CW: descriptions of sexual aggression, harassment, and abuse

May 19, 2024 5:52 PM

Spacey Unmasked [Wikipedia] is a Channel 4 documentary about Kevin Spacey's sexual misconduct allegations presented in two parts: Spacey Unmasked Episode 1 of 2 [55m], Spacey Unmasked Episode 2 of 2 [51m]
posted by hippybear (29 comments total)

Spacey makes me so angry because he seems to be the quintessential Gay Sex Pest Creep. And he had plenty of time to learn not to be that. But maybe because of family stuff, that's just how he was programmed.

He keeps trying to make a comeback. I wish he'd just live off his wealth interest and go away.
posted by hippybear at 5:54 PM on May 19 [7 favorites]

Back in the day, I had a friend who was a cub reported for Esquire, and he ended up in a limo interviewing Spacey for a feature article. Spacey hit on him relentlessly, disregarding my friend's disinterest and heterosexuality. So basically what I'm saying is I've known he was a scumbag since like 2001.
posted by tristeza at 6:14 PM on May 19 [13 favorites]

I feel this needs context - context which can frankly disappear into a very deep hole along with the people supporting it.
posted by edd at 6:15 PM on May 19 [8 favorites]

Oh lordy, his creep nature was known back as far as Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil if not earlier than that. I'd say more like around the Glengarry Glen Ross, so early Nineties...

The gay underground had much chatter going on. I was in my early twenties and living in po-dunk New Mexico and even I knew Kevn Spacey was a sex pest by the time I was 24.
posted by hippybear at 6:16 PM on May 19 [5 favorites]

Stephen Fry is demoted from National Treasure status. What the actual F, from a gay elder?
posted by edd at 6:17 PM on May 19 [7 favorites]

Stephen Fry is a free speech absolutist and a transphobe, and has spoken in support of Rowling and if Jordan Peterson. He’s been awful for a while.
posted by pxe2000 at 6:57 PM on May 19 [25 favorites]

I love Fry, but I feel like the older generations of brilliant, lefty British comedians that are still around often show their flaws when it comes to issues of sex and sexuality (and the tangentially related subject of "cancel culture" -- cf. John Cleese). And perhaps pertinent to the discussion, Fry's husband is 30 years younger than Fry, and they married when the former was in his late 20s, Fry in his late 50s. Not to suggest Fry has done what Spacey's accused of, just that he may, from his perspective as an older man in a relationship with a younger one, who may also have been in the reverse situation himself 40 something years ago, be inclined to blind himself to the uglier side of vast gaps in age/status/power between partners, unlike the younger set (whatever their sexual orientation).
posted by Saxon Kane at 7:00 PM on May 19 [15 favorites]

See also pxe2000.
posted by Saxon Kane at 7:01 PM on May 19 [1 favorite]

I'm having a very hard time right now because possible soon death of a loved one, and mental health involved, and rape by a man in academic power playing into that. So I'm... well... that.

There's enough prominent gay men of Fry's generation who look out for the generations below them. There are comedians of his generation and younger all doing vastly better on this.

Every gay or bi or anything non-cishet person I know of that generation looks out for the people going through what they did and they try to help. But supporting an abuser!? That's something else entirely.

I don't want to make this a witch hunt on one man - clearly there's a much broader issue.
posted by edd at 7:09 PM on May 19 [4 favorites]

I was certainly disappointed to see Fry sign off on this, but I haven't heard him say anything that struck me as actually transphobic. He has refused to denounce Rowling as a friend at the same time that he's said trans people deserve respect and support. Here's an interview where he talks about it, and (as a trans person) I don't see anything in it that makes me feel like he's a transphobe.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 7:14 PM on May 19 [12 favorites]

I don't want to make this a witch hunt on one man

Let's refocus this discussion away from Stephen Fry, who is not the subject of his FPP, and onto Kevin Spacey who IS the subject of this FPP and maybe is worth being the subject of a witch hunt. You can watch the videos in the FPP and make your own judgement.
posted by hippybear at 8:25 PM on May 19 [9 favorites]

We watched this the other night when it was on Investigation Discovery and boy... yeah, I knew that Spacey was a very questionable dude and I was barely in the entertainment industry. My wife, on the other hand knew vey little and it was interesting watching her growing horror as more and more stories came out.

