Joss Whedeon, getting more canceled by the day

[IlyaP]

2 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

without the abuse the movie would be different, probably wouldn't work as well. 

There's the word.

*Abuse*.

Consensual kink contexts excluded, doling out abuse to others isn't something that I think anyone here would ever flag as a point of pride. 

[Heartofice]

Just now, IlyaP said:

There's the word.

*Abuse*.

Consensual kink contexts excluded, doling out abuse to others isn't something that I think anyone here would ever flag as a point of pride. 

Who is taking pride in it?

[IlyaP]

11 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

But it’s a slippery slope.

There's also a question of what falls within what the union accepts, what the agent considers ok, etc., as well as what current legislation and worker protection rights are now versus 40 years ago. 

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Heartofice said:

The question is whether the trade off is worth it, probably most people would say no. But that is a reason why this is a more complex example, without the abuse the movie would be different, probably wouldn't work as well. 

She was critically panned even with the abuse!  It's more than safe to assume the movie - which is my favorite horror movie ever btw - would have worked just fine without Kubrick's treatment of Duvall.  And all this ignores the fact she fully committed to Kubrick's ridiculously arduous process while Nicholson spent his downtime screwing Anjelica Huston and didn't even bother to keep up with all the rewrites (both wise decisions on his part, but still).  It's not a more complex example unless you're ill-informed or excusing abuse.

[sifth]

I'm not sure how I feel about this, to be honest. I've had some really horrible bosses over the years, like to some insane levels. I remember only lasting 4 months or so in my first teaching job and basically coming home every day either angry or crying. It was a truly horrible experience. That was back in 2008, so does that give me the right to try and use twitter to try and ruin the life of the lady that caused me so much pain?

[IlyaP]

2 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Who is taking pride in it?

Pride is admittedly too strong a word. But I would not be comfortable with being the person who subjected Duvall to the multi-tiered amount of abuse to which she went through. I can't imagine flaunting "yeah I was abjectly horrible to a person for the entertainment of others". 

[Heartofice]

Just now, DMC said:

She was critically panned even with the abuse!  It's more than safe to assume the movie - which is my favorite horror movie ever btw - would have worked just fine without Kubrick's treatment of Duvall.  And all this ignores the fact she fully committed to Kubrick's ridiculously arduous process while Nicholson spent his downtime screwing Anjelica Huston and didn't even bother to keep up with all the rewrites (both wise decisions on his part, but still).  It's not a more complex example unless you're ill-informed or excusing abuse.

As I say, I disagree. The movie would still be good, but would her performance at the end of the movie be the same without what happened? Very unlikely. 

Her performance was panned because she is quite misunderstood, the whole performance is odd as I said, very stilted and robotic at times, and I can see why many people would think that was simply bad acting, but I think it's partly stylistic and adds to the atmosphere.

[DMC]

Just now, Heartofice said:

The movie would still be good, but would her performance at the end of the movie be the same without what happened? Very unlikely. 

 

[Heartofice]

2 minutes ago, DMC said:

 

Or I can base that on Shelly Duvall's own words:

“If it hadn’t been for that volley of ideas,” she says in the Rolling Stone video, “and sometimes butting of heads together, it wouldn’t have come out as good as it did. And it also helps get the emotion up and the concentration up because you get more out of yourself. He knew that. And he knew that he was getting more out of me by doing that. So it was sort of like a game.” 

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Or I can base that on Shelly Duvall's own words

Yeah, there's lots of quotes to dig up.  You gotta be pretty stupid to not be able to differentiate Duvall referring to Kubrick's extreme demands of all his performers and the specific abusive treatment of Duvall.  The difference is well documented - including by Nicholson.  Try the google.

[Heartofice]

3 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yeah, there's lots of quotes to dig up.  You gotta be pretty stupid to not be able to differentiate Duvall referring to Kubrick's extreme demands of all his performers and the specific abusive treatment of Duvall.  The difference is well documented - including by Nicholson.  Try the google.

I mean that quote right there she outright says that the methods got the best out of her? Is there a quote that contradicts that?

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I mean that quote right there she outright says that the methods got the best out of her? Is there a quote that contradicts that?

