Lavrenty Beria was one of my favorite Bolsheviks until I found out about him being a serial rapist. Mass murder is OK, but not serial rape.
On a more serious (?) note, I’ve added the Green Bay Packers to the list of teams I don’t exactly root against, but kind of enjoy see losing, ever since Aaron Rodgers turned out to be a lying sack of antivax nuttery.
Mostly I can separate performers from their private bad acts. It doesn’t mean I’d pay money to see anything Mel Gibson acted in or directed. Or go to a Fatty Arbuckle restrospective.*
*yeah, I know he probably was a victim of the Morals Police.
Wanted to include a side-jack, if the OP will forgive me.
I was talking about how Mario Batali’s actions IRL ruined my appreciation of individual episodes of shows in which he appeared, but mentioned that it came to mind as I was reviewing Anthony Bourdain’s works. I loved his (Tony’s) writing, attitude, snark and insight, but as I was re-watching, I found everything I watched dyed with a certain level of emotional distress knowing that after all of these experiences and joy, he still felt compelled to take his own life.
A similar issue happens with any rewatch of Robin William’s works. Neither of them were perfect people of course, and we knew them from their roles rather than personally, but I suspect many of us have felt some degree of a connection with our favorite performers.
It’s not nearly at the level of ruining their body of work, but it can similarly taint them all with a melancholy hue.
I don’t recall seeing your story. Please share again if you feel like it!
Amen to most of these. Van Morrison I can separate the man from his music still. I hadn’t heard about his anti-vax stance, but I’ve heard for years what an obnoxious asshole he is, so I’ve been kind of ‘inoculated’ to it, hehe. I remember years ago reading the story of a reporter who got to interview him, and was really excited because he was a big fan of his music, but Morrison spent the entire interview complaining bitterly about how he was just as much of a genius as Dylan but he only got a fraction of the recognition for it.
I ran into him at a film festival in L.A. at a screening afterparty. He was very friendly in the moment. As a Canadian former film student, I had to go on about Videodrome, how it’s really the seminal Canadian film text. He was intrigued when I told him about a TV cut I’d seen with a completely different opening as he’d never heard of it, and he told me that he and Cronenberg had actually been talking about collaborating again, but he couldn’t tell me what the project was (I suspected it was the biography of Ferrari that Cronenberg had as an unrealized passion project). He posed for a photo with me, big happy smile on his face.
His date for the evening was a young and nubile blonde, probably much younger than me. I did know that about him at the time, that he liked his ladies young (I didn’t know until much later about accusations of harassment of underage actresses on sets), and that he’d dated Heather Graham by that time. When Woods turned away momentarily to speak to someone else, the girl told me “I like your tie.”
And it was like a door slamming shut. His face went dark, he grabbed her elbow, and without a word steered her away from me. Creepy, weird and controlling.
Not the same as Bourdain. Williams was afflicted with a crippling neurological condition that he knew was going to kill him anyway. Yes, he did suffer from depression during his life, but he ended it himself rather than go through the agony of letting the disease kill him.
I met a woman about 25 years ago (a senior citizen then and now deceased) who told me she had had a two-week fling with Cohen in New York City a few decades prior. (I’m being intentionally vague on the timing.) She got pregnant, and when she told him, he said he wasn’t interested, and in fact had quite a few such offspring scattered around and didn’t care about any of them either.
She went to a home for unwed mothers,* as girls did then, and gave the baby up for adoption. Many years later, she tracked down the now-grown child and they connected and then later had a falling-out.
Yeah, this is apocryphal, and I’m sure the story, if true, isn’t unique – but I have had a hard time appreciating his music as much as I did before I knew this story.
*I understand Texas evangelicals are re-instituting these facilities now that abortions will be harder to obtain – let’s turn back the clock!
Liberal Catholicism is long gone, but it’s where I was raised. It held that sanctimony is a cardinal sin: immoral in itself; and stupid as well, since it’s often committed in reaction to much lesser venial sins. But drugging and anal rape of a 13 year old is not just a venial sin
Nonetheless, I let the artwork stand for itself. My only criticism on that level is when Roman Polanski mades films like Death and the Maiden or 2019’s Alfred Dreyfus movie as if to say “poor me, oppressed by a corrupt and brutal police state!” I only separate the art from the artist when he does too.
Pee-wee Herman (aka Paul Reubens). Not so much for the indecent exposure arrest (not really all that bad), but that his TV and movies were geared toward kids, and he exuded an air of child-like innocence.
Chris Hardwick was my favorite celebrity ever, and I listened to his podcast daily. He is the best interviewer I’ve ever heard. He is open about personal details of his life, which has a disarming effect on his subjects, and on me. I had the sense “this is one of the good ones.” It sounds silly, but it was kind of a safe place for me. Then he was accused of abuse and sexual assault by a former girlfriend. I don’t know if she is telling the truth. I just know that I can’t go back and enjoy his work anymore.
Adam Ragusea did an excellent video on Mario with the premise: Hate the guy but love his show.
Of course I have to include Kevin Spacey. Not only what he did but his rationalization for it and those creepy “House of Card” videos he did afterwards…
To be fair, he was on a downhill slide for me after he found out all of those old actors in the Hollywood actor’s retirement home had Academy votes so he shows them some love, wins his Oscar for American Beauty then blows them off.
And I’ll add Paula Poundstone to the mix. She made a plea deal that dropped the child molestation charges and pled guilty to child endangerment (DUI with her kids in the car). I used to watch her growing up but stopped when I found out what she had (allegedly) done. I tried listening to her podcast recently and her adventures in worm farming. She is so not funny anymore. It’s like listening to Grandma stories.
You can throw Kid Rock in the same pile of shit. Never cared for his music so this means nothing to me. Both he and Nugent spent some time at the White House with their noses firmly up Trump’s ass.
I have hard time watching any movie with Harvey Weinstein as an executive producer because it makes think about which actresses in the film he may have sexually harassed and raped.
Seinfeld hasn’t aged well and seems far less amusing than it did thirty years ago, but it’s impossible for me to enjoy Kramer’s goofy exploits at all. Screaming racial slurs during his very public meltdown was bad enough, but maybe even worse was:
“Fifty years ago we’d have you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass.”
This may be a possible conflation of the Pence incident and a show where Miranda - in mid-flow - chastised an audience member for filming the performance. That he managed to literally work this into the rap he was performing was, frankly, awesome, and the audience member took it in good grace and apologized afterward.
Miranda has taken some flak for his perceived exclusion of darker-skinned Latinos in the casting of In The Heights (for which he himself has apologized) but I’m not aware of him stopping a show to “abuse an audience member” of any kind.
