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Born with Gravitas — Controversy and Legacy

06 Saturday Jun 2026

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I absolutely love Kevin Spacey. It feels as though the man was born with gravitas. Hollywood may have unofficially boycotted him, but you simply cannot help admiring his work. There was a time when I didn’t know Spacey; I started watching House of Cards and was blown away by the performance. Later, checking my IMDb history, I discovered I’d given top ratings to The Usual Suspects, L.A. Confidential, The Negotiator, The Life of David Gale, Se7en and Horrible Bosses.

Where it began: a brief biography

Kevin Spacey Fowler was born on 26 July 1959 in New Jersey. His father was a technical writer, his mother a secretary. Obsessed with theatre from childhood, he trained at Juilliard and made his Broadway debut in 1981. After spending the 1980s on stage, he broke into film in 1990 with a small part in Glengarry Glen Ross. From there, there was no looking back.

The roles that made him an icon

  • The Usual Suspects (1995) – Verbal Kint. Limping, meek, stuttering. In the final five minutes he delivers one of the greatest twists in Hollywood history. Oscar – Best Supporting Actor. This role proved that “gravitas” isn’t shouting; it’s control.
  • Se7en (1995) – John Doe. Twenty minutes of screen time, yet the theological engine behind seven murders. Reciting the Bible in that cold voice still chills the spine.
  • L.A. Confidential (1997) – Det. Jack Vincennes. A corrupt Hollywood cop who smiles for the cameras and cuts deals in the shadows. The most stylish role in neo-noir.
  • American Beauty (1999) – Lester Burnham. A father in mid-life crisis. Satire, sorrow and liberation all at once. Oscar – Best Actor. The tagline “Look closer” sums up Spacey’s career.
  • The Negotiator (1998) – Hostage negotiator Danny Roman. A dialogue duel with Samuel L. Jackson. A masterclass in sustaining tension.
  • The Life of David Gale (2003) – A philosophy professor on death row. Ideology versus reality — no one but Spacey could carry the part.
  • House of Cards (2013–2017) – Frank Underwood. “Democracy is so overrated,” he tells us, breaking the fourth wall and locking eyes with the audience. The role that put Netflix on the prestige-TV map, and the one that introduced him to a new generation.
  • Horrible Bosses (2011) – Dave Harken. Equally adept at comedy. As the psychotic boss who makes Steve Carell’s life hell, we laugh until it hurts.

The boycott: why did Hollywood turn away?

In October 2017, during MeToo, actor Anthony Rapp alleged that Spacey sexually harassed him in 1986 when Rapp was 14. More than 15 others in the US and UK later made similar allegations of misconduct and inappropriate behaviour. Some incidents allegedly involved minors.

The fallout: Within 24 hours Netflix sacked him from House of Cards and rewrote Season 6. Ridley Scott cut all of Spacey’s scenes from All the Money in the World and reshot them with Christopher Plummer in nine days. Agencies and publicists severed ties. That is the “unofficial boycott”.

Legal outcomes: In 2022 a New York civil jury found Spacey not liable in Rapp’s case. In 2023, Southwark Crown Court in London acquitted him of nine criminal charges. So there is no criminal conviction. Nevertheless, the industry has not welcomed him back to the mainstream. Since 2023 he has appeared only in small indie films such as Control and Peter Five Eight.

Artist versus the man: the audience’s dilemma

Spacey’s case is the classic “separate art from artist” debate. The allegations are serious, and the victims’ trauma is real. Yet in the eyes of the law he has not been found guilty. What should viewers do? John Doe in Se7en still gives us goosebumps; we still quote Lester’s monologues from American Beauty. Those performances haven’t been erased.

Spacey once said, “I have a lot of respect for actors who keep their personal lives personal.” Ironically, his private life derailed his career. The man born with gravitas showed god-level control on camera, but allegedly lost control off camera.

Final word

Hollywood may boycott him, but IMDb won’t delete his page. The limp in Usual Suspects, the Southern drawl in House of Cards, the ice-cold sermon in Se7en — these will be taught in film schools. You can hate him, love him, or ignore him. But for 22 years, from 1995 to 2017, Spacey was Hollywood’s most reliable “intelligent villain”.

The boycott is unwritten, but the legacy is written. To borrow a line from The Life of David Gale: “Fantasy is an exercise for the brain.” Spacey’s filmography is that exercise. Let the courtroom debate the man; the film room will debate the artist for another fifty years.

Who Killed Bangladeshi Music Industry!

08 Saturday Dec 2018

Posted by in Bangladesh, Comments, Songs and Music

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The Bangladeshi music industry is, quite literally, dead. There are no new blockbuster albums, no grand concert spectacles, and as far as I can tell, the entire scene has ground to a halt.

Last week, whilst wandering around Bashundhara City, it suddenly dawned on me that I had never bought the last Warfaze album. I rushed up to Level 6, fondly remembering the days when it was home to several fantastic music shops boasting rich collections of both local and international releases. To my utter astonishment, every single one of those music shops had vanished, replaced by an endless sea of mobile phone and accessory stalls. Hoping for better luck closer to home, I visited Rajlaxmi Complex and Syed Grand Centre in Uttara, where a few prominent music shops used to thrive. They, too, were completely gone. I eventually tracked down one solitary shop that had survived the purge, but the CD I was looking for was nowhere to be found.

