David Mamet doesn’t just criticize Hollywood’s liberal establishment.
“DEI is trash,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning author told a packed audience at the Los Angeles Times Festival. “It’s fascist totalitarianism. ”
The playwright and director talks about his revealing memoir, “Everywhere an Oink Oink,” with Times entertainment associate editor Matt Brennan at USC’s Newman Recital Hall, avoiding his trademark expletives and controversy. That never happened.
His book, published in the fall, describes his past 40 years in the filmmaking industry and the progressive “Baby in the Red Diaper” who grew up on Chicago’s South Side to communist Jewish parents. ” to the present day, detailing his downfall due to politics. -day Conservatives who love Trump.
For more than a decade, Mamet’s political and social commentary has garnered as many headlines as his film and theater work. His latest complaint is the Academy’s new diversity rules for Oscar nominees to promote representation of LGBTQ+, women, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities.
“Unless you have 7% or 8% of this, you can’t give a stupid f— statue…It’s a nuisance,” Mamet said.
Mamet acknowledged that discrimination has prevented people from joining Hollywood for years, but he believes the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. In his book, Mamet describes leaders of these diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts as “diversity capos” and “diversity commissioners.”
” [film industry] “Very few things improve people’s racial understanding like the fire department does,” Mamet said, to loud laughter from the crowd. He argued that his colleagues would be better off selling popcorn than trying to improve the representation of women, gays and other marginalized groups.
Mamet did not mince words. He used the outdated term “transsexual” when talking about transgender people and slammed gender-neutral bathrooms. “It politicizes the human excretory function,” he said to louder laughter from the crowd.
Earlier this year, he proudly defended free speech in his amicus brief to the Supreme Court in NetChoice LLC v. Paxton. “We’re seeing a huge attack on free speech in this country,” Mamet said.
Movie executives and screenwriters were also unable to protect themselves from Mamet’s criticism. He blamed movie studios for a “hegemony” that suppressed the voices of independent filmmakers. “There is no room for individual initiative,” Mamet said. He added that the film industry is experiencing “growth, maturation, decline and death” that “happens with all organic things.”
Back in 2007, Mr. Mamet was a vocal opponent of the writers’ strike, and complained last year when writers reached an impasse with studios in negotiations for higher pay and protections for the use of artificial intelligence.
“There will be fewer jobs,” Mamet acknowledged. “But the script could be better.”
Does Mamet see his children as Nepo’s babies who benefited from his illustrious career? Not at all, he said. He is happy with what they learned from being on set with him.
“They earned this award on merit,” he said of his daughter Zosia Mamet, who starred in “Girls.” He said he believes they are not benefiting from any privileges and that DEI efforts are robbing them of hard-earned opportunities. “No one gave my children jobs because of their blood ties.”
Mamet said he was kicked out of Hollywood more because of his age than for political reasons. Young directors want to work with friends of their own generation.
“No one’s going to pay me that much anymore,” Mamet said. “No one lets me have fun.”
