“We regret that an event that was meant to be a conversation to celebrate an iconic movie instead became a platform for political views.”
Surfers are a diverse-ish group ranging slightly in age, sex and race though all, everywhere, consider Richard Dreyfuss a hero. The 76-year-old actor has brought many wonderful characters to life though none more inspirational, to surfers, than Matt Hooper. Yes, the brave oceanographer who correctly identified that a massive great white shark was hunting ocean players, later crawling into a cage in order to poke it with poison, is a patron saint for wave sliders, many wearing his visage around their necks in small medallion form.
You can imagine the shock, then, when days ago, Dreyfuss attended a screening of Jaws, arriving in a flattering floral dress and proceeding to break into what is being described as an “anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ+” screed. The event was scheduled in the small town of Beverly, Massachusetts and supposed to be a simple chat with the Hollywood icon with tickets running $300.
The subject matter, which also included a takedown of Barbara Streisand, was not appreciated by all.
Sarah Hogg and their partner, Jonah Hoffmann, attended but marched right out in protest, Hogg telling the Boston Globe, “I’m queer, I’m nonbinary. This is personal to me. It’s one of those moments where you feel like you’re having an out-of-body experience. It was horrifying.”
Cheri Ziegra forwent the media and took her disgust straight to Facebook, penning, “Apparently (I found out too late), he has a reputation for spewing this kind of racist, homophobic, misogynistic bullcrap. … We did NOT get what we paid for (which we all assumed would be a light, fun evening listening to stories and anecdotes about RD’s time on the Vineyard making ‘Jaws.’) This was offensive and we demand a refund.”
Theater director J. Casey Soward, feeling very bad, declared, “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. 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.”
Surfers mortified.
The Dreyfuss team has yet to address the matter but will hopefully before the Tahiti Pro kicks off in under 24 hours.
Exciting.
