How far can a director go for the sake of art?

Film director Quentin Tarantino has come under public scrutiny for how he treated Uma Thurman on the set of the Kill Bill movies. It's been said that he asked her to drive a car that wasn't up to working order for a scene at the beginning of Kill Bill, Vol. 2.  The car crashed and Uma suffered serious long-term injuries. There was also a scene from the first movie where her character is being choked by a chain and Tarantino reportedly placed the chain around her neck himself and pulled a little too hard.

It's a serious question, how far is it okay to go for the sake of art? Is putting an actor's health and life in danger okay because it's for a movie? There have been stories about this subject throughout the history of cinema. While filming The Wizard of Oz, wicked witch Margaret Hamilton was badly burned during a stunt in the munchkinland sequence, and original tin man Buddy Epsen was hospitalized from the makeup they used and then replaced by Jack Haley.
Ed Harris has accused James Cameron of pushing him too far on the set of The Abyss to the point where he almost drowned.

The question is, at what point does a director draw the line and say, it's only a movie, it's not worth hurting my actors for? If an actor died because a director pushed them too far, is that manslaughter? Is it murder if the director knew the stunt was too risky but decided to do it anyway? These are murky moral waters with no clear cut answers.

A lot has changed in Hollywood in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the Me Too movement. People are becoming more aware of how cast and crew are being treated on set both in front of the cameras and when they've stopped rolling. That's where things get blurry. If a director slapped an actress across the face when the cameras were off, that could be deemed assault. But if the same thing happened because it was needed for a scene in the film, is that now okay? At what point do you say, we should probably fake it with CG or a dummy or some other way instead of really hurting the actor?

The more serious question was posed to me by my brother Greg when we were discussing the James Cameron Ed Harris incident. If Harris had drowned, would Cameron have avoided any blame just because the simple fact that he's James Cameron? Can powerful people skirt an issue using their money and influence. I think we've seen both sides to this recently. We've seen Donald Trump get away with sexual harassment among other things because he's rich and the president. We've also seen power come crashing down as with the public humiliations of sexual predators Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby. In the end, their money and fame didn't save them from reckoning. The same can happen to President Trump amidst the current Stormy Daniels scandal.

Politics aside though, I really hope we are entering a new era where a person isn't protected by their money or fame and that we all are culpable for our own actions. As for film directors, they must take a serious look at what they are asking of the cast and crew before they attempt something that is dangerous, unsafe or just plain demeaning. After all, it's just a movie.