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March 31, 2022 - The Megyn Kelly Show
01:31:46
20220331_what-will-smiths-slap-says-about-america-and-dange
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Freedom of Speech Under Threat 00:14:26
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
Our guest today is an American icon, actor Richard Dreyfus.
He rose to fame during the 1970s, starring in some of the greatest films ever, including Jaws, The Goodbye Girl, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
I could go on.
He actually won an acting Oscar for The Goodbye Girl, then the youngest person ever to win it at a mere baby 30 years old.
His film career is lengthy and impressive, but as he's going to share with us in a minute, there's so much more to him.
And it was not easy to be someone not of the far left in Hollywood.
Since the 2000s, he has turned to his passion for civics education and founded the Dreyfus Civics Initiative in 2006, aimed at bringing civics into public education.
He's concerned about the loss of patriotism in this country, the loss of understanding of why America is special, how we got to be so, and the erosion of that belief.
And maybe, as a result, its truth decade after decade, as passing generations continue to think the worst about this great country of ours.
He's spoken critically about the media and its impact on public opinion.
And today, he is passionate about, among other things, Facebook and the power of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, and what he's doing in this Ukraine-Russia mess.
Richard, so great to talk to you again.
How are you?
I am.
I was 29. 29 when you won for Goodbye Girl, one of my very favorite films of all time.
I've made my kids watch it.
They love it too.
We're introducing a whole new generation to your many, many talents.
But I'm with you on the Facebook concern, so we'll start there on the newsier stuff.
Facebook, for those who do not know, has changed its quote hate speech policy in the wake of this war in Ukraine.
And among the other things that they're doing, his platforms, Meta's platforms, are now going to allow Facebook and Insta users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers, not civilians.
But if you want to post death to Russian invaders, that's fine now.
Didn't used to be.
You can't say kill all Russian civilians, but you can, depending on what Mark Zuckerberg feels, you can call for violence against certain Russians now, as long as you don't divulge a certain location or the specific method by which, I mean, this is like big brother crazy stuff where he's going to be controlling every other sentence uttered on his platform.
Richard, what do you make of it?
I think it's despicable, and I think it's breaking the most fundamental part of the First Amendment.
And I think that we've fattened us up so that we can be cut up into thin strips and put on the stupid grill.
And the real problem is that he's not calling for this, he says, as a geopolitical fight.
He's saying that he has freedom of speech and as an owner of the First Amendment, he tells you what's fair and balanced.
Calling for the incitement to violence and the reform of the is okay to let's assassinate Vladimir Putin is not what was meant and is not meant today.
This is, of course, the continuation of his behavior when it comes to censorship.
He'll allow that, but he won't allow posts he deems to be COVID misinformation, even if they later turn out to be perfectly correct.
Of course, it was big tech that was behind the story in the news this week, which is the censorship of the New York Post reporting on Hunter Biden, which now, as of today, and as of earlier this week or last week, the New York Times and the New York, or the Washington Post just yesterday have had to admit was accurate reporting, right?
They censored it with the help of big tech.
So this is an ongoing pattern where these overlords decide what's okay for us to hear and what's not okay for us to hear.
And if these were small little platforms that we could ignore, that would be one thing, but they're not.
No, there is a complete, apparently, a lack of trust in the brains of our young people.
We think that they will be putty in the hands of an influencer or a social network owner.
And this happens and has been happening since social media has been our constant companion for many years.
And we may not be able to affect what the leaders of the Russians do on the ground in the pay of a foreign government.
But we have our own rules, and they are the most important rules we have.
We have ethics and values expressed not on a list at the end of the Constitution, but right smack dab in the middle of the Constitution are the things that they say are irrefutable and basic.
What do you think they should do?
Because, you know, if you, and I know you're a free speech supporter, a First Amendment supporter, where do you think he should be drawing the line, if anywhere, right?
Like there are certain categories over here that we don't recognize as constitutionally protected.
Very limited, very tiny category.
