adult life having sex with models and actresses and getting high. And we're supposed to treat him with reverence? If you ask me, the piece of fiction in Esquire is pitched at the right frequency. Heath Ledger was not Bishop Tutu.

[Claire K.]

Did he spend most of his adult life doing that? If so, I applaud the time-management skills that allowed him to build a growing and widely-admired body of work and the sorts of loyal friendships that would inspire tributes of the nature we've heard over the past several weeks while still spending the MAJORITY of his time in these more self-destructive pursuits. And gosh, if he really frittered away the lion's share of his adult life in that kind of shameful decadence, then how much more pitiable and tragic this all is, and how much more ghoulish and inappropriate it seems to turn it into faux-highbrow fanfic.

[Glenn Kenny]

While it's commendable that Daniil has abandoned his unsupportable "David-Foster-Wallace-does-it-too" argument, I can't say its replacement, "Ledger-was-a-fornicator-and-a-substance-abuser-and-hence-it's-permissible-to-piss-on-his-grave," is doing a lot for me. I suppose it's more intellectually honest, though.

[bill]

I realize that not long ago I was sounding like somebody who hadn't clicked on any of the provided links, as indeed was the case. But now that I have, am I understanding this correctly: Esquire really does assign works of fiction to people? Didn't Granger actually say that in the NYT article? And if that's the case, isn't it sort of stupid and horrible?

[addison dewitt]

As those of us who have worked for him know, David Granger is not a stupid man. He's a smart one with confused values and no taste. Translation, the perfect magazine editor.

[James M.]

Repulsive story. Why? Because it is not well written. It's a great piece for Esquire, though, because it's tasteless all around. It's easy to sell a story to them. Make sure you talk about the male and female anatomies, and use lots of certain four-letter words. You've got to be crude in all the right ways, and pretend that you're classy -- that's the Esquire formula.

It wasn't always that way. David Granger is no Arnold Gingrich. Read some of the stories that Gingrich bought. No boobies and butt jokes, no four-letter words and crude references to female sex acts. Oh, but lots of big and interesting ideas, and great writing, too.

Sorry, but Esquire died a long time ago. Let's all write some of their top advertisers to let them know. Maybe they can drop the Esquire account and advertise in a decent magazine that we like.

[Alice]

I'm not a native English speaker (I don't even live in an English-speaking country anymore) but I am bilingual.
I read the loathsome article about Heath Ledger's last hours. I feel so upset and indignant about the way she pictured him. It's easy to write a pile of junk over a dead man, he cannot answer back. Congrats Lisa Taddeo, you're a brave person. If you only knew the person you tried to talk about in your "story", you'd feel ashamed of yourself.

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