Richard Dreyfuss criticizes 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 standards that films must meet in terms of representation and inclusion to be eligible for a Best Picture Oscar “makes me gag.”
“It’s 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 tell me, as an artist, that I have to bow to the latest, most up-to-date notion of morality.”
In 2020, the Academy announced that it would begin rolling out inclusivity standards in 2021 “to promote equal representation on and off the screen to better reflect the diversity of cinema audiences.” And from 2024, films will have to meet minimum requirements to be included in the best picture category.
Dreyfuss, who won an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role in 1978 for The Goodbye Girl, added: “And what are we risking? Do we really risk hurting people’s feelings? You can’t decree that. And you have to let life be life.”
The American graffiti actor then defended Laurence Olivier’s performance in the 1965 film Othello, in which Olivier played the Shakespearean lead in Blackface.
“He played a black brilliantly,” Dreyfuss told Hoover. “Have I been told I’ll never get a chance to play a black guy? Is anyone else being told not to play The Merchant of Venice if they are not Jewish? are we crazy Don’t we know that art is art? That’s so patronizing. It’s so, it’s so thoughtless to treat people like children.”
Hoover then asked the Close Encounter of the Third Kind actor if “is there a difference between the question of representation and the question of who gets to represent other groups? … And the case of blackface, explicitly in this country, given the history of slavery and sensitivities to black racism.”
He replied, “It shouldn’t be. … Because it’s condescending. Because it says that we are so fragile that our feelings cannot be hurt. We must expect our feelings to be hurt, our children’s feelings to be hurt. We don’t know how to get up and slap the bully in the face.”