But what do you think he should be doing with respect to Russia and beyond?
No, not what he should be doing.
It's what we should be doing.
Direct television took Russian television off American television.
And not only was that wrong, but that ended up being about 15 channels and all on cable.
And we don't, we have rules and they can come on cable television without any look around, and when that happened here I I went through the roof.
So i've discovered that now there really is a way to beat uh uh, what we call freedom of speech.
We don't get it.
Yeah well, we just, we just pull the plug now because, to your point earlier that there's a belief we can't handle it, we can't handle rt right, that somehow we're not going to be able to understand propaganda.
The problem is you have to trust the system.
You have to trust not that you can be ultimately a two or three people, one of whom works on the street, that says work here for us.
Work here for us means only one version gets in and there's no such thing as one version of history.
I was sitting in a in a in Austria, at a table filled with journalists and we were talking about history, and I know I said that there's not, it's not valid to just give one version, and the journalist sitting there said that's not.
So i'm a journalist, my friends are journalists and we deal in the truth, and I said, excuse me, you do no such thing.
That was true.
There would only be one person sitting at this table and the fact is, history is a is different opinions about what happened in the past, and that difference of opinion makes all the difference, and people have to learn to hear them both.
It's been kind of scary to see how Verbodin certain viewpoints are being treated, even domestically um as, for example, people who are questioning the narrative that this is.
You know, this is that the Ukraine has done absolutely nothing wrong and that the United States has a moral obligation to get more involved and to take the lead in protecting Ukraine.
Now, I understand most people feel that way, but for those who don't feel that way, why can't they express their position like that?
That's what concerns me.
This is America.
We used to march to protect the rights of skinheads and white supremacists, to spew their hatred because we believed in the principle of the free expression of opinion, not because we supported their opinion, because we support the freedom to express one's opinion, even if it's incredibly controversial.
We've all been trained now to use certain words and to not use certain other words, and you've just gotten the point across.
But let's just say it, we control our television and we've told our enemy, our supposed enemy that um, they don't have any outlet, legitimate outlet, to give their opinion.
And this means we're either fighting nothing, fighting the air, or we're afraid of what would happen if we saw Americans listening to Russians way up there, who have authority, hearing the Russian version of this.
And if you are afraid you'll come out badly, you probably will.
And both sides in a war, in a hostile conflict, make mistakes or do something that you don't approve of.
Okay, what else you got?
And how dumb do you want those who will inherit our system, which by the way, is now the most revolutionary, the most that they have ever heard.
It should make them sign up for dance class, but they don't.
They don't sign up for intellectual curiosity, which is really the goal of American public schools.
Which should be the goal of American public schools.
I know you've been railing on this for a long time, saying it isn't.
It isn't.
And I've told many stories, Richard, about my own children who are now in second, fifth, and sixth grade being taught when we were in our New York City private schools the opposite of critical thinking.
If they asked questions challenging narratives, you know, be it George Floyd or trans ideology teachings and so on, anything that's a third rail, you know, that's under the category of woke identity politics.
If they just asked questions, pushing back on the narrative, they were told in my daughter's case, in one example, by the teacher, I'm uncomfortable with this conversation and I'm shutting it down right now.
Instead of encouraging critical thinking, which I know you believe because I've read your stuff, is one of the main things.
That's like one of the main jobs these K through 12 educators should be doing.
Instead of encouraging it, they're shutting it down.
You just must think as the teachers do, period.
If you want America to continue to exist, to continue to exist as the country that has a specific meaning, which it's had now for 200 years, if you want to kill it, do what they're doing now.
But if you want that excellence, then you have to test them and they're always working at the boundaries, at the, what is it called?
You got to work so that they understand this moment where you and I are talking about it and every other moment.
I could tell you a story.
First the Jews Then Russians 00:06:41
My mother-in-law lives with us and she is from Russia.
She was a judge in Russia.
She speaks no English and she's nervous.
