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April 7, 2021 - Epoch Times
32:58
The Influence of Cancel Culture on Hollywood, Explained | John Duffy
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You know, there's people been canceled in the past in Hollywood and in other places.
My opinion is a lot of it is driven by social media.
It brings out the worst in people.
Where do you think is it coming from?
10% of the population or less is the ones who are driving this on Twitter.
So you're letting a minority of people control how you live your life.
And if they challenge you, you're going to give in and apologize to them.
Why?
And tell me about the culture of Hollywood now.
It's not a place that's a role model for what's best in the world.
But it wasn't just Harvey.
That was the culture that surrounded all of Hollywood.
What Harvey was doing was being done by a lot of other people.
Do you think it's gotten to a point where some of the actors, celebrities in Hollywood, they have to really self-censor?
Absolutely, 100%.
Because you look at Hollywood and they made movies about the blacklist and how they were blacklisted in the 50s for being associated with communists and that how horrible that was to blacklist people for their belief systems now are the exact opposite doing everything they can to blacklist people with a different point of view than them.
So they've become the thing that they said that they were against.
Cancel culture in Hollywood is blacklisting artists and celebrities for their past and current actions.
My guest today is John Duffy.
He's a film producer with over 25 feature films.
Today he discusses the growth of cancel culture and how it's influencing Hollywood.
Welcome to California Insider.
John, it's great to have you on.
Welcome.
Well, thank you.
Thank you.
I'm glad to be here.
You have long years of experience in Hollywood, and we want to talk to you about.
We have cancel culture in society, and you have seen some of that or a lot of that in Hollywood.
Yeah, it's growing in Hollywood.
You know, where did it originally start, or when I say originally, this latest...
A bit of cancel culture, because it existed before.
People have been canceled in the past in Hollywood and in other places, but it didn't exist as such a growing phenomenon.
Now it's a bigger growing phenomenon.
My opinion is a lot of it is driven by social media.
And the growth of, in particular, certain platforms on social media where people are encouraged, it brings out the worst in people, in particular Twitter, where people have the ability to attack people without having to defend themselves.
So you don't get to challenge them, they challenge other people.
And obviously, if you're in any position, whether it's as an actor or a media person or a In a corporation or whatever, they can attack you for whatever reason they want.
Something you did 30 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago.
Whatever it is that they can find something to find a way to attack you because you don't agree with every one of their ideas.
So it's like a growing phenomenon of groupthink.
That is occurring on social media and it's affecting Hollywood.
Recently, one actress who worked with me on one of my movies, Gina Carana, got canceled from The Mandalorian, the Disney thing, because of a comment she made.
And once again, it's very selective because if you wanted to go through every single actor, you'd probably be able to cancel every single one of them and there'd be no actors left because every single actor has said something dumb, stupid, inappropriate, or whatever, historically.
So you can find a way to do that.
So it's not like the people who are canceling everybody.
It's a selective rage that's going on in the culture.
And it's not a good thing.
It's very unhealthy.
So when you're mentioning they, is it a group thing or is it a small minority?
Because wouldn't all the actors should be worried right now about what they've said in the past?
Well, what happens is, I think, when people are attacked...
The response of people too often because people don't stand up, don't have the courage to resist.
They give in and they apologize.
And I think apologizing for anything is the worst thing to do.
Personally, I think, you know, it's just like a fight or a debate.
If you're going to go on the defense, you've lost.
If you let people put you on the defense, they won, you lost.
And the question is, why would you let people who've accomplished nothing in their lives, a lot of the people on social media who start these things off, are, in my opinion, people who have not accomplished anything, have not produced anything of value, have not done anything that's useful to the society.
And all they're doing is attacking people who have.
People who are in one of the presidents, I think it was Theodore Roosevelt, is the difference between being in the arena and being bloodied versus being a critic.
Anybody can be a critic and attack the person who's in the arena fighting and struggling.
But the critic doesn't have to do anything.
The critic doesn't have to produce anything.
The critic doesn't have to succeed at anything.
They can just attack you.
And if you give in to that and you let them do that and you apologize to the critic, then the critic gets stronger.
The monster gets stronger.
So I say don't feed the monster.
