#it reminds me of marilyn monroe and how her life was an absolute tragedy but still her image and her fame are exploited

[dragonsandducks]

nothing ever has made me or will make me as mad as that fucking "most beautiful suicide" photo. a photo taken of a dead woman whose suicide note read, and i quote, "I don't want anyone in or out of my family to see any part of me. could you destroy my body by cremation?" and then SOME MAN comes along and takes a picture of her body and spreads it everywhere.

it still exists. the photo outlives her, it probably even outlives her family members. and it makes me so angry that this woman was not only denied her one final wish, but ogled by generations of people who ignore the fact that she was a depressed, mentally ill woman who fucking killed herself.

why is there no respect for the dead?

[filmista]

Jackie

Jacqueline (Jackie) Kennedy, It’s a famous name belonging to a famous and iconic woman. But what do we really know about the woman behind the name, who was she?

We know she was a woman of elegance, of grace of poise, the sort of poise you can tell under which shimmers great strength of character.

When we think of Jackie Kennedy, we almost immediately think of her husband John. F. Kennedy, there is a universal collective image of Jackie, beside her husband smiling and greeting, ready for both the camera and the people.

She looked as if she was ready for the world at all times. But that was a defense system of sorts too, an impenetrable, public persona because It’s in her mind what’s expected of the first lady, and partly by choice.

Which once again brings me to the question, who was the woman beneath the elegant dresses and Chanel suits? The word that comes to my mind is once again is impenetrable, inaccessible.

She has in a way remained as mysterious as her husband’s murder or the smile of the Mona Lisa, neither ever solved. And that’s exactly what Pablo Larraín tries to answer, who was Jackie Kennedy?

And in a way he succeeds, but in a way, she still remains a mystery. But at the same time we get peeks inside her mind, and yet it feels almost as if we’re intruding as if we’re watching from somewhere we shouldn’t be watching.

We discover that Jackie was a woman who values her privacy greatly, and who despite her public persona wasn’t always happy being the first lady, not always glad to be in the public’s eye.

A woman who loved her children, and her husband, but with whom she didn’t have a perfect, flawless relationship. They weren’t always the eternally happy, smiling couple from the photos and historic footage.

But she loved him. And that was the only thing shown to the outside world, any insecurities and annoyances were bottled up, stored inside herself.

And that there was a strain at times we know, both Kennedy brothers famously had an affair with Marilyn Monroe, the very wrong, quite heated, “Happy Birthday Mr. President”, is still as inappropriate and filled with erotic undertones as it was in its day.

One room in the film is referred to as the Monroe room, and unless the US had a president called something Monroe that I’ve somehow not heard of, I assumed it referred to Miss Monroe.

That bubbling up of emotions is something that keeps recurring, she looks strong as iron, but at the same time so fragile, that she seems like a glass that only by lightly ticking your finger against it, you could shatter.

Her face seems unreadable, yet she seems like the public facade can drop at any minute and that she could explode with all the stored emotions at any minute.

There is a constant internal struggle, between her public persona, the face Americans were allowed to see on tv, and how she really felt.

In that way, the film reminds me of another performance of hers, Black Swan. That is also a fight between ego, vanity, personal dignity and sanity. And a performance toward the outside world.

Not surprising, at least for me is that Darren Aronofsky helped produce Jackie. And while Jackie doesn’t have those same horror elements, there are times when it has that almost shrining restlessness and tension, and that same gory unsettling intimacy.

There is something terrifying, horrible, about seeing Jackie step out of her suit as if she is shedding her skin, allowing herself to be vulnerable, as the next minute she breaks down in the shower, with her husband’s blood sliding off her back, after the assassination in Dallas.

And she has no hurry to get the blood off, It’s almost as if she enjoys that something of her husband is still on her, not the same of course as when for instance a man is inside a woman during sex, and the woman wants him inside of her as long as possible, even after sex.

But it has that sort of intimacy to it, it feels like they’re one, one last time like she was really saying goodbye to him…  It’s horrifying and heartbreaking at the same time.