And one afternoon, when we were all huddled over the TV watching the Russian ambassador discussing why they were expanding their conscription day,
it was because a lot of Russian, a lot of Ukrainian young men were jumping over the border because they didn't want to have anything to do with this war.
And so the president was forced to hire mercenaries.
And as he was being interviewed, he was wearing mercenary outfits and He said to me, he said to the audience, or excuse me, my mother-in-law said to me, do you know what those shirts say?
And I said, no, of course not.
I don't read Cyrillic.
And she said, they're saying first the Jews and then the Russians.
And I said, Is that right?
And she said, no, of course not.
And we watched her say it.
They didn't talk about it, but the background of that conversation was them talking about all the Jews they were going to kill first and then the Russians.
Three weeks later, those same clips were on CBS, ABC, and NBC.
And those clips had the same shirts.
You know, it was a copy of the Russian wardrobe, except that no one translated it.
And so people all over the country did not have a chance, unless they were born there, to say, us too are saying first the Jews and then the Russians.
People think that history is only as far back as yesterday.
And that's too bad because the Hungarians in 1956, when they were rising at our enthusiastic hope that they could continue the bad treatment of Russia,
the Hungarians were told by the voice of America to drop their chains and fight the oppressors.
And then someone whispered in Eisenhower's ear, and he said, I'm sorry, I said something stupid.
I take it back because we, the Americans, can't supply an American army in Eastern Europe.
We can't do it.
That was 1956.
He did do it.
He did say that he was going to do it, but that's why there was no food, I mean, feet on the ground.
No American soldiers helping the Hungarians.
And when the Russians came back, they came back in tanks, killing all of the grandmothers in the town squares.
And a friend of mine, a filmmaker, made a movie called Blood in the Water, which if you saw it, would freak you out.
And he was not, he had decided not to sell it in America.
Just to make sure I understand the story about your mother-in-law, she's saying that the Ukrainians, the Ukrainian men who were facing down the Russians on the Ukraine border were the ones with this shirts that read first the Jews, then the Russians.
Yeah, it was the Russian, it was the Ukrainian mercenaries that were saying it.
Okay, I got it.
Right.
And then it speaks to the overall soldiers in the regular draft draft because they'd left.
They'd said, bye-bye.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
There are a lot of Ukrainians who left initially, which is why Zelensky had to issue an edict saying no men of fighting age can leave anymore.
And now they are fighting, and there are a lot of Ukrainians there fighting mightily on behalf of their country, which has been invaded.
And that's all true too.
But that doesn't mean that every Ukrainian faction is something to celebrate or that there isn't a long, long history between these two countries.
I think it's correct for you, for anyone to say, and that's all true because you can't take for granted anything that is being said now on television by the news people.
That's true.
Since we get the BBC, we saw a journalist who has her own show on the BBC eating crow.
She gave a usual anti-Russian speech, and then she said, oops, and then described what was really going on.
And she said, it's horrible.
And it's the same as the lies that were being told in other areas.
So this woman, a journalist of apparently great reputation in that area, was restating that all of what she had said two days before and reflective of what the pictures and images were saying were not true.
Crisis in American Education 00:15:18
And I'm sorry.
I have a right to be confused.
And I don't ever want the source of the material to be so emphatically denied.
Yeah.
I understand that, especially in this day and age when we don't trust the people who control the information platforms.
I think a lot of people are feeling it.
And it's not just big tech, it's domestic media as well, treating us all as infants, as though it's not up to us to determine the difference between fact and propaganda.
And we've seen it on so many subjects now.
It's genuinely led to a loss of faith in these platforms and these media purveyors.
All right, stand by because we do have to pay a bill, squeeze in a break, and we will have much, much more with legendary actor Richard Dreyfus right after this.
Richard Dreyfus has been up on the stage accepting the Oscar for best actor, just as Will Smith was the other night.
So I'll ask him about that whole kerfuffle in a minute.
