From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made when a Tony Award winning Broadway performer got tired of hearing the noise.

Patti LuPone was starring in the Roommate on Broadway.

Next door, the Alicia Alicia Keys musical Hell's Kitchen was playing.

LuPone could occasionally hear some of the sound bleeding through the wall.

She made some phone calls, addressed the issue, and that was supposed to be that.

But then Patti LuPone talked to the New Yorker magazine, and she unloaded.

She bashed some of her fellow performers.

She made some comments that black performers took as being bullying at best, or even racially derogatory.

LuPone has this kind of reputation, and some of her fans have felt the push and pull that goes with separating the art from the artists.

One of her fans wrote in response, I love Patti's work.

I just don't love her.

And so what should we do about that?

Back in 2017, 2018, when the MeToo movement broke into the mainstream, some artists wondered if they'd ever get onstage again.

Over time, the public discourse has seemed to shift a bit, and many artists who thought they were canceled, so to speak, are back at it, performing for crowds.

This hour, we examine the ways that art and the artist can feel so dissonant, so polar, and we'll talk about separating the art from the artists.

My guests in studio include my colleague from classical 91 five and the music coordinator for the Little Cafe.

Mona told us, Salome, welcome back.

Hello.

Good to be here.

Good to have you here.

Matt Santino, right next to Mona, the film critic for Citi magazine.

Hello, Matt.

Hello.

Thank you for having me.

And on the line with us.

And if you're watching on the Sky news YouTube channel, you can see on the video Thomas Warfield, best dressed man in Rochester, director of dance at.

Right.

Hello, Thomas.

Hey, there.

It's great to have Thomas joining us here.

And listeners will open up to your feedback as well.

How do you feel about the art and the artists and maybe drawing those lines?

Or maybe you don't.

Maybe you think, you know, maybe you don't really care.

Maybe you do.

Maybe it helps determine what music you listen to, what shows you see, you know what art that you buy?

It's 844295 talk toll free.

8442958255263 WXXI if you're in Rochester.

2639994 email the program connections at KCI dawg.

Or you can join the chat on the YouTube channel.

And I'll start with Thomas Warfield.

Let me let me just ask you a little bit about the the broad outlines of this question here.

Thomas, how much these days are you thinking?

Yeah.

You know, I mean, I love this song, but I know, you know, I know this about the performer, so can I listen?

I mean, does that come to your mind at all or do you think are desired?

I'm not going to think about the artist.

Well, I think we can't, not think about the artist.

it's a complicated question because I think philosophically it's an individual choice.

And so it's hard to really have a moral sort of collective idea about it.

I think it's good that we're discussing it because, yes, this is something that's here and we can't ignore it.

and I think it also may be that we take each individual case differently.

You know, I think I think about, Picasso and his, wonderful painting, Guernica.

And, you know, he was a sort of repugnant behavior towards women his whole life, basically.

But yet we think of that painting, and it's sort of depiction of war, and it's a masterpiece, we call it.

So it's a little bit hard to say.

Well, we shouldn't appreciate and we shouldn't value that piece of art.

And yet do we then not value the artist who made it?

it's a very complicated issue.

I think.

It certainly is.

And that's why we're talking about it.

I mean, Dallas sends me a note saying, liberals love to find new targets to hate.

I know they started with the Dixie chicks.

They've been all over Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen.

Those liberals, those lefties just cannot lay off musicians.

Like, just leave the Dixie chicks alone.

Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, they get a lot of hatred.

Even the president was all over that noted liberal.

Donald Trump was all over Bruce Springsteen last weekend, seeming to threaten him.

So, yeah, I mean, like, this is not a political thing.

I mean, I understand politics comes into everything here, but this goes in a lot of different directions.

There are people who decide they don't like the actions, the viewpoints.

But really what we're talking about is behavior of artists and consuming the art.

Mona, is is there a kind of broad overview that you have on how you think about this?

Certainly I separate how I consume media personally versus what I will professionally I think platform or also and Thomas knows this I think well is the arts is a workplace.

So if someone is whether it is fully abusive or dangerous or just personally rude and unpleasant or untrustworthy, can I enjoy something they've made?

Sure.

I think at least because people contain multitudes.

I think the Guernica example is a very strong one.

I also think of Roman Polanski and the pianist.

He can both do awful things and have a strong insight into something very human and important.

But in terms of if I'm hiring a musician, if I'm working with someone, I think of who's teaching a master class.

There's been a lot of discussion of that from Kathryn Needleman, the the principal oboist of the Baltimore Symphony, about even how to interrupt.

You have some famous artist come teach your students at your college.

It's a big honor.

You've brought x famous artists say you brought Patti LuPone to coach your students.

And then what if she screams at them and makes them feel awful?

Or if it's not Patti LuPone, it's some great violinist who makes a racist comment towards a young Asian violinist, which happened not too long ago.

What do you do in that moment?

And do you realize whether or not you can still love how they play the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto?

You would probably not bring them into a professional situation or an educational situation.

Again, because artists do make the art.

The art doesn't happen without them.

And when art is actually your workplace or your educational environment, that should not be tolerated.