And you feel almost perverted watching it because she in that moment ought to be alone. And in these moments the line between reality and fiction is blurred for the audience, Natalie Portman is Mrs. Kennedy in those moments.

The assassination is something that has been featured in cinema aplenty, but never in such explicit and gory detail as here, here you see that Jackie got her husband’s blood and his brain literally splattered across her lap.

You really see the barbaric carnage a fire weapon can cause, and that she even desperately tried to hold his head together, after It’s literally been blown apart to seconds later feel him go limp, his vital signs fade while she was holding him in her lap. It is truly unspeakable...

This sort of sequence fits into the most disturbing and disgusting of horror films, but it really happened to her. What does such a thing do to someone? What effect does losing someone in such a horrible, haunting way have on someone? How do you not break down after that, go crazy or suppress the urge, to scream or break something?

Normally when people face such a tragedy, they have a right to mourn. Jackie had a struggle with herself, on one side she feels that she owed her husband a good, unforgettable funeral, she wants to do that for him.

But she weakens herself, by not allowing herself time to process because she felt she had to be a symbol of strength, something that would calm the American people.

But the sometimes lack of comprehension and compassion from people around her in the White House conflicts with her own vanity. She wants the best for her husband, while it seems the others want to swipe it under the carpet and resume things as quickly as possible, which is normal for a nation, the show must go on of course.

But she absolutely needed more emotional support, which she only gets from a bouffanted Greta Gerwig, and her children who yet couldn’t offer the support an adult could offer…

Thus what you see is a stoic, or forcedly stoic woman, alone, utterly alone, (while at the same time being adored by a nation) lost and drowning in the sea, or perhaps ocean of her grief and rage, with no one where or no one to go for relief.

And the times when she allows herself to drown are the eeriest. There’s a scene that gave me goosebumps: Jackie at one point drinks herself drunk almost to the point of oblivion. Puts on a record of the musical Camelot which her husband loved, then she wanders around the white house almost like a ghost, aimlessly, restlessly.

Her husband’s love for Camelot created the famous Camelot legend or myth surrounding the White House. Jackie said there would be other great presidents, but there would never be another Camelot. Maybe meaning that America would perhaps never thrive in such a joyous, beloved presidency and state again.

The film is framed around an interview that Jackie held a week after the funeral, with “the journalist” (Billy Crudup) - based on a conversation that Jackie had, in reality, with Theodore White, without being even mentioned by name. In it, she looks back on the successful tour that she gave for television on Valentine’s Day 1962 and the attempted assassination of JFK on November 22, 1963.

By the broken structure and fairly long flashbacks (and flashbacks within flashbacks) director, Pablo Larraín knows how to project her fragmented and scattered mind and mental state. Whether it really all happened is a guess.

Obviously, It’s drama and not a documentary and the Chilean filmmaker and his crew were free to interpret the events at their discretion and freedom. Most scenes are consistent with the facts of history and the memories of those around her. Her manipulative side, for instance, is most evident in the verbal sparring match with a very aggressively interviewing Crudup.

In this way, we see both snippets of her during her time in the White House and after her husband’s death. Yet I have to return to the question who was the woman? The answer to that is I still don’t know.

Clearly a very strong, resilient, kind, charismatic, elegant, proud and fiercely intelligent woman. who in truth maybe was quite the loner and didn’t want to be in the spotlight all the time, maybe only wanted a normal, ordinary family life, as she says “I never wanted fame, I just became a Kennedy.”

But I like that the film didn’t give us a definitive answer, but rather allowed us peeks into her psyche, it is for me more believable that way because no one is that easily defined, if you want cold hard facts, you might as well watch a documentary.

Jackie watches almost like a dream. The shots bathed in warm, romantic colors, framed with the hypnotic strings of Mica Levi’s music. But it’s a dream shrouded in a fog of grief, paralyzed by its downside. The film is set in the moments and days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The preparations for the funeral, the transfer of power. But those are just the events. It is not truly what Jackie is about.

