David Mamet Offers Extreme Take On Hollywood Diversity, Equity And Inclusion
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David Mamet is decrying efforts to support the underrepresented as “totalitarian fascism.”
The Pulitzer Prize-winning screenwriter argued as much during a panel Sunday with The Los Angeles Times for its annual Festival of Books gathering and said DEI, a framework aimed at nurturing diversity, equity and inclusion across various industries, is useless.
“DEI is garbage,” he reportedly said at the panel. “It’s fascist totalitarianism.”
Mamet, who attended the panel to promote his memoir, “Everywhere an Oink Oink: An Embittered, Dyspeptic, and Accurate Report of Forty Years in Hollywood,” has spent the past few years as a vocal critic of various progressive causes.
Just last year, he urged Jewish people — Mamet is Jewish himself — to stop supporting Democrat politicians and to keep their children from attending “antisemitic colleges” in the wake of the renewed Israel-Gaza conflict.
While the Hollywood veteran had no qualms about trouncing initiatives like DEI, he refused to concede that his own children have benefited from his status. His daughter, Zosia Mamet, famously broke into Hollywood as a lead actor in the popular HBO series “Girls.”
“They earned it by merit,” David Mamet reportedly said Sunday. “Nobody ever gave my kids a job because of who they were related to.”
Along with Zosia Mamet, David Mamet has three other children, including Clara Mamet, whose first acting role in “Spartan” was directed by her father. His ex-wife, Lindsay Crouse, is an Oscar and Emmy Award-nominated actor, whose father, Russel Crouse, wrote “The Sound of Music.”
Elsewhere, during his panel appearance, Mamet criticized the 2023 writers strike and claimed such protests leave “no room for individual initiative.” He also said that Hollywood has “little business improving everybody’s racial understanding” and claimed the introduction of gender-neutral bathrooms “politicizes the human execratory function” by welcoming “transsexuals.” (The more socially accepted term, of course, is transgender.)
Mamet concluded by urging Hollywood to sell popcorn instead of trying to improve representation for marginalized groups, while also admitting that his industry has long pushed him out, supposedly for his age and not for any outdated perspectives.
“Nobody’s going to pay me a lot of money anymore,” he said. “Nobody’s going to let me have a lot of fun.”