Matt Parsons, you know, I'm kind of of the same mind, but I do have gotten in this conversation with some friends who deeply disagree with me that you can separate the art from the artists, because unfortunately for us, who consume lots of art, music and movies and things like that, bad people make good art sometimes, and, I don't think that that, takes away from, you know, if a movie is good or not.

I think it, I think someone can choose if they want to go see that movie.

I do believe that's an individual decision.

And I do believe the greatest form of protests is with the dollar.

But, I think people can make, you know, people do make the choice.

Like, I'm just going to see this movie and there's different levels of that.

You know, I think if a director is notoriously terrible, you might not want to support that movie because it's their movie.

I think when you get into like one actor in a movie, I don't really believe in punishing the movie for one actor, because a lot of people go in to making a movie.

To me, you're punishing the grips, you're punishing the camera operators, you're punishing, the background players.

So it kind of sounds like I'm talking about both sides of my mouth, but I do think it is a bit of a layered, topic like that.

No, I don't think.

I don't think you are at all.

I think you, just as Thomas did, are expressing the complexity of this.

and, and let me also just say that, I know you were making a point, Matt, when you said it is true that bad people can make good art.

but it you're kind of making an obvious rhetorical point, so I'm not trying to correct anything you're saying.

I'm simply going to offer.

the world is not bifurcated into good people and bad people, right?

I mean, everybody has things that they wish they hadn't done in their lives.

That does not absolve.

Right.

So.

Right.

I was thinking broadly, I want to acknowledge the complexity of this and my own imperfections, while not absolving myself of the need to be careful about, you know, really sort of funneling a lot of, you know, energy, resources, time, money, toward people who are truly sort of abhorrent.

So, that's what I mean by complexity.

I'm not comfortable just saying, like, well, there's good people or bad people and I'm one of the good ones, so I'm just not going to support the bad ones, and that'll be easy, you know?

Like what?

What does where's the line of bad?

And do people try to atone?

Are people genuinely contrite?

are certain behaviors one offs or repeated?

Who was harmed?

I mean, all those questions are really, really important.

But I'm not someone who's never, you know, caused pain.

I mean, I hope not to the level that anybody would ever want to cancel me, but I don't I don't know, I guess I'm just observing that, I don't want to just have this bucket of, like, good and bad and pretend it's easy.

I think this question is complex.

It requires complex thought, but it's not.

I'm not going to ever arrive at, like, well, that person's in the bad pile now, you know.

Does that make sense to me?

For sure.

Okay.

I mean, what do you think?

I think so, though I'd also say that James Levine, longtime music director of the met, now, deceased, spent years abusing young men, basically.

Not only then, I'd say separate from his art, but connecting it to the sense of whether or not they could create or be allowed to be artists.

So sometimes I do have a scale of zero to James Levine, and, he's on the far is running a literal sex cult and depriving people of their creativity and their humanity.

The person stay there.

Yeah.

And the other thing is that how many people and, you know, sort of the no smoke, no fires, so many times he did like there weren't guest conductor.

So he's such a great artist.

It was a big open secret for a long time.

In fact, some people even say, Kathleen Battle if we're going to the opera.

Great opera singer was declared a diva and impossible to work with at the met.

Was it actually because she called out James Levine?

Some people say so.

It wasn't that she was a difficult woman.

She spoke up about him abusing young men and then suddenly she was gone and James Levine was still on the podium.

So anyway, in terms of, you know, I think, yeah, go ahead.

Thomas, I was going to say that, you bring up some interesting points here about the where we live now, the time we live in now.

So there was a time where we really didn't talk about these things.

And, you know, part of the part, a part of that.

James Levine time was that we we really as a culture, we didn't really especially if someone we considered great artists, we just kind of overlooked it.

You know, I have a couple of short little stories.

Well, I took class, in Martha Graham Studio, and she was still around, and she really was a torrent of a person who just had a lot of anger.

And I remember one time she threw a chair across the room, you know, kind of at us and, but, yeah, you know, she's one of the great modern choreographers of our of the 20th century.

so but we didn't talk about it then, you know, it wasn't something that was, sort of a community discussion.

Now with, especially with the Patti LuPone thing is a good example.

No, we're at least discussing this.

It's out in the open.

And so people can make a choice.

I think that's the one of the big differences in the time we're living in now.

also, we're we're using the lens of where we are now to look back, which is a little, you know, complicated because, you know, and at one time we didn't think this way or we didn't speak this way or we didn't rationalize this way or whatever, but now we do.

So I think it's maybe even more important than canceling quote unquote, the, the art is I think what's actually really important is discussing the situation, getting that out into sort of, collective, discussion or comment, just to get through some of the how we feel about this.

Maybe we won't arrive at an actual solution, but I think part of the, solution is actually just discussing it.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, sure.

And, Thomas, to your point about the way that some of these very talented artists that people knew that sometimes these allegations come out and like, well, they're coming out publicly, but people, new performers, new, you know, people who worked, on a set or on a stage knew this is where what Donald Trump said on that Access Hollywood video rings really true when you are famous or when you're considered great, they let you do it.

And what this last decade has been about is a question of, well, maybe not anymore.

But again, not to bifurcate and make things really snug and easy.

It's more of a conversation about what do you do and what lines do you draw.

And everyone's going to have a slightly different view of that.

There's not a a simple answer.

I'm going to get Will on the phone in a second, but an extension of how to think about this.