Historian Ernst Kantorowicz distinguished once between the two bodies of the king: the natural, mortal body and the political body which transcends the earthly. In many of Shakespeare’s King pieces, both are visible and especially the conflict that arises between them. 

And in Jackie we see it, the emphasis Pablo Larraín puts for example on clothing. It begins with that familiar suit, that candy pink Chanel suit with gold buttons and black lining. When Jackie smiling and waving steps off the plane in Dallas, Texas she is a walking icon.

But that same suit becomes smeared with blood for all the world to see, and when she is alone she pulls it off, something Larraín films with an emphasis that makes it almost ritualistic. Here the natural body separates from the political body. The next shot is Jackie in the shower, her back turned to us.

Larraín frames the scenes about the immediate aftermath of the assassination of scenes in which Jackie will be interviewed by an in the film not named, but based on Theodore H. White journalist. 

This way Larraín introduces the citizens in the story. And they are (and by extension our) desire to gain access to Jackie Kennedy, to her emotions, her sadness. It is the mechanism of collective mourning, something the public sphere attracts and has a morbid fascination with but that is is actually so very private.

Jackie is filled with close-ups of the face of Natalie Portman. Front and centered on the screen. We can not avoid it. Larraín thereby gives the public what it wants: the sadness of the elusive Jackie Kennedy. But that sadness is as inevitable as it is screen filling, and becomes overwhelming, uncomfortable to watch. 

When Jackie tells the reporter how she was in the car with the head of her husband in her lap - the blood, the brains - we feel resistance. It shows the paradox that we want to enter the private sphere, leaving only the space for our imagination. And the reality is that that space does not exist. The grief, the trauma, all are pressed outward into our face. 

In one of the few other scenes where Jackie is alone clothes again play an important role. She puts on an LP of Camelot, the famous musical with Richard Burton and Julie Andrews of which hubby was a fan, and desperately tries on all kinds of dresses.

Desperately seeking that political body, which would allow to separate her from the all-consuming pain. It is a balancing act that is required of her. Between what remains private and what is public. Something that has always been something she was good at. But the murder has put a gigantic, dividing, unbearable weight between the two and she doesn’t know which persona to present at which times. 

The title role is with phenomenal acting taken on by Natalie Portman, she has everything down to perfection, Jackie’s elegance comes to life through her and above all, she knows how to imitate her voice without strikingly resembling her.

The entire film revolves around her, her experience, Portman is in every scene, carries the film, while she knows with an astonishing manner to capture the entire spectrum of emotions - and the different stages of grief. In addition, she shows us another side Jackie at each moment.

This along with the narrative style makes it somewhat difficult as a viewer to really sympathize deeply, as it feels as if you’re observing from afar. Portman, however, knows how to find the right balance and a deserved Oscar nomination was rightly hers, a true tour de force!

On how Portman imitates the voice of the former First Lady, there has been quite a lot of debate. That it can induce irritation in some people, is not that difficult to imagine, but if you listen to original recordings of the White House Tour from 62, you will learn that Jackie’s voice is approached almost to perfection.

In important supporting roles, we see an almost unrecognizable Greta Gerwig as her assistant Nancy Tuckerman, Peter Sarsgaard as an unrecognizable Robert Bobby Kennedy (and not in a good way) and John Hurt as the priest that Jackie holds a frank conversation about life and death and the nature of her marriage with.

Sarsgaard is the only frustratingly discordant note in an otherwise masterful film. With his acting work in itself, there is not even that much wrong and that he barely resembles the younger brother of the president (and also Minister of Justice), is still forgivable. But he also does not attempt to access Bobby’s voice and attitude.

Moreover, there is hardly any reference to the fact that he as a cause of his brother's death also fell into an emotional black hole and is going through a grieving process as well, he seems insensitive, untouched and I don’t find that realistic.

Of course, there are scenes in which he gloomily stares out at nothing in particular, but his version of Bobby Kennedy never really comes to life for the viewer. 