But first, before we leave the political field, can I ask you because you, I know, I don't know, years ago, you just sort of openly declared, I'm not a Democrat anymore.
I don't know that you said you're a Republican either.
So what are you?
And how did that go over?
I'm an American citizen.
That's who I am.
And what I mean, since I apparently have to explain that, is that Americans have been known for 300 years as the people who have the right to speak their mind and say what they really feel.
And so I had that opportunity because I was at the Iowa caucuses because I was curious and I actually got a lot of feedback or payback by people saying, what is he doing at the Iowa caucuses?
Well, the Republican Iowa Caucuses.
Yes.
And I'm sorry if that wasn't articulate, but to be queried or to be grilled by your own side about something so basic.
It was foolish.
And thankfully, my son, my youngest son, Harry, took it upon himself to tell the world.
And he thought it was foolish.
I didn't know about that until it was published.
But journalists have ceased allowing their own political opinions to be reflected in any way.
And need I say that the best history teachers I had in grammar school were the teachers that would not let them even know of an oncoming disagreement.
And it was a hell of a thing and quite wrong.
And so he didn't think so.
And I didn't think so.
Well, you guys.
Yeah, so you got all this pushback.
You're saying, I mean, journalists, they are offering their opinions way too much.
And it's so obvious where everyone stands.
And it's fine, just as long as you're a lefty.
If you're a liberal, you can, you can put your thumb on that scale just as much as your heart desires.
If you're not, even if you're a centrist now, it's somehow you're out of the club.
Do you, did you, I mean, do you think that Hollywood is intolerant of people who are not established liberals?
I think America is intolerant of anything that is at the moment not kosher.
What do you mean?
I mean, what the subject is, is irrelevant because there are as many thick-headed conservatives as there are thick-headed liberals.
And you can't and shouldn't do anything that shuts down the notion of debate, of opposing views.
That's in the Constitution, and it's built us into the greatest destination for the poor and the untaught that has ever existed on the planet Earth.
The matter has reached crisis status.
I had pulled just a couple of stats before the interview that we've talked about on the show before.
You may have heard about this, but when it comes to the looking it up, hold on.
Oh, yeah.
How do people feel about speaking their mind?
On college campuses, let's see.
Overwhelmingly, people do not feel comfortable expressing their opinions.
More than 80% of students report censoring their own viewpoints.
More than 80% do not feel free to say how they really feel among the general populace.
It's a little lower, but not by much.
It's in the high 60 percentages of people who don't feel comfortable expressing how they actually feel about various issues.
And 23% on college campuses feel that it's acceptable for people to use violence to stop certain speech.
66% of students report some level of acceptance for speaker shoutdowns, stopping someone else from expressing their opinion at all.
To me, this is disgusting.
They've missed the point and made me think of something I'd heard you say, something of to the point of we're now something like four generations in of not teaching civics to students and not teaching them what the Constitution stands for, what America stands for, what's exceptional about this country.
And this is the result.
You get 66% of students who think it's fine to shout down people so that we cannot hear their points of view.
If you really went back and actually looked at what was approved social rules and regs, you would be amazed at what was not allowed.
And that was more important than anything.
And that meant the monarch or leader of a nation had an opinion, and everyone underneath him reflected that opinion regardless until it got to the common people, which is what we are.
And they are completely and utterly under the thumb and they're not allowed to learn how to speak any way but the way they are taught at birth.
That's the goal.
And so if a young farmer said that he wanted to learn how to talk, how to speak, or learn how to express his thoughts, he would be punished.
And that punishment would start with his hands in stocks and it would end with his head being chopped off.
Really.
And that's what the world was like.
And what we stood for for the first time was that some nation actually stood up for the rights of the most common of us and said, we will teach you to read, we will teach you to write, we will teach you to discuss this subject for as long as you want.
And you can use these talents to rise from the station you were born into and go as far as your talents would allow.
So understand that what we were must have been compared to an opium dream.
But that's what we offered.
