actors

Caring Letter From A Child Star

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments
Sarah and the Baron.

Sarah and the Baron.

This remarkable letter is old—2005—but I just became aware of it, and it is an important document in the ongoing problem of the mistreatment of child performers.

I am a fan of film director (and Monty Python member) Terry Gilliam, and a great admirer of Canadian actress/director/political activist Sarah Polley. So naturally I love “The Adventures Baron Munchausen,” Gilliam’s epic fantasy that starred Polley when she was the tender age of 9, and gave one of the most impressive performances of any juvenile actress, ever. In 2005, Gilliam was filming another movie with a young star, and 17 years after working with him, Polley felt obligated to write this letter, which speaks for itself, and eloquently too:

Hi there, Terry.

Continue reading →

Seth Rogen’s Celebrity Hissy Fit And Congress’s Celebrity Cynicism

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
"How dare the Senators not take me seriously?"

“How dare the Senators not take me seriously?”

Actor Seth Rogen, who specializes in playing likable, though often stoned, shlubs in Hollywood comedies (except when he was cast as the Green Hornet, which everyone would rather pretend never happened), came to Capitol Hill to testify about the need for more research into the causes and prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease. His testimony was to the point and heart-felt—his late mother began showing symptoms of the illness in her fifties—and read from prepared text in a flat and formal tone rather than actorly flair. Rogen, however, was apparently seething was anger: after he was introduced, only two Senators on the committee stuck around for the show. Later he tweeted peevishly:

Rogen Tweet

Get the hook: Continue reading →

KABOOM! And THIS Is Why Teachers Need An Ethics Code

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
Actor-Teacher Richard Graffanino, who knows how to play a teacher, but not how to act like one.

Actor-Teacher Richard Graffanino, who knows how to play a teacher, but not how to act like one.

Yes, there apparently is an Actor-Teacher Showing His Middle School Class Film Clips Of Himself In Bed With A Naked Actress As He Regales The Students With His Romantic Designs On Another Teacher While Wagering On NFL Games Using Food As Bets Principle.

The principle: such teachers get fired, and are damn lucky if that’s the worst thing that happens to them.

I sure hope the A-TSHNSCFCOHIBWANAAHRTSWHRDOATWWONGUFABP doesn’t come into play often, but nothing surprises me any more.

River Dell Middle School teacher Richard Graffanino, teaches impressionable young teenaged minds, and he also acts professionally, with roles on “Law & Order,” “30 Rock,” and some independent films.  He was suspended in September of 2013 after complaints from female students, and a sexual harassment claim by a fellow teacher. It looks like he is going to be fired, following an arbitrator’s report last month that found that Graffanino showed a sexually-oriented, inappropriate video, featuring him, in class; discussed his personal relationship with another teacher; and was “inappropriately using food when interacting with students.” Continue reading →

CNN, Making Us Trivial and Ignorant

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments
You got shortchanged, Edward G.!

You got shortchanged, Edward G.!

I suppose I should give “New Day,” CNN’s revamped morning news show hosted by Chris Cuomo and Kate Bolduan a honeymoon before I start complaining about it, considering how I negligently blamed them for the conduct of their colleagues before their show as even on the air. Nonetheless, if CNN has decided to trade Soledad O’Brien’s biased coverage of real news for this pair’s avoiding it, I’d (I cannot believe I am writing this ) rather have Soledad back.

You may have noticed that there is a lot going on in this country and around the world. The conflict in Syria is at a critical point, and the U.S. may be preparing to play a greater role. Iran has a new president, Iraq is descending into violence, and the Middle East could still blow up at any moment.There are so many scandals to investigate emanating from D.C (and, uh, Cincinnati…) that the news media isn’t even bothering to keep us abreast on half of them. The stock market took a dive yesterday; illegal immigration is being fought over on Capitol Hill, where there was a big Tea Party rally against the I.R.S. yesterday.

Trust in the government is at low tide, which is more important than the usual polling nonsense, and President Obama’s poll numbers are beginning to look like Bush’s, but according to CNN’s Gloria Borger (WHY do I keep watching CNN?), it’s for a surprising reason. I watched with my jaw falling open as I heard Borger tell her CNN panel a couple of days ago that apparently citizens who had been thus far willing to “give the President the benefit of the doubt” were now—imagine this now!—beginning to associate him with the government they don’t like. That’s right—five years into his Presidency, and Obama is finally beginning to be held accountable for the government he heads and is supposed to be leading. Normally—sanely, reasonably—this calling to account would typically happen during an election, but hey, better late than never. (I believe I could hear Mitt Romney banging his head against the wall now, if the sound of my own head wasn’t so loud.)