John Hurt shines with his sonorous voice in one of his last film roles before his death in early 2017 as a priest who has no answers to the questions of life which Jackie wrestles with but knows how to touch the deeper layer and offer her sympathy and consolation, just by really listening to her.

In other roles we John Carroll Lynch as a crass Lyndon B. Johnson, JFK’s successor and Richard E. Grant as designer Bill Walton. Phillipson, a Danish actor who has been chosen because of his likeness to the president was awarded little screen time and the only dialogue that he has, is unmistakably the voice of Kennedy himself.

Larraín knows how to with beautifully filmed, wordless scenes catch Jackie’s inner state of mind, supported by the unprecedented and ominous, unsettling almost horror like music Of Mica Levi. Central is also the “Camelot” closing song from the musical, a popular Broadway hit of that time, which was the basis for the myth of the Kennedy fairy tale in the White House.

Jackie is a fascinating character study that breaks the mold of the customary biographical fact cross list and sheds a new light on one of the most famous and at the same time most unfathomable women of the 20th century in her strong and weak moments.

Jackie: The truth? Well I’ve grown accustomed to a great divide between what people believe and what I know to be real. Journalist: Fine, I will settle for a story that’s believable. Jackie: That’s more like it. You know I used to be a reporter myself once. I know what you’re looking for. Journalist: I’m sorry? Jackie: A moment-by-moment account. That’s what you came here for, isn’t it? You want me to describe the sound the bullet made when it collided with my husband’s skull.

“I've read a great deal. More than people realize. The more I read, the more I wonder: When something is written down, does that make it true?”

[la-belle-crawford]

What's your favorite thing about Marilyn Monroe?

Oh boy, where do I begin. I guess its completely because Marilyn changed the world in more ways than one. Shes an iconic figure for a reason and the world is unwilling to forget that. Of course I admire her for her being such a strong female (becoming the second with her own production co., helping Ella Fitzgeralds career, being the first to speak openly about child abuse, rape etc.) but I seriously get some burst of pride everytime I remember that she was completely fine to admitting to her nude photoshoots. WOMEN ALL OVER MUST REMEMBER THAT!! Marilyn was posing naked and honestly who minded?? Do we refer to her as a slut or a whore?? NEVER! She honestly proves till now that the naked female body is probably the most beautiful thing in the whole wide world. She proves that a woman showing some skin does not show anything that should be degraded and looked down upon and certainly not criticised. 

 Apart from all her revolutionary actions, she amazes me because she seemed so real and “actual”. I understand that the “Marilyn” image was a facade but she still so raw. Very unlike Vivien Leigh or Greta Garbo who seem almost otherworldly. Marilyn was so raw it seems as if you could almost pass a hand right through her. And yet at the same time she was quite literally a moving orb of light. Who can create that sort of paradox without seeming phony. Absolutely no one. She was beautiful, very kind, talented and to me the “Marilyn” character didnt seem so much as a mask but more like a veil. Whenever you watch her, a part of Norma Jeane seems to ooze though. Its like what Natalie Wood said about her “When you look at Marilyn on the screen you don't want anything bad to happen to her. You really care that she should be all right...happy.” Probably the truest statement. 

 I dont exactly know how to correctly word this next part but please bear with me and try to understand. Marilyn was a tragedy. Throughout her life she was always being stripped by people around her or by herself. But when you watch her or learn more about her life it almost seems like everyones devastations were all put on her. We watch her and we can sense the complexity, the sadness, and we think sympathetically “ Oh what a darling girl, blessed and cursed, thank heavens that never happened to me but how I wish I couldve helped her.” What I mean is that she seemed to get every type of cruelty thrown her way to almost save others from getting it. And we watch from afar through a screen and feel like we should do something, but what??  In the simplest terms she was the epitome of a “Tragic Heroine”. No ones life should be that and yet hers was and she was still willing to bring some goodness and change into it. That is incredible bravery and the most mind blowing determination.

