EXCLUSIVE Mel Gibson/ Heath Ledger StarTalk by Paul Fischer
We're
some 30 miles from Jackson, South Carolina. It's a wintry day in the uppermost
reaches of this mountainous area. Amidst the man-made swamp that surrounds us,
gunfire and yelling is heard in the distance. We're transported back to the 1770s,
and the Revolutionary War is raged again, for the benefit of the cameras. The
film being shot here is The Patriot, an epic action-adventure tale about
a peaceful farmer, Benjamin Martin, played by Mel Gibson, reluctantly forced
to fight against the British, as the war begins to affect his family.
Playing his idealistic eldest son is West Australian Heath Ledger. Already with one Hollywood film behind him, (10 Things I Hate About You) the 21-year old Aussie is on his way up. Donned in khaki period clothes, wearing revolutionary garb and sporting an oversized musket, Ledger smiles sheepishly when asked his reaction to the news that he'd be playing none other than Mel Gibson's son. "It was very exciting, but I never really let anything get me too worked up till I got here. I had about 4 months before I was shooting it to let it sink in, so it never really sank in until the first time I sat down, looked into his eyes and heard action and cut. Then I started to shake." The young actor, last year AFI-nominated for Two Hands, had little time to think about the mere task of playing Gibson's eldest son. He had to get inside the head of a revolutionary patriot, set during an era about which he knew nothing. "I never got too much involved in American history when I was at school, but was always curious about it, so it was really interesting what I found out." For Ledger, it answered a lot of questions for him "as to why the country was so proud and arrogant in many ways, but good ways, why they have their World Series without any other countries and why they wave their flag so high and proud. It's because they went to hell and back, to build their country."
Ledger
defines his character as "representing the new generation of this country. He
believes strongly in the ideals of the new government." Drawing some modern parallels,
he further describes him "as basically a kid who grew up in a family of footballers
who always played football his whole life. He finally gets a chance to play in
the Super Bowl and he does. He's a very proud guy."
Apart from learning about American history, Ledger and his co-star Mel Gibson, had to undergo some serious training for this movie, he recalls. "We did a bunch of musket training and learned how to lock and load the musket, firing and horse riding. Basic stuff, including marching and drilling." While it sounds like fun, young Heath did endure pain and suffering along the way, managing to rip open his "little pinkie finger" acquiring three stitches in the process. "On the muskets they have these flint locks, and on the flint there's a sharp rock that causes the spark. I was just cocking it back to fire and just slipped my little pinkie across it, peeled it open and stuffed it full of sulfur. That was kind of painful." Then he adds laughingly "I wasn't a brave soldier."
Though classed as an action adventure, The Patriot is as much a story of a father and son, as a drama set during the Revolutionary War. Though Ledger admits he can't relate to the war aspects of the film, he certainly responded to the father-son theme, which he describes as the kind of relationship everyone can relate to. "It's similar to what I went through with myfather, getting to an age where you feel you had your own opinions and rules in life, taking off, doing them the hard way and not listening to what he has to say."
Ledger once recalled that he was desperate to get out of Perth and so pursued an acting career. There was no formal training involved, and now the young actor is on the set of a $100m film, from the same team who helmed the blockbusters Godzilla and Independence Day. You'd think this kid from Perth would be pinching himself. "Not at all because I find that if I have to pinch myself, then I'm probably some place I don't want to be, and this is where I want to be." And who can blame him, for despite the cold here in South Carolina, he gets to work alongside another Aussie, Mel Gibson, who has taught Heath a lot throughout this arduous shoot. "In so many ways I've learnt so many things from this guy. Most are unspoken and sub textual, but we've spoken about how to deal with different pressures. He just showed me, in a way, how to keep yourself normal and sane, remain a normal guy, and not let it take you to another planet. He's very good at that." Heath recalls how pleasantly surprised he was when they met. "He's a genuinely good guy who gives time to everyone on set - he's brilliant that way."
Gibson,
also dressed to the hilt in full Revolutionary regalia, has nothing but praise
for his young co-star. Relaxing between takes; the Aussie superstar doesn't feel
Heath has a lot to learn. "He's incredibly quick" Gibson enthuses. "I recall how
shit scared he was when we first started, but we joked around as guys do, and
before long, he fitted in perfectly." Like Ledger, Gibson, though American-born,
knew little about this period of American history, a period that's been rarely
dramatized on film. So he read a lot. "It helps and watching Public Television
specials on the Revolution was useful as well, because you find out the mood and
temperament of the time. One of the most disgusting things I ever heard was the
old smallpox vaccination. You know what they used to do? They used to find somebody
who had smallpox and run a needle and thread through one of their pustules and
then they'd get that same needle and thread and run it under their own skin. The
likelihood of them getting it was about 40% and dying from it, but they figured
that 60% was a good risk. So, those were tough days. I mean, you had to be tough
to get a vaccination. Little tidbits like that give you an idea of how harsh things
were then."
All this is a far
cry from the popular Lethal Weapon series. Now, the Oscar-winning director
is transforming himself into a revolutionary hero. "It's a matter of the world
of the time, I think, and trying to not do anything to betray behavioral things
of someone from that era. I mean, that's pretty general but that's where you start.
It's what you don't do more than what you do. I do my best work ten minutes before
I fall asleep. I'm usually lying down and you're relaxed enough so that you get
little epiphanies, you know. I used wake up and write them down and discover in
the morning it was just gibberish, so I stopped doing that. I've sort of had my
head to this for this film for a while, doing the groundwork and trying to imagine
the reality of it. I don't know if I'm going to be able to pull it off. See, that's
the scary thing. You go into something every time and the challenge is, can you
get away with it? Can I lie well? I'm a reasonable sort of liar, I figure, so
I'll have a good stab at it. At least I keep getting hired.," Gibson adds with
typical modesty. Nobody told him that he'll return to the screen shortly in Wim
Wenders' Million Dollar Hotel, as the voice of a cocky rooster in the
new animated feature 
Chicken
Run, and is about to start work with Helen Hunt in the romantic comedy
What Women Want.
Meanwhile, life for Gibson's onscreen 'son' continues to get better. A self-described nomad, following The Patriot Ledger returns to period garb, shooting A Knight's Tale in the Czech Republic. "Yeah, it's yet another period movie, another one on horses," he says wincing (with a grin). "It's about a knight and the jousting tournaments of 1532." Payback director Brian Helgeland will shoot that film over three months. So for this rising star, the heat is on, and the actor is finally feeling it. "Yeah but I'm really good at snapping on and off, so when I'm in town, talking to my agent and discussing all the things that are going on, I snap on and get involved in it. But for me, nothing yet has really changed, though I know I'm on the brink of something happening, and it's exciting."