New York’s medical examiner report was predictably dry and succinct and non-judgmental, but the implication is that Heath Ledger didn’t care to calculate or remember which prescription drugs he’d taken, much less assess their combined effect upon his body. You can say “accident” over and over but the blunt answer is that Heath did it to himself. Like I wrote the day he died. A tree didn’t fall on him. Actions have consequences.
The pharma-names of the drugs found in his system are “oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine.” The common names are OxyContin, Vicodin, Valium, Xanax, Restoril and Unisom.
Everyone presumably knows that OxyContin — “hillbilly heroin” — isn’t a painkiller as much as a recreational drug that serious stoners take in order to experience a nice opiate-like high. Hydrocodone is found in Vicodin. Diazepam and alprazolam = Valium and Xanax. Alprazolam and doxylamine are sleeping aids commonly known as Restoril and Unisom. In other words, Heath loaded himself down with one heavyweight floater-downer, a fairly heavy-duty pain killer and four relatively mild drugs for alleviating anxiety, settling down, feeling loose and catching zees.
Do you think he said to himself, “Let’s see…I’ve got five or six downer meds in my system. I still don’t feel completely relaxed though. Maybe if I popped another Oxy? I wonder what Mary Kate would say…?”
The report didn’t mention the apparent amounts of each drug that Ledger had in his system. It would help to know this.

“The exit polls in the 16 primary states in which they were taken showed that the contours of the race as we’ve come to know them are still in place. Obama did well with African-Americans, men, the wealthy, those with college degrees, and liberal voters. Clinton continues to do well with women, older voters, Latinos, and those with less education and lower incomes.” — Slate political columnist John Dickerson writing this morning about yesterday’s voting.
The only place in the world in which people repeatedly dispute the claim that Hillary is supported by “those with less education and lower incomes” is the Hollywood Elsewhere reader-comments section. Starting this morning, will those who’ve resisted this generally accepted deduction (you know who you are) please shut the fuck up and stay that way — buttoned, zipped, mute — until further notice?

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who was briefly the Beatles’ spiritual guru in late ’67 and early ’68 until the bloom fell off with allegations of sexual impropriety, died in Holland yesterday. He was nonetheless a seminal figure in the Eastern-following spiritual movement of the late ’60s — psychedelic Godhead breakthroughs leading to dog-eared copies of the “Baghavad Gita” in college dorms leading, three or four years later, to the “Me Generation” personal fulfillment movement of the ’70s.

Say what you will about bedroom shenanigans but MMY spoke of immaculate and eternal truths, and at a crucial moment in history he prompted tens of thousands to turn a significant spiritual page.
Many sensed there was something less than magical (I almost wrote “vaguely deceptive”) about the assertions that transcendental meditation, if practiced devoutly, would drastically improve followers’ lives, but the outgrowth of all that energy and fascination was that hundreds of thousands of American-born spiritual seekers began to know what “satori” is and grasp the intimations of revelation in…well, loads of stuff but I’m thinking right now of the lyrics in “The Wind Cries Mary,” the Jimi Hendrix song. (“Jets” in their boxes, “clowns” gone to bed…seriously.)
My key Maharishi memory will always be John Lennon‘s Rolling Stone recollection about how the Beatles quit the ashram “after he confronted the guru about sex allegations. He said: ‘There was a hullabaloo about him trying to rape Mia Farrow and a few other women, and things like that.
‘The whole gang charged down to his hut. I was the spokesman, as usual, and said: ‘We’re leaving!’ He asked why and I said, ‘Well, if you’re so cosmic, you’ll know why.’ He and his right-hand men were always intimating that he did miracles.The Maharishi gave me a look that said, ‘I’ll kill you, you bastard!'”

Big Eyes, announced last night by Variety‘s Michael Fleming as the forthcoming “directing debut” of renowned screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, will be in fact their second stab at feature directing. Their first was a commercial wipeout called Screwed (’00), which was a pretty good piece on paper (i.e., an inventively plotted and certainly unpredictable script) and didn’t deserve the curses that fell upon it.

I haven’t read Big Eyes, a biopic of famed painter Margaret Keane (to be played by Kate Hudson) “whose distinctive creations featuring big-eyed children became one of art’s first mass-market success stories in the 1950s.” But given the withering contempt for Keane’s paintings in the art world and their general reputation as a mass-market joke (i.e., right next to those black velvet paintings that were so richly lampooned in the original 1979 version of The In-Laws), how can Big Eyes be anything but a portrait of a laughably mediocre artist a la Ed Wood?
Fleming’s story, written without the slightest indication that he’s in on the joke, says that Alexander and Karaszewski’s drama “covers Keane’s personal awakening at the onset of the feminist movement, leading to a lawsuit she filed against her husband, Walter, who claimed credit for her works.”

“Better the devil you know than the diffident debutante you don’t. Better to go with the Clintons, with all their dysfunction and chaos — the same kind that fueled the Republican hate machine — than to risk the chance that Obama would be mauled like a chew toy in the general election. Better to blow off all the inspiration and the young voters, the independents and the Republicans that Obama is attracting than to take a chance on something as ephemeral as hope. Now that‘s Cheney-level paranoia.” — from Maureen Dowd‘s 2.6.08 N.Y. Times column, titled “Darkness and Light.”
Oh, and the latest study-stats piece claiming that McCain’s chances are much better against Clinton than Obama.

