Wake Up Rian Johnson: A Cancel Culture Mystery
the myth of cancel culture in the casting department
Hollywood has never cared about what its stars get up to off-screen as long as it doesn’t affect business and especially if the stars in question are men. I jokingly ask Hollywood to “bring back background checks” when sharing my disappointment at seemingly every new casting press release these days and also to justify my own role as a consumer of art made by some not so great people.
Despite its progressive facade, Hollywood is filled to the brim with abusers and the industry seems to have no problem continuing to prop them up. As long as the box office is booming and the general public is largely unaware or uncaring, Hollywood will continue casting whoever they want for whatever they want. Within the past year, there are two instances in particular that have me begging for casting directors and studios to think twice before casting those with sketchy histories: Adrien Brody in The Brutalist and seemingly half the cast of the upcoming Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.
Of course, I’m just a college student and Hollywood could not care less about what I have to think about their casting decisions, but I believe these are conversations worth having amongst movie goers. Can we separate the art from the artist when casting dismisses their crimes?
Adrien Brody has been the frontrunner in this year’s Best Actor race for his role in Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, only closely trailed by Timothée Chalamet in A Complete Unknown and Ralph Fiennes in Conclave. At the end of the day, the Oscars are a talent competition where it’s rare that an actor’s personal life hurts their awards chances (Karla Sofía Gascón being the exception that proves the rule).
When Brody went on stage to accept his first Oscar back in 2003, he kissed Halle Berry, who was presenting the award, forcefully and without consent. That very same year, Brody hosted SNL where he did a racist Jamaican caricature while introducing Jamaican musical guest Sean Paul. Berry has recently praised Brody’s Oscar prospects on Instagram, and Lorne Michaels has denied ever officially banning anyone from SNL, so whether something this man did twenty years ago should be relevant in conversations about him today is also up to you.
I say all of this to say I find Brody’s frontrunner status especially hypocritical considering it was only two years ago that Brendan Fraser won Best Actor for his role in The Whale, his return to film nearly twenty years after being groped by the then president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and three years since Will Smith was banned from the award show for slapping Chris Rock. It doesn’t sit right with me that Hollywood can pretend to care about assault victims and then award a man who assaulted a woman on their stage the last time he won that very same award. I find it very weird, but that’s just me I guess, and of course, I’m not exempt to this kind of hypocrisy as a movie-goer myself.
I’m a huge fan of Rian Johnson’s work. I love the Knives Out franchise and his Natasha Lyonne-led Poker Face series. I’m going to see Wake Up Dead Man regardless of my opinions on the cast, but I couldn’t help but feel disappointed when the initial casting announcements were coming out.
Knives Out casting press releases are a full-blown meme at this point. Every time a new film in the franchise is preparing to go into production, it seems like each day comes with the announcement that every single actor in Hollywood (and everyone within a fifty-mile vicinity) has been cast in the murder mystery. It’s usually all fun and games, but this time things felt different and not in a good way.
There were some great casting choices, no doubt. Josh O’Connor, Andrew Scott, and Cailee Spaeny are some of my favorite actors working right now, and I was looking forward to seeing what Johnson had in store for them. However, in between those intriguing casting announcements came the news that some less exciting individuals had been cast alongside them, namely Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, and Jeremy Renner.
In 2004, Josh Brolin was arrested for domestic violence, but that hasn’t stopped Marvel, Denis Villenueve, and now Rian Johnson from continuing to give him work. Mila Kunis wrote a letter in support of Danny Masterson when he was on trial for rape in 2023. Jeremy Renner’s ex-wife alleges that he pulled a gun on her and threatened to kill her during their marriage. Their casting complicates things even more when you consider that the whole premise of the Knives Out franchise is a social commentary on the modern-day, out-of-touch rich and famous. Even if the casting department on this film was aware of the controversies of their cast, is ironic casting for the sake of a better performance really worth the pain of their victims?
Separating the art from the artist has been an ongoing conversation for decades now with the rise of the Internet and greater access to the lives and opinions of the actors and directors behind these films. I’m only a teenage girl, so I don’t have all the answers, but I also don’t think anyone does. Whether or not you feel comfortable watching art from problematic people is all very complicated and personal, and I’m not in a position to tell anyone how to feel about these things. Personally, I try to take these issues on a case-by-case basis, but I’ve largely found it unavoidable to entirely avoid art by controversial or criminal artists. My general rule of thumb is that I don’t like to support work from these artists that was created and released after their actions became public knowledge, but even that mindset has its flaws.
I was intrigued by the train wreck that was Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis in 2024. I’m a pretty big fan of Coppola’s work, but I’m also aware of his own problematic past. The thing that really kept me from seeing the mess of the film for myself was the idea of staring at Shia LaBeouf for that long as a believer of FKA Twigs who alleges that he physically and sexually abused her during their relationship. Similarly, I haven’t been able to watch a Johnny Depp film since Amber Heard posted her 2018 Washington Post op-ed. I was a huge fan of Depp’s work growing up, but the thought of watching one of his films now, regardless of how much nostalgia they may hold, makes me physically ill. The public’s abhorrent reaction to the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial did and continues to do numbers on my mental health, and I’m not willing to sacrifice my mental health to rewatch Edwards Scissorhands anytime soon.
Perhaps the biggest artist at the heart of this debate is J.K. Rowling. Like many others, I grew up on the Harry Potter franchise. I read all the books multiple times over, I watched the movies every chance I got, and I owned every piece of merchandise imaginable. The fact that she has weaponized her platform for transphobia rather than used it for good pains me. I have no plans on watching the HBO Harry Potter TV series because that series is in development knowing full well what harmful things Rowling has done and continues to do with her platform.
Again, it’s all very personal and case-by-case. There are artists like Woody Allen who I have no attachment to or nostalgia for, and I therefore have no hesitancy avoiding his filmography, however acclaimed it may be, given his history of predatory behavior. Of course, sometimes it can be completely unavoidable to avoid art made by artists you would very much like to separate from said art. Harvey Weinstein was a massively influential figure in Hollywood before the #MeToo movement as a result of his criminal tactics of sexual assault and blacklisting. It’s rare for me to stumble upon a movie from the ‘90s or 2000s and not be jump-scared by the Weinstein Company logo when I press play. It’s by no means his victims’ fault for not speaking out sooner which is where my rule of thumb starts to crumble. I can’t stress enough how complicated and nuanced this all is, and Wake Up Dead Man is a microcosm of a much bigger problem with Hollywood.
Following the re-election of Donald Trump, things are looking bleak in nearly all regards and the movies are no exception. Studios are already backtracking on diversity efforts, and it seems like Hollywood will only be more adamant and open about casting whoever they want with no regard for minorities and victims. I watched over six hundred movies in 2023 and over four hundred movies in 2024. Being a cinephile is a huge part of my life and the ethics behind separating the art from the artist is something I am forced to grapple with every day. Hollywood might not be willing to “bring back background checks” anytime soon, and it’s very much a vocal minority who cares about these issues, but as a pop culture writer and consumer, the least I can do is keep the conversation going.
Believe women.