Heath Ledger Scholarship Awards

Heath Ledger & winners : Matt Levett , Emilie Cocquerel and Lily Sullivan

  Matt Levett was announced the winner of the prestigious 2015 Heath Ledger Scholarship Award and Emilie Cocquerel and Lily Sullivan were named the runners up.
For the high calibre judging panel at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in Los Angeles the choice was not an easy one to make. Emmy award winning casting director, Laray Mayfield (Fight Club, Gone Girl, House of Cards, The Social Network), who joined the panel for the first time this year said, ‘It was inspiring to be on a judging panel where every person was passionate and invested in the result. The decision was not easy as each of the applicants are talented and unique and we are sure they will have long and lovely careers."
At the awards: 

at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in Los Angeles : Denise Roberts, Phil Noyce, Luke Hemsworth & Mark Morrisey

Grin And Bear It!

Robert Redford at Sundance

A BIG THUMBS UP  for actor Nash Edgerton's short film Bear which premiers today at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in Utah. The Sundance Festival was created in 1978 and the actor Robert Redford is chairman,.

Directed by Edgerton, Bear stars Nash with Teresa Palmer and Warwick Thornton. Below is a clip from the film which was produced by Lauren Edwards and John Polson of Tropfest fame.

Joel & Nash

 Nash Edgerton's credits are possibly longer than his brother and fellow actor Joel Edgerton who has now finished working on The Great Gatsby. Nash has worked as a stunt double in umpteen Aussie productions and on Gatsby, stands in for brother Joel.

### Michelle Williams, the mother Heath Ledger's baby daughter Matilda Rose has been nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in the film My Week With Marilyn.

Not Such Happy Feet 2

Every time the Shuttle has encountered film director George Miller over the past few years he has been wearing his 'lucky shirt'- a black silk number with three embroidered red peppers. Sadly it looks like his luck is waning of late.

After the brilliant success of the Oscar winning Happy Feet, the charming cartoon film about penguins, it's successor Happy Feet 2 has opened  in the USA with dismal takings of only $22M which doesn't bode well for it's future success.

Most reviewers are praising the 3D effects in the kid's movie but the bad box office takings are creating spin off damage. It's rumoured around 200 staff will be laid off at Miller's Sydney animation studios based in the magnificent art deco Metro Theatre in Kings Cross.

Further rumours are flying around that Miller's new Mad Max movie Fury Road could be in trouble. The flick is the fourth in the series and will star Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron. The first three shot Mel Gibson to international stardom .  
Fury Road has already had some major hick-ups with an 2003 starting date with the late Heath Ledger in the lead role being cancelled followed by shooting in Namibia being post-poned because of the Iraq invasion.

Now pre-filming which was to start in a few weeks outside Broken Hill where many scenes from the first 3 films were shot has been abandoned.  Recent and unusually heavy rains have transformed the desert which doubled as a post nuclear war terrain into a green paradise !.
Location managers are desperately looking for a similar area in Australia. They could always try Maralinga in SA which is a real-life post-nuclear frontier. Seven giant nuclear bombs and hundreds of smaller ones were exploded there between 1955 and 1963 making it the most nuclear bombed country on the planet. 

Marianne Faithful's Nemesis Photographer Dies

One of Australia's most popular photographers Peter Carrette has died of a heart attack.

 Regarded as the gentleman of the paparazzi, London born Carrette first came to prominence when he photographed Marianne Faithful in a drug coma in her hospital bed in 1969.

Faithful had travelled to Australia with Mick Jagger who was to star in a film about Ned Kelly. She had over-dosed after it was claimed she had discovered Jagger in bed with another woman.

Carrette borrowed a white doctor's coat and stethoscope and sneaked into Faithful's room, took the photo that was flashed around the world as one of the first examples of intrusive photography. Earlier this year when Faithful was in town for an arts festival, she told the Shuttle she'd still like to give the snapper a "quick boot in the backside". However she conceded she had forgiven him.