I do wonder - will he get the old fashioned eventual "mea culpa and I've change" reformation pattern or will he continue to be persona non grata? How does the fact that he's gay play into that dynamic? (I remember being utterly flabbergasted and disgusted when he came out as cover)
posted by drewbage1847 at 8:48 PM on May 19

How many people can separate the body of work of the artist, from the personality of said artist. Like Woody Allen, and perhaps too many to mention Hollywood artists...Or for that matter, athletes or business personalities. I admit to having a bit of trouble doing it.
posted by Czjewel at 9:17 PM on May 19 [1 favorite]

How many people can separate the body of work of the artist, from the personality of said artist.

I think part of Spacey's undeniable skill as an actor was his ability to channel & project his personal full dark. That he couldn't master it offstage is a tragedy, for his victims even more than him.

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
posted by chavenet at 1:22 AM on May 20 [2 favorites]

Let's refocus this discussion away from Stephen Fry, who is not the subject of his FPP,

Folks are allowed to comment as they wish, and discussions evolve in ways the original poster may not always like. Please don't threadsit like that.
posted by mediareport at 2:58 AM on May 20 [24 favorites]

Fry is an interesting contrast to Spacey, I think, for reasons cited above. By itself, whether Spacey should be allowed off of Unclean Island, and who supports him for which reasons, is less interesting for its familiarity.
posted by cupcakeninja at 3:35 AM on May 20 [1 favorite]

(I missed the edit window, so on rereading I'll say that there was an implied "to me" at the end of that last sentence. Others will feel otherwise, I assume.)
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:27 AM on May 20

Folks are allowed to comment as they wish, and discussions evolve in ways the original poster may not always like. Please don't threadsit like that.

"Please let's get back to the topic of the thread" is a way to comment on the threads, and is not "threadsitting". Especially since this site has often had moderators say exactly the same thing in threads when they derail.

...So when I was starting my film blog I realized I needed to come up with some way to cover the issue of prominent filmmakers who were sex pests; I knew of three big names whose films I'd be discussing at some point, since I cover classic film throughout history up to the present, but I didn't want to give them any credit. Ultimately I decided I'd talk about the film but give the specific individuals a pseudonym, and all the same pseudonym as a signal that "the film itself is great but this specific person who contributed to it is an asshole". Kevin Spacey was one of the original three people I knew I'd have to do that with.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:32 AM on May 20 [9 favorites]

"Please let's get back to the topic of the thread" is a way to comment on the threads, and is not "threadsitting". Especially since this site has often had moderators say exactly the same thing in threads when they derail.

Yes, moderators. Too many threads of late have involved the poster (I am not calling out a particular user here; many do this*) jumping in to guide the thread to their liking, once or many times. That shouldn't be the norm, and it shouldn't be OK. I'm not a big fan of the old "get your own blog" complaint, because the heyday of blogging is long past, but anyone leaning hard into the flow of comments on their posts are, indeed, behaving as if MetaFilter is their own blog.

* Arguably I do this, in the form of occasionally offering an initial comment expressing the most light-handed wish in regards to thread direction that I can make, if I have concerns. And then I step back. And MeFites should, in fact, be hands-off about thread direction. That's the mods' job, not yours, EmpressCallipygos, or mine, or anyone else's.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:04 AM on May 20 [21 favorites]

I think Spacey's work is sometimes interesting, and I offered the minor comment that I offered above because I think this part of his "story" is unpleasant, sordid, and a well-trodden public narrative. It's so much a trope that I wonder about (and will never know, just like most of us here) what the whole truth is.

Spacey The Abuser is a very clear, understandable story, and I wonder about the extent to which his past deeds were ignored because of his sexuality and a blend of straights' apathy, ignorance, or not wanting to comment where their comments weren't wanted. A similar thing happens here regularly, any time there's a discussion about sexual relationships involving adults and teens or late teens. Someone pipes up to denounce age gap relationships, and someone else pipes up to say they don't understand anything about current or historical queer relationships, then someone says "how dare u," and it's off to the races.

