I present to you Luca Barbareschi, the producer of Roman Polanski’s most recent film (which I shall not name here, you can find it in the link), who cannot get theater distribution for this film in the US, the UK or France. Here are some of his quoted statements:
And we ask ourselves why there are wars. The Anglo-Saxon world has to respect artists like the rest of the world does.
That’s right, not being willing to spend money to put in the pockets of an admitted child rapist and his enablers, is the same as making war. If there is any respect due, it would be to the work itself, not the artist (if in fact he can claim that title). If the artist behaves badly and ruins peoples’ lives, he should not expect to be treated with respect.
He added that Polanski movies were shown on numerous streamers, such as Netflix, “making millions” for those platforms. “Someone explain to me the logic for that,” he said.
Hey, you’re the producer, if you don’t want the streaming services to make money off the film, don’t sell it to streaming services. On the other hand, if I’m a distributor and I don’t want to buy a product that is stained with the actions of its director, I won’t buy it.
There is no moral judgement on art.
Maybe. But there is moral judgment on artists, and on those around the artist (like you) who are completely amoral when it comes to making money off the work of an admitted child rapist.
So I hope you will forgive me for not boo-hooing about you not making as much money as you think you are entitled to, from the work of an artist who is also a despicable human being.
(I debated making a pit thread about this instead, but since both the subject and the object are in the purview of this forum, I decided to put it here.)