The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)

Director Terry Gilliam is feverishly working to figure out how to keep Heath Ledger alive on film, according to one of the late actor's costars in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which Ledger was still shooting when he died last week.

"Terry's throwing himself into the job of trying to salvage the picture," veteran actor Christopher Plummer told PEOPLE over the weekend.

Despite earlier reports that the director might shelve the $30 million production, Gilliam, whom Plummer describes as "terribly saddened" by Ledger’s death is "trying to work out at this moment how to continue on. Fortunately, because the film deals with magic, there is a way, perhaps, of turning Heath into other people and then, using stills and I think they call it CGI ...

"Terry was a very good friend [of Heath's]," adds Plummer. "He very wants to go on with the movie, and I can very much understand why. Because he wants to dedicate it to Heath, of course."

Ledger and Plummer both left the London portion of the movie's shoot last weekend and were due to continue filming next week in Vancouver. Leaving England, says Plummer, "Heath was in very high spirits. He was just enjoying himself tremendously. It's a rather fanciful script, and he was wonderful in this role."

Confirming earlier reports that Ledger hadnt been feeling well on set, Plummer says, "we all caught colds because we were shooting outside on horrible, damp nights. But Heath's went on and I don't think he dealt with it immediately with the antibiotics. ...I think what he did have was the walking pneumonia."

On top of that, "He was saying all the time, 'dammit, I can't sleep' ...and he was taking all these pills [to help him]."

As well as the damp cold and lack of sleep, Plummer describes the shoot as rigorous. "We had to shoot every second we were out there…there was hardly any time to go into the tent or the car to keep warm. We just kept shooting ... boom, boom, boom ... there was no pause. It was very, very hard work."

Ledger would have appreciated the show-must-go-on mentality, says his co-star. "He was terribly likeable and obviously enormously talented...and the combination was terrific. It's such a shame these things have to happen to the good ones."

As for reports that Gilliam has approached Johnny Depp to step into Ledger's role, the actor's rep tells PEOPLE: "There have been no official talks, and he is currently working on Public Enemies for Michael Mann for Universal."

Last week in London, Heath Ledger was busy wrapping up nearly six weeks of long days and nights he'd spent at often-frigid outdoor locations, filming scenes for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. But with Ledger's death on Tuesday in New York, the movie has become a reported $30 million question mark, since there were additional weeks of studio-soundstage filming yet to be done in Vancouver.

Imaginarium is a fantasy tale, co-written and directed by Terry Gilliam, a filmmaker known for his outlandish visual invention (he previously worked with Ledger on 2005's The Brothers Grimm). Christopher Plummer, who's now 78, plays the title character, an eccentric theatrical trouper trapped in a deal with the devil (Tom Waits) that dooms Parnassus's lovely daughter, Valentina (played by British-born model Lily Cole). Ledger was playing Tony, a roguish charlatan who gets mixed up with the troupe and begins a series of through-the-magic-mirror adventures to a strange parallel universe.

Early on Sunday, Jan. 20, Plummer boarded a plane back to New York and went on to his Connecticut home. Ledger took a different London-to-New-York flight and repaired to a SoHo apartment where, two days later, he was found dead. EW spoke with Ledger's final costar about what happened, what the filming was like, and what may or may not become of the last scenes Ledger ever performed.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: It seems incomprehensible.
CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER: We're all a bit befuddled at the moment. It's so sad. Heath did have a terrible, lingering bug in London, and he couldn't sleep at all. We all — I thought he'd probably got walking pneumonia, which they seem to think he had. Of course I don't really know, but that's the latest.

Where had you been working?
In and around London. Lots of sinister-looking, horrible locations. Places like Battersea Power Station, where the interior's all open, with huge hanging girders. The light comes in and creates this sort of vast, horrible Valpurgis Night. It's a very sinister building, and it's used sometimes for films. They shot some of [the new] Batman film in there. It's a designated building, protected, so they can't tear it down. It's just standing there gaping at everybody. Very effective. The last few days we were shooting outside a pub. Always outside. Cold as bejesus. You know how damp it gets in London. And at night the temperature drops horribly, and that little breeze gets up. You have to wear tons of stuff.

