Can you separate the art from the artist? It's an old question that has been given a fresh coat of paint in the social media era when we know so much more about the private lives of nearly everyone, and it's a question that I tend to think about a lot. I've never been able to arrive at a clear yes or no. My general opinion is that art and artist are already separated if you are someone who does not know that artist personally, but I have a lot of caveats and qualifications. I don't require the people whose work I engage with to behave in ways I find moral or ethical. My opinion of that person devalues if I find out they did terrible things, but it doesn't tend to devalue the work for me unless that person was using that work as cover or opportunity for those terrible behaviors. If an artist is a piece of shit who makes good stuff, I don't see that behavior as my problem or my responsibility, especially if that artist is now dead. I say all this as a lone individual engaging with the art by myself.
On the other hand, if an artist whose work I enjoy does something horrendous and is still living and still working, or if I am experiencing the art with another person whose life may have been affected by actions similar to the ones perpetrated by the artist, my reaction to that art vs. artist question gets a lot murkier. I don't want to financially contribute (even in the small way I would be contributing with my ticket price, DVD purchase, etc.) to a lifestyle that enables that artist to continue to abuse people and get away with it, and I don't like the message it sends when my abused friends see abusers' careers continue to thrive. I want people to be held accountable for their actions, and I want the various art industries to be less heinous places. I'm also completely against existing work being removed or censored because of things the creators did. It's a complicated, messy question.
I'm starting my review of Clownhouse (a movie I watched for free in a pirated upload on YouTube) with this art vs. artist spiel because it was written and directed by Victor Salva. I thought Salva's name was familiar while watching the film, and I shuddered when I looked him up after it ended. The same year Clownhouse was released, Salva was convicted of sexually abusing the 12-year-old star of the film, Nathan Forrest Winters, and also of possessing child pornography. He served 16 months in prison, was paroled in 1992, and then worked as a telemarketer for a few years before resuming his film career. His first film back in the business was a straight-to-video cheapie, but he soon got the full marketing and distribution weight of Disney behind him for his next film, the inspirational fantasy movie Powder. I'm not sure how many people involved in the film knew about Salva's past, but surely the bigwigs at Disney knew. Winters and his family picketed the premiere and several screenings of Powder, and caused the story of Salva's past to break nationally, but, in the pre-social media age, the news quickly faded.
Salva went on to direct a successful horror franchise, the Jeepers Creepers movies, but the pendulum may be swinging back in the other direction. His other films have been flops, the last Jeepers Creepers movie went straight to television, and he hasn't been able to get recent projects made.
There's another name who deserves a bit of mud-dragging in the Salva story: his patron Francis Ford Coppola. I love Coppola's work, but his role in the Victor Salva story is not great. Coppola saw Salva's 1986 short film Something in the Basement (also starring Winters) at a festival and thought Salva had a lot of potential. He mentored and befriended Salva and helped him get Clownhouse made (though he kept his name as one of the producers off the credits as the controversy broke). Parts of the film were even shot on Coppola's Napa Valley compound. Coppola supported Salva even as he faced prison time, and has continued to support Salva's later work, acting as producer and financial benefactor on several of his movies. Coppola has said that Salva is talented, has paid his debt to society, and deserves to work. That point can be argued, but one that can't is Coppola's unbelievable quote in a Los Angeles Times article about Salva: "You have to remember, while this was a tragedy, that the difference in age between Victor and the boy was very small. Victor was practically a child himself." The Times' reporter added in a parenthetical immediately following the quote that Winters was 12 and Salva was 29 when the abuse occurred. That small age difference: 17 years. Practically a child: almost 30 years old. Fuck off, Francis.
It's an extremely low-budget movie, but it's a well-made one, and it's suspenseful and exciting. But so are a lot of other movies where a 12-year-old wasn't sexually abused. And knowing what I know now, the brief and innocuous-looking scenes of boys in the tub and in their underwear and jumping bare-ass out of bed are not so innocuous. No matter how you look at Clownhouse, you have to acknowledge that this is a movie about boys written and directed by a pedophile, and one of those boys was abused.
By all accounts, Salva confessed and owned up to what he did, did not try to fight his conviction, and spent years in therapy after getting out of prison. Like many abusers, he was also abused as a child, and he was beaten severely by other prisoners while serving his sentence. It deserves to be pointed out that although many abuse victims go on to abuse others, many more do not. Salva had a choice; Winters didn't. So far, Victor Salva has been able to direct eight more films and a TV episode. Nathan Forrest Winters has never worked in the business again.
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