New York magazine's Vulture blargh smells a rat in Leon Wieseltier's "thoroughly entertaining" review of a Martin Amis book from yesterday's New York Times. In a strange non sequitur, Wieseltier wrote that formerly living actor Heath Ledger once said of Phillip Seymour Hoffman's Oscar (Ledger was also nominated that year for Butt Cowboys 3: Paul Haggis' Revenge): "I thought it was for the best acting, not the most acting." Funny and sort of accurate, but untrue! says Vulture. Conducting a thorough Google search, they were unable to find any mention of this Heath Ledger bon mot. Did Wieseltier make it up? Was it just a small, unconfirmed anecdote he picked up somewhere? Either way, Vulture doesn't like that Ledger's rep will now be sullied for saying a sort of mean thing once, years ago. When he was alive. [NYM]

We weren't the only ones disturbed by that scratchy and highly controversial video showing Heath Ledger at a cocaine-filled party that emerged days after his untimely death. And now, an ex-girlfriend of one of the photographers present at the party is suing her ex's paparazzi agency under the alias "Jane Doe" for setting up the actor in an attempt to secretly tape him using drugs:

Believe it or not, the last person we'd expect to perpetuate the Terry Gilliam Curse recently landed in the emergency room: Verne Troyer, soon to be seen as Mike Myers' tiny bad-joke magnet in The Love Guru, was reportedly dispatched to a hospital outside Vancouver while shooting Gilliam's near-doomed Heath Ledger project The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus:

Healthwatch! Verne "Mini Me" Troyer has reportedly been "rushed to the hospital" with vaguely described flu-like symptoms. Troyer has been working on The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus, the same film that Heath Ledger was starring in at the time of his death. [Us]

Prewar building. Stainless-steel appliances. All-night pharmacy around the corner. Service staff have Mary-Kate Olsen's phone number memorized. Get all the details on this apartment, which all but reeks of celebrity death, in the glorious Craigslist ad after the jump.

• Heath Ledger may have a love child in Australia, the late actor's uncle said, which would mean he has two children. Isn't that straight out of Lost? I mean, except for the part about Heath fathering the child while 17 and still in grammar school with a woman eight years older who already had a boyfriend. [Daily Telegraph via HollyScoop]

The AP's Dave Germain has quite the feverish, myth-churning Heath Ledger tribute making the rounds today, positioning the late actor's final film The Dark Knight as "arguably the biggest movie featuring a posthumous role in Hollywood history." But don't get your hopes up! The A-list parade of Ledger devotees that follows keeps his subtlety and charm as the Joker in ever-modest perspective:

Though Heath Ledger was busy racking up film roles in the years leading up to his death that fattened his wallet, there was one practical economic task he overlooked: updating his will. According to the Daily Mail, Ledger hadn't rewritten the document since 2003, one year before he met Michelle Williams on the set of Brokeback Mountain. As a result, the actor's sole beneficiaries will be his parents and now-estranged sisters, which leaves his daughter Matilda and Michelle out of the picture. But a surprising lack of assets in New York begs the question: how much did Ledger have to give, exactly?

A big magazine industry report came out, and it turns out People magazine's top selling regular issue last year featured Owen Wilson on the cover just after his attempted suicide. People's biggest seller so far in 2008 was about Heath Ledger's death. The magazine's top sellers of all time were Sept. 12, 2001 and just after Princess Diana died. But death and misery do not rule completely:

• Actor George Clooney Googled himself in front of Esquire and addressed the various rumors that popped up. On his alleged feud with Fabio: "There is a moment when you are actually in the argument and you're thinking, 'If I do get beaten down by Fabio, that will be far worse than the pain. I wouldn't shake that.'" On being called "gay, gay, gay:" "No, I'm gay, gay. The third gay – that was pushing it." [People]

