David Mamet doesn’t just criticize Hollywood’s liberal establishment.
“DEI is garbage,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning author told a packed audience at the Los Angeles Times Festival. ”It’s fascist totalitarianism. ”
The playwright and director spoke about his revealing memoir, “Everywhere an Oink Oink,” with Times Entertainment Associate Editor Matt Brennan at USC’s Newman Recital Hall, offering his trademark expletives and controversy. There was no avoiding it.
His book, published in the fall, chronicles his past 40 years in the filmmaking industry and his history as a progressive “red diaper baby” raised by communist Jewish parents on Chicago’s South Side. To this day, he details 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.
“You can’t give a stupid f- statue unless you have 7 or 8 percent of this…It’s annoying,” 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 refers to leaders of these diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts as “diversity capos” and “diversity commissars.”
” [film industry] “Rather than trying to improve representation of women, gays and other marginalized groups,” Mamet said to loud laughter from the crowd, “you’re not going to improve people’s understanding of race the way you do in the fire department.” , colleagues argued that it would be better to sell popcorn.
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 He used the outdated term “transsexual” when talking about transgender people and slammed gender-neutral bathrooms.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. “Nobody entertains me.”
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