Where do you think is it coming from?
Well, it's coming from a politically correct culture that has been bred in a few places.
It's been bred in the universities where you have a...
A lot of university professors who propagandize the students with their ideas and they create a groupthink around their ideas that the students come out with.
So the young people have that coming out of the universities.
Then they have social media, which is encouraging groupthink.
And when you look at the percentage of people, say, on a platform like Twitter, it's not 50 percent of the population of America that's on Twitter.
It's a small percentage.
And the amount of people who tweet regularly is even a smaller percentage of people.
But you're saying maybe 10% of the population or less is the ones who are driving this on Twitter.
So you're letting a minority of people control how you live your life.
And if they challenge you, you're going to give in and apologize to them.
Why?
What have they done?
What's their ethics?
What's their morals?
What have they done to change the world to make it better just because they can tweet?
So I think what happens is too many people in Hollywood have gone into apology mode, but not everybody.
So Gina Carano, for example, she just said, you can't cancel me.
And I think that's the perfect response is you can't cancel somebody who won't let themselves be canceled.
You know, you can ruin their opportunity at that moment.
But they're not going to let you ruin their life because they're bigger than that and they're bigger than you.
So I think that's a positive.
And then her co-star in the show basically came out and said she's a great person.
This isn't right.
If more people would stand up and do that and say this isn't right, They would lose their power.
But it takes courage and it takes people who are willing to speak back against people who are trying to destroy lives.
Sharon Stone, I know I'm running on, Sharon Stone just said recently that cancel culture is one of the stupidest things she's ever seen.
And she's somebody who's been in the business for ages and she just realizes the stupidity of what this is doing to Hollywood, but also to America and the culture.
Because corporations and media, both of them have a role in this too.
Companies actually fire people or they stop using and working with an actor in their movies.
And then also media creates a hype around that as well, right?
Yeah, and there's different reasons.
Unfortunately, politics is part of it, and the political divisions are part of it.
So they've had boycott Georgia movements before in the film industry.
So a few years ago, there was a call to boycott Georgia because of political vote that the state of Georgia voted on.
So now...
Recently on Twitter, there was another hashtag, Boycott Georgia.
Interestingly enough, they spelled Georgia wrong.
They dropped the R out of the thing and you go, you know, this is that they expect respect and they can't even spell the word Georgia.
But hey, so that whole thing, they were trying to get another movement going to Boycott Georgia again.
And what that means is you're asking, and these are people on Twitter who are not involved in anything, trying to boycott a whole state, and all the people who work in the state, the industries, the film industry, basically destroy these people's livelihoods because you do a hashtag?
And you should be able to have the power off a hashtag to destroy people's lives.
It makes no sense.
It makes no sense.
But it's driven by that group of people who I personally think don't have much purpose or mission in their life.
And that's why they do it.
So do you think that group of people control the thinking that comes into Hollywood?
Or do you think...
Yeah, they do.
They do.
I mean, they control their thinking in Hollywood.
They control their thinking in the media.
They control their thinking in social...
And when I say control...
Not in a way of full control, but in a way of influence.
They influence it more than I would say control it, because control means that they're like these people in power, and they're not.
They're people with no power, quite frankly, and will never get power, hopefully, and should never have power.
But they're people who want power.
They want to have more of an influence because they don't have, in my opinion, a lot of them, not all of them, a lot of them don't have anything else that they can be proud of in their lives.
So this is the only thing that they can do with their lives, unfortunately.
And tell me about the culture of Hollywood now.
It's not a place, in my opinion, I've been in it for years, it's not a place that's a role model for...
What's best in the world, in my opinion.
It might have been at one point in time.
It's no longer, you know, it's a lot of the people who dominate Hollywood.
I mean, you just got to go to the issue of the Me Too movement, which started against people like Harvey Weinstein, who dominated Hollywood for so many years.
But it wasn't just Harvey.
That was the culture that surrounded All of Hollywood and Harvey was just the tip of the spear.
When you went to the Cannes Film Festival, what Harvey was doing was being done by a lot of other people and everybody was acquiescing and allowing him to do it and praising him as if he was somebody great when they knew the evil that he was doing.