I want to ask Mona about does it matter to you if the artist in question is alive or dead?

It does to me in some ways on the radio because of royalties.

Like literally, am I giving them money is a difference, I think.

But I mean, even we'll go with Wagner.

There's always going to be an asterisk in my mind.

Kind of annoying.

That's that's a whole longer discussion.

But to me, whether or not they are actively getting money from my consumption of their art does change something for me.

You know, I will not play it on the radio and they get more royalties.

I don't like to think of the fact of giving shoulder to more money.

Okay, that is a might be that again is sort of personal, but that is my kind of thing.

No, it's an interesting way to think about it, Matt.

Alive or dead, does that matter to you?

I see I see what you're saying in terms of getting royalties.

I mean, I'm, I am I am the person that I kind of like.

I will just go see any movie that's out in theaters.

I just it's kind of just my only hobby.

So I don't often, differentiate of, you know, should I be seeing this or should I just kind of go see everything that's out?

I think it's if someone is, no longer with us, it's definitely an interesting way to contextualize their career, their life, and if, their art should carry forward, as some, you know, something important.

and I think, you know, any misdeeds as part of their legacy.

And it should be discussed as such.

Okay.

Thomas.

Alive or dead, does that matter to you?

Well, I, I think it's on.

It's on the individual by individual case.

I can't really say generally this is how I feel about this.

I it depends on what the person did or didn't do.

It depends on even if I know about what the person did or didn't do.

I mean, I think there's so many layers to how we can arrive at a sort of confusion.

And again, I'm not really sure we can arrive at the conclusion.

But I guess to answer your question, yeah, I don't know if it matters to me.

It just depends on the situation, the person in that situation.

I do agree.

about the kind of giving money to having somebody, having an artist kind of, be able to get money off of something.

It's hard.

It's a hard thing to to really, to conclude.

But I'm glad we're talking about it, because getting it out in the open maybe helps upcoming artists or even artists right now to be thinking twice about their behavior.

So, I mean, I think that's part of this whole thing is getting us to rethink or think for the first time our our behavior and how it affects the culture that we live in, the world that we live in.

And for students coming up, as you work with Thomas, you know, to know what you know, this is not acceptable.

It's not like, well, they're a great artist and they're getting this out of me or whatever.

You know, that there's more acknowledgment of our own worth and our own, you know, not that all this suffering is needed for art, because a lot of reading the Patti LuPone article is not just what she does, but it's also what she went through when she didn't have as much social or cultural power.

What Hal Prince did to her that's, you know, kind of heartbreaking to hear.

Yeah, yeah.

I, I want to get some feedback here from listeners.

I read some emails in a moment.

Let me grab Will and Fairport on the phone first.

I will go ahead.

Hey, how are you guys?

Good.

I think I missed the maybe did mention the whole Barenboim Bogner piece.

Oh, we have a I started to go ahead with that and such that.

Yeah.

No I mean that was one piece that just came to mind immediately.

Like, you know, the thing about canceling or not canceling, like the Israel canceled, so to speak, long term since the World War two because of World War two, obviously.

And, you know, the espousal of, of the Hitler regime, of the Aryan music, you know, central to them.

And so you didn't have that played in Israel until Daniel Barenboim played it, I think maybe 8 or 10 years ago for the first time.

And he came out and said, look, you know, this is he loved the music and he wanted it played.

And he thought that you could separate things.

And that brings me to something else.

And again, I don't have the answers, but I just love the discussion.

And I think that part of it is something like what Furtwangler did.

Or speaking of World War Two, there was known as like, you know, Hitler's conductor.

He's literally on a 1944, you know, recording broadcast across the world of him on Hitler's birthday, you know, conducting the Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for, you know, the union of all brotherhood of men.

And at the same time, it's it's reported that his own, his own letter said, you know, he can separate politics from art.

He thought, you know, these guys are all stooges.

They're a bunch of, you know, but clowns that are going to leave at some point.

The real beauty of, you know, and that's a technical term that you of, of, of Germany is, you know, underlying this and it will pass as well.

And I got to say, that's kind of what I'm feeling about the beauty of America too.

You know, this will pass.

And we're going to be lying underneath waiting to pick up the pieces and put it back together because, you know, and that's what they've done in Germany, you know.

And Furtwangler, it was went through the denazification trials and was found okay.

And, you know, for the first time after, you know, doing that because he thought he could separate, like being the conductor associated with the Nazi regime from the music that he was trying to do.

He thought it was just do it over live that and it was just beyond.

So it's a super interesting thing too, that like Yehudi Menuhin, you know, one of the primary representatives of kind of, you know, the Jewish musical world, post-World War II, who was the first guy to go out and say, yeah, I'm going to play with Furtwangler.

And they recorded a gorgeous Beethoven violin concerto that you can get the recording of nowadays.

And I think even the phrasing in it is gorgeous to listen to.

So I like it, you know, from that side, like some of the stuff that comes out of it.

That 1944 recording of the Beethoven's Ninth is earth shaking.

You can only listen to it once a year.

I mean, if you ever search it out for things, you know?

Yeah, it's going downhill, you know, and then last, you know, I to throw a bunch of stuff out.

But on a personal scale, I do believe it's like a, you know, music by troubled characters.