How much is left undone on the film?
Oh, there's an enormous amount left to do. This is why we were going to Vancouver. All the technical stuff, the green-screen, was to be done in Vancouver. God knows what's going to happen now.

That seems like a pretty substantial blow to the movie.
Of course it is. The film wasn't half made.... It's just terrifying. It had so much going for it, and there was so much new stuff we were all going to put into it to help it along. It was a sort of work of invention, from all hands.... And Terry [Gilliam] has had this experience before, with [The Man Who Killed] Don Quixote, with Johnny Depp.

Which famously fell apart early in the filming.
And here it is again. My heart goes out to him because he's worked so hard to get it off the ground. It just drives you mad thinking about it. I have no idea, and I can't say, really, what's going to happen to the film. We're still in total shock over Heath's death. It's sort of literally unbelievable, because apart from the sleeping, he was in such good form.... There was a sweetness about him. He was a very charming and gentle guy, actually.

Ledger had mentioned in a New York Times interview last fall that he had sleep troubles, and that he'd used sleeping aids to try to cope with that.
That's interesting, I didn't know that.

Did he ever seem or look tired on the set?
Oh no. Great energy. Always wonderful energy. In fact he did some of his own stunts just before we left London, some jumping and leaping about. Not horrendously dangerous stunts, but physically challenging stunts. Like leaping onto a rising stage from this rather quite high-up spot. He wants to do everything himself? Well that's all right — he's 28 years old. We all did. [Gentle laugh].... Anyway, it's so sad. I think he was just too over-exhausted: 28 years old, you think you can bounce back. But maybe not with heavy pneumonia on your chest.

There was an initial, seemingly groundless wave of speculation that it could be suicide, based on some inaccurate and incomplete reports about sleeping medications he kept in his apartment.
That doesn't make any sense. He was looking forward — he was in such a good, happy mood about the picture. Looking forward to going to Vancouver. He was enjoying the film thoroughly, and I'm here to say so. He was also terribly excited about becoming a director.

Right — he was going to direct a movie about a chess prodigy, called The Queen's Gambit.
I think that's where most of his ambitions would have lain, for the future. That too is such a shame. He thoroughly embraced the profession, and loved it. He wasn't suffering for his art at all. He was enjoying it.

Did he talk about wanting to direct?
He was very friendly with Terry Gilliam. They became very good friends on The Brothers Grimm and consequently bonded. And [on Doctor Parnassus] they would consult and they'd look and he'd watch, and he was fascinated. They were having such fun on this one. He was very inventive, Heath, and very versatile, as indeed many Australian actors are. They have a marvelous ear for accents and for character. He gave some very good ideas and pointers. As we all tried to do, but I think he was very serious about directing. Such a shame. He was so talented in so many areas.

You made a film with Terrence Malick a few years back, The New World — and Heath was at one point going to work with Malick on something called Tree of Life, though recent reports are that Ledger dropped out and Brad Pitt may take the role he would have played.
We never talked about that. You know, I didn't get to know him very well.... There was no time for that, really. You had to take what you got with the weather, and you had to be always on call, standing there waiting for your shot. One could step into a car every now and then and get warm, but shooting at night in a big city, it's not easy.... We were working in such dire conditions in London, outside every night in the cold. Which may have contributed somewhat to [the state of] his health. We were all armed with antibiotics all the time. It wasn't exactly joyous, except that the film itself was fun to do.

I'm only familiar with the broad strokes of the plot for Doctor Parnassus.
So were we all. [Laughs] I kept teasing Terry about that all the time. A lot of it is set down [broadly] and then improvised. A lot of the happenings are magical, and wonderfully Gilliam-esque and obscure. It's sort of the Faust story in modern terms. Doctor Parnassus, whom I play, is sort of a modern-day Faust, who sells his soul to the devil. It's full of visitations into another world, a rather Narnia-like world. Heath was playing a sort of young mountebank who comes upon the scene. It's rather difficult to describe the plot. It's a sort of wonderful yarn of fantasy, sometimes very funny. Heath [was playing] this young charlatan who's brilliant at fooling people.

And Heath's character would appear in various guises?
Heath was a harlequin in one scene, a tramp in another. His character steals a lot of the costumes that my character's troupe have managed to hang on to, though they're on their last legs. He's rather like a younger version of my character — a magician who takes family on tour and invites the public to go through a mirror into this other world, the Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. How can I describe it? He's an interloper, who of course falls for the daughter. Or the daughter falls for him, I can't quite follow it.