I'm not in Hollywood, but from the outside, it sure looks like "sexual aggression, harassment, and abuse" are 100% part of the system. There are people fighting against it, #MeToo did for some of the worst of the shits, but this is the site where I most often see "the purpose of a system is what it does" invoked. Which leaves me, you know, wondering if Spacey is truly exceptional, or whether his actions coming to public scrutiny are the exceptional part. It should not be that way, if so, but it seems like it is. I don't know enough about the broader world of the film industry or theater to know how widespread it actually is.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:35 AM on May 20 [3 favorites]

One add-on: I think American Beauty will probably eventually regain some of the ground it's lost in recent years. I like it for many reasons, including Spacey's performance, but barring some major societal change I can't predict, I think it will probably be studied primarily for reasons that the makers of the film did not intend and could not readily predict. Not least that there would be a window between the Cold War and 9/11 where a lot of anxieties got thrown up on screen without either shadow conditioning viewers' responses.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:51 AM on May 20

Hard disagree on American Beauty; there are films I watch and pretend he’s not in, like LA Confidential, but in my opinion AB was wildly overrated at the time and I think if the next generation brings it up it will be to say “what the hell were they thinking”? For a film to be popularly reevaluated as a time capsule, usually it also has to be good.
posted by q*ben at 6:29 AM on May 20 [8 favorites]

That's a good point. In academia, I regularly encounter people deeply engaged with films and books of the past (sometimes centuries back, or further) that have little popular appeal, so that's part of my thinking.
posted by cupcakeninja at 7:13 AM on May 20 [1 favorite]

American Beauty is, at its core, a pedo fantasy. It's about an adult man fantasizing about an underage girl. I don't think it's going to survive into the ages.
posted by hippybear at 7:43 AM on May 20 [7 favorites]

American Beauty is one of those films that everyone was raving about and I was just left like ... wtf was this overwrought pretentious suburban dreck. could not fathom why the film wanted us to sympathise so badly with a distant father and husband who wanted to bang a cheerleader

spacey's own special creeper energy (which i first heard about around the time of swimming with sharks) just made it extra gross to me i guess
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 8:36 AM on May 20 [4 favorites]

I worked all 6 seasons of House of Cards. My very first day of work (which was also my very first day in the film industry) he tried to get Margaritas with me... I was confused as to why this actor approached me and was so cordial, but it became clear enough over time. He harassed essentially every young male on set. And by his final season he had a harem of young guys (not affiliated with the production) milling about on set who would just hang out with him between takes.

I remember saying to my co-worker on the Friday before he was "cancelled" that it was only a matter of time before he was MeToo'ed. I woke up that Monday and the news had leaked. We all knew he was awful, but no one came forward because it would mean that 200 people that you work with everyday could potentially be out of work, and shortly after the revelation, we were out of work. Thankfully, Netflix paid us for a couple months after the incident and they chose to finish the show up without him. I have lots of stories from other crew member and actors on the show, but they're not really my stories to tell.
posted by cloeburner at 10:08 AM on May 20 [34 favorites]

Sharon Stone, Liam Neeson, F. Murray Abraham, and Trevor Nunn are also in The Telegraph supporting the guy. Abraham: "I vouch for him unequivocally." Neeson: "Kevin is a good man and a man of character. Personally speaking, our industry needs him and misses him greatly."

Deadline: "the reportedly near-broke actor" — in February, Spacey settled a suit brought by the House of Cards production company, MRC:

The US actor had been accused of alleged sexual misconduct by male staff members on set, and was dropped by the company, MRC, for the final season of the hit show in 2017. A judge later found that the accusations were credible, ordering Spacey to pay back $31 million that MRC lost in reworking the season, plus interest.

Spacey struck a deal; now he'll pay MRC just $1 million (in yearly installments, as "10% of his taxed income") and cooperate in MRC's suit against its insurance providers, Fireman’s Fund and Lloyd’s of London:

"Spacey will back arguments from MRC in a legal battle against its insurer that he was written out of the show because he was too sick to return, which would trigger its insurance policy. [...] With the deal, MRC is looking to collect on a $150 million policy from Fireman’s Fund Insurance, as well as punitive damages for fraudulently denying its claim.

A man of character, yes. Kevin Spacey says he has ‘so much to offer’ after Hollywood pals demand his comeback (LA Times). Sir Trevor would like remind everyone that he's primarily a theatre man & not responsible for the 2019 Hollywood film "Cats."
posted by Iris Gambol at 5:44 PM on May 20 [3 favorites]

American Beauty also has this really twisted sub-plot involving homosexuality in several different ways. In the end, Spacey's character is shot and killed and the implication is that he was killed because his conservative next door neighbor made a same-sex advance on him and subsequently couldn't allow Spacey to live because now he knew the dark secret. Or something like that.
posted by hippybear at 5:58 PM on May 20 [1 favorite]

Kevin Spacey is one of those actors who always gave amazing performances but now I can't watch anything he's in anymore. I don't know there is a comeback for him but if there is, I am not participating in it.
posted by Kitteh at 6:24 AM on May 22