We'll call them that.

I, you know, Walter Gaskin is one I can't even listen to me more because the Rubenstein recorded that he was like, okay, with Hitler, and I'm in there now.

I can't listen to, you know, these kings beautiful seminal Debussy preludes, nor can I even listen to it.

But on the other hand, I can listen to Ryan Adams awesome song, and some of it I see and what's happening in there, because I can listen to the words.

So maybe it's something to do with, like the music and then actually having lyrics attached to it and yeah, the music and the words and the personal expression.

Because of course, on the one thing I think where one professor pointed out to me with Wagner, when you can say, oh, this music is separate, or it's just the plots of the opera that get to the anti-Semitism, as in Beck Nessa's Aria, when as he sort of does, like a cancellation, cancellation style singing and he's trying to correct him to sing more properly German.

You might even say music itself could contain some anti-Semitism.

But then I know other people.

Yeah, who were saying, I'm Jewish and I like Wagner.

I wish to go travel and hear it.

Or.

But people ran up to pull the bow off the first violinist strings.

It's complicated.

Someone like Furtwangler, who believed they were above it all but may have been a form of naivete, was Richard Strauss.

People didn't really go after him, but he was like, I worked with these jerks.

I'll work with those jerks.

And so but he lent his social capital, I don't know, it's very complicated, as you say.

And I didn't know that about this king.

And now I'm going to be sad.

What a phone call.

Well, should have been the piano man.

Sorry we didn't have you in the studio.

That was outstanding.

no.

They're really thoughtful and really interesting.

Kind of asking, why is it that we feel strongly enough about certain art to say, I'm not going to consume it?

Others, you know, we kind of allow ourselves to kind of go there.

well, I really appreciate that.

And, you know, another thing that came to mind, a couple listeners, sent me a note about, well, what about the comeback of Kevin Spacey?

So, Matt Santino, tell me a little bit about.

I mean, he just received some kind of an award that I don't remember I don't know much about.

but he also, has, it's here's the headline.

Kevin Spacey's comeback continues with new action thriller featuring Rocky and Fast and Furious stars.

So he's, if you don't know the Kevin Spacey story, I'm not going to kind of go into detail, because I don't know all of the details.

I just know that in 2017, 2018, he effectively lost a lot of the opportunities he still had in front of him as an actor, Awards, things like that.

I mean, if you're going to use the word cancellation that Kevin Spacey probably would use that word.

but now he's kind of back to an extent.

How do we evaluate something like that?

Does anyone ever really cancel?

well, right.

That's the kind of the point, right?

And I mean, yeah, he's I mean, he's been accused of doing despicable, disgusting things.

And, you know, it's we learned that in the past several years, these allegations.

And it's to me, I always kind of look at it as do I go back and think, okay, well, I don't I can't watch The Usual Suspects anymore, which, I mean, I'm never like the usual suspects, but, you're wrong.

It's so good.

It's fine.

here, I'll give you the most complicated one.

American Beauty.

Okay?

Given what it's about and the allegations of Kevin Spacey, it's a not aged well movie that I still think is pretty great.

I think it's it's, satirical of, you know, suburban ennui.

I think it's always sad about it.

I think it's a pretty great movie.

That's one that's a little like you watching through the lens of what we know about Kevin Spacey now.

you know, but like I said, it's anyone ever really like.

He's he's booking roles again.

He's getting a where Paul Schrader, the writer director, I mean, he goes out of his way to say he would cast Kevin Spacey in something.

he's just one of an old curmudgeon on Facebook who was just like, I've got this great script for Kevin Spacey, but no one will give me money.

I think he just, like once a week, we'll just say this.

So, yeah.

So that's just frustrating because it gets back to the workplace thing.

Me enjoying the usual suspects.

Are you enjoying American Beauty doesn't materially affect.

That's actually, I guess, where it's living that Kevin Spacey is still around, but I wouldn't hire him to work with young people.

Right.

You know, I don't know, like that's.

And that keeps happening in the musical world too.

And, you know, it's like when we talk about the art versus the artists, it's, you know, being in good movies, making great music that doesn't excuse, you know, we can't criticize, you know, these are not people I want to hang out with.

These are not people I want to get lunch with.

But, in terms of just sitting down watching a movie, I usually fall on the line of, if it's a good movie, I will watch it.

Okay.

It's it's another thing for us to, another thing that may come up here, you know, I don't remember the name of this book.

Exactly.

And that late 60s, there was a book called.

I think it's called The Death of the author, something like that.

And basically the idea is, you know, once the art has been created, the artist is kind of not there in a sense, because it's you, the observer or the audience or the viewer.

You bring your interpretation.

And that's kind of what creates the art.

So how you feel about it.

So in some ways, I mean, we could look at it this way that once the arts create it, it's like you're giving birth to something and then it goes out into the world and it becomes whatever it becomes.

So I mean, in some ways it's we could look at it this way.

I think it's a very valid point that you, the audience or you, the observer, are part of the creation or at least the interpretation of the art itself.

So if we look at it like that, you might be able to not in a sense think of the artist at all, but to think of yourself as part of the experience.

And I think that really is, gets said, something really important about what meaning we create that is separate from it.

