Do You Remeber When Heath Ledger Called John Howard A Dick For Invading Iraq? by John/Togs Tognolini

Heath Ledger as Ned Kelly

Like everyone else I was stunned when I heard of Heath Ledger's death. His death is a tragic loss. I had just seen him play one of the alter-ego's of Bob Dylan in I'm Not There. Below is section of the interview Heath did with Andrew Denton on Enough Rope in 2003. John/Togs Tognolini

.......Andrew Denton: They're turning ugly, aren't they? Did you manage to watch any of the Academy Awards?

Heath Ledger: No, I was working all day. .

Andrew Denton: Of course, Michael Moore…I have a transcript of the speech Michael Moore made.

Heath Ledger: It's fantastic.

Andrew Denton: Fantastic speech. I'll read the last little bit. He got pretty much booed off the stage. He said, "We live in a time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fiction of duct tape or the fiction of orange alerts, we are against this war, Mr Bush. Shame on you, and any time you've got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up." You were in Melbourne the other day, leading the march. I saw you on TV last week, after a bit of thought referring to our Prime Minister as 'a dick'.

Heath Ledger: Yeah.

Andrew Denton: You stand by that?

Heath Ledger: Well…yes, I do stand by that, absolutely.

Andrew Denton: There are those…and they've written over the weekend to suggest that you've been duped, that you're grandstanding.

Heath Ledger: Well, you know what? It's like… Screw it, man, everyone has their right to their opinion and that's mine. And, look, I'm not alone, am I?

Audience: No.

Andrew Denton: And to those who'd say, "Get your hand off it,
Ledger, what do you know?"

Heath Ledger: Yeah, look, I do… I mean…yeah, the unfortunate truth is none of us know enough and we will never know enough. But, screw it. Our country…we've never… This is the first time in the history of our country that we're an aggressor, and we're not an aggressive nation or people. I'm certainly not, and I'm very proud of my country and I'm the very proud of the people here. We shouldn't be a part of this. It's not a fight for humanity. It's a fight for oil. And screw it and screw them. I think we should all pull out and live a peaceful existence down here.

Andrew Denton: Do… Are three people around you saying, "Just pull back, Heath. Don't say this, don't blow it?"

Heath Ledger: Yeah, but at the end of the day, what am I going to blow? My career? At the end of the day, my career is so insignificant in this…this war. It just is, and I'm willing to lose a few jobs over it. God. Yeah. I'll start to cry soon.

Andrew Denton: No, it's a man of passion. I like that.

Heath Ledger: Well, we need more of it and I think it's only going to get…we're only going to get more and more support. I don't know how much effect it will have on it, but hopefully we can stop this thing before it's too late. Unfortunately, you know, within the human kind of instinct, we don't… It's like, I could tell you, Andrew, "Don't touch the fire because if you touch it you'll burn yourself," and you'll go, "OK." But then when I'm looking that way, you'll go over and you'll touch it and burn yourself and then you'll learn. I just hope we don't take it that far. I hope we learn before something disastrous happens.

Andrew Denton: Sadly, I think the fire has begun.

Heath Ledger: It has............

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s816837.htm

Quotes from George Clooney

There's no connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq.

We moved away from what we were going after which was the al-Qaeda and there's no connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq, which we know, we spent a lot of time trying to prove it and it didn't happen. And we're going to go into a war and we're going to kill a lot of innocent people.

We're picking on people we can beat.

[The above comments were made by George before Bush, Blair and Howard’s invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq.]

The government itself is running exactly like the Sopranos and they sit back and they make deals. And they say okay, 'I'm going do this: France, you're getting the pipelines.'

Run for office? No. I've slept with too many women, I've done too many drugs, and I've been to too many parties.

I don't care. Charlton Heston is the head of the National Rifle Association. He deserves whatever anyone says about him.

After doing One Fine Day and playing a pediatrician on ER, I'll never have kids. I'm going to have a vasectomy.

Do you want the truth or the politically correct version? The truth is that I go plastic, it's so much easier. And I like to put the bags over my head at night when I sleep, which I think all the kids at home should try. Kidding!!

I don't believe in happy endings, but I do believe in happy travels, because ultimately, you die at a very young age, or you live long enough to watch your friends die. It's a mean thing, life.

