Just watched 12 Monkeys (1996), and it’s a little uncomfortable seeing Bruce Willis portray a character struggling mentally, know of his real-life problems with frontotemporal dementia. It’s not the time of year yet, but I’m wondering if my enjoyment of Die Hard will be reduced, since the hearing loss he suffered on that film may have been a contributing factor.
The Crow (1994) - on which Brandon Lee died, and Rust (upcoming) - on which Halyna Hutchins died - aren’t films I’d normally watch anyway, so I don’t know how the deaths would have affected my decision to watch them. Conversely, Kevin Spacey is in a lot of films I like, but it’s a bit queasy seeing his performances, with the suspicion that we all now know why he’s so good at portraying creeps.
So do you just try to enjoy a film as a film, or does real-life events ever stop you re-watching them?
Those are two very different examples…
For Bruce Willis, yeah, watch the heck out of his films and celebrate his talent and the joy and entertainment that he brought to us. Everyone ends up dead, and it’s rarely pretty, so perhaps we shouldn’t let it ruin our past.
However… Lee died during the making of the crow and that’s more complex. Was the film finished to honour his life and his skills, or was it finished purely for financial reasons?
I’d like to think it was the former, and that when we see a film it is never the work of one actor, not even a bunch of actors and a director, but hundreds of people all bringing themselves to the endeavour of making.
And that’s how they live for ever. Scratching their name into the desk of the world by making something that will be here long after they have gone.
And I think that should be celebrated.
And then the spacey thing… First, let’s not forget he just got found not guilty… Not saying he didn’t do anything, but a jury of his peers didn’t send him down.
Again though, should everyone that worked on those films lose their work because of him?
My original post is a loose collection of ideas that sort-of fit together and sort-of don’t.
I think if properly examine why you should still see a film, you’ll find lots of reasons to support doing so. I guess I’m mostly interested in what the instinctual reaction is, and whether anybody has to convince themselves to watch something, after initially finding something off-putting about it.
I don’t know much about the current status of the Spacey trial, but even if he was found not guilty in a court of law, he can still be found to be a creep in the court of public opinion. In law, a person must be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt (a fairly high bar), but in public the bar is, and should be, much lower.
Of course we are each allowed our own opinions and that includes whether we watch his movies or not. You also make a good point that he was not the only person in the movies that he was part of, and I think it is ok to celebrate the great performances of his co-stars. Besides, he’s not exactly the hero in se7en or unusual suspects, so it isn’t hard to still enjoy those movies.
Fuck absolutely everything about your assertion that the court of public opinion holds a single ounce of merit…
The court of public opinion at one point in time held that a human being with a measure of melanin beyond a certain amount was a piece of fucking property.
You’re also suggesting a news outlet has almost omnipotent power of judgement.
Fuck that. Fuck. that.
The court of public opinion is fickle, it’s easily manipulated, it’s standards are as fluid as anything can be. No…
It’s “innocent until proven guilty”, not “guilty because we think so”.
100%
There’s a reason that the judicial system is beyond reasonable doubt and it’s to minimise the number of innocent people convicted.
Countless innocent people are nailed to the wall by the court of opinion because they “look guilty” and it’s awful.
You’ve misinterpreted my statement. I think we’re largely in agreement.
I think the only place that we disagree is that the public opinion doesn’t matter. I think it can matter a lot, for better or wrose. You rightly point out that public opinion has been wrong a lot, and I don’t disagree with that or defend any time that it has been wrong.
My point was that courts should use innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Public opinion shouldn’t be held to the same standard though, but it should also only be deciding “do I like them” or “did they do something I don’t like”.
Yes, he’s a creep. But that doesn’t take away the value of watching movies he was in. He was just an actor, it’s not like he was some kind of puppet master making movies to normalize rape. I don’t like the guy, but he was in some great movies. We shouldn’t let the vision of the director or the work of everyone else involved be lost to time just because he’s scumbag
I agree. I’ll watch Seven or Usual Suspects any day of the week.
I won’t watch anything he did recently though.
How recently? Is Baby Driver in the cards?
I haven’t seen Seven and didn’t really get into House of Cards, so I don’t know what he even did recently. Usual Suspects is amazing tho, I make Keyzer SoZe jokes like once a week even tho nobody gets them lmao
Seven and Usual Suspects are back to back masterpieces.
I have no idea what he’s done in probably a decade or more, tbh.