It also then puts us in a weird relationship with the creator, though, because we've now co-created something in a way with someone involved somewhere in the process that we have an uncomfortable feeling about, which might always put that asterisk near it.

Even with cases of Matt and I were talking beforehand about nostalgia for certain things, when you go back to them sort of knowing something, whether it's having gotten older or knowing about the person to.

And I think Mona would probably roll with this.

This is from Constance Grady and Vox.

I want to read some of what Constance said about this.

So she said, for a few years when I was a teenager, my favorite movie was Edward Scissorhands.

and then by the way, Matt Santino, Edward Scissorhands, great movie, great movie.

Yes.

Okay.

I rarely say that on here, Great movie.

I know now Matt is a tough critic.

Critic should be tough.

I'm.

I'm a pushover.

Matt's tough.

constant says in 2016, Johnny Depp's then wife Amber heard, accused him of domestic violence and produced credible evidence backing up her side of the story.

All of a sudden, there was something new to reckon with when I thought about Edward Scissorhands.

Now, whenever I thought about Johnny Depp, I felt a deep and profound disgust, a moral outrage.

That was a real feeling, too.

And I couldn't feel it either.

How do I reconcile esthetic pleasure with moral disgust?

Which of my feelings will win?

What do I do with art I love that was created by a monster?

And she concludes with this no matter how you think artists are connected to their art, you can always refuse to give them your money.

End quote.

That's kind of the living or dead who benefits thing, right?

Mona?

Some of that.

Yeah.

So and then the only other thing is again, some of that discusses, you get back to the idea of there aren't good and bad people and we all have things we regret.

We haven't even gotten into with some art that shocks or delves into horrific things actually help us connect to that.

We've been thinking of art that we find pleasurable in a person who does something that is this score with that brand or way, or discordant with that idea.

I think there's a Zadie Smith story from years ago in The New Yorker about every one night we go out and point our arrows that everybody else's houses and the trick is to be consistent from beginning to end, you know, to be have a consistency.

And that was we were watching a movie last night.

It had, James Woods in it, and my husband said, oh, that guy.

And I said, well, he's not playing a Tom Hanks character.

I'm not bothered if it turns out he's a jerk and he's playing a jerk.

My brain sort of, you know, resolved it.

That's an interesting way of thinking about it.

And, you know, woods is an outspoken political person.

I've got some emails from people who are saying, well, you know, this person is a Trump supporter.

Did you know this artist is a Trump supporter?

Hayes Carll is a country artist, by the way, a really good one, by the way.

You want to listen to a great song you never heard download.

Hey, it's Carlos Beaumont.

he is a left.

He's on the political left.

He's in the country.

And that in some, in some cases has limited where he can play and what what radio stations want him on because he's a he's a political lefty in the country world.

So, there's a lot of things that people will do or say.

And to your point, Mona, I just think it's interesting thinking about like an artist who plays a jerk or plays something that you feel like matches their real life persona.

And of course, we don't really know the real life persona at all.

This is all parasocial, and we should, you know, worry about people we know and not about Patti LuPone fighting with Audra McDonald, because they're both fictional characters.

I mean, in many ways.

How much do we how much do we really know about Thomas?

How much do we really know about anybody?

Well, you know, I think there's a couple things going on.

There is the sort of polarization of our beliefs.

So we do get sort of stuck in how we believe something and maybe even believe something about somebody else.

and then there's sort of the behavior of the person.

So I think they're not always the same thing.

And so I think because of the behavior, it's important for us to discuss the behavior.

you know, if you have your own beliefs and all that polarization, you probably need some therapy around that.

But that's not really the issue.

I think projecting our beliefs and what we feel onto somebody else or onto their work is one thing, but to, a person's behavior is something else.

And so taking it back to Patti LuPone, I, I do think that in many ways she's crossed the line in a sense of not reading the time or any.

So to make that, sort of terrible remark about Hell's Kitchen, which is an extraordinary, wonderful musical.

really became a personal attack on the people in that show.

I mean, how you couldn't know that was going to happen?

I'm not really sure.

Or maybe that is what, you know, maybe the controversy is what you wanted, but I think that that that's that's worth talking about because, the time we live in now, attacking individuals is almost a, from the Oval Office a bad time, but it's becoming a sort of a we're accepting it in a way, without any qualms.

And I think it's important for us to know we really did.

This is not acceptable behavior.

We really do have to talk about this.

Why did this happen?

What were the repercussions of it?

How can we not pass this along to the next generation that this is okay with the Patti on the Patti LuPone story?

By the way, pretty extraordinary email here from Charlie, a somewhat regular emailer, who says, Evan, I don't expect you to believe this, but it's true.

Patti LuPone was my babysitter when I was eight through ten years old.

She is a Northport, Long Island girl and has always spoken her mind.

One time I asked her how come my cousin didn't get a better role in My Fair Lady, in which Patti had the lead, and she said, because your cousin can't sing or dance as well as I can.

I can't say I agree with many of the things she says, but she'll be just Patti to me.

That's from Charlie, who Charlie's got a specific relationship, whereas most of us, our relationships with stars, with artists, is this really, really surface, faraway thing here.

I mean, this is Mark, right?

To say, Evan, at the end of the day, artists are human, good, bad and ugly, but human.