So when you talk about the culture of Hollywood, you got to say, yes, there's good people in Hollywood, of course, there's really good people.
And yet there's a lot of...
Bad people who've gotten away with a lot of bad behavior and are continuing to get away with it because they don't come from values of morals and ethics that are really centered in a way that's good for the country.
They just don't.
I mean, they're self-serving, they're narcissistic, they're profit-driven.
They have a lot of elements that are just not The best of what could be if they were about something more about really making a difference in the world.
And they're not.
They're just not in my opinion.
And they have a lot of influence.
Hollywood does have a lot of influence in our culture, right?
Yeah, and all over the world.
I think their biggest influence, unfortunately, and this is why I think more people need to start to...
Come up with alternatives to Hollywood on so many different levels because Hollywood's main influence is among the young.
And that's the real bad side because they influence the young towards values that are not necessarily the best values for the young or for anybody.
So their influence there is bad.
I think their influence among the older population of America is starting to decline rapidly.
Award shows where they award themselves with all these awards for all the great things they've done are no longer getting the kind of audience.
Millions and millions of people are dropping off.
I think the Emmys lost like 60% of their audience the last thing.
So the older population, the older segment of the population is no longer interested.
They've lost interest in that.
So they're losing that, just like the media has, the audience for a lot of the media has dropped off because the people have lost interest in them.
And they figure, hey, the best way to treat that is to just ignore it.
Don't watch it, don't buy it, don't participate in it.
But that doesn't diminish the fact that they still have so much, so much influence among the young of our society.
And that continues.
So why do you think the Emmys and these awards have lost this much audience?
Well, you know, and all this is, anything I'm saying is just my opinion, is just...
Most older people, most people, we went to the award shows for entertainment.
People go to it for entertainment and for an escape.
You know, you work, you come home, you won't forget about what you're dealing with at work or the struggles you're having financially or whatever it is.
So it's, you know, all of entertainment is an escape for people who have to live real tough lives, maybe.
When the award shows and all of them start to become a platform for political speech and for all these actors to basically get up there and give you all these, speak at you and tell you what you should believe and how you have to believe...
The people turn off because that's not what they're there for.
They're not there to have these actors to tell them what to believe.
They're there to get entertained.
That's what actors and entertainment is about, is entertainment.
Once it starts to become a political thing, well, then go run for office and let's cancel this.
Let's cancel your show because you're not being entertainment anymore.
If you want to cancel, let's cancel your show.
How about that?
So they've lost that thing of what the purpose of it was, was entertainment.
That's what people want.
They want to be entertained.
They don't want to be preached to.
Do you think people in Hollywood see that and know that, or do you think they have to live by that to survive?
Well, there's probably three groups.
There's, you know, people who are on one side or the other side, more on one side in Hollywood, because Hollywood has been I've been on the left side for maybe since the 60s.
So it's grown from the 60s.
Before the 60s, it wasn't.
It was more balanced.
But after the 60s, it's kind of moved, moved, moved, moved, moved to the left.
But then you've got people who kind of are somewhat in the middle trying to figure out.
They just want to act.
They want to entertain.
They want to perform.
And They, you know, they can.
I work with a lot of military veterans who work in the film industry.
And, you know, I know one guy, he served 25 years and he's an actor and he had to hide his politics, you know, and he's a guy who, you know, served his country and basically, you know, kept our freedom, but he's afraid to come out and say what he believes.
Really?
Why?
Why is that like that?
Why can't he express his opinion?
But that's the culture that's been set up in Hollywood.
So someone like that, who's done so much, is afraid to speak.
So would they get canceled by the Hollywood community?
Yeah, they'd get canceled, they'd get shadow banned, they wouldn't...
They wouldn't hire them.
You know, the people in Hollywood on the conservative side or the libertarian side who speak out, you know, they have to be at a certain level of their career that they don't care anymore.
Or if they're coming up, they can't.
Because if they do, then they're going to have to only work in certain kind of projects because Hollywood won't, you know, they'll definitely be canceled.
What's the logic for that?
Is there a logic?
Is there any thinking behind it?
Well, I wouldn't use the word logic because none of that is logical.
You know, I think a lot of the belief on that side is purely emotional.
