Gilliam's "Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" Premieres at Cannes

According to the Associated Press, Terry Gilliam's film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. It is Gilliam's 11th film at Cannes and Ledger's last film prior to his death.

In an interview on Friday, Gilliam talked openly about his collaboration with Ledger, going so far as to describe him as a "co-director" of the film.

"Heath was enjoying himself so much, and he was ad-libbing a lot, which I normally don't allow. But Heath was brilliant at it, and he got a lot of people going," Gilliam said.

Ledger's death not only impacted his friends on the set; it also provided Gilliam with a dilemma. With only half of Ledger's scenes filmed, the film languished for a while. Gilliam contemplated scrapping the project until some friends of Gilliam prompted him to restart production.

The Life of Brian director's solution was to cast Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell to play incarnations of Ledger in otherworldly sequences requiring his character, Tony, to venture to other dimensions via a magical mirror supplied to him by actor Christopher Plummer. Depp was already attached to another project of Gilliam's, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, so it was relatively easy to snag him. Farrell and Law were harder to acquire since they both had previous engagements. But the two set aside time to star in the film for the sake of their late friend.

"The real credit has to go to Johnny, Colin, and Jude, which was an extraordinary thing to come in," Gilliam said. "They're doing other films, they're involved in other projects and they came to the rescue of this thing."

Most of the money they would have received went instead into a trust fund set up in Ledger's daughter, Matilda's, name. Ledger later won a posthumous supporting actor Academy Award for his performance in the Christopher Nolan thriller, The Dark Knight.

Even as the film premiered, critics were already noting the themes of premature death and remaining forever young by citing the reference to James Dean, Ledger's hero, in the film. Those themes were already written into the script when Ledger signed on. But for Gilliam, the real stars of the film are the men who selflessly gave their time to pay one last tribute to an old friend.

"They did it solely, basically, for nothing," he said. "To me, they're the real heroes."