This doesn't excuse horrible behavior of some artists, but unfortunately, we raise them to a status that we forget they are human.

Glen Weldon on NPR's pop culture Happy Hour, covered this subject with the allegations against Neil Gaiman.

His approach was he would not deny past work of the author because of the memories, feelings, and nostalgia it brings to him.

Like one of your panelists said, he would not support any work in the future.

It is an individual choice of how we want to view the artist or if we want to consume their art, knowing they could not be the person that we thought that they were.

That is from Mark.

yeah, they are human.

It's easy, but we and we think we know them, but most of the time we don't.

And so we're judging based on what we do know.

I mean the Edward Scissorhands.

Does that change your view of Edward Scissorhands?

The stories on Johnny Depp Matt know honestly, it doesn't because it was, you know, a movie from 1990 and it's, it's a good movie.

Johnny Depp is, you know, been accused of doing some god awful things.

And, but, you know, he didn't make that movie.

That's Tim Burton's movie.

He's the star front and center, silent, most of it.

I, if I remember correctly.

Yeah.

which is probably good for a lot of, for everyone who watched that.

but, you know, it's a good movie because it's a good movie because for two hours he's Edward Scissorhands, he's not Johnny Depp.

And I think that can help.

maybe if you're on offensive.

Should I still be watching that movie?

Maybe that could ease some moral tensions.

If you want to still enjoy certain films or not.

but I just watched Edward Scissorhands movie last year, and I think it's still a pretty great movie.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

I know you want to add to that.

Oh, I was just thinking about sometimes when the work of the art has an idea that the artist wants to convey, and I'm trying to think of a less controversial one, but I may have to bring this up.

That's all I'll say.

When I was younger, I enjoyed The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and I enjoyed the fiction and the story.

And then, of course, there was a big helping of politics that went along with it that was very inherent to the art.

And, perhaps those are no longer views that I find very good.

And as I read more and more, I see more in it that I find distasteful.

That went down because it was an an interesting story that I was intrigued to read the next page.

So while we can say there are things that are very separate, I sometimes wonder about and this doesn't get to Patti LuPone at all.

But I do think about Neil Gaiman, whose work meant so much to me at such a young age and I will not support in the future.

But it's it's tough because even some of who I am as shaped.

But I were reading this and then sometimes wonder about are these ideas of someone who had a point of view that I would not tolerate in friends or near me, but there are ideas that are in their ideas are mimetic and they get in our head.

And so in art you convey something.

It can be something outside yourself.

And I think I'm worried.

I'm definitely getting too abstract.

And maybe I should go back to Ayn Rand and Objectivism, but you know, we'll go there.

Did you read?

Was that a hypothetical or did you read The Fountainhead?

Yeah, I did, and did you enjoy it?

I did, and then I didn't, but yeah, no, that's now I'm more of a her very first book is that anthem.

I feel as much closer to her authentic experience and also isn't like a thousand zillion pages.

I only knew people who were assigned the fountain had never read it, and got the cliff notes.

I don't know, read the whole thing and end that pass.

Santino, did you read Fountainhead?

No, I think Atlas Shrugged.

I think Atlas Shrugged.

You did, I think, yeah, I think that was one of those served up annoying English class.

But I also read three out of the ten.

What's his name?

The guy who started Scientology on a bet with Heinlein.

He wrote some very long kind of bad science fiction books, and I think I realized only three novels and how bad they were.

Oh, Battlefield Earth guy.

Okay, I have to get our only break in the hour, and I've got some more of your feedback.

It's 844295 talk.

If you want to call the program as we're talking about, how do you separate art from the artists when you are uncomfortable with the behavior of the artist?

And where where are the lines that you draw if you draw any?

has that changed over time?

Do you think of it differently now than you did?

maybe years ago?

It's 844295 talk.

8442958255263.

If you're in Rochester 2639994, you can email the program Connections at Skywalk.

If you're watching us on YouTube, you can join us in the chat there.

We'll come back with your feedback in just a moment.

I'm Evan Dawson Thursday on the next connections, the center for youth has a new restorative justice project.

We'll talk to the executive director, Elaine Spall, about that.

And then in our second hour, our Jenny joins us on the program, responding to our invitation and responding to some criticism from some members of Rochester City Council who want to see a public utility replace our Julie talk with you on Thursday.

This is Evan Dawson with WXXI news.

Join me for a voice at the voter debate with the three candidates vying for Rochester mayor in the June Democratic primary Malik Evans, Mary Lucien and Shashi Sinha will debate live on Wednesday, May 28th and Sky TV, FM 105.9 and on Sky News Dawg and the Sky news YouTube channel.

Join us Wednesday, May 28th at 8 p.m..

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Ariel, on the YouTube chat says, I'd love to see Patti's response.

Patti LuPone responds to The New Yorker article if she ever decides to.

She knows exactly what she was doing during that interview.

do you do you agree with that, Thomas Warfield I mean, do you think Patti knew what she was saying and she knew that this would blow up?

I think Patti LuPone always knows what she's doing.

So yes, I think she knew what she was doing.

And, you know, look at we're talking about it.

We're talking about her.

I mean, you know, there is some of that here going on.

So, you know, there's something else that came up to my mind while we were in a little break was we're kind of in the middle of this right now, you know, with P Diddy.