  Marilyn brought some sort of a light into this world that was never seen before nor can be mimicked even till today. I understand that Audrey Hepburn and her are probably the most recognisable “icons” from Old Hollywood (very unfortunately), but with all the Incredible goodness Audrey brought to the world (believe me I love her too) Marilyns seems to surpass that in a most unorthodox way. Audrey was astonishing with all her charity work but (please bear with me) in an almost perverse way, the world was more changed by Marilyn because she did everything to entertain us. And yes I know that charity and helping others and children (which Marilyn did as well) is much more important than entertainment, but as a whole we are practically run by methods of entertaining and distracting us. Marilyn was the first to push herself wholly into that whether she was aware or not. 

She was more different than anybody. No actual being has the power to change the atmosphere of an entire world and its people and yet somehow she was able to. It wont happen again, believe me. Marilyn is iconic and everywhere for a reason and thats why it angers me seeing her name being used so carelessly (and rather insulting) on merchandise and billboards etc. She must be remembered for everything she brought into the world that we didnt have before, along with her goregeous face and body. We have to somehow remind people of that. 

Im so sorry this is so lengthy but I didnt know how else to put it and she means a whole lot to me so i wanted to really express my true feelings about her. Im still not very confiident about how I worded everything but I hope you will still get the main idea:)) Anyways I love her truly (how can anyone not be madly in love with her) and I thank you very much for the question, have a lovely day

[itsiotrecords-blog]

http://ift.tt/2v4myaM

To be fair, not every celebrity on this list ended up choosing their final resting place, but in spite of that, they are, to be sure, strange and/or incredible places all the same. Below is a diverse list of TV writers, novelists, actors, martial artists, musicians, fathers of musicians, royalty, journalists, businesswomen, and the creator of likely the biggest entertainment company in the world, if not at least the best known entertainment company in the world. Each of these men and women— and one special dog— have either been made the lady of the lake, been given a gigantic new prescription for their glasses, stolen a man’s heart… literally, snorted or been smoked, traveled to outer space (or at the very least been blasted across the desert), and have appeared dead on screen… not to say they simply looked dead on screen, but the last anyone saw of them, they were on screen, and actually dead. So here are fifteen weird places celebrities have found themselves in death.

#1 The Game Of Death True, Bruce Lee‘s actual final resting place is in Seattle’s Lakeview Cemetery, where thousands of people go to visit him and his son, Brandon Lee (buried alongside his father), but there is a creepier, much more exploitative resting place of sorts for this martial arts master. Dying, shortly before the famed Enter The Dragon hit the box office, Bruce Lee appeared in several other films, post-mortem. Surely this is not an unusual occurrence, with partially shot films continuing production with stunt doubles, or just cutting with the footage they have, like in Brandon Lee’s final film The Crow, but there is something more sinister behind Bruce Lee’s final shots as a film star. The Game of Death, famous for the yellow jumpsuit that Uma Thurman similarly wears in Kill Bill, and for the epic fight between Lee and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, got away with using actual shots of Lee’s corpse, from funeral footage, being cut into the film. So if one is ever looking for Bruce’s final film resting place, one need only watch Game of Death.

#2 The Field Where Music Died Buried in the Lubbock Cemetery in Texas, one might not know of Buddy Holly’s final resting place for all of the commotion over the Clear Lake, Iowa memorial, looking over the site of the infamous crash that killed Ritchie Valens, Big Bopper, and Buddy Holly, on February 3, 1959— the day the music died. Along the sorrowful site, which includes an engraved guitar and record memorial, there is a gigantic tribute to Buddy Holly by way of his signature glasses. If one didn’t know any better, one might think that Buddy Holly wasn’t buried elsewhere at all, but left no remains in the crash and therefore had erected an enormous structure to remind people of the significance of his poor eyesight. Smack dab in the middle of farmer’s fields, one has to wonder if this symbol of tragedy is not taking up valuable real estate for the continued growth of that “American Dream” so readily believed in circa 1959.

