Richard Dreyfuss doesn’t love the new diversity and inclusion requirements for next year’s Oscars.
“They make me vomit,” the Mr. Holland’s Opus actor, 75, said in an interview on PBS’ Firing Line with Margaret Hoover. “Because this is an art form. 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.”
The initiative taken by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences established in 2020, requires nominees for Best Picture to meet certain standards, including “on-screen representation, themes, and narratives; creative leadership and project team; industry access and opportunities; and audience development.”
There are multiple ways to meet the demand, but if it is not met then the movie is not eligible for an Oscar. At least one of the following criteria needs to be met: at least one actor from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group must be cast in a significant role; the story must center on women, LGBTQ people, a racial or ethnic group or the disabled; or at least 30 percent of the cast must be actors from at least two of those four underrepresented categories.
For Dreyfuss, the new guidelines are “patronizing.” He doesn’t think that art should be subservient to passing social fads or should fear offending.
“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,” he said. “And I’m sorry, I don’t think that there is a minority or a majority in the country that has to be catered to like that.”
The Jaws actor went on to point out that Laurence Olivier portrayed Othello in blackface in 1965, which was controversial even at the time but is still held up as an example of great acting.
“He played a Black man brilliantly,” Dreyfuss said. “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 [in] The Merchant of Venice? Are we crazy? Do we not know that art is art?”
He added, “This is so patronizing. It’s so thoughtless and treating people like children.”