And that's no longer the way it's taught.
The kids today are being taught to hate their country.
And it's working.
Let me comment on that, because there are people who teach in university who are ungenerous and ungrateful enough to appear to teach hating your country.
We have ideals, we have ideas, and we tell our youngest of the children glory tales.
That's what I call them.
And there are pictures of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who are trying to learn that the worst stories they hear are probably wrong.
That's what we used to do.
And what we now do is make it illegal to have their point of view, our enemy, speak.
I have to take that back.
We are taught that they have no right to speak their mind on our television, on our information agency.
Russian television has been thrown off American television.
And I mean the social cultural channels that have been the symphony orchestras and the great old movies.
They're gone.
And no one is allowed to speak about it.
We have to stop that.
That's what we used to make fun of when the Russians did it in the 50s.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, but it's not just that.
It's an absence of teaching basic civics.
I mean, this is what you've been fighting for many years.
You look at the stats now in terms of, you know, what people know, do they understand about the Constitution?
Only 28.4% of college graduates, college graduates, correctly identify the father of the Constitution as James Madison.
59% of college students believe it's Thomas Jefferson, who, of course, wrote the Declaration of Independence, which is not the same thing as the Constitution.
When asked about...
Before and six months before the Declaration was written, Tom Paine wrote Common Sense.
And in Common Sense, he very clearly and carefully described why the British could not allow the same thing and that they were caught by the events of history as they happen.
And when you realize that, that it was so hidden and so much a danger that they made sure that they had prohibited the opposing views never to be discussed.
And it's as close to science fiction as it possibly can be.
Well, on that subject, almost half of all college students surveyed believe that hate speech, quote, hate speech, is not protected by the Constitution, which is just so dumb.
I'm sorry, but that's just dumb.
The Constitution is not there to protect speech that we all like and love and it's about rainbows and unicorns.
It's there to protect speech we can't stand and have a natural inclination to shut down.
You can say you don't want to hear it, but you can't say the Constitution doesn't protect it.
And yet 44% of those surveyed, this is a 2017 Brookings survey and college student students say they believe the Constitution does not allow hate speech.
It doesn't protect it.
I mean, that's alarmist.
Remarkable legal case in the colonies was the case of an editor who was arrested for just doing that.
And it was the case of Peter Zenger in the early part of the 18th century.
And he was arrested for doing his job.
And it was something that bound us together for the first time.
Normally, Massachusetts would have nothing to do with Florida, but Peter Zenger was on trial.
And we discovered that we had a boundary.
We had a line that we should never have crossed.
And we did.
We did.
So it's been with us forever.
This poll, to this tug of war.
I only have one issue in my entire political life, and that is we're either going to respect the Constitution as central and the political parties as peripheral, or we're going to turn it around and make the political parties central, more important than the Constitution, which is of the moment.
Congress Demands School Reform 00:08:17
And that's not only a terrible decision, it weakens us beyond belief.
We have no ability to train armies.
We have no ability to be trusted enough by our young people to respond to the events of our day in any way.
The army now invites the people, the young people, to join a volunteer army because they promise to teach the kids how to read, how to read, which is something that should be guaranteed and taken care of before they get out of grammar school.
And that presents an enormous problem.
I had my first conference on civics many, many years ago.
And one of the attendees was the admiral who ran the San Diego Naval Station, the largest American naval station in the world.
And I said to him, Admiral, do you have a need for anything that you don't have?
And he said, yes, I do.
I need people who know how to read an order and execute it.
And then he interrupted himself and said, no, wait, I don't have the people who can write it.
And then two FBI agents, the ones who run the FBI when the political heads are being chosen, those are for looks, let's put it.
But I asked them the same question: Do you have any need for something that you don't got?
And they had just finished telling us all that they had a need because They didn't have the they had all the facts and they had all the covert information, but they did not have anyone who was bright enough to explore what the data that they had meant.
And I said, why don't you go to our enemies, our neutral allies, and get them from there?
