After a story in Variety in November, the fact that registered sex offender – and well-known film photographer – Adam Kimmel has been a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 2007, the organization took action and removed him.
An academy source confirmed to Variety that Kimmel is no longer a member. When a representative of the Academy was asked for comment, he did not respond immediately.
Kimmel also no longer appears to be in the American Society of Cinematographers, an elite organization for photography directors. An ASC spokesman did not return Variety‘s inquiries about Kimmel’s status. But his name, previously listed among the members of the organization, is no longer on the ASC website. And on a list of ASC members, Kimmel’s name has an asterisk next to it, meaning ‘withdraw from membership’. His IMDb page under trivia reads: “Was a member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) from 2008 until his resignation in 2021.”
Kimmel was arrested in New York in November 2003 – after having a sexual relationship with a minor girl that summer – and pleaded guilty in February 2004 to third-degree rape. Two months later, he was sentenced to ten days community service. 10 years probation and ten years in the register of sex offenders (this was changed retrospectively in 2006 due to a change in the law across the country).
In an email to Variety last November, Kimmel pleaded guilty but called the charges ‘consensual sex with someone under the legal age of consent’ – he was 43 when the girl was 15 and then turned 16.
After Kimmel’s conviction, he was a film writer for ‘Capote’ with director Bennett Miller, for which he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. Kimmel’s previous credits included ‘The Ref’ (1994), ‘Beautiful Girls’ (1996) and’ Jesus’ Son ‘(1999). He was invited to join the Academy in 2007, three years after joining the register of sex offenders.
A number of filmmakers who worked with Kimmel after his 2004 conviction told Variety that he never revealed to them that he had been convicted of rape. Kimmel’s story illustrated how sets could not be looked at in Hollywood, nor at heritage institutions.
In his original statement to Variety, the Academy wrote: “The Academy has a pronounced policy against abusive and immoral conduct, and takes all matters relating to harassment, assault or misconduct very seriously. The current membership selection process is based on a system of honor that relies on the integrity of prospective members, their sponsors and branch committee members to disclose any disqualifying information. The Academy reviews the situation in accordance with its statutes and will continue to regularly review its member selection process to ensure that it accurately reflects Academy values..”
The 2004 conviction was not Kimmel’s only foray into the law regarding a minor girl. In 2010, Kimmel, then 49, met a 15-year-old girl and her mother in September 2009 outside a post office – and he and the girl began to correspond. He was arrested on April 23, 2010 and charged with fourth-degree sexual assault, two counts of risk of injury and failure to register as a sex offender in Connecticut. In his email to Variety“Kimmel called the charges ‘serious and blissful’ and wrote: ‘I was innocent of the charges.’ However, he was convicted of a Class D offense for failing to register as a sex offender, which resulted in him losing his job as a cinematographer in the 2011 film “Moneyball”.
In the wake of the #MeToo calculation caused by the Harvey Weinstein investigation in the fall of 2017, the Academy introduced its first code of conduct the following year. Until Weinstein’s eviction in October 2017, only one person has been kicked out of the Academy: character actor Carmine Caridi was expelled in 2004 for piracy reasons after lending screeners for your consideration on VHS that ended up on the internet.
After the code was written in 2018, Bill Cosby and Roman Polanski were also removed. and now Kimmel has now joined the small group of men who have been expelled from the Academy for their sexual crimes.