I don't like to share my personal life... it wouldn't be personal if I shared it.

I grew up in the world of bad television, on my dad's sets and then as a young schmuck on dating shows and so on.

I resolve not to drink liquids before donning the Bat-suit.

I'd think, in a relationship, we should never have his kind of fight.' Then, instead of figuring out how to make it work, I looked for a way to get out of it. The truth is, you shouldn't be married if your that kind of person.

I'm a Method actor. I spent years training for the drinking and carousing I had to do in this film.

I'm only two years older than Brad Pitt, but I look a lot older, which used to greatly frustrate me. It doesn't anymore. I don't have to fit into that category and get trounced by Tom Cruise and Brad.

I'm really white trash.

I'm the flavor of the month.

People thought I was Tom and Nicole's bodyguard. They'd come up and go, "Is it okay if I go up and ask for an autograph? It was good. I'd charge 'em three bucks a person. Yeah, you gotta make some money off of that."

The funniest thing is that all the things every director goes through, I thought I could shortcut, but there was no getting around those issues.

The only failure is not to try.

They say I was a bad Batman, that it was my fault, that I buried the franchise. But the truth is, it was a big project. I was pretty intimidated in that world. I did the best I could in the situation I was given.

When you're young you believe it when people tell you how good you are. And that's the danger, you inhale. Everyone will tell you you're a genius, which you are not, and if you understand that, you win.

You have only a short period of time in your life to make your mark, and I'm there now.

You make a lot of films, do you? You make a lot of films yourself? Yeah, I'd like to see you make a film first before you get to talk about it. What a jerk.

Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957) quotes

They'll nail anyone who ever scratched his ass during the National Anthem.

A hot dog at the ball park is better than steak at the Ritz.

All you owe the public is a good performance.

I came out here with one suit and everybody said I looked like a bum. Twenty years later Marlon Brando came out with only a sweatshirt and the town drooled over him. That shows how much Hollywood has progressed.

I made more lousy pictures than any actor in history.

People who don't drink are afraid of revealing themselves”

If a face like Ingrid Bergman's looks at you as though you're adorable, everybody does. You don't have to act very much.”

I was born when you kissed me. I died when you left me. I lived a few weeks while you loved me.

You're not a star until they can spell your name in Karachi.

The only point in making money is, you can tell some big shot where to go.

The only reason to have money is to tell any SOB in the world to go to hell.

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.

The whole world is about three drinks behind.

Things are never so bad they can't be made worse.

"Well everybody in Casablanca has problems. Yours may work out."
Casablanca

“We didn't exactly believe your story, Miss O'Shea, we believed your 200 dollars.”

The Maltese Falcon

"It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people doesn't add up to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

Casablanca

"Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”
Casablanca

Quotes from Sean Penn

I wanted to come to Iraq and see Iraqi faces - children, adults, diplomats, anybody that implies - and go home with some impressions that will not let me off the hook. . . . It's not abstract anymore.

Sacrificing American soldiers or innocent civilians in an unprecedented preemptive attack on a separate sovereign nation may well prove itself a most temporary medicine.

[The above two quotes and photo were said and taken before Bush, Blair and Howard's 2003 invasion and subsquent occupation of Iraq.]

I think that people like the Howard Sterns, the Bill O'Reillys and to a lesser degree the bin Ladens of the world are making a horrible contribution.

There's the death penalty as society deals with it and legislates it, and I'm against it.

There's not a lot of good movies being made.

You tolerate me, you really tolerate me.

Some of my reactions to acting are very negative, and take me places I no longer really want to go.

So, if you're an artist who is in it just for the money, I would be against you.

I don't like any directors. I don't get along with any of them. Mostly, I think they're a bunch of whiny people without any point of view. So I don't want to be around them at six o'clock in the morning with make-up and bells on; and I'm probably the same way for the actors on my own set, but that's their problem.

I'm in the showbizz because I need Money!

When I direct or write I can express myself, all my soul, all my heart: But, goddamn, Hollywood wants me as an actor, not as a director or a writer. They don't care about you want. They call you to make money. You're just something - not somebody - which draw out money from. When they don't need you anymore, they throw you away. They give you clichés and you have to behave in the way they expect.

