Kevin Spacey

[Howyoudoin]

Am I to throw away all of the DVDs that I have, where one of my favourite actors, is starring?

Well I won't. Stuff that.

American Beauty and Usual Suspects are right up there with my favourite ever films and I really couldn't give a monkeys toss what he has been up to in his personal life as long as he hasn't broken the law. If he has, why is he not in jail?

Bah, this sucks.


HYD

[vrdiver]

The current mood music is that there's no smoke without fire and that personal character (or fault within it) trumps artistic measure.

Even if the artist is guilty, does that make their work less? There is also the impact on all their collaborators on a piece of work; why should they be tossed into oblivion just because they were unfortunate enough to work together?

It is possible to appreciate the talent of an individual, whilst at the same time rejecting their behaviour. For example:

“To Richard Strauss, the composer, I take off my hat,” the conductor Arturo Toscanini once famously declared. “To Richard Strauss, the man, I put it on again.”

We are (in the UK) Bowdlerised by such artistic censorship. Gary Glitter is expunged from pop culture (my niece had never heard of him), Top Of The Pops episodes are edited or simply not shown, due to accusations (or guilty verdicts) against some of the presenters, Rolf Harris's works are gone from sight; when was the last time you heard "Two Little Boys" at Christmas?

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Paul McCartney had been found guilty of abusing Heather Mills? Would The Beatles, Wings and the man himself have been cast out from collective enjoyment? Would "The Beatles Experience" in Liverpool have had to close its doors in shame?

Just as I can like a human being but think their artistic ability is terrible, I can enjoy the artistic work of a terrible person without having to like them.

VRD

[formoverfunction]

Wagner anyone?

[CommissarJones]

Regrettably, I must confess to having recently seen Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors for the first time. Even worse, I liked it. (The casting of Martin Landau and Jerry Orbach as brothers was a great idea, IMV.) I realise that this makes me a terrible person.

[Charlottesquare]

Polanski is another, I would not refrain from watching Chinatown or The Pianist because of his involvement in both.

[Itsallaguess]

I think we as a society can take this retribution thing too far at times, and that seems to be the case more and more, recently.

It seems that he's made a huge mistake, or a number of them, and he's both paid, and is likely to continue to pay a high price for those errors of judgement.

This isn't to belittle the severity of the things he is said to have done, but if we as a society are going to want people who make mistakes into people that want to rehabilitate themselves into a better society, then we need to give them a chance to do so.

Making people into permanent pariahs and trying to delete them from history is very unlikely to achieve that aim....

Agree that he was great in LA Confidential, and also The Usual Suspects. Great films that I would quite happily watch again and enjoy.

He was complete pants in Baby Driver though....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[Clitheroekid]

American Beauty and Usual Suspects are right up there with my favourite ever films and I really couldn't give a monkeys toss what he has been up to in his personal life as long as he hasn't broken the law. If he has, why is he not in jail?

Bah, this sucks.

HYD

Hear, hear. I thought American Beauty was not just the best film he ever made but one of the best films ever made, full stop.

This hideous, Soviet style condemnation of anyone who has behaved badly at some point in their life to eternal damnation in a social gulag is to me just another example of a country - the USA - that has completely lost its humanity and decency and turned into an extremist nation controlled (both politically and socially) by an assortment of nutjobs.

[MaraMan]

I agree with all the thoughts expressed, and would add House of Cards amongst his finest work.

I saw him several times at The Old Vic when he was artistic director, including a memorable Richard III. He was and remains one of the outstanding actors of his generation.

I had never done this before, or since, but on a bored Sunday afternoon just after seeing RIII I wrote a short note to KS c/o The Old Vic saying how much I enjoyed his performance and what a wonderful job he had done reinvigorating The Old Vic (I have long standing family associations with that area). A few weeks later I got a hand-written reply thanking me for taking the trouble to write to him. Says a lot about him I think.

I don't think he has been found guilty of anything yet. No doubt he has made mistakes, we all have, but unless we know him personally we have to just take his work as we find it and not be part of the Kangaroo Court of PC public trial by media.

MM