And I think we have two sides to us, an emotional side and a logical side.
And I think...
I recently read something where they were just saying with the issue of...
COVID that they did a survey, a poll, and people on one side were more fear-driven and people on the other side were not.
And they both at least saw the same thing very differently.
And I think that's because logical people see the world one way.
Emotional people see the world another way.
Business people see the world very logically, intellectually.
Artists and creative people see the world very emotionally.
And that's not a bad thing in the past.
That's not a bad thing because you need business people and you need artists.
You need poets and you need politicians.
You need the whole range of people.
But now it's like if you're not emotional, you're evil.
And so the division is now, you can't be that, you have to be this.
Well, and unfortunately in the creative community, the majority is on the emotional side because that's what the creative community is.
They're emotional beings.
But there's not a lot of logical going in.
And I have a friend who basically says, you know, when emotion is high, intelligence is low.
And I think that's a real good quote because when you're reacting emotionally, you're not thinking.
You're not being able to step back and say, okay, here's the challenge.
Is this possibility?
Is that possibility?
Let me be logical and let's come up with a conclusion, a solution.
It's just pure emotion.
Well, you don't agree with me.
I'm going to scream at you.
Really?
Yeah.
So you mentioned this emotional thinking.
Can you tell us more about it?
What does it look like?
Well, I mean, you see the phenomena in the culture and it clearly is in Hollywood and social media where people get offended every single day.
They get offended by anything.
I mean, you know, they're looking to get up and get offended, which I think is a very emotional driven thing.
And it's the opposite of what it should be.
I mean, I get up every day and I write down everything that I'm grateful for.
And I think if you're grateful for life, you have a different perspective than if you're always looking for something to be offended about.
And so, unfortunately for emotional people, they're always finding something to be offended.
There's always something to get them upset because they live in that place.
They live in that space of...
Emotion and offense.
And they live in a place of being victims.
They're always trying to be a victim.
And there's real victims in this world.
There's people who are being human trafficked, sex trafficked.
Those are real victims.
The people who are on Twitter playing victim, and I say playing, it's almost like they're acting victim, is not real victims.
We should be spending our time helping the people who are real victims in this world.
So, but that outfence thing is a growing phenomena.
It happens because people just have an ability to not think, but just respond instantly on social media instead of just taking a step back and going, you know, maybe I shouldn't post this.
Is this going to have a positive outcome or a negative outcome?
When I use social media on my Facebook, my Twitter, my Instagram and all that, I have one purpose.
It's to promote positivity.
It's to promote a way to inspire people to be the best they can be, to give them a way to be their best.
Because if I can help somebody be better, then they can help somebody else be better.
And then we are able to create a better community, a better society, a better world.
But that's not where it's coming from on social media.
So you have that offense thing.
And there's one example of somebody who, when the movie American Sniper came out, one of the people in Hollywood directors, Clint Eastwood's movie, attacked it on Twitter.
And he attacked, went on this Twitter rampage against the guy who was The American sniper who basically saved all these people's lives.
Well, of course, in about a few days, he realized because of all the blowback on him, he had to like delete that tweet and make believe he didn't say it.
But here's somebody who is a nobody.
He's a film director.
He's attacking somebody who's a real American hero who risked his life to save people's lives and to free people.
And that's the problem with social media.
So you have that.
And then sometimes you have the voices.
I mean, I think sometimes you have some good voices out there who are brave enough, and there ain't a lot of them, but who are brave enough to criticize Hollywood.
Like at the Oscars, I think they made a mistake when they hired that comedian from England, Ricky Jervis.
And he went on, and he's funny as can be, but he threw their...
He threw it all in their face.
He basically said, here's a mirror.
This is who you people are.
You make believe you're this kind of person, but this is who you really are.
Look at yourself in the mirror.
And they weren't very happy with that reveal of who they really were behind the curtain.
But that's the truth of them.
And it takes those brave voices.
And sometimes comedians are the best voices.
I mean, they try to cancel comedians.
Most comedians, no matter their left or right or liberal or conservative, they don't want to perform on college campuses anymore.
None of them want to go to college campuses because there's the sense of you tell a joke, everybody gets offended.
You tell another joke, somebody else gets offended.
