Richard Dreyfuss Rails Against Academy Awards’ “Patronizing” Inclusion Standards: “They Make Me Vomit”

The post Richard Dreyfuss Rails Against Academy Awards’ “Patronizing” Inclusion Standards: “They Make Me Vomit” appeared first on Consequence.

Richard Dreyfuss criticized the Academy Awards’ new representation and inclusion standards for Best Picture nominees going into effect in 2024 during an interview on Friday for PBS’ Firing Line with Margaret Hoover.

“They make me vomit,” the Oscar winner said in response to Hoover’s query regarding the upcoming eligibility requirement. He emphasized film as “an art form,” which to him, means “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. What are we risking? Are we really risking hurting people’s feelings? You can’t legislate that.” Dreyfuss then offered his own, alternative solution, saying, “You have to let life be life. I’m sorry, I don’t think there is a minority or majority in the country that has to be catered to like that.”

He continued by praising the late Laurence Olivier in the 1965 film adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello, for which the white, English actor donned blackface to “brilliantly” portray the titular character and subsequently received a Best Actor nomination at that year’s Oscars. “Am I being told that I will never have a chance to play a Black man?” Dreyfuss asked, hopefully as a complete hypothetical. “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,” he lamented. “It’s so thoughtless and treating people like children… it says that 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 stand up and bop the bully in the face.” Watch his remarks below.

In this case, the “bully” Richard Dreyfuss thinks he’s standing up to are the diversity and inclusion standards first announced by the Academy Awards in 2020. The initiative established new criteria for Best Picture nominees, which must meet one of four new thresholds related to the hiring of members of underrepresented racial or ethnic groups. The practice will be implemented for the first time in the upcoming 2024 campaign.

Richard Dreyfuss Rails Against Academy Awards’ “Patronizing” Inclusion Standards: “They Make Me Vomit”
Bryan Kress

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