The Unacceptable and The Usual Suspects
Imagine everyone suddenly knew the worst thing you’ve ever done.
Now, considering a list of your favorite actors, directors, artists, or entertainers, if I told you that at least half of them have committed a crime, would that change your list? Would there be a sudden shift in your artistic taste or entertainment valuation? Would it matter to you what crime, how often, and would you search for specific circumstances in order to justify your own enjoyment of their talent?
On the other hand, is it possible for artists’ contributions to outweigh or balance out the harm they inflict on themselves or others? Vincent van Gogh cut off his own ear. By celebrating his art, we condone his destructive behavior. His actions are perceived as collateral, and perhaps even necessary, to yield such excellence. In celebrating van Gogh, we agree that all of his artistic contribution is worth an ear — or, really, the mental demons with which he wrestled. But what if he had cut off someone else’s ear? Does that change our perception? Or, more importantly, does that change the value and beauty of his art? This is assuming, though, that that value, that beauty, exists independently of your subjective judgement – which is a discussion for another time. We condone certain actions, certain demons, as at least tolerable if the art produced as a result rises above a certain subjective standard of beauty or entertainment. But the beauty of the art should hold true regardless of the artist’s sinful or blameless nature; and certainly regardless of our flawed, limited perception of that nature.
Many insist that upon finishing the movie The Usual Suspects, they immediately want to rewatch it. You won’t find it on the AFI Top 100, but it is a compelling Action-Thriller complete with excellent performances and an exciting conclusion. It won two Academy Awards — one for screenwriting and one for supporting actor — and thirty-five awards total including multiple wins for cast ensemble. The premise is built around five criminals who each have their own unique balance of likability and character flaws. One of these men, Verbal — played by Kevin Spacey who won the Oscar — spends the movie’s present timeline in a Los Angelos police station being interrogated and narrating the plot of the story to a detective — and therefore to the audience — as a flashback. Already, we know we have an unreliable narrator, since Verbal is a criminal telling his story to the police. The story begins a month earlier when, according to Verbal, the other criminals — actors Benecio Del Toro, Gabriel Byrne, Stephen Baldwin, and Kevin Pollak — converge in a police lineup one evening and are kept overnight in the same cell on charges of a carjacking. However, they are suspicious that greater forces than the police are at work, because routinely there’s only one criminal in a lineup surrounded by innocent volunteers. And, again according to Verbal, none of them seem to have actually committed the carjacking for which they’re accused. They conclude that whatever was stolen was of great importance to someone political and powerful and that the police were pressured to find the culprit as well as the stolen goods. In response, the police detained five of “the usual suspects” with the aim that one or more of them might crack. However, instead of confessing or acting as informants to save their own skin, the men band together to plan another heist involving millions of dollars of cocaine; and the movie continues. Their suspicions of greater forces pulling the strings are correct, it seems, but Verbal is reluctant to share this aspect of the story because of his fear of repercussions from which — he leads us to believe — not even the police could protect him. The forces at work are later referred to as the Devil, or rather someone the Devil himself should fear: a man, a villainous legend, known as Keyser Söze (KY-zər SOH-zay). This superstitious character and the mixed motivations of the others are mysterious at best but the way Spacey’s character delivers the narrative, it feels more like an eerie objective point of view and the audience learns to trust his voice. In the end, a red herring is revealed and refashions everything previously shown in the movie; therefore compelling people to want to see it for a second time.
Before I elaborate on Kevin Spacey — the actor who plays Verbal — I must take a sidebar to mention Benicio Del Toro, with whom I came to revere because of his role here. Fenster, played by Del Toro, is characterized by a weighted, yet graceful swagger and a distinguished, yet unidentifiable accent: he claims later in interviews that he was channeling a half-German, half-Chinese origin. He’s the best-dressed of any of the characters and habitually reaches for his chapstick when he’s really contemplating. Independently of any scripted notes or director queues — as director Bryan Singer testifies — Del Toro conjured this character himself in a cold reading during the audition: the accent, the demeanor, the gait, facial expressions — even the chapstick — all of it. If you’re a fan of Benicio and haven’t seen this movie, it’s worth it to witness his performance. But I want to be clear on my own error: it’s not actually the man, Benicio Del Toro, whom I revere and admire. It’s the idea of him that the character he plays elicits in my mind. This is a common misjudgment that all audience members confuse with reality at one time or another: we decide that the fiction is more real than the person who plays it.