After studying photography in London, Carrette travelled to Sydney and snared a job as Sir Frank Packer's copy boy when the media mogul owned the Daily Mirror newspaper.

Once established, he worked for various publications photographing news stories. He gatecrashed the US invasion of Grenada by hiring a smuggler's boat while the world's media waited for official transport in Barbados, worked in New York for 6 years and  photographed  for Vogue in Paris for 2.

More recently he and another photographer squirted the actor Heath Ledger with water pistols at a Sydney film premiere-again in an action where the film of a startled Ledger was flashed around the world. Briefly banned by film companies from red carpet premieres, Carrette later made peace with Ledger shortly before he died in New York.

Carrette also supported an orphanage in Cambodia by donating the fees received from his exclusive candid photos of celebrities often taken around the beach at Bondi.

 For the past few years Carrette had been running his own studio and photo distribution service from a Bondi flat where he had lived for the past 20 years. The flat is owned by his good friend , the actor Jack Thompson.

Carrette was concentrating on studio portraits and had just completed a series of studio shots of Danni Minogue when he died suddenly on Sunday evening from heart failure while working at his computer.

Was Heath Ledger Murdered ?

A startling claim has been made that Aussie actor Heath Ledger who died in 2008 was murderd by a mysterious group called the Star Whackers who are knocking off Hollywood celebrities.

Actor Randy Quaid who was released on bail in Vancouver, Canada today along with his wife Evi says the Star Whackers assassinated Ledger, David Carradine, who was found hanging in a Bangkok hotel room last year and brother of Sean Penn, Chris Penn who officially died from heart disease in 2006.



Randy & Evi- the Star Whackers are after them !



Plus 6 others are known to Quaid to have been murdered by the group.

Randy and Evi were under arrest in Vancouver on an immigration violation but have now applied for asylum in Canada after claiming the Star Whackers are hot on their trail.

But who are the other Hollywood Six, murdered by this shadowy group ? For more go here.

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Kate's lawyers after Aussie paparazzo....

        The report that Kate Middleton has instructed the Queen's lawyer's to pursue 2 photo agencies over the sale of snaps of Prince William's girlfriend adds more woes to Sydney based agency Ikon and it's likeable boss, the roguish snapper Peter Carrette. (right in white sunglasses)
   The report -on Murdoch's News Ltd website says the pics were offered to British newspapers, presumably The Sun and other News Ltd outlets but were graciously rejected but published in Germany (forgetting to mention the slight fact that the German publication is part Murdoch owned ).
   Carrette, who lives in a Bondi apartment owned by friend and actor Jack Thompson and originally from London, has lived most of his life patrolling Bondi Beach and snapping topless stars .
    He came a cropper in 2006 when he organised himself and 2 aides to squirt actor Heath Ledger with water pistols at a film premiere.

      "You need us " was their claim and Carrette fronted several TV interviews broadcast world-wide proclaiming his right to do just about anything to get a saleable snap.
    That stunt backfired badly when the giant film corporation Village Roadshow banned him from all future events. 2 days later Carrette was filmed walking up the steps of the late Ledger's recently purchased Bronte Beach seaside house and leaving a bunch of flowers at the door with a note.
       As he departed a male opened the door-ripped up the note and hurled the bouquet after Carrette. Within 2 months Ledger announced he was flogging his much loved house and moving to New York to escape probing cameras. He died there in 2008.
     But another blast from the past is about to arrive Downunder and is seeking an apology.

