Reaper Man

It is the fate of nearly all humans to die alone, unloved and unmourned, forgotten long before death by a society addicted, like vampires, to the virgin blood of vigorous, unaffected youth. The allure is strong, then, for an ironically-named untimely death, allowing the still-potent narcotic of vigor and potential to splash, to bloom and diffuse in the stream of living cultural consciousness, borne away, indelible, on the eternal current of memory. James Dean will always be 24 years old, a lost Brando. The longer-lived Brando is the fat guy dressed in a bedsheet hamming and mumbling his half-hearted way through The Island of Doctor Moreau. Oh, if only he'd died right after Streetcar...

One can only imagine what a sleepless night thinking is for any member of *NSync not named Timberlake. An ill-timed plane crash, though unforgiving on the vital organs, can cement a cultural legacy through at least one generation. Sure, we assume Buddy Holly would have preferred to make it to his 23rd birthday, but would that really have been the best thing for his reputation? And how sure are we that playing "Peggy Sue" four nights a week for the afternoon LifeAlert crowd in Branson, MO is really that much better than being dead?

I guess what I'm saying is Kurt Cobain, John F. Kennedy, Bruce Lee, John Lennon... man, they got off kind of easy.

None of them lived long enough to have a week like Dave Letterman has. Every moment, every incident, every banged secretary is another opportunity for the press and the public to reasses and reasses and reasses again your position in the pop culture zodiac until eventually, inevitably, you are ground to ashes and dust.

Or you end up on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! with Pia Zadora and Alf.

Either of which, I've heard, are what happens when you die anyway, so where's the benefit?

Consider Heath Ledger: premature death = Oscar. Regular non-death = a string of films that could only disappoint after the cachet of Brokeback Mountain or the overwhelming, nearly unprecedented success of The Dark Knight. Next thing you know it's 2014 and you're doing Brokeback II: Young Stallions directed by Uwe Boll. Oh, and prolly no Oscar.

To paraphrase that other guy from The Dark Knight, you either die a hero, or you live long enough to be exposed as a singularly fallible middling talent who's also kind of a douchebag.

But then, he should know. He followed that movie with Love Happens. Case in point.