#3 Princess Diana’s Monumental Memorial Park Buried in an Althorp estate in Northamptonshire, Princess Diana has become the mythical Lady of the Lake. Her resting place is on an island in Round Oval Lake, in a gigantic park (that the general public is allowed to visit one day out of every year), dedicated to the, for some reason, still adored face of the royal family circa the nineteen nineties. It’s not all that weird to have a resting place in a park, but in a park that people can visit only once every year; an enormous park, dedicated solely to her, with its own lake, riddled with ducks and four, specially placed black swans, topped off with an almost palace-like Grecian structure overlooking the island resting place from the mainland of the park… If not weird, it is at least a bit overzealous, to understate the enormity of the memorial. The royal family has not had any great significance since before the Great War, and Diana of all, was loathed by the majority of the royal family when she married into it anyway. Seems a bit weird.

#4 George Harrison Takes A Dip In The Ganges  Once described as “liquid love of life”, the Ganges is a supposedly mystical river in India where good karma flows through the bodies of those who bathe in its waters; a gift from the almighty, graced upon believers and skeptics alike. Never quite escaping the Hare Krishna phase of the Beatles’ legacy, like the rest of his band mates had after the LSD wore off, George Harrison, after being cremated by the friendly folks at Hollywood Forever (facilitators of perhaps the most frequently visited cemetery in the world), was taken to the sacred river, and cast about its waters, as well as at Allahabad, where the Ganges and two other holy rivers converge. The Hindu belief is that spreading one’s ashes about holy waters aids in the process of releasing the soul from one’s body, and escaping reincarnation, to make the final journey to Heaven. Who knows where Harrison is now, besides mingled with the ashes of many others, but My Sweet Lord, he did go peacefully.

#5 Blasted Across The Desert One of the most famous funerals of the twenty first century, to be sure, after taking care of the planning, taking interviews about how his funeral would be carried out and how his remains would be disposed of, and then finally setting the phone down after chatting with his wife and blowing his brains out with a .45, while she was still on the line, Hunter S. Thompson ended his life, but not the significance of it. Shortly after his death, actor and good friend of Thompson’s, Johnny Depp set out to foot the bill for the great tower, atop which sat a double-thumbed fist, holding onto a button of peyote, and through which a cannon would fire the famed journalist’s ashes. With a fabulous fireworks display of red, white, and blue, Hunter’s remains went out the very same way he did: with a bang! The unfortunate missing part of the above video is the moment where, as the cloud of smoke and ash billows over the cheering crowd, one of the onlookers tells his friends to “breathe deep… breathe deep!”; so badly did he want Thompson to be a part of them.

#6 You Know I Snorted My Father, Right? Alright, so this isn’t a celebrity resting place by any direct means, in that Keith Richards has not yet, however surprisingly, been found dead. That being said, this is still the case of a celebrity resting place because while his father was no celebrity, Keith certainly is, and he is now, himself, at least partially, the resting place of his father. “I opened my dad’s ashes and some of them blew out over the table, just because of the suction of the lid, you know what I mean? I looked at my dad’s ashes down there and— what am I gonna do? ‘Do I desecrate them with a dustbin and broom?’ So I wet me finger and I shoved a little bit of Dad up me hooter.” That’s right! Keith Richards snorted his father with, upon further elaboration in an interview, a bit of cocaine because let’s be honest, if you’re already a drug fiend, and you’re already putting your father up there, you may as well get a fix at the same time. Not having snorted the entirety of his father’s ashes, Richards put the rest “round an oak tree, which is coming up a treat.” So a celebrity resting place in a sense, Keith Richards continues to boggle minds.