You tell another joke, you can't not offend them.
It's like they're just waiting to get offended.
And so you come as a comedian and your job is to make fun of everything and they can't handle it.
They can't handle the fact that you're making fun of things.
That's sad.
I mean, I just think that's really sad that it's come to that place that people can't laugh at anything, and even at themselves.
Because I think one of the greatest gifts you have is when you can laugh at yourself.
You know, if somebody makes fun of me, we were doing a movie in Canada, and I was doing an interview after, and two of the crew guys, you know, I started asking them, and they started making fun of people on the crew.
We were doing a behind-the-scenes.
So they started making fun of me.
I started dying.
They thought I was going to get upset.
And I was like, go with this, man.
This is hilarious.
Because they saw who I was.
And they just found a way to make fun of it.
I was like, well, that's what humor's about.
You know, laugh at me.
Laugh at the director.
Laugh at the producer.
I don't care.
That's what we're about.
You know, let's be brave enough to have a sense of humor.
So this canceling, it's across all spectrums, right?
It's for conservatives, liberals, libertarians, everybody.
Is that Well, yes and no.
I mean, it started in one place.
And, you know, and I can say that it started and the strength of it comes from the left.
That's where cancel culture originates.
And, you know, I used to be a leftist.
I used to be a Maoist leader.
So I can speak as somebody who was somebody on that far left personally.
So I understand it pretty well.
But it started on that.
And that's where the strong...
Where it's being driven is from that side of the political spectrum.
It's not 100% that, and there's people on the right who cancel people too, unfortunately, as well.
But then it starts to spray because it's a cancer, or somebody called it a mind virus.
It's a virus that spreads to the mind, and I think that's a good description of it.
But then it starts to go against anybody who does not agree 100%.
So you could be a Kevin Hart.
Kevin Hart, a funny comedian, African American, well-liked, a great actor.
He got canceled because he had some things that they didn't like.
So even though he was mostly in agreement with that side of the political spectrum, he got canceled and couldn't do the Oscars.
So it starts to, you know, I don't know what to say in, but, you know, it starts to eat the young.
It starts to eat their young.
It starts to spread because...
And then you have to step up your agreement.
I read recently about a pop star who's going to take weekly classes to basically apologize for all the things that she's done wrong in her life, which I just find stupid and offensive that people are willing to do that, that they're able to let themselves...
You know, it reminds me of...
What went on in China with the Red Guard and other places like that where people were really beaten into submission and beaten into just obeying whatever the group think was at the time.
So I think the way you stand up to it is you make fun of it.
You stand up to it by pushing back and not playing defense, playing offense, but primarily and then find a way to reach out and educate people That we have more in common than we have differences.
And if they can't handle that, that's their problem, not mine.
So the people that are saying that the cancel culture is good, they're thinking that it brings accountability.
What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, I guess there's somebody who believes that.
I don't have a lot of belief in that.
But, you know, I think that may be how they present it.
Because here's the thing, in this culture, my opinion on all this, you know, there's a lot of people who want to feel good.
But they don't want to do good.
You know, and so it's the same kind of thing.
If you can post something, you feel good that you did something, but you did nothing.
You know, they're hashtag warriors.
You know, you do a hashtag.
I remember when they did the hashtag to save the kids who were girls who were kidnapped in Africa.
Well, the hashtag didn't save those girls.
What would have saved those girls would have been sending in special forces to release those girls from the terrorists.
You don't accomplish anything by hashtags.
You don't accomplish anything by what you tweet.
It's by what you do.
So if you're not being a role model, if you tweet something against homelessness downtown, but you're not doing anything, face it, you're not doing anything.
You ain't accomplished anything.
So don't give yourself any pats on the back because you did nothing.
So too many of these people, all they need to do is feel good.
And that's the problem.
And that's the problem in this generation.
There's not enough where results is what it's about, in my opinion.
If you accomplish something, then pat yourself on the back.
But if you posted something, don't pat yourself on the back because you did nothing.
Do you think it's gotten to a point where some of the actors, celebrities in Hollywood, they have to really self-censor.
They have to go back and delete the posts that they've made in the past and really watch out for what they do going forward, whatever they post, whatever they say.