I hate journalists. Or better. I hate paparazzi. Yeah, I punched them out and I'll do it again if it's necessary. I think a fist in their face is the only way to protect my private life. I demand my freedom. And I must have it.

If too many people like you, you're doing something wrong.

If there's anything disgusting in the movie business, it is the whoredom of my peers.

So if we have anything original to offer, it's to speak from our own life about the society we're in.

1 think, you know, if the right project kind of came along that I would be able to direct, I would love to do that.

There are a few directors around who I have some excitement about spending my $7 at the theatre watching their movies.

At this stage, what would be rewarding would be for audiences to want to watch.

But I'm never again going to do a movie as an actor where I'm enjoying myself. It's not fun, and it doesn't have to be.

Child-rearing is my main interest now. I'm a hands-on father.

Directing is the ultimate job of an appreciator.

Directors like Alejandro come along very rarely, and you're very lucky if you stumble across one in your life as an actor.

I appreciate words, and I appreciate acting, so combining those elements into a film is the ultimate act of appreciation.


I don't have any particular excitement about working with any specific director or actor at this point.

I like to believe that love is a reciprocal thing, that it can't really be felt, truly, by one.

I love acting, truly my favorite people are actors.

I really love to make movies.

I start to giggle the minute that Gary Shandling walks in a room, so I'm going to have to say Gary was the funniest.

I think it's much more important to direct movies but if it's going to take five years between each one then I'll have to make up for that.

I think life's an irrational obsession.

I think that any time you really concentrate, there's a certain amount of adrenaline rush, yeah.

I think that I've still not been successful at playing the role of the retired actor, and I'd like to work on that.

I think that you become a bit enlightened to the concerns of the filmmaking process more when you direct.


I think we all have light and dark inside us.


I think you start to prepare the minute you read something.

I'm a little bit computer illiterate.

I've never really been one to get what they call stage fright so much.

If I win the lottery, I'm gonna direct three to four pictures every four to five years, instead of one - and there won't be time to act..

If you're willing to put two thoughts into a picture then you're already ahead of the game.

In between, I go broke because I seem to do movies where you're not paid a lot as an actor.

It has nothing to do with the emotional demands of a role; I've done comedies that are as draining to me as any drama.

It varies from role to role and the type of the piece and the people you're working with. All those factors contribute to how you function on a movie.

Love is a mess, at best, and I figure it can be very real in spite of all the things people try to attach to it.

Marriage ain't easy, but it's great most of the time.

My daughter is changing so rapidly now that her likes are different every day, and I love being involved with that.

My favorite thing to do is not act - it's that simple.

Oh, I'm a big-mouth. I said a lot of things.

On any movie I'm involved with, I say what I think.

Once in a while, one of these Hollywood-Hollywood movies works like the old ones did.

Somewhere along the line, the actions of this government are the actions of me.

That on a romantic level, if you feel it about somebody and it's pure, it means that they do too.


The bottom line is, you love your wife, you do your best with that.


The first role was something on stage and it was 20-something years ago.

There is no re-inventing the wheel.

There's a lot of mediocrity being celebrated, and a lot of wonderful stuff being ignored or discouraged.

There've been a couple of times when I've gotten the offer to do the odd one that'll make the bank big forever.

To look at the world as it is now, without recognising and acknowledging that there is a gigantic bearer of revenge and redemption, would be criminal on behalf of a filmmaker.

Well, I think that when you direct a movie or write it. And in the case of the two movies I did, I wrote and directed, they occupy a special place for you.

Well, look at all of these summer blockbusters. You can't help but laugh a little, because you've already seen a lot of these movies 482 times.

Well, outside of the excitement of being able to participate in anything with somebody like Terry Malick who I have a great admiration for, was diving the Great Barrier Reef on the weekend.

What happens is things come to you - director, script - and if you respond to it, it's because it's tapping into some part of what's inside you, and different roles tap into different parts.

Whenever I've been on the other side of the law, as it were, I've never conspired to do malice toward somebody, so I didn't feel like now the shoe was on the other foot or anything like that.

Yeah, I had a tremendous time shooting in Nebraska. I like that state a lot, all over it.

Yeah, I had actually tried to stop acting before I made Dead Man Walking.


You can't get paid $20 million for the kind of movies I want to do,

You try to do your best at what you're getting paid for.