Like Johnny Depp, Heath had a strong reaction early on to being packaged as a ''heartthrob'' and he fought very strongly against that. He didn't want to be pigeonholed and stereotyped and turned into a commodity.
That's quite right. He stuck up for what were the right parts, and that's very commendable. He didn't succumb to any of those cheap temptations, and throwing himself into a huge variety of roles.

Was his daughter or anyone else from his family able to be on the set at all, to come and see him?
No, no, no. Just his driver and his friend from Ireland who was helping him. The last day, the last night [Saturday, Jan. 19] we were all working, and then he flew to New York, as I did, the next day. We weren't on the same plane, but he flew early, and we were looking forward to continuing on.

And you were scheduled to regroup in Vancouver next week?
Yeah. I don't dare say what will happen until we've talked with Terry [Gilliam]. Probably nobody will know until the end of this week what's going to happen. I spoke to Terry yesterday. We're all in shock, but he particularly, of course.... It's just awful. Quite shocking, because it's so incredible. I just left a very laughing, happy fellow, practically a few minutes ago.

See more from EW on the life and career of Heath Ledger::
Heath Ledger: 1979-2008
Heath Ledger: His Career in Pictures
Heath Ledger: An EW Critic's Tribute
Heath Ledger: A PopWatch Tribute and Reader Comments

The Imaginarium in Hopton Street on Monday morning

The film, due for release in 2009, stars Christopher Plummer and is described as a "fantastical morality tale set in the present day".

It tells the story of Dr Parnassus and his extraordinary 'Imaginarium', a travelling show where members of the audience get an irresistible opportunity to choose between light and joy or darkness and gloom.

The screenplay has been written by former Monty Python star Gilliam together with Charles McKeown.

In a parallel universe, where novelists get to choose who adapts their books, "The Golden Compass" and "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" would have been directed by Terry Gilliam. Philip Pullman and J.K. Rowling both wanted Gilliam, who was also approved by Roald Dahl's widow to remake "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." In each case, the studio said no.

That's the story of Gilliam's career. He's loved by fellow creatives, but he scares the suits to death.

Back in the real world, the 67-year-old filmmaker, originally from Minneapolis but now a naturalized Brit, has just started shooting "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," a $30 million indie movie which he describes as "a compendium of everything I've done."

It's his first wholly original screenplay, and his most personal statement, since "Brazil" in 1985.

Set and shot in contemporary London and in parallel fantasy realms, it stars Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer, Tom Waits and Lily Cole in a characteristically convoluted tale of a travelling theater troupe led by the 1,000-year-old Parnassus (Plummer), whose magical mirror lets his audience escape into a universe of boundless imagination.

The only snag is that Parnassus has won this power by gambling with the devil (Waits), which means there's a price to pay.

"It's autobiographical," laughs Gilliam. "I'm trying to bring a bit of fantasticality to London, an antidote to modern lives. I loved this idea of an ancient travelling show offering the kind of storytelling and wonder that we used to get, to people who are just into shoot-em-up action films."

"Parnassus is trying to bring amazement to people, and not doing a very good job of it, because they aren't paying attention to him. But if they will enter his mirror, and allow their imagination to mix with his, they enter these extraordinary worlds, and they come back transcendent -- or they strangely disappear."

Gilliam co-wrote the script with Charles McKeown, with whom he last collaborated on "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and "Brazil."

"It's the first thing I've truly written myself since then," Gilliam says. "I wanted to work back in England and do what I used to do in animation, free thinking. This is the first film I've storyboarded myself since 'Munchausen.' That's what I've really enjoyed, just to sit there and start drawing."

Gilliam's flights of fancy don't come cheap, so financing is always a struggle. After a run of hits from "Time Bandits" to "Twelve Monkeys" (with only the significant blip of "Munchausen"), his fortunes have dipped in the past decade with "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," the abandoned "Man Who Killed Don Quixote," "Brothers Grimm" and "Tideland."

It doesn't help that his resume includes two notorious production disasters -- "Munchausen," which went wildly over budget, and "Quixote," halted when its elderly star Jean Rochefort fell ill, as chronicled in the doc "Lost in La Mancha."

