Focus Features3:45 p.m. PT: The SAGs honor Heath Ledger tonight. I trust and hope it'll be as heartfelt as Jason Sedillo's tribute.
I met Jason outside the Shrine, where I was interviewing a protester who was holding the cruelest sign I had ever seen. It read "Heath in Hell."
Sedillo stood beside the young woman, Jael Phelps, of the notoriously antigay Westboro Baptist Church, of Topeka, Kansas, with his own sign. It read "I'm sorry for them/R.I.P. Heath."
Sedillo was sorry. I was inspired.
On Friday night, Sedillo told me, he read that Westboro Baptist was planning to picket the SAGs, Heath and his work in Brokeback Mountain.
Right then and there in Fort Worth, Texas, where Sedillo serves as a church youth minister, the 30-year-old decided to plunk down $800, fly to Los Angeles and show up at the SAGs himself. With his own sign. To say he's sorry for something he wouldn't dream of saying himself.
To be honest, Sedillo's sign wasn't much of a sign—it was a little dry-erase board, and his message was scribbled in green ink. The passengers in the passing limos probably couldn't even see it.
"Here's a guy," Sedillo said of Ledger, "who didn't do anything but perform in movies."
But that was enough. As was Sedillo's sign.