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kleinbl00  ·  2345 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Walking away from Louis CK

I mean, I've seen bits and bobs of Triumph of the Will. So have we all. Food for thought, though:

    Men like Louis C.K. may be creators of art, but they are also destroyers of it. They have crushed the ambition of women and, in some cases, young men — boys — in the industry, robbing them of their own opportunities. The comedians Dana Min Goodman and Julia Wolov said that after Louis C.K. cornered them and masturbated in front of them at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in 2002, they feared that speaking out about the incident could risk their careers. While Louis C.K. felt free to flaunt the behavior throughout his comedy — in one scene of “Louie,” Pamela begs him not to start masturbating in front of her — the women were silenced. He took advantage of them, then took ownership of the experience.

    Another performer, Abby Schachner, said her own inappropriate run-in with Louis C.K. discouraged her from pursuing comedy altogether. (As he himself put it in an apology released on Friday: “The power I had over these women is that they admired me. And I wielded that power irresponsibly.”) Our assessments of men’s contributions to an art form ought to be informed by the avenues they have closed off for other artists.

I love Blade Runner. I think it's a great film. But it includes this scene:

Sean Young has said that she felt raped in that scene. She also auditioned to play the Replicant Pris but Ridley Scott refused to give her the part because she wasn't blonde (it went to Daryll Hannah). A few years later she was supposed to be the love interest/interior decorator in Wall Street but Oliver Stone took it away from her because she wasn't blonde (it went ot Daryll Hannah). Then she was supposed to be the love interest in one of the Batman movies but she broke her shoulder rehearsing a scene and the role went to Kim Basinger.

"That night, I re-watch two of her other films, the ones that don’t get the attention of Blade Runner. In 1987’s No Way Out, she glints brilliantly in a Hitchcocky confection. In The Boost: she’s raw, compelling. Really, these past couple of decades, it’s Hollywood’s loss as well as hers. The play in Northport, I find, has been reviewed in the New York Times. Young, despite minimal stage experience, is said to “acquit herself honorably”."

I'll say this: I've been in the sausage factory for ten years now and I'm ready to go vegetarian. I've written eight screenplays, optioned two and I mostly watch The Great British Baking Show. I've long since lost the ability to separate the art from the artist; I stopped listening to Laibach, Echo & The Bunnymen, World Party and VNV Nation when they were abject dicks to me.