Yet for all his unruly creative persona and his compulsively outspoken behavior, Gilliam is a remarkably disciplined filmmaker. "I have always stayed within budget, apart from that one glitch. But that's not what my legend is," he says. "I have a weird obsession to tell the truth about filmmaking, but my problems have been no greater or less than anyone else's. I just talk too much, or there's always a documentary crew around."

Fortunately, there's always talent lining up to work with him. "Nothing I do seems to be understandable to the money people at the early stage. The key is to get Johnny Depp or Heath Ledger. If big-name actors didn't want to work with me for bad money, I wouldn't be able to do it," he says.

"Parnassus" is produced by Sammy Hadida, Bill Vince and Amy Gilliam (his daughter). Gilliam credits them for the "miracle" of raising the $30 million budget -- a lot for an indie movie, but not for what he's putting on screen.

"Anyone else would want $80 million to make this movie. People are going to see it and think, 'Wow!'" Gilliam says. He's doing the f/x work in Canada after he finishes shooting around such London landmarks as Battersea Power Station, Tower Bridge and St. Pauls Cathedral.

"You can do 'Golden Compass' for $250 million, or you can make 'Parnassus' for a tenth of that, and still make it look spectacular," he asserts. "I don't want to do the hugely expensive films because my creative team wouldn't have control. Suddenly you're surrounded by executives, by this fear, and that puts everyone off."

In a truly genius piece of casting, Terry Gilliam has made Christopher Plummer his Dr. Parnassus. As previously reported, Tom Waits is involved - but as Mr. Nick, the devilish villain of the piece.

Phil Stubbs came good on his promise and has published the image below in his new piece on the film. He's also confirmed the Heath Ledger, Lily Cole, Andrew Garfield and Vern Troyer casting as covered here as the weeks and months have gone by.

For many, many more details I'll point you towards my previous script review, which gives a good idea of the characters and plot. No doubt Phil Stubbs will be bringing us more as the film progresses, and I'll be doing my best to find out what I can also, in the many long moons until it is expected to be released in early 2009.

Please send me any information - any information at all - you have about this film.

OCTOBER 2007 - here's a preview of Terry Gilliam's forthcoming feature, now in preproduction - including cast details, a synopsis and a detailed concept drawing.

The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus is set in the present day, and tells the story of Dr Parnassus and his extraordinary 'Imaginarium', a travelling show - where members of the audience get an irresistible opportunity to choose between light and joy or darkness and gloom. The script is written by Gilliam with Charles McKeown, who both wrote the script to The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

Here's the cast, four of whom have worked in Gilliam pictures before. There's much to look forward to, including the prospect of Tom Waits as the devil incarnate. Christopher Plummer is the eponymous doc, and inventive Heath Ledger returns to work with Gilliam following his work on Brothers Grimm.

The concept drawing below shows the 'Imaginarium' - an old, colourful horse-drawn theatre, contrasting with its post-industrial backdrop.

SYNOPSIS - CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a fantastical morality tale, set in the present day.

It tells the story of Dr Parnassus and his extraordinary 'Imaginarium', a travelling show where members of the audience get an irresistible opportunity to choose between light and joy or darkness and gloom. Blessed with the extraordinary gift of guiding the imaginations of others, Dr Parnassus is cursed with a dark secret. Long ago he made a bet with the devil, Mr Nick, in which he won immortality.

Many centuries later, on meeting his one true love, Dr Parnassus made another deal with the devil, trading his immortality for youth, on condition that when his first-born reached its 16th birthday he or she would become the property of Mr Nick. Valentina is now rapidly approaching this 'coming of age' milestone and Dr Parnassus is desperate to protect her from her impending fate. Mr Nick arrives to collect but, always keen to make a bet, renegotiates the wager. Now the winner of Valentina will be determined by whoever seduces the first five souls.

Enlisting a series of wild, comical and compelling characters in his journey, Dr Parnassus promises his daughter's hand in marriage to the man that helps him win. In this captivating, explosive and wonderfully imaginative race against time, Dr Parnassus must fight to save his daughter in a never-ending landscape of surreal obstacles - and undo the mistakes of his past once and for all...

The film is expected to be released early 2009.

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