#7 Just About As Ugly As Ichabod Crane… Making it all the way to the ripe old age of eighty seven (well past ripe in her case), Leona Helmsley was once as big a mogul in the business world as Donald Trump, if not even bigger. Instead of bankrupting herself so many times as Trump, she was caught evading taxes, since “Only the little people pay taxes” according to her view of the world. This billionaire, dubbed “The Queen of Mean” for her incredibly bitchy persona, Helmsley only served twenty one months of her sixteen year sentence, paid her seven million dollars in fines, and had her employees do her pot-prison community service for her. Amazingly not dying of a heart attack at her sentencing in trial, she did eventually suffer from heart failure, leaving twelve million to her dog, and nothing for her grandchildren. Where would such a monster end up? Well, many likely wishing her headless, and absolutely more hideous to look at than Ichabod Crane, Helmsley was laid to rest in Sleepy Hollow, in a 1.4 million dollar mausoleum. It’s doubtful that Washington Irving ever expected such a hideous creature to truly come to the little township North of New York City.

#8 In The Vault, Like So Many Classics What’s weird about this one, is how very not weird it is. The lavish, luxurious Marilyn Monroe, known the world over by men and women alike (and known very well by a number of famous men), after all of her flash and pizzazz, was laid to rest in the Westwood Memorial Park Cemetery, and while she is accompanied by some greats like Dean Martin, Peter Falk, and Frank Zappa, it does seem like a less than lavish way to go, being stuck in a wall of vaults, surrounded by other corpses of former glory. That being said, Monroe’s presence along the crypt wall has certainly raised the price of real estate there, causing a bidding war that jacked the price of the vault above her to a staggering 4.6 million dollars. Surely many wanted to be on top of Marilyn in her time, but in death it seems a steep price to pay for such an honour. All the same, visitors to the site adorn the vault with well-plied, lipstick kisses, which makes one wonder… were there that many women who really loved her, or are there that many men willing to make a last impression?

#9 Shelley & Her Lover’s Heart It’s not so much the resting place here, as it is what is in the resting place. Famed author Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein), was buried in St. Peter’s Church in Bournemouth, U.K., way back in 1851. Nothing weird about that. What is weird, however, is what Mary took with her when she died. Having drowned many years before Mary’s death, the famed poet Percy Shelley was cremated… all but his heart turned to ash. Unscathed (speculating calcification from TB saving it from the flames), the heart was turned to Mary, who kept it with her in a silk shroud. Unfortunately here is where the story deviates, depending on who is telling it, but the story once went that, wrapped in paper, Percy’s heart was placed in the casket with Mary Shelley. Unfortunately this incredibly romantic story turns out to be a poetic fantasy as the poet’s heart was interred with his son’s body, wrapped in the pages of Adonais (one of Percy’s last poems) in the family vault. So in a sense, his heart was reunited with his wife, but not until some time after her death.

#10 Sewn Into A Pillow After an incredible number of years, toting around a jar of ecstasy pills, snorting cocaine off any surface possible, and indulging in a big breakfast of anti-depressants, it’s no wonder that Michael Hutchence of INXS fame was found dead, hanging behind the main door of his hotel room. Whether auto-erotic or not, Hutchence died of asphyxiation, and thus ended an incredible career of excess. After very publicly and dramatically accusing ex-husband Bob Geldof of murdering Hutchence, and declaring that she would dye her prospective wedding dress black for Michael’s funeral, love Paula Yates attempted suicide, hooked up with a heroine addict in rehab, then fought for the ashes of Hutchence. Split between three urns: one for his mother and father respectively, and one for Paula, Hutchence was morbidly carried around everywhere that Yates went, until she finally sewed his ashes into a Gucci pillow of hers, so that she could still sleep with him. And who knows: maybe some of the prozac, booze, cocaine, and prescription meds are still in the ashes to help comfort her. As for the rest of poor Hutchence, he remains in his mother’s home, and in the ocean blue in the Sydney harbour in Australia.