Mick Jagger's ex-girlfriend Marrianne Faithful will be in Sydney in a fortnight and has said she is still smarting from a snap taken as far back as 1967 when she and Mick arrived here for Jagger's film role as the bushranger Ned Kelly. Faithful ended up in hospital on day two after a suspected drug overdose.
      A photographer sneaked into the hospital in a doctor's coat with stethoscope and snapped Faithful as she lay in bed looking like death. The pic went around the world in a flash.

     tSS spoke to Faithful via telephone a week ago about her up-coming appearance at the Sydney Opera House where she will be joined on-stage by the Federal Environment Minister and fromer Midnight Oil's singer Peter Garrett and actor Tim Robbins in a show conceived by actor Johnny Depp.
      Asked about the infamous snap, Marrianne said she  had "sort of forgiven the photographer but  I might just give him a kick in the balls if I run into him "
       Step forward Peter Carrette . According to the News Ltd piece Middleton's lawyers have asked for financial compensation. Carrette claims he receives $50,000 a picture-even claiming that was what he received for the Faithful hospital snap in '67 (which in today's money would be about half a million). Plenty enough  for a lead-lined jock-strap to protect those bollocks.

finally Britain's TIMESONLINE catches up to the Shuttle

     Twice in early December we reported on the collapse of the dreaded paparazzi who until the death of Princess Diana were making a decent living. But when that car crash happened, something else strange occured.

     A whole new breed of semi-professionals were unleashed-the majority being obnoxious kids with a new digital camera who thought they were out to make a fortune and adopted an attitude of such arrogance they simply became a complete pain in the butt.

        Even worse, a new breed of so-called "publicists" began to take them seriously and put them at the top of every guest list.

      It peaked for us in Sydney about 6 years ago when a buffoon of a PR 'consultant ' refused tSS and guest, entry to a store promotion he was grandly managing (with the usual suspect guest list that make up the 'd-list') , whilst inside at least 10 shabby "paps"  grinned away almost triumphantly.

      And thus Count Paolo Zegna, (pictured left) Chairman of the legendary Zegna Group in Milan and tSS trudged off for supper at Aria Restaurant at Circular Quay.

        tSS has worked for the elegant Count Zegna for many years when he travels to Australia to present awards for the finest of the world's wool.    We made hurried excuses that it was the wrong function but it was difficult not to notice the boutique we were about to enter, was a franchise of one the world's major Italian designers-a close friend of Zegna's.

The party was a PR disaster. The only person worth photographing had been booted.  No publicity ensured.

 tSS hexs are very strong. Be warned.

We finally threw in the towel when the late actor Heath Ledger was squirted with water pistols by a bunch of gung-ho paps at a film premiere which literally drove him to sell his Sydney beach-side house and flee to the US. "You need us" they yelled. Not any longer.

Giles Hattersley writing in the Times says it all better here..

 an exert :

    

Paparazzi: A flash in the pan

The paparazzi used to earn big bucks from snapping celebrities, but their moment in the limelight is over

Dan Weir, a 20-year-old paparazzo from south London, heads into the West End most days at 6pm. This is the unofficial handover hour, when the daytime snappers stop bothering the Wags on Bond Street so the night shift can start bothering them outside Mahiki.

As ever, the same worries race through Weir’s mind. Is Kate in town? Will Cheryl be out? Will she wear a scandalously teensy ensemble guaranteed to boost his bank balance? “It isn’t glamorous like it sounds, though,” he says. “It’s a job, and it’s getting harder.”

                                                        

He’s right. Stifle your sobs, people, but thanks to dwindling reader interest and a ferociously litigious gaggle of pap-suing harpies (never say the words “Sienna” and “Miller” to a photo hack: they’ll rip your ears off), the pack is in trouble.

After a decade of steady pay for any old snap of celebrity detritus, in the past 18 months the spoils have shrunk. Dramatically.

“It’s got tough,” says Ken Goff, who runs GoffPhotos, a top agency that supplies candid sleb shots and red-carpet fare to the tabs.

“A year ago, you could get a picture in one of our main daily papers — The Sun, Mirror, Star or Mail — and it would be worth £500. Now, with one of those papers, you’re lucky to get £170.” One picture editor tells me that rates can fall as low as £40 for a half-decent shot. That’s if he deigns to publish it at all.

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### Count Zegna has announced that his Wool Awards in Australia -suspended in 2009 over the great muesling of sheep scandal, will resume this year for Zegna's centenary celebration.