And I knew that you can't really recruit from a foreign university.
So I said, why don't you go to your boss, the American Congress, and demand a greater rigor in the teaching of American public school education?
And he said, no, we wouldn't do that.
That would be inappropriate.
When he said that, I stopped and I thought for a while, what would be inappropriate about going to American schools?
And then I said, excuse me, I want to bring up this point again.
And everyone sitting around me said, Richard, you've done it.
Richard, don't.
It's impolite.
And I said an expletive and underlined it by saying, this is the safety of my country.
And so I said to the gentleman, everybody knows that you are the guys that run the FBI when the political walk-ins are being chosen by the Congress.
Why can't you go in executive privilege to only those members of the Congress who have rights to hear and express this concern to them and get this exemption from silliness and allow that demand for greater rigor in teaching American history?
Allow you to speak your mind.
And they said it would not be appropriate.
And therefore, nothing changed.
I wrote to the lady who was running that organization and those meetings, and I said, you've probably thought for yourself by now that we are being perhaps lied to.
And I don't disagree with the need to lie.
If it accomplishes something, we are talking about the national security of our country.
But you don't, you know that you're not without leadership.
You know, there are elements in the government that are higher than you.
Why don't you go to those people and demand that they do it right and speak to them?
And again, they said, no, this was not appropriate.
Well, I mean, the problem with what's happening in our schools is there's one thing you've got to hear, and that is this is either a well-thought-out strategy, or they really don't know who's above them.
And that scares the living hell out of me.
What do you mean?
Why can't it be they just don't think it's their lane to go to Congress and say, improve the school so we get better recruits who are smarter and can execute better on the orders they're given.
If they think that that's the lane of politicians, that's the lena the voters, but it's not the lane of the intelligence community.
If it isn't, then let's lock it up and put it in a closet and come back 100 years later because that's foolish.
That's what the intelligence agencies are meant to do.
That's simply, if anyone tried to say that to me from a position of power, I would laugh in their face.
This is the national security of our country.
There's got to be people who know what's going on.
And if they gave me an answer like you just did, I'm sorry.
Get out of my education system.
Yeah.
Well, you know, the problems are so widespread at this point.
We got folks focusing on renaming schools because they're named after Thomas Jefferson instead of worrying about the fact that they've got a less than 30% reading rate within their high school.
I mean, what's happening in cities like Baltimore, like Chicago, I could go on, in large part due to teachers' unions, but they're not the only problem.
The problem is just so deep.
And this is why there's a growing rise in support for charter schools and more school choice.
And, you know, I greatly hope that in 25 years, we'll be looking at a much different education system than we're looking at now.
Listen, let me pause it for one minute because we got to squeeze in a commercial break and then we'll come back with more.
You know, Richard Dreyfus, he played Mr. Holland in Mr. Holland's Opus, where he went on a tear about our American school system.
Society Rejects Old Elegance 00:15:35
Now you can see why he took the role, right?
And remember, folks, before we come back, you can find the Megan Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at Noon East and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel.
That's youtube.com slash MeganKelly.
Check it out now.
And I would love it if you would go and subscribe, comment on any video.
I do meander over there and have and get the chance to listen to what a lot of you guys are saying.
And I really appreciate the feedback.
Richard, we played over the break just a little bit of the moment that you won the Academy Award for the Goodbye Girl, 29 years old.
I'm going to play it again just because I want to see it.
It's a nice moment.
You were up against some stiff competition, some of the best of the best, and here it is.
And the winner is a new heavyweight champ, Richard Dreyfuss.
You were so cute.
You were so adorable.
You were excited.
And I made thousands of dollars because I bet that I would win and no one else believed me.
I love that you knew you were going to win.
How?
You were up against Richard Burton?
I mean, I didn't realize you were up against John Travolta for Saturday Night Fever.
That was tough.
Woody Allen, how'd you know you're going to win?
Because I tested it out because at that time, I knew everything there was to know about everything in the academy.