No, it says Duvall is an insanely classy and gracious woman.  As for other quotes, well:

Quote

"But after a while, your body rebels. It says: 'Stop doing this to me. I don't want to cry every day.' And sometimes just that thought alone would make me cry.

"To wake up on a Monday morning, so early, and realise that you had to cry all day because it was scheduled — I would just start crying. I'd be like, 'Oh no, I can't, I can't.' And yet I did it. I don't know how I did it. Jack said that to me, too. He said, 'I don't know how you do it.' "

Anjelica Huston, who was Jack's girlfriend at the time, recalled how Shelley seemed "tortured" throughout the gruelling shoot and hailed the actress as "incredibly brave" for seeing the project through.

She said: "I got the feeling, certainly through what Jack was saying at the time, that Shelley was having a hard time just dealing with the emotional content of the piece.

"And they didn't seem to be all that sympathetic. It seemed to be a little bit like the boys were ganging up. That might have been completely my misread on the situation, but I just felt it.

"And when I saw her during those days, she seemed a generally a bit tortured, shook up. I don't think anyone was being particularly careful of her...

"She actually carried the movie on her back if you look at it. Jack wavers between sort of comedic and terrifying, and Kubrick was Kubrick at his most mysterious, interesting and powerful. But it must have been something for her to be in the middle of that mix. And she took it on. She was, I think, incredibly brave."

I completely reject the premise that that's how you get a good performance out of an actor.  If you want to argue otherwise, that's your own deal.

[baxus]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Do you believe Duvall could have given that performance ordinarily?

Let's reverse the question - do you think Kubrick could've gotten that performance out of her in another way that wouldn't include abuse? After all, it is his job to get the desired performance from actors. If abuse is the only way to do that, he should definitely not have been allowed to direct movies. If he had other ways and decided to go with abuse then he should've been inprisoned.

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

No, it says Duvall is an insanely classy and gracious woman.  As for other quotes, well:

I completely reject the premise that that's how you get a good performance out of an actor.  If you want to argue otherwise, that's your own deal.

Yeah all these quotes do, and basically pretty much everything I've seen, just back up things we already know, that Kubrick treated her like crap. Nothing is contradicting the idea that she seems to think he did actually get a good performance out of her and his methods worked to some extent.

[Lord Varys]

Saying abuse is the best way to motivate an actor is like saying abuse/torture is the best way of a studio executive to motivate a director to make a good movie.

It is utter nonsense.

[Heartofice]

2 minutes ago, baxus said:

Let's reverse the question - do you think Kubrick could've gotten that performance out of her in another way that wouldn't include abuse? After all, it is his job to get the desired performance from actors. If abuse is the only way to do that, he should definitely not have been allowed to direct movies. If he had other ways and decided to go with abuse then he should've been inprisoned.

Personally, I don't think it would have been quite the same, the reason it works so well in that movie is simply because it is in some way real. 

[baxus]

Ok, then let's go for a direct question - do you think Duvall's performance was worth Kubrick's abuse? And if it was your wife/sister/friend in Duvall's place, do you think you'd say: "Oh, but it's good for your art" or would you try to do anything about it?

[DMC]

5 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Nothing is contradicting the idea that she seems to think he did actually get a good performance out of her and his methods worked to some extent.

  I'll let you get back to editing John Yoo's memos.

[Heartofice]

Just now, baxus said:

Ok, then let's go for a direct question - do you think Duvall's performance was worth Kubrick's abuse? And if it was your wife/sister/friend in Duvall's place, do you think you'd say: "Oh, but it's good for your art" or would you try to do anything about it?

I don't think it was worth the abuse no. That's not really the point I'm making though. This all started because I was saying that this is a pretty complex example of a director treating actors badly, because the direct result of his bad behaviour was a better movie. 

You could pick out many other examples of bullying directors who haven't enhanced a movie by bullying, but just made everything worse. Michael Bay seems like a good example.

[Mindwalker]

3 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I don't think it was worth the abuse no. That's not really the point I'm making though.

My impression was that was exactly the point you were making. You kept insisting that the artistic result was better for the abuse. I guess I'm too dumb to not see an implied justification here.