Kevin Spacey to be celebrated at Cannes’ Better World gala
The Guardian
The PR guru Mark Borkowski, an expert in brand and crisis management, said Cannes and the French film world had for many years offered “a huge amount of support” for another controversial figure, Roman Polanski. “They have a track record,” he said.
Borkowski said the award, which could be seen as “the film world taking Spacey back into their bosom”, was clearly a “very significant” moment.
“It feeds into the slow battle Kevin Spacey has fought, which is to get his purpose back. His purpose and whole being is to be an actor and he is, without doubt, one of the most extraordinary acting talents of any generation,” he said.
“He is not someone who has disappeared into the ether; he has fought it all the way and he has powerful supporters because ultimately he made a lot of people a lot of money.”
In terms of brand management, Borkowski said the biggest issue was that people had “short-term memory loss and long-term amnesia”.
“We move on from things. This [the Spacey award] shows that everyone has a shot of redemption; it shows that the further you get away from the noise of a scandal you can change the emotion of the crowd, right or wrong.”
Big tech was changing the world, he continued. “A publicist’s job nowadays is not to convince an editor, it is to turbocharge the algorithm.
“There are a lot of people who want to see Kevin Spacey back. I don’t have an opinion either way but ultimately, whatever he does next it will create clicks, it will create noise … you can’t be mediocre any more.”