No one is going to give best actor to Marcello Mastriani.
And Richard Burton had peaked the year before.
He could have been nominated and won for anything.
And he didn't.
And so it kind of peaked.
And John Travolta was even newer than I was.
And who else?
Woody Allen.
Woody Allen.
Well, Woody Allen won that year best actress, best screenplay, best film, best writing, best directing.
They were not going to give Annie Hall.
Right.
It was the greatest.
It is right now the greatest romantic comedy ever made since World War II.
So you knew that left, that left one man, little old Richard Dreyfus.
There was some years before where I bet against myself and won a fortune.
And the following year, I bet major money by one asking one question.
Quick, who won last year's Best Actor Award?
Last year's?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the answer was me.
Oh, I see.
And no one got it.
Which will tell you exactly where the Academy Award is in the minds of America.
Everyone loves the winner and everyone forgets very quickly.
Yeah, maybe not so much this year because there was a controversy surrounding the winner, as you by no doubt have heard by now.
Will Smith, prior to winning, attacked Chris Rock on the stage for making a joke about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, slapped him with an open hand, shocked pretty much the world.
And now the Academy's deciding what to do to him, what kind of discipline they should do to Will Smith and so on.
So what was, as somebody who has been in the position of attending the Academy Awards, winning an Academy Award for best actor, what did you make of Will Smith's behavior the other night?
It's not his behavior.
It's our behavior that has led me to a very specific and difficult decision, which is to write this book.
That would no more have been allowed to happen than to show up naked on the same show.
The Academy Awards are a reflection of some of our best and all of our worst instincts.
And we trample on that.
And it's not funny and it's not something that you can do and say, oops.
We have a certain sense of society and its behavior.
And we have respect for not only the society we are members of, but we don't give in to the least sensible behavior.
And Will Smith would no more have approved of his own behavior had this been 10 years earlier than he would have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge.
But there is no boundaries anymore because no one is teaching them to us.
No one.
No one is teaching the Bill of Rights, and that ultimately is the society's picture of proper behavior.
And no one is teaching that, and no one is calling for it.
And that is the worst decision that a society can come to.
This is not just Will Smith, and it's not just the Academy Awards.
It's who we are and how did we get to this clownish place.
Can I remind you that the 2016 and the 2020 debates for the presidency of the United States contained every rotten, stupid thing, and no one called it out.
We were, that was as, let's say, as illustrative if you were trying to get on the Ed Sullivan show with vaudeville.
The only thing they lacked were red noses and big floppy shoes.
And that was not mentioned by any of the journalists involved.
And no one spoke up for the inappropriateness of that behavior when it was as inappropriate as hell.
And you can't do it.
And if you do it, that's the country you live in.
That's fascinating.
I mean, listen, I actually sat on the stage with Donald Trump when he made a reference to his unit.
He was making a reference to the size of his manhood and comparing it to the other debate candidates.
And I remember being stunned, sitting next to Chris Wallace and Brett Baer thinking, oh my God, he's actually making a penis joke.
I'm not exactly sure what to do, right?
Like we're in unchartered territory here.
And in the end, it's really up to my view in the moment was that this is up to the voters to decide whether this is okay and NetNet, whether he's the guy they want, warts and all.
And they decided he was.
I don't know if I think that's the same, though, as what happened with Will Smith, because I think as a journalist doing a presidential debate, these guys are running for George Washington's job, and it's not your job to protect society from them.
It's up to society to accept or reject.
I think in the case of the Academy Awards, you know, they're running a show that used to be, you know, we had some problems here and there, but it used to be back in the day, the picture of elegance, glitz, glamour, excitement, a chance to celebrate these stars who we used to hold in high regard.
And that moment spoke to a greater erosion in that entire system that is reflected now in the ratings.
What do you make of it?
We live now in a spiral of decay that is as clear to see as any bad crime.
We have been losing the one guaranteed audience.