Borger elaborated on her theory in her CNN column:

“Now, I know this president doesn’t like some parts of his job. He doesn’t much like schmoozing members of Congress, despite his recent share-a-meal plan with assorted Capitol Hill types. He doesn’t like the LBJ-style strong-arming, either. He doesn’t much like the messy lawmaking process in which personal relationships can often mean the difference between getting what you want and getting nothing at all. And he doesn’t ever like to be pushed. Ever. No-drama Obama, remember? But he does like speeches. He likes writing them, redrafting them, pondering them. He likes giving them, too — because he’s good at it.”

Gloria left out plenty of other things the President doesn’t like doing—managing, oversight, appointing non-cronies, firing incompetents, being straight with the public, making decisions, his job-–but she cut though it all to identify what he needs to do to address all the chaos around him: give a speech. And Borger is a big President Obama booster. She wasn’t trying to be cynical or funny.

BANG…BANG…BANG….

All of this is prelude to my objection to what the new kids on the CNN block decided was the top news of the day, worthy of more than ten minutes of exclusive coverage, remote oversees updates, two special live reports, a studio interview, and even a phone interview with Larry King himself. And what was this riveting news story that Americans just had to know about while they were having their coffee and chewing their Pop Tarts into pistols?

James Gandolfini died. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero Emeritus: Actress Jean Stapleton (1923-2013)

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments
Edith Bunker, being stifled.

Edith Bunker, being stifled.

Jean Stapleton, the superb character actress best known as “Edith Bunker” from “All in the Family,” has died. She exemplified the actor who, given the chance to use her talents for cultural good beyond mere entertainment, not only did so but did so beyond all reasonable expectations.

Edith Bunker, the submissive, not-too-bright, loving, loyal and thoroughly confused character she played on the 70’s sitcom, always broke my heart. I found Stapleton’s portrayal difficult to watch, even when she was too funny to resist. Edith was an abused spouse who didn’t realize she was being abused. I think many women who were similarly abused resolved to change the course of their lives because watching Stapleton accept being “stifled” and insulted by the man she loved made them recognize the pattern they had accepted too. Yet Edith Bunker, in Stapleton’s hands, made “All in the Family” more than the portrait of a redneck bigot and his enabling wife, broadcast to be mocked by smugly liberal viewers reveling in their intellectual and moral superiority. We felt Archie was redeemable—as indeed the show slowly revealed that he was—-beyond his hard-wired prejudices, in part because such a sweet, good woman loved him. (The other parts included the superb writing of the characters and Carroll O’Connor’s nuanced Archie.) What an achievement Stapleton accomplished by playing a negative stereotype in a way that both promoted sympathy, understanding and rejection, while never becoming so ridiculous that the audience stopped caring about her. She deserved every one of her eight Emmy nominations and three awards: in fact, she smoked the competition every year. There wasn’t a better or more important  performance, male or female, on TV while “All in the Family” was on the air.

That’s not why Jean Stapleton is an Ethics Hero Emeritus, however. Continue reading →

Mariska Hargitay and Hugh O’Brian Show How To Use Celebrity Ethically

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments
O'Brien and Hargitay---Good guys on the screen, but more importantly, off it.

O”Brian and Hargitay
Heroes on the screen, but more importantly, off it.

I have left the impression in more than one post that performers and celebrities too often use their fame and finances to garner wide dissemination for opinions that they are unqualified by experience, intellect, maturity and education to have taken more seriously than the rants of a typical 7th grade blogger. That is an accurate observation. Unfortunately, such public figures are taken seriously, so we must listen to Sean Penn sing hosannas to a South American dictator, see Kanye West pronounce a President guilty of wanting see blacks drown in New Orleans, and watch Ann Hathaway protest the existence of rich people with Occupy Wall Street (while collecting her million dollar fees.) Not all celebrities waste their influence and our time on dubious pursuits, however. There are others, and since they are interested in substantive issues and more concerned with accomplishing something than getting publicity, we often don’t know about their work.