According to MSNBC’s “First Read,” Barack Obama won last night’s delegate hunt “by the narrowest of margins, picking up 840 to 849 delegates versus 829-838 for Hillary Clinton.” (Does this tally include New Mexico, which Obama appears to have finally “won” in a squeaker?) Update: The Page‘s Mark Halperin says the current total is 908 for Obama, 884 for Clinton, not including superdelegates.
Obama “also won more states (fourteen to Clinton’s eight), although she won the most populous ones (California and New York),” the First Read summary says. “And Obama’s argument that he might be the most electable Democrat in a general election was bolstered by the fact that he won nine (ten with New Mexico?) red states versus four for Clinton.
“Yet with Clinton’s overall superdelegate lead (259-170, based on the lists they’ve released to us), and when you toss in the 63-48 lead Obama had among pledged delegates going into Super Tuesday, it appears Clinton has about 70 more overall delegates than Obama does (1140-1150 for Clinton versus 1070 to 1080 for Obama). It’s that close, folks…
“Obama’s Opportunity And Challenge: The calendar for the next couple of weeks favors Obama, as we head into February 9 (Louisiana, Nebraska and Washington State); February 10 (Maine); February 12 (DC, Maryland, Virginia); and February 19 (Hawaii and Wisconsin). In fact, in a conference call it held with reporters on Monday,
the Clinton campaign seemed like it was conceding those states when it didn’t mention those states, but said it was looking ahead toward March 4 (Ohio and Texas; don’t forget Rhode Island and Vermont) after Super Tuesday.
“Obama can certainly feel good about last night: He went toe-to-toe with Clinton in a Super Tuesday contest
that once seemed to favor her. And he’s on pace to have a significant financial advantage over Clinton. But as the AP’s Ron Fournier writes, “Obama still has much to prove. The potential for setbacks and mistakes is high.” At some
point, the question will have to be asked: When or how can he put her away? Of course, last night proves that Clinton faces that very same question regarding Obama.”

Obama is heavily ahead among African-Americans, under-30 voters; strongly ahead with men. He’s beaten Clinton in Georgia, Alabama, Illinois, Delaware…and he may win in Connecticut. But Hillary has the over-40 women, the over-40 Hispanics, rural whites (we all know what that means), the elderly, etc. And let’s face it — Hillary’s wins so far (Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee) haven’t exactly been whisker-thin.
What’s up with Hillary’s lopsided Massachusetts victory? Is anyone going to interpret the results in racist-voter terms, or is that absolutely not allowed? (Even if it’s, like, as real as the nose on your face?) And why is Obama slightly ahead in Connecticut? (“Urban” voters?) Why has Obama lopsidedly won North Dakota? Why has he won Utah? Some of it adds up, and some of it doesn’t.
Has Obama’s young-voter base come out in exceptional strength, or has a significant percentage of the under-30 and the college crowd stayed put in front of their TVs and computers today and tonight? (I’d really like to see some figures on this.) Either way, a large percentage of over-40 women seem determined to side with their mothers and not their children, and to go down to the sea in ships with Hillary, win or lose. Dispiriting. No champagne tonight.

If I had taken this embarassing Milk-shoot photo of Sean Penn (as Harvey Milk) and James Franco (as Milk’s lover Scott Smith), I wouldn’t have posted it. But there’s enough general interest in this Gus Van Sant film to trump the appearance of a photo taken by a falling- down drunk just before he hits the pavement. (Source: towleroad.com.)

To hear it from Vanity Fair Oscar blogger Stu Van Airsdale, the Best Original Screenplay contest is a toe-to-toe between Juno‘s Diablo Cody and Michael Clayton‘s Tony Gilroy, and — interestingly — he thinks Gilroy has the edge.
“So. Cody and Gilroy. One statuette, two phenomena. Even cynics like Eric Henderson, blogging at Slant magazine, anticipate a closer race than most Oscar media are letting on: As Henderson writes, ‘Gilroy’s double-dip on Michael Clayton and status as a lost cause over in Best Director ensure a few votes from those who feel pity, and from those who have apparently seen none of the myriad law-and-order TV dramas from which the film’s ruinously clich√É∆í√Ǭ©d plot resolution was lifted.’
“Less ironically, Gilroy’s status as a dues-paying hack from way back (the guy wrote a figure-skating opus 16 years ago, for Christ’s sake) is as compelling a nominee back story to Oscar voters — industry wonks all — as Cody’s stripping career or her singular young voice.
“But the gamebreaker is that one represents a movie, the other a movement — a myth, really, cultivated via an overexposure borrowed in part from its beneficiary. And even if movies aren’t really what the Oscars are all about, Best Original Screenplay is the category where the Academy begs you to believe otherwise. It’s why I foresee Tony Gilroy taking home Michael Clayton‘s lone trophy, leaving an upset Juno counting its money as the little movie that could — and didn’t.”
Question: will Cody’s industry rep as a newly empowered Attitude Queen, vaguely indicated by her no-shows at the Critics Choice awards and at the Santa Barbara Film Festival screenwriters’ panel, result in a couple of extra Gilroy votes, or is this just me talking out of my ass? Just asking. I have no dog in this race.

I guess the California polling places are finally geared up now. (A lot of them reportedly weren’t this morning.) I’m heading off to the West Knoll apartments (just north of Melrose) to do my duty. If anyone reading this hasn’t yet voted…hubba-hubba.

With everyone believing that the WGA strike will probably be settled by sometime next week, Vanity Fair has announced that they’re cancelling their annual Oscar Party “in support of the writers and everyone else affected by this strike.” Does anyone buy this? They’re nervous about shrinking revenues and just tightening their belt….right?