Heath Ledger's Final Days Among the Masses

“The company started as a dream,” says Cline, Masses’ executive producer and the collective’s first official hire. “Heath kind of came in and made that dream a reality. We were all, literally, living the dream of working in a collective of artists, where everyone had great respect for each others’ work and talent, but we also had this great force behind us to actually make things happen.”

Needless to say, it’s been a tough year for the Masses. Six months ago, one of their own died. Beyond the devastating loss of their friend on a personal level, the collective itself is in recovery mode. The dream has been deferred. What once was promise is now hope, and what once was written in ink no longer applies.

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• Matt Amato
• Heath Ledger
• Jon Ramos
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Hence, Marfa, where the Masses would like to conjure the spirit they had only just begun to tap into. “I feel like this is something that we all have to do together,” Cline explains, “and I feel like it’s important that everyone be there. I guess it’s the promise of great adventure, sure, but also how meaningful it could be to show all of our work in one place, and finally say, this is what the Masses is. There’s a band playing outside. There’s artwork on the walls. There are films screening. Finally, we’ll have a chance to exhibit all of our work in one place. That’s incredibly significant to me.”

Many striking images hang on the walls of the Masses’ Hollywood office, a four-room second-floor space with windows overlooking a busy thoroughfare. There is an illustration of a big lightbulb, its coil twisted in the shape of an M, created by Masses designer Daniel Auber. An original French movie poster for Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz. A dark, ominous wall-size painting of a solitary man treading water in an endless ocean, by Andrew Campbell, hued in deep greens, browns and blacks. And a jumbo flatscreen monitor, which usually features one of the dozens of images and stills taken over the years of Heath Ledger, the Masses’ guiding force.

(Click to enlarge)

(Click to enlarge)

Tristan Bayer

(Click to enlarge)

Safe haven: Heath Ledger, right, with Matt Amato (sitting), Sara Cline and Alex Ebert gathered around the computer.

Now, though, the picture lording over Amato and Masses president Bryan Younce is a close-up of the British singer Dido, the most recent object of Amato’s affectionate eye. While most of his people are spreading the Masses message in Marfa, Amato has been filming the British chanteuse in a studio on Santa Monica Boulevard. His footage, soft and precise, has the warm tone of the early 1960s, of Aretha in Muscle Shoals, of Dusty in Memphis, of an Atlantic Records album cover — timeless and honest.

“Matt has always said that every person is like a star,” notes Younce, who in his day job as vice president of Video and Content Production for Sony/BMG Music Entertainment, oversees both big-budget Miley Cyrus videos and smaller-budget MGMT spots.

“Every man and woman is like a star,” confirms Amato, sitting on his workstation balance ball. “Absolutely. That’s my MO. Make them feel like a star.” And you can see it in his work, whether it’s his luxurious video for Mia Doi Todd’s “Night of a Thousand Kisses,” which honors sunlight, seduction and sensual dance; his kinetic portrait of the San Franscisco duo the Dodos, during a performance of their song “Fools”; or his masterfully erotic video for Ima Robot’s “Lovers in Captivity,” featuring not only lead singer Alex Ebert but also the actor and Masses member Brady Corbet. The video, I hereby submit, is one of the great music clips of the 21st century.

But then, I’m more than a little biased. I first met Amato in St. Louis while working in a record store after college (I recommended American Music Club’s California; he loved it so much that he returned from San Francisco the next year for Christmas with the band’s lead singer, Mark Eitzel — they had fallen for each other and had become a couple). When I relocated to Los Angeles last year, I moved into Amato’s apartment, a vast and elegant second-story space in a white Spanish-style Hancock Park duplex, which he was sharing with his then-boyfriend, artist Andrew Campbell. The two had shared the place for years with actress Lisa Zane. She brought her brother Billy Zane into Amato’s orbit. And, after meeting a 17-year-old Heath Ledger on the set of the short-lived, Shaun Cassidy–created fantasy series called Roar, she lured the up-and-coming Australian actor to Hollywood and said he could live at the apartment on South Orange Drive with her, Campbell and Amato. It was the beginning, as they say, of several beautiful friendships.