Richard Dreyfuss is criticizing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ new diversity and inclusion requirements.
The Jaws actor told Margaret Hoover on Friday’s episode of PBS’ Firing Line that the minimum requirements films will have to meet related to representation and inclusion to be eligible for the best picture Oscar “make me vomit.”
“This is an art form,” he continued. “It’s also a form of commerce, and it makes money, but it’s an art. And no one should be telling me as an artist that I have to give in to the latest, most current idea of what morality is.”
In 2020, the Academy announced that it would start rolling out inclusivity standards in 2021 “to encourage equitable representation on and off screen in order to better reflect the diversity of the movie-going audience.” And beginning in 2024, films will have to meet minimum requirements to be considered for the best picture category.
Dreyfuss, who won an Oscar 1978 for best actor in a leading role for The Goodbye Girl, added, “And what are we risking? Are we really risking hurting people’s feelings? You can’t legislate that. And you have to let life be life.”
The American Graffiti actor then proceeded to defend Laurence Olivier’s performance in the 1965 film Othello, in which Olivier played the Shakespeare lead role in blackface.
“He played a Black man brilliantly,” Dreyfuss told Hoover. “Am I being told that I will never have a chance to play a Black man? Is someone else being told that if they’re not Jewish, they shouldn’t play The Merchant of Venice? Are we crazy? Do we not know that art is art? This is so patronizing. It’s so, it’s so thoughtless, and treating people like children.”
Hoover followed up by asking the Close Encounters of the Third Kind actor if “There’s a difference between the question of representation and who is allowed to represent other groups? … And the case of blackface, explicitly in this country, given the history of slavery and the sensitivities around Black racism.”
He responded, “There shouldn’t be. … Because it’s patronizing. Because it says we’re so fragile that we can’t have our feelings hurt. We have to anticipate having our feelings hurt, our children’s feelings hurt. We don’t know how to stand up and bop the bully in the face.”
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