What were the last moments of Heath Ledger's life like? Esquire doesn't have the exclusive! So their reporter Lisa Taddeo added a gimmick to her story about the actor's final days: She wrote her story in the first and second person as the late actor, using Chuck Palahniuk's dramatic narrative style (which is pretty close to Esquire's default). The magazine cleverly introduces the piece as "reported fiction," which means we don't get to know which details of Taddeo's piece are true. So why didn't she just invent the whole thing? That seems easier. [Photo: Getty]

Ryan Phillippe is thinking of leaving L.A. He's tired of having the paparazzi following him and his family everywhere he goes. Mary-Louise Parker thinks the paparazzi culture is sick. And Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have opted to travel permanently rather than give the paparazzi a chance to wait outside their eco-friendly gates. But with the popularity of digital cameras and stalking celebrities, there's no escaping fame and having said fame photographed. And whiners complaining to major news outlets are complicit in a culture that has them photographed picking up trash.

Two doctors are being investigated by the feds in connection with actor and Soho resident Heath Ledger's death. The Daily News reports that one doctor in California and one in Texas supplied Ledger with Vicodin and Oxycontin, and the feds want to know if the whole deal was legal. Nothing has been established yet. The two painkillers were among the six drugs in Ledger's system when he died of an overdose in January. [NYDN]

One of the last things Heath Ledger left us with is a video for Nick Drake's "Black Eyed Dog." An admitted obsession of the actor, Drake was a British folk music prodigy in the '70s who suffered from debilitating depression, eventually O.D.ing on an antidepressant at age 26. Until now, the video managed to avoid getting leaked on the web, and was screened only twice: "Labor Day weekend at the Bumbershoot festival in Seattle and a second time in October at 'A Place to Be,' an event honoring Drake held in L.A." Last night, Australian A Current Affair broadcast parts of the video.

"It was about how we all have different consciences and voices in our head that tell us what to do and how to react. They're not good or bad, they're just voices that we hear, telling us how to behave. That's what the other figures are in the painting." [Page Six]

According to an extensive New York profile out today, Heath Ledger spent his final days deeply engrossed in researching and writing a script based on the life and death of Nick Drake. In case you missed the whole Drake resurgence of the late `90s (spurred by Volkswagen's usage of his song "Pink Moon" in a now-classic advert), he was an English singer-songwriter who battled insomnia and depression before overdosing in his bed at age 26. Sounds sickeningly familiar, right? According to the piece, Heath's last weeks involved saying goodbye to the Nice Guy character he'd played publicly since the birth of his daughter Matilda and falling into another role altogether: a depressed, masked public figure who, consumed with writing the Drake screenplay, just might have got too close to his subject.

Deceased Soho resident Heath Ledger will be replaced by three separate actors—Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell— in his unfinished final role in "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus." [Ain't It Cool News]

It's no big deal for Mattel to release a toy that just happens to look like a recently deceased actor in conjunction with a popular action flick, especially when the family approves. But imagine you've somehow gone home with a comic book nerd, and he shows you his "collection." What is the one possible way he could further creep you out?

Take this with a grain of salt, but AICN is reporting that Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus director Terry Gilliam has cast Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law to film the remaining scenes that Heath Ledger was to have played. If word from Harry Knowles' camp ends up being true, it'll be quite a score for both the project and the notorious bad-luck magnet Gilliam. While it remains to be seen how Heath Ledger's scenes will be integrated into the final product, we can all agree that this casting news is a definite improvement over Christopher Plummer's vision of using "stills and something I think they call CGI" to save the flick. [AICN]

No one ever said the paparazzi were tasteful (far from it!), but sometimes they still manage to surprise us with their indelicate lensing. Like the photos of Michelle Williams that are floating around today. The images show Williams, who had a relationship (and a child) with now deceased actor Heath Ledger, walking past, get this!, a skeleton. The fake set of bones is being used in a film shoot or something. OMG, because her ex-boyfriend just died! Poetry! If you're curious about what sadness looks like, a photo lies after the jump.