#11 To Infinity And Beyond Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, as well as, eventually, actor James Doohan (Scotty), had the journey of a lifetime, after their deaths, continuing as they did in their work lives: among the stars. Celestis, a company that capitalizes on the grieving families of the deceased, offers the chance for the dead to “experience” space travel. Of course services are given on a sliding scale starting from ���missions” to space that then return to Earth ($1,295), to Earth orbitals ($4,995), to Lunar orbitals ($12,500), and finally journeys to deep space ($12,500). Again, these prices are all “starting from”, so the more money you pay, the more fun your loved one’s ashes will likely have in space. Regardless of the ridiculously priced comfort people pay for in terms of grieving, there is certainly no better way for the likes of Roddenberry (his wife also) and Doohan to go than out into deep space, where they spent so much of their lives pretending to be. Though one might wonder what becomes of all of this space junk (especially to those in orbit), since what goes up, must eventually come down, as society has learned one too many times with satellites, and the like.

#12 There’s No Place Like Hollywood… The lovable Terry (Toto), was a Cairn terrier, with a not-so-original name, likely based simply on her breed. That’s right, HER breed. Born at the outset of World War II, and dying shortly after its end in 1945, Terry had performed in nearly a dozen movies with Shirley Temple, Spencer Tracy and, of course, the tragic Judy Garland. After her death, Terry was buried behind owner Carl Spitz’s property, where a number of other four-legged stars were laid to rest (Spitz being one of the forerunners for animal training in Hollywood). During the expansion of the Ventura Freeway, the property was purchased, and the burial grounds were destroyed, and one can only hope that the pet cemetery haunts motorists to this day on the massive freeway. Regardless of the fact that Terry’s remains were disturbed, and covered over with concrete, she remains immortalized as her most famous, male persona with an erected monument to Toto in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

#13 Give Me To The Highest Bidder Novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor Truman Capote, one of America’s most celebrated (especially for the renowned Breakfast At Tiffany’s), is perhaps one of the first deceased celebrities to be able to claim (if he were alive) to have had his remains sold off. Yup, Capote, after his death, was given to best friend Joanne Carson (Johnny Carson‘s ex-wife). Carson died only last year, and plenty of items went up for auction, including the remains of Truman Capote, packed neatly away in a beautifully carved Japanese box. Not wanting to merely sit on the shelf in death, it seems Capote will be getting his wishes, as the successful bidder for his ashes intends to travel with him, for sure. After his cremation in 1984, Truman was valued at $6000, but just last year was sold at auction for $45,000! A number of other Capote items went on the block as well ranging from clothing, to ice skates, and even prescription bottles that Carson had for some reason, that left the auction for $5000. Always living large, it seems that Truman Capote is still worth quite a bit to people, and will not find some new home in the arms of an anonymous bidder.

#14 Tupac Got Smoked… Literally Tupac‘s remains went just as Tupac himself did: he was smoked. Granted, when Tupac died it was because he was smoked by bullets in a drive-by shooting, but this grandiose hip-hop artist, riding with Death Row Records run by the absolutely, certifiably insane Suge Knight, was hit four times: twice in the chest, once in the arm, and once in the thigh, as he stood out the sunroof of the car he was in. The crime still remains unsolved, and while Notorious B.I.G. was accused of being involved in the shooting, he denied everything, swore he was in the studio recording that night, and was himself, a year later, shot and killed in a drive-by shooting. Dealing with the thug life, as well as the drug life, it’s no wonder that Tupac Shakur, upon being cremated, was partially divvied up among friends, rolled up with some primo ganja, and smoked. Made ever closer to his friends, Tupac went out in both the thug life and the drug life, smoked both ways in the end.

#15 A New Meaning To Disney’s Frozen Resting in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, it is indeed very sad to learn that the claim that Walt Disney was cryogenically frozen is in fact false. How perfect would that have been? That being said, the reason that there are so many claims about Walt being frozen is because of the claims of Bob Nelson, president of the California Cryogenics Society. Before Disney died, rather quickly, of lung cancer, it is claimed that he was in discussion with Nelson about wanting to be preserved until such a time that he might be cured, and then continue to live on (in spite of how shady the workings of cryonics are, even to this date, never mind how they were in 1966). Realistically, Walt Disney Sr. was cremated, and not frozen, no matter how perfect that would have been for Disney today, given all of the hype, even still, over Disney’s Frozen. I suppose we’ll just have to “Let It Go”.

Source: TheRichest