How on earth is an audiophile supposed to find physical music these days?
When I posed this question to a friend, he nonchalantly suggested I log onto my ISP’s FTP server to find it there. As my readers well know, I absolutely refuse to listen to pirated music—especially when it comes to supporting Bangladeshi artists—and I do not condone piracy in any form. Naturally, I did not look for the album there. Yet, this has become the biggest talk of the town. Everyone openly admits that their ISP maintains a colossal repository of films, music, software, and video games. It is no longer just the small-scale, neighbourhood ISPs doing this; even major corporate ISPs are hosting these vast collections to keep their customers happy. While many users might find this convenient, I strongly believe this is a dangerous path to tread.

The roots of this collapse run deep. Historically, the industry relied on a heavily transactional model. Major record labels like Sargam, Soundtek, Sangeeta, and G-Series operated purely on a contractual basis with artists. Because Bangladesh’s copyright laws have always been notoriously weak and poorly enforced, these partnerships never evolved into sustainable, long-term careers for musicians. This lack of legal infrastructure triggered a chaotic gold rush in the 90s. Music companies mushroomed like toadstools overnight, riding the wave of the audio cassette boom. These fly-by-night labels would produce one or two hit tracks, cash in on a couple of trendy mix-albums, and vanish into thin air just as quickly as they had appeared, leaving the industry fragmented and artists exploited.

Almost a decade ago, I watched a documentary film called “Who Killed the Electric Car?”, which exposed how a capitalist fuel industry suppressed electric vehicles to keep them from ever seeing the light of day. But look at the world today: the UK government has since pioneered dedicated highway lanes fitted with induction charging technology for electric cars. Progress is inevitable, and it gives me reason to believe that someday, our media industry might also stage a comeback.

However, for that to happen, we must undergo a cultural shift. We desperately need to respect foreign copyrights too. Bangladesh is a developing nation with a massive population to sustain. If we do not learn to respect the intellectual property of others, the global community can easily retaliate by disrespecting the things we rely on and care about the most—a consequence that could utterly ruin us. Until we value the art we consume, the music shops will remain empty, and the silence in our industry will only grow louder.

… and no one will sue Link3

01 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by in Bangladesh, Comments, Telecom

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For a travelling guy like me, living abroad without family makes internet the key communication media. The Internet became the bridge between me and my family, and keeps us connected all the time. Which obviously makes us feel like at home all the time.

The term “broadband” in Bangladesh became a joke. I always pay premium price for my internet service but it is very unfortunate that I did not get any satisfactory service ever from any ISP. Guys started to call broadband providers fraudband providers only because the providers do not take their business seriously.

Link3, The IT Guru!

It’s more than 2 years since I have subscribed to an ISP called Link3. With their 1 mbps fibre service I was feeling like flying in the cyberspace. But since last month they made the subscribers of Dhaka Uttara zone guinea pigs and started to pilot an unfit/untested/inappropriate platform. On 21st February they have forced all the subscriber of that area to move into the new(!) platform which was not even ready yet. Well, leaving other troubles apart, they have disconnected the connection of all the users of this zone on 1 March 2015 at 1 am and sent SMS notification at 2:30 am. The SMS says that users have to pay the monthly bill in advanced to stay connected. Now how on earth the users will pay the bills in the middle of the night?

I called the Service Deliver Manager and she lied to me about the SMS delivery time. She said the SMS sent to the users days ago, I checked with few other friends in that area and everyone has received SMS after midnight service disconnection. Finally my family back their managed to pay the bill but the connection has not been restored yet. These are the people I have called:

  • Afsana Ali – Manager, Service Delivery – Cell: 01733911869
  • Md. Saiful Huq (Suhan) – Assistant Manager, NMC & HD – Cell: 01913743230
  • Bushra Salahuddin – Manager, NMC & Helpdesk – Cell: 01610001023

And none of them has been able to restore the service. This is a friend’s post on Facebook complaining about their service few days back:

Trivuz's Facebook Post on Link3This post expresses the frustration of an ordinary user. My point is why an user has to suffer, why we have to be so frustrated with a service and why service providers gets any chance to make us guinea pigs of their unfinished/untested work?

I do not want to blame the ISP. Actually we let them sell shit to us. We pay taxes and public servants just takes the salary home. We have a joker organisation called Bangladesh Telecom Regulatory Commission, it is a mystery what they do apart from fining cell phone operators for illegal VOIP usage. I never compare Bangladesh with any other country, this is what I just do not like to do. We have what we have and in my point of view we have more than what many people do not have. But besides what we have, perhaps our lazy ass public servants can make some regulations like other countries have. The term broadband means a subscriber has to get 25 mbps download speed in the USA. Cannot our BTRC make a broadband definition? Cannot a regulation define if a subscriber suffers downtime for more than X amount of time, than ISP has to give them free internet for Y time or cash patiently of Z amount? Is it very had to implement?

I wish someday they will weak up before it is too late. Else Digital Bangladesh motto would become a joke.

Update: After struggling for more than 48 hours Link3 failed to fix my connectivity and later gave me a public IP saying I have requested for that. This is a mail I have sent them while having some conversation regarding moving into private IP range:

Email Communication

I do not see anywhere I have requested fro any public IP for me. And only God knows if I have to pay for the public IP now!

Professionalism Inside Out

06 Saturday Nov 2010

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নানান উৎসাহ উদ্দীপনার মধ্য দিয়ে শেষ হয়ে গেলো Beauty of Web শীর্ষক phpXperts এর সেমিনারটি। আমার প্রেজেন্টেশন ছিলো Professionalism Inside Out সেটা এখানে শেয়ার করলাম…