Hollywood has never been unaware of how to create a myth but it has never known so well how to sit with an ending that does not come. In the case of a young actor or actress dying in the middle of production – or just prior to release – his or her work is, at the same time, a time capsule and a logistical challenge that nobody trains on at drama school. Next comes a glimpse of jobs that had stalled in progress and the strange, even excruciating modes of completing the job already underway- by rewrites, substitute actors, recycled film, or even the make-up that organizes a nonexistence.
1. James Dean
James Dean gave us a filmography to memorise, and big enough to characterise a century of onscreen desire. He was killed in a car accident at the age of 24, when Giant was still in post-production, this immediately became an issue, which seemed almost banal compared to the tragedy: some of his dialogue became inaudible. Having no option of standard ADR, actor Nick Adams was hired by filmmakers to perform line dubbing to ensure the end version would come together. The effect saved a play which now acted as a star finding his own weight on the spot a climb taken, and suddenly closed.
2. Brandon Lee
The whole story was taut as a breakthrough story, until it wasn’t, when Brandon Lee rose. He succumbed to death at the age of 28 when he was on-set filming the Crow. The movie proceeded by a mixture of rewrites and stand-in and his stunt-doubler performed some of the scenes. That patchwork was also a part of the viewing experience the completed movie has the weird charge of a performer being there in the frame, but unavailable outside of the frame.
3. River Phoenix
By the time of his death, aged 23, due to a heroin and cocaine overdose outside the Viper Room, River Phoenix had already established a reputation of restless and searching performance when doing Dark Blood. The project was halted over the years after which it later surfaced in a revised version that was trying to fill the gaps that could not be filmed. Narration was employed by the director George Sluizer to mark the parts that were missing, a decision that transformed absence into a component of the film language, as opposed to a weakness that was being covered.
4. Aaliyah
Aaliyah was a young, glossy and still developing screen career when she was killed at 22 upon returning to shoot a music video in a plane crash. Her last movie, The Queen of the Damned, came after her demise, trapping her star image at the verge of a bigger acting existence. She also had filmed separately part of The Matrix Reloaded before her death resulting in the recast of the role of Zee. Since in her instance, the unfinished legacy is divided in what the viewers were presented with and what the filming timetable tells without much noise: a performer being staged to a more extended film future.
5. Heath Ledger
Heath Ledger was 28 when he passed away accidentally due to an overdose of drugs following his work on The Dark Knight and still in filming Terry Gillians The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. The resolution was also very literal: Gillian redesigned the movie to allow the character of Ledger to be embodied by several actors: Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell, as the plot shifted across altered realities. It maintained Ledger in the middle without imposing a counterfeit. The approach also took into account a difficult reality of performance: a face can be reproduced, but no rhythm, so the film preferred metamorphosis to imitation.
6. Tupac Shakur
The acting career of Tupac Shakur is frequently regarded as an interesting side piece to the music, but even then his on-screen presence was already taking shape into something different. He was shot dead at the age of 25, and had finished working on Gang Related that was later released. Writer-director Jim Kouf recounted the experience in a quote that sounded like a piece of paper in a less heated room: Tupac was a great guy to do business with, he said. He truly wished acting to act as his escape out of music realm… “He was a great guy. We had a lot of fun on set.” The movie was no longer an orient but an indicator testimony of a second road being already drawn up.
7. Paul Walker
The untimely demise of Paul Walker at the age of 40 in a car crash at the middle of the production on Furious 7 put the filmmakers in a tight spot between continuity and closure. The film was made through CGI and his brothers were used as stand-ins to complete outstanding work. This strategy brought to light a current reality of franchise filmmaking: the fact that when a character is a touchstone of a worldwide story machine, then the production can technically go on. What cannot be continued is the specific effortlessness with which Walker made the part, the charisma that was unforced and made even the most overcharged effects feel momentarily human.
8. Cory Monteith
The death of a young actor on television may have a different effect, since viewers are accustomed to several years of living with the characters. Cory Monteith passed away at 31 prior to the start of Glee shooting its fifth season. The series factored his death into the show and even devoted an episode -The Quarterback- to the character absence, but he did not directly tell how Finn died. The unfinished legacy, in this instance, was not in the visual effects, or even stand-ins, but in a decision by a writers room: the show had decided on a point to stop, and grief can exist without making it a storyline.
It is odd that these unfinished legacies have in common, the work is not owned by the individual but by the industry, and the obsessions of the industry, doubles, recycled footage, etc., become a part of the object. The last performances tend to be more intense not because it was planned to be so, but because the viewer is aware that the actor does not have the opportunity to leave the frame and the next scenes. Ultimately, it is not the patch used to complete a scene that lasts the longest. It is the feeling of the momentum seen, palpable and permanently discontinued.