Much like Benicio, beginning with this movie’s release in 1995, Kevin Spacey made a name for himself and became known as one of the best at his craft. And if he is guilty of being a horrible person, does that negate his performance in this movie or his honed talent in general? It seems only the publicizing of his sins necessitates our dislike; meanwhile, we each have our own concealed sins that keep friends, coworkers, and résumés all agreeable. Let me be clear, in no way am I condoning Mr. Spacey’s actions, or saying we should enable his sins. My contention is twofold. First, we condone many sins of artists and entertainers as long we don’t know about them; or if the level of entertainment they provide – according to our own subjective standard – supersedes the level of the sin. My second contention is that the reason we get to judge Spacey is that we have the luxury of keeping our greatest sins secret. Of course this commits the fallacy that a thief cannot condemn thievery; but if I condemn it, then I have to turn myself in. Perhaps we have not committed the same crimes, but let he who is without sin cast the first stone (John 8:7). If my greatest sins were made public, my professional and some of my personal life would be tainted — as Spacey’s is now: he was fired from his last role on House of Cards, for which Spacey won two Grammies; he was dropped by his longtime agent and publicist; he was permanently uninvited to the Academy Awards ceremony; the International Academy for Television Arts and Sciences immediately decided to resend his Emmy award for House of Cards; and, finally, he was recasted in a movie that had completed filming — meaning they went back and reshot all of Spacey’s scenes with a replacement.
The very nature of his profession means he is held at a higher standard than you and me — I’m assuming you’re not famous. I don’t know if this is unjust or not — to judge, ostracize, and ultimately condemn artists and entertainers deciding that their past talent has lost all value — but it’s a real thorn in my brain, particularly because of my love of movies and the art of storytelling; and I feel it every time I contemplate the value of it now. This debate reaches to artists and performers of all media formats. Is their art, their talent, their final product, ever worth the sacrifice of those hurt by their sins? Is my life, coupled with my sins, worth the positive consequences of that life? Or do the consequences only have value if I am devoid of sin? It seems as long as sins remain hidden, one’s subjective value is preserved. And then, once sins are revealed, there exists a sliding line that is uncrossable: a ratio of how many ears I can cut off — or whose ears — in relation to the level of beauty or entertainment I produce.
In the way art does, some movies have an impact on me that nothing and no one can take away – not even Spacey himself. Again, it is not the human being that provides the impact, it’s the art, the elusive level of beauty that connects an audience member to a character, to an idea, to an emotion, etc. The actor, the man or woman, is able to channel that fictional character and perform in such a way that a connection is possible; but they themselves are not connected to us, though — as mentioned earlier with Del Toro — we make the mistake of thinking that.
The conjured ideas of the entertainers we fall in love with are not really those people, but that’s true at both ends; they become something other, channeling things that are not themselves, and at some point they often end up losing who they are in the process of becoming the idol that people love. And whether their personal demons enable the art or the art contributes to the demons, I honestly can’t be sure it’s not both. Either way, the life of an entertainer often results in drugs and other self-destructive behaviors — like dismemberment, as well as a myriad of mental illnesses: The Heath Ledgers, The Phillip S. Hoffmans, The Robin Williams’s, The Chris Farley’s of the industry are proof. Bill Murray probably likes to run over puppies for fun; I just don’t want to know about it. But if I did, would it really change my appreciation of his work? Perception so often is more important than the truth — to a detriment, I believe.
On October 29, 2017, a male actor made allegations that Spacey sexually assaulted him when he was fourteen, 32 years earlier; since then, more than thirty people have come forward claiming sexual harassment or assault against Spacey.
So, what/who is it that we really love when we love art? Do we love van Gogh? We don’t know him, just as we don’t know any artist or entertainer whom we claim to love and revere. So then how could we possibly judge their art, and change our own sense of beauty, because we are exposed to possibly the worst thing the author of that art has ever done? I suppose — particularly in film and theater — it’s all just an idea in our minds, conjured by people in another reality, living another truth; all manipulating our emotional reactions through music, sound, lighting, camera angles, editing, and the writing and acting of both sympathetic and unsympathetic characters. It makes it all the more essential that we continue to appreciate and learn from the art for which they sacrifice so much.
I want to say — as a society — that it’s possible we could accept the flaws, encourage talented people to get help, and still celebrate their art, but I’m not sure the grand audience is built that way. And even so, as alluded to earlier, it may be those very flaws that enable the beauty to rise to a certain level of greatness. Instead, we will continue the charade of idolizing the idea of the artist and agree to a contract of mutual blindness —where they perform as if the demons don’t exist, and we relish in the entertaining results, until, perhaps, the worst demons are revealed.