And, and I could even go back to our Kelly, to Bill Cosby, even, you know, about some of the work that those people have done are somewhat provocative in a sense that it gets us thinking about things bigger than ourselves or greater than ourselves, or about the society in general.

and so are those things valuable?

You know, I it's it's worth talking about, you know, so, yeah, I think we're right in the middle of this just right now would be Diddy actually think well and Thomas on the on the Bill Cosby note.

Let me read an email from Irene and I'd like to get your take on this.

Thomas.

Really the whole panel here, Irene says I was midway through introducing my then teenage daughter to the joys of The Cosby Show when the accusations began to surface regarding Bill Cosby's predatory actions toward women.

Immediately, the series was nowhere to be found anywhere.

To me, the series was brilliant.

The casting and writing were so well done.

I am able to separate the actions of the actor as a man from the genius of the series.

It is a shame that this classic series has now essentially been shelved.

That's from Irene, so I haven't checked to see, I guess.

I mean, I certainly would believe that what Irene is telling us, which is like, you can't find The Cosby Show on streaming services anymore.

and Irene is saying she thinks that's a shame.

She's saying she would never endorse what Bill Cosby did as a human being.

But the show itself was brilliant and deserves to still be seen.

What do you think Thomas Warfield?

Yeah, I agree with her.

And I actually I think it is starting to pop up again in different places, streaming.

So I think you can kind of find it if you search right now.

which is another thing, you know, as time goes on, things change and things come back and, you know, but, The Cosby Show was brilliant, and it was actually a very important historically, and changed shifted the culture of the country in many ways, especially around race.

And I think that that was a really important thing that it did.

You know, what Bill Cosby did in his private life or even, you know, behind the scenes on that show.

That's another thing.

But the show itself, as an entity, as a work of art, really was brilliant.

And, and was an important, contribution to the culture of this country.

And so let me ask our guests in studio.

You know, Mona, earlier, you were talking about how, well, if it's an actor that you have a problem with, are they at the center?

Is this their show or not?

So if you've got an issue with Bill Cosby and you want to penalize Bill Cosby by saying, I'm not going to watch The Cosby Show, are you also hurting the other actors and the people who rode in?

People behind the scenes, who are not maybe Bill Cosby, but might benefit from your consumption of this also then actually question sort of my living or dead thing because the idea is, people are still with us and are also still history in a way.

Right.

And this is accounting important.

So this also gets to entertainment and also art, sort of even like the, more that the carousel where the designs got moved to the museum is the radio is the TV is something else.

Are we the pub?

Are we the public carousel?

Or are we the museum where you appreciate it and say, that's interesting.

Looking at historical, it's not just to be there to sort of again sink into our mind without being problematic, you know?

So that's I guess I didn't answer that other question, because I do think that's sort of Matt's point about the main character versus the side, but it did get me questioning my living or dead, because I don't want to give someone royalties, but I also still feel even before they're dead, their show could be historically important, culturally important, and it is nice to think that we can create things better than ourselves.

And I'm talking about art, not children.

At this point, movie shows streaming, so there's a lot of people involved.

It's hard to penalize one person now.

And, you know, it's, you know, the abhorrent things that, Bill Cosby did.

It's, you know, he's the face of the show.

It's The Cosby Show.

so I can understand the show being penalize.

I don't think it's necessarily the right thing to do because, like we said, you are penalizing hundreds of people for a bad man's actions.

I get to use, you know, broad terms.

And, and so I don't believe in penalizing everyone.

I think maybe around the 25th anniversary to bring to bring it back to American Beauty, I think Thora Birch gave an interview because she played, Kevin Spacey's daughter in it and said, you know, kind of danced around the whole Kevin Spacey of it all.

But like, what he has done should not affect this.

Let this movie be this movie.

This was a big movie.

Let it stand on its mean.

Whether you like the movie or not is obviously up to an individual person, or if you even want to see it because of Kevin Spacey is up to an individual on the individual person.

This movie was a cultural phenomenon.

I mean, it was this like tiny little movie that made hundreds of millions of dollars, like it was a phenomenon in 1999 when it came out.

and so I kind of fall in line with, like, like what Thora Birch said.

Like, I even think she I could be misquoting, but I even think she said, like, you know, he wasn't always the most comfortable person to be on set with.

But his actions are his actions.

This movie is this movie, of course, the success sort of grandfather and things.

Well, you know, it was a mess, but it was really successful.

And so it's important now.

And I think about that with classical music, like it's very easy if it's a kind of a crummy piece of music and it was written by a jerk, like, you know, that's not right.

That's the problem.

Yeah, yeah.

But if it's something that is iconic or beautiful or does something special and also has, again, this asterisk or this discomfort, again, sometimes I think about again, you know, not going to hire Bill Cosby to work with some more actors perhaps.

And you know, and that is where if no one's really canceled, you can say something's come back.

But also I our is so short that someone who maybe you know, I guess that's the question is, do you still feel comfortable hiring this person as a conductor to perform on stages with people who have to work backstage with them?

And are they better, or is it just like, well, you know, like that's you're putting more people again in professional situations without perhaps a formal HR in the performance art world, like in an uncomfortable position.