George Clooney and Matt Damon are in this group, as is classic TV Western star Hugh O’Brian, better known as “Wyatt Earp.” Since 1958, O’Brian has been funding and building the Hugh O’Brian Youth Foundation, which was founded to “inspire and develop our global community of youth and volunteers to a life dedicated to leadership, service and innovation”  after a meeting between O’Brian and famous humanitarian Dr. Albert Schweitzer. This large and thriving non-profit commonly goes by the name of “HOBY”; one has to search the fine print to find any mention of its once famous founder, now in his eighties.

And then there is Mariska Hargitay. Continue reading →

Actor Ethics: Welcome to Colombia!

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Yes, Sarah Bernhardt was probably unethical too. Actors!

I just blacklisted an actor, at least as far as my theater company is concerned, and I feel badly about it, because I don’t like banishing artists even when they deserve it. This individual did deserve it, however.

I held auditions a couple of months ago for a very difficult and complex production requiring special talents and a large cast. The turn-out was excellent, and the quality of talent was superb, with the actors obviously excited about the project. Since the script needs to be tailored to individual performers, the fear of an actor dropping out after being cast was especially strong (the maxim in the theater community is “cast early, cast often…”), so I took the unusual step of asking every auditioner who had a good chance of being cast to be honest about their commitment to the show. “If you want to be considered for this project,” I said, “I need to have your assurance that you are serious about it and will not tell me, after we have decided to cast you, that you have changed your mind. The show is like a big jigsaw puzzle, and casting you will affect whether we cast other actors, not just in your role but in roles that interact with yours. And I definitely do not want to cast someone who is going to turn around in a week or a month and say, ‘Sorry, I got a better offer.’ This is a commitment, and if we are committing to you, I need to know that you are committing to us.”

When the offers went out, a few actors nonetheless refused. One had just learned that she needed to seek more lucrative employment because her husband had been laid off; another had union problems. Over the next several months, there was another major loss, as an actress whom I had cast even before auditions—right before the delivery of her first child—told me that parenthood was more involving in reality than she had predicted when she committed to jumping into a major role so soon. I had thought this might happen, and, frankly, now felt that she was making the right decision.  I told her: “As a director, I was happy to let you be irresponsible for the benefit of my show, but as a parent, I’m glad your priorities are straight.”

The other day, however, one of the actors who had gladly accepted a role sent our producer a terse e-mail saying:

“Unfortunately, I can no longer do the show.  Thank you so much for all your help with everything; I’m very sorry for the inconvenience.” Continue reading →

The Professions Most Likely to Cheat on Their Taxes?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Gee, where do "Treasury Secretaries" fall on the list?

A study of I.R.S. data by a University of Chicago graduate student, now Doctor, Oscar Vela,  produced the following list of the professions most likely to file fraudulent tax returns, at least according to his analysis. Make of it what you will. The Time Magazine website blog post about the list is worth reading, first for the blogger’s highly questionable theories explaining, for example, why lawyers aren’t on it, but mostly to see conclusive proof that Time is hiring English-as-a-second-language night students, relatives of Ko-Ko the talking gorilla, or stroke victims to write their blogs. Sample sentence: “His conclusion was that as much as we would like to think so we pay taxes out of  the goodness of our hearts, or even because we are fearful of fines or worse.” Henry Luce just did a back-flip in his grave.

Dr. Vela’s theory is that the professions that are required to maintain a perception of integrity are less likely to cheat. Let us say that I am dubious. Why then are scientists so high on the list?

Here it is: Continue reading →

The Fireman, the Cheater, and Media Muddling

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Come on, Robert! It's less embarrssing than Joey's gonorrrhea poster!

One of the reasons I launched The Ethics Scoreboard and later Ethics Alarms was that I felt  the media did not recognize ethics stories and failed to cover them. Well, more ethics stories are finding their way into the news, but true to the warning “Be careful what you wish for,” the reports usually botch them, and get the ethics lessons wrong. The saga of Enzo and the “Barefoot Contessa” was a particularly nauseating example, but there have been others recently. For example… Continue reading →

The Second Annual Ethics Alarms Awards: The BEST of Ethics 2010

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The Best in Ethics 2010. Not nearly long enough…but still a lot of men, women and deeds worth celebrating.

Most Important Ethical Act of the Year: Continue reading →