Jaws-dropping remarks from veteran actor
Dreyfuss goes on rant at screening of 1975 film
Richard Dreyfuss is no stranger to controversy. Last year, the Oscar-winning actor spoke out against the inclusivity and diversity changes being implemented by the Academy Awards.
But during a recent Jaws screening in Massachusetts, Dreyfuss, 76, sparked new outrage after delivering a rant that attendees categorized as transphobic, sexist and homophobic.
“This was disgusting,” posted one attendee on the Facebook page of Beverly’s The Cabot theatre (per Deadline). “How could the Cabot not have vetted his act better. Apparently (I found out too late), he has a reputation for spewing this kind of racist, homophobic, misogynistic bullcrap.”
In a video shared to Youtube, Dreyfuss, who also starred in American Graffiti, The Goodbye Girl and What About Bob?, was seen walking out ahead of the screening to the sounds of Taylor Swift’s Love Story wearing a floral print dress over his clothes.
Dreyfuss allegedly called his Jaws director Steven Spielberg “a genius but an idiot” and said their other collaboration, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, was only a success because he “convinced Spielberg to hire him instead of Gene Hackman.”
“Jesus Christ what an explosion,” the X summary continued. “Crowd was shouting at him and most walked out before the movie even started. Talk about the movie a--hole.”
On Facebook, one moviegoer said he left after 20 minutes. “Should have been fun, but what a disappointment. Dreyfuss is a pathetic clown and an intolerant jerk,” he wrote.
Another said Dreyfuss was “behaving like an a--.”
As another audience member described it to the Boston Globe, “(Dreyfuss) said that the parents of trans youth, allowing them to transition, was bad parenting and that someday those kids might change their minds.”
The Cabot issued a statement of apology.
“We regret that an event that was meant to be a conversation to celebrate an iconic movie instead became a platform for political views. We take full responsibility for the oversight in not anticipating the direction of the conversation and for the discomfort it caused to many patrons,” executive director J. Casey Soward wrote. “We are in active dialogue with our patrons about their experience and are committed to learning from this event how to better enact our mission of entertaining, educating and inspiring our community.”
In an email sent to patrons, which was obtained by radio station WBSM, the theatre went a step further, calling Dreyfuss’s remarks “offensive and distressing,” adding that “the views expressed by Mr. Dreyfuss do not reflect our beliefs, and we do not endorse them in any way.”
Dreyfuss has yet to address the fallout from his appearance.