And I think what I hear from Matt on American Beauty is like, yes, it was successful, but this was a cultural touchstone because it was a little bit of a mirror, an uncomfortable mirror into a lot of suburban households where you might have someone who cannot grapple with getting older and I mean, not every hopefully not every suburban dad is trying to sleep, but their friend, their daughter's friend.

I mean, he's even gross in the movie.

Yeah.

Right.

Right.

That's back to the jerk in real life.

Jerk in the movie.

Oh, also, just like everybody misunderstanding things like everybody, it's hard.

Everybody misunderstood Fight Club, and now we're dealing with the repercussions.

The terrible movie.

oh.

I love that movie.

I hate what it's done to your past.

You know, here it's going to have to be a great movie to get his approval.

he's a very good critic, Dwayne.

And he actually is Dwayne in Rochester.

Hey, Dwayne.

Go ahead.

Hello.

Thank you.

what I'd like to add to the conversation is, it is something that has, guided me through the years that is that, if the art is serious, attended to, the art will mature.

whether the artist matures along with the art depends on whether they have a spiritual life.

and so, you can find plenty of art that is really wonderful art, but is done by people who you wouldn't want to have dinner with or introduce your children to.

But that does not necessarily take away the the value of the art unless the the artists lack of spiritual development and maturity invades the art.

Define spiritual, spiritual means looking into one's own inner wisdom.

Okay.

All right.

Mona, how is this?

I just love that comparison of the art can mature while the individual doesn't, that somebody can really tap into something and not even, perhaps even know you know, what they have done and not continue to be that person.

Or take the lesson.

You can take a lesson from an artwork that the actual creator might not have from, is that I think some of it, and that's I think that's sort of wisdom and knowing what you're looking at.

So that notion of that spiritual development or wisdom is an interesting one, because some aspects of creations are accidents.

And as we've talked about movies, dance, also dramas so much is a collaborative process and comes from different things.

And the intersection of certain people or of a certain moment.

And yeah, the artwork that could define your life might not have defined to that creator's life.

Also, what do you think, Thomas?

You know, I would go as far as to say that art is a collaborative, always collaborative, even, you know, we think of a single artist creating a poem or a dance or a piece of music, but actually it is sort of the sum of the experiences or the dreams or the imagination of many, many experiences that you kind of absorb.

And so I think that there is this, again, this idea that the viewer, the listener, the audience, the observer brings to the work something that the artist maybe doesn't and that creates something there that then makes it something for whoever is watching or experiencing it.

So I, I can't I think we can't quite get away from how important that is.

And that's a piece of art making that it doesn't happen in a vacuum, actually.

You know, even though we think in Georgia O'Keeffe is off in the desert creating these pieces, but it is about her life that's being poured into that and everything that came into her life, that poured into that moment of a brush stroke on a canvas.

And so when people see it, they then bring their experience to this, feeling that then create something between the artist and the art and the person viewing it.

And so I think that that's an important piece that kind of, I don't want to say maybe supersedes, but does sort of overtake the artists themselves.

So that's I think it's important for us to really remember that.

Well, maybe a good way to kind of wrap this up here is Michael reminds us of the old adage, he says all human beings have flaws.

But that old saying, never meet your heroes.

you know, I mean, it.

It's easier.

It's easier to be a fan of someone's art when you find out that they're pretty cool person.

I mean that you like them as a person.

it really challenges you as a consumer when you are put off by their behavior.

and I think that we've had a really good conversation this hour that is nuanced, that isn't just endorsing a simple way of looking at this.

And every person is going to have a different view.

But I'm with Michael that, you know, don't meet your heroes.

Just be careful because it could it could break that that beautiful image that you have of that Mona.

Yeah.

Brenda said I should bring this up.

I've always said I'm basically prepared to believe everyone is a jerk except for Yo-Yo Ma.

So I don't know if you have that person.

That's the only I heard once he got hangry and disagreed with Emanuel Ax on a tempo, and that's the worst I heard about him.

I will say this for some reason I would be shocked to hear that Yo-Yo Ma is is a cad or a jerk, so that's the only one.

Just give me that one universe.

That's it, that's it.

Just everyone else.

No monsters.

Tom Thomas, who's yours?

Like, don't ruin this for me.

I've got such a wonderful.

Well, you know, as a as somebody who has met a lot of my heroes, I've been blessed to have done that.

I would say for the most part, they are as I imagined.

And so that's that's that's really beautiful.

Yeah.

That is lovely.

Matt.

Pass.

Santino.

Unfortunate.

A lot of my favorite filmmakers are terrible people, but, it would break my heart if I ever learned that, my, my Italian grandfather, Marty Scorsese, he was a bad person.

Oh, okay.

There you go.

to all the listeners who emailed and contributed thoughts, even Charlie, who was babysat by Patti LuPone.

And Charlie, I believe you.

Thank you for a nuanced conversation about a subject that, you know, it doesn't have to have the same answer for everyone.

Matt Parsons, film critic for City Magazine, thank you very much for being here.

Thank you for having me.

Always good.

Mona Secreto salami, our colleague, music director, host and producer for Sky classical 91 five and music coordinator for The Little Cafe, Thank You.

And Thomas Warfield, director of dance at RIT.

You are so generous with your time.

I love talking to you.

Thank you sir.

You're welcome.

And from all of us at connections.

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