Yeah, absolutely, 100%.
I think that that is one of the, you know, there's two sides to it, but that's the growing danger of this, is that that's what they want.
And I say they, you always mean what they, but the people who believe in that they have the power to cancel people, they believe that you have to agree with the groupthink on everything.
And so when you step out of the groupthink, even for a minute, they start to want to cancel you.
So Bill Maher.
Bill Maher is part of they.
But when Bill Maher steps out of the day and starts to express independent points of view about issues, whatever those issues may be, Well, I
think.
They're afraid because if they step out, they're not going to get hired.
And they know that's true.
And it's kind of funny and ironic because you look at the Hollywood and they made movies about the blacklist and how they were blacklisted in the 50s for being associated with communists and that how horrible that was to blacklist people for their belief systems now are the exact opposite doing everything they can to blacklist people with a different point of view than them.
So they've become the thing that they said that they were against.
That's who they are.
And that's sad and horrible.
But the only way you stop that is like anything else.
You stand up to it.
You refuse to go along with the program.
You stand strong and not let...
Bullies, because at the end of the day they're woke bullies, trying to bully people, you don't let the bullies win.
The way bullies win is if you back down and you let them win.
And now I understand it's not easy and there's a lot of people who are afraid, and rightfully so, because they realize where the power lies.
And unfortunately the power is oppressive power.
It's power that can make or destroy their careers.
But you got a lot of, like anything in life, you always got courageous people who are willing to step up and fight the fight.
And that's across the board.
And, you know, like I said, there's people on all sides politically who are independent thinkers who are willing to step up and fight the fight.
And we need more of them.
So where do you think this culture is going, the Hollywood culture, at the rate it's going with this canceling and these emotions?
Well, I think it's going in a very bad direction.
You know, I mean, we've seen just recently...
And it doesn't matter what their political points of view are, because I may disagree with them.
I mean, you've seen Piers Morgan have to quit his show.
You've seen Sharon Osbourne get kicked off a show.
You see this cancel culture going across the board.
And it's just getting worse because...
But at the same time, that's one side.
That's the negative side.
The positive side is that people are standing up to it and people are pushing back against it and people are saying, no, ain't gonna let it happen.
I'm gonna speak my mind.
I'm not gonna be afraid.
I'm gonna be courageous.
And it doesn't matter in which direction that is because there's voices out there in the media, in the culture, voices who are liberals, voices who are in the middle, voices who are on the right, Voices who are libertarians, who are able to speak to each other, respect each other, and get into a dialogue with each other, which is what we should be doing.
Because there's a lot of real big problems in our society and the world.
I mean, I was downtown Two weeks ago doing a movie and I was walking through Skid Row.
If you ever had a chance, if you haven't done it, walk through Skid Row if you're brave enough and if you're not, maybe drive through.
But you walk through Skid Row and look at over the 75,000, I think, homeless people that we now have in Los Angeles and And go, is this something that's been solved?
Is this a problem that anybody is really working to solve with real solutions?
Because it's gotten worse every year.
So what are you doing and why can't we solve these kind of problems instead of fighting over stupid things on Twitter?
You know, I think people are better than that or at least they should be better than that if they're not.
Do you have any other thoughts for our audience?
Yeah, I mean, I think the main thing is two things.
It's kind of what I've learned to become in my life is that, one, I start out my life, wherever I work on a movie or anything, I start out a thing where I treat everybody with respect.
That's the bottom line.
And when you treat people with respect, it doesn't matter whether they have a different idea than you or the same idea.
You treat them as a person deserving of respect and you find a way to find dialogue and unity or at least some unity on things that you can work on and solve together.
You don't have to agree on everything.
I have friends all across the political spectrum But they're the ones who are the brave ones, the courageous ones who are not afraid to have that dialogue and be able to say, hey, I disagree with you, but you're a great person.
And I can say, hey, yeah, I disagree with you too, but you're a great person.
So I'm not afraid.
I'm not afraid of any of their ideas.
And that's what I think people should need to do is step up, be courageous, not be afraid of ideas that are different than theirs.
Matter of fact, they should be open to them.
Well, thank you, John.
It's great to have you on.
You're welcome.
Thank you for taking the time.
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