During an interview with the Los Angeles Times’ Matt Brennan, David Mamet, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright best known for his works “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “The Untouchables,” and “Hannibal,” scorches far-left Hollywood. Particularly, he argued that its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) standards limit the creativity of him and others in hi profession and make their outputs far worse.
Such is what he said when speaking during the Festival of Books, an event organized by the Los Angeles Times and hosted this year by the University of Southern California. He was interviewed by Matt Brennan, the Los Angeles Times’ deputy entertainment editor.
During the interview, Mamet spoke to Brennan about his memoir, which was released in the fall of 2023. In the memoir, Mamet uses a series of anecdotes from his life to chart how he started life as a so-called “Red-diaper baby,” or child of two communists, and eventually charted a new path, becoming a supporter of Donald Trump.
In the context of that book and his politics, Mamet ripped into Hollywood’s DEI policies, saying, “DEI is garbage. It’s fascist totalitarianism.” Particularly, he took issue with the inclusion standards set forth by the Academy of Motion Pictures, which require certain diversity levels be reached for a film to even be considered for awards.
Torching the idea of such standards, Mamet said, “I can’t give you a stupid f***ing statue unless you have 7% of this, 8% of that.” Continuing, he complained, “It’s intrusive.” For reference, the standards require that a movie include, to be considered for the Oscars, a certain number of non-white and female actors and/or staff members, with there being a few different ways to meet the requirements. Mamet refers, in his memoir, to those tasked with implementing such rules as “diversity commissars.”
Mamet went on to add that Hollywood has no business trying to foist new ideas about race and diversity onto people, suggesting through analogy that it is wholly unsuited for such work. He said, “The [film industry] has little business improving everybody’s racial understanding as does the fire department.”
Further, Mamet didn’t limit his criticisms of Hollywood to its DEI agenda. he also ripped into film executives and writers, saying that the “hegemony” of the film studios has eviscerated independent, creative writers, smothering their voices. He said, describing how that has impacted things, “There’s no room for individual initiative.”
He went on to note that the industry has, thanks to its various problems, started not just to decay but to die. He referred to that currently ongoing process as the common cycle of “growth, maturity, decay and death” that “happens to everything that’s organic.”
Mamet isn’t the only one to criticize the DEI standards inside woke Hollywood. Actor Richard Dreyfuss did so as well on PBS’ “Firing Line with Margaret Hoover,” saying, “It’s an art. 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. 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.”
Watch Dreyfuss here:
Featured image credit: By David Shankbone – David Shankbone, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3942539
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