Originally posted by Rhett Miller:
Note to J_Lee:
Reality Bites was a movie. Ethan was playing a role. That character was not necessarily him.
What truly made Ethan a jerkass was his cheating on his wife with another woman. Though I guess that's commonplace for Hollywood.
Yeah, but hating someone for their personal life would have no bearing on my wanting to see a film/listen to an album/read a book of theirs or not...Wagner was a Nazi Sympathizer but no one can doubt the brilliance of the Ring Cycle. David Byrne was (and may still be) a self-affirmed racist, but many people still enjoy his music. Roman Polanski was involved in a statutory rape scandal with a teenager and is a fugitive from the law but that doesn't mean he's a terrible filmmaker. As I've said...with the exception of gattaca, I've never liked any of Ethan's film roles. I suppose I could've been more specific about that and gone back to his role in Explorers, complained about his butchery of the "Pip" character in the modernized Great Expectations, or his awful portrayal of "Hamlet," or his most likely less than memorable turn in "Tape" (though with Linklater connected to it the film was destined for mediocrity), derided his novels as publishible only because of his name and not worth the paper they're printed on, and yes, blithely mentioned the fact that he cheated on his wife, whom he took a vow to stay with regardless of how old and busted she started to look.
But I was lax in my critique. Thank you for pointing that out.
