Award-winning playwright and screenwriter David Mamet didn’t mince words when giving his opinion on Hollywood’s diversity efforts, during a media event last weekend.
“DEI is garbage,” Mamet reportedly told a crowd at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. “It’s fascist totalitarianism.”
Mamet’s remarks came during a conversation with The Los Angeles Times about his new memoir, “Everywhere an Oink Oink,” according to the new report.
During the discussion, he attacked the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for implementing diversity standards that will be required to be eligible for the “Best Picture” Oscar, starting in 2025.
Film producers and directors will now be required to submit to the Academy a dossier of the sort that points to the race, gender, sexual orientation and disability status of their film’s cast and crew members.
Mamet described these regulations as burdensome, and he was skeptical about their effectiveness.
The notion that “I can’t give you a stupid f—— statue unless you have 7% of this, 8% of that… it’s intrusive,” he continued.
According to the LA Times, Mamet argued that while certain groups had experienced discrimination in Hollywood, efforts to combat these problems had gone too far the other way.
“The [film industry] has little business improving everybody’s racial understanding as does the fire department,” he said.
The Jewish playwright has also spoken out against the antisemitic threat on college campuses and encouraged fellow Jews to not support Democrats.
He said in an interview last November that liberals have “never done anything for the Jews” and that the “only person” who ever did anything for the Jewish people was former President Trump.
“He brought peace to the Middle East and liberal Jews are saying, ‘Oh, I don’t like this Trump,” he concluded. “It’s time to stop putting our head in the sand.”
Mamet isn’t the only one in Hollywood who has voiced disagreement over the DEI standards.
Last year, several voting members warned the new guidelines would hurt the creative process.
“It’s completely ridiculous,” one director said during an interview with The New York Post.
“I’m for diversity, but to make you cast certain types of people if you want to get nominated? That makes the whole process contrived. The person who is right for the part should get the part. Why should you be limited in your choices? But it’s the world we’re in. This is crazy.”
“Jaws” actor Richard Dreyfuss also griped about the new guidelines in an interview with PBS’s Margaret Hoover last year.
Not holding back, Dreyfuss declared, “They make me vomit.”
“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,” he continued.
Fox News’ Stephanie Giang-Paunon contributed to this report.