Everyone loves the Academy Awards.
Everyone loves movies.
And yet each year, the audience is less and less and less.
And there's a reason.
And that reason is that we've thrown out anything having to do with film, which we can run and be proud of, but we're not.
People name documentaries that are never seeable.
And people talk about movies as if it is their job to correct the social gaffes of men versus women and white men,
white people turning against black people, that that's their first job, not their second or third.
There's no excuse for the political correctness that has overwhelmed our culture.
And you have to have the right to, through your art, to have this given some serious thought.
Yeah.
People are voting with their pocketbooks.
They're not going.
They're not watching the films anymore.
They're bored.
They don't want to be lectured.
They're watching them on clicks.
They're watching them on TV, on stream.
They're watching them.
And there's a journalistic lie that goes on every week.
Every newspaper in the country says that such and such a film is the most popular film of the year.
Why?
They count only the price of admission.
When my mother saw The Wizard of Oz, she paid a quarter.
When I see Wizard of Oz, it cost me $16.
You break it down.
You figure that and assign a logical reason for that.
There's only one reason for that.
They're not accounting for inflation.
And nobody asks.
If you included how many clicks, how many times it was shown on television, you'd get something closer to a real answer, but no one is allowed to make that.
Well, what, back to the Will Smith situation?
What do you think should happen to him?
What should be done to him?
The Academy may take away his award.
Well, why are you asking that question?
Because we're so far away from knowing that answer.
And you can't insist that artists adhere to your beliefs at the moment.
And that's, it's just not right.
So what I would do is leave it alone now.
It's been done.
America has made fun of Will Smith, and that's enough for now.
But let's talk about it and maybe get something going in the fact that actors are now being called upon to be preachers and sermonizers.
You're an influencer.
You are the person that tells the world what is important.
The first name for people like you was flapdoodles.
And they were the ones that made an independent decision to open the flaps of the eyes and ears of the people who were running the world, which were They looked like elephants.
And it was in Daniel DeFoe's Gulliver's Travels.
Oh, boy.
And that's who you are.
And why did not some journalists, for their own selfish reasons and for their own sense of drama, stand up and say, excuse me, this is not what I signed on for.
I signed on to host the Academy Awards.
I have my own opinions.
And I know one thing, and that is that Edward R. Murrow would never put up with this, even for an instant.
But wait a minute, this is how is this all in journalists?
So why didn't one of the actors stand up at the Academy Awards and say, what the hell just happened here?
No, it's not for the actors.
The actors are actually as much part of the audience or the unruly society as anybody.
Actors Fail to Stand Up 00:04:49
But who's running it?
Who's running this thing?
ABC.
Yeah, it's the mouse.
And ABC had to fire the League of Women Voters who were responsible people.
They had to fire them to get control.
And that is not right.
Well, what do you make of the fact that ABC, I mean, Disney right now, right now, is in the middle of yet another scandal because they've been caught on tape.
Their president was caught on tape and leaked tape yesterday saying that they want to commit to making at least 50% of their leads, quote, queer, queer leads.
Now, within the Disney family, this is, that they want that represented more and more in the children's films where they're trying to push an agenda on America's kids.
This is the same organization that did not stand up at the Academy Awards in response to what we saw.
I mean, do you think they're hypocrites?
And what do you make of their social agenda they're pushing right now?
They do.
They are hypocrites.
And I don't approve of their having a social agenda.
I asked the head of Disney why he was betraying Walt, who taught me how to love my country every week on the show when he was alive.
And he did, in fact, teach that.
That's why I did a show paid for by the Walt Disney Company called Funny You Don't Look 200.
And it was funny.
And it used their characters that were animated and John Gielgud and Randy Newman and a whole bunch of others.
It was to celebrate the Constitution's bicentennial.
Yes.
Yes.
And it's not up to the actors.
It's up to the journalists to be journalists.
You are the only ones who have the right to represent us.
You are the only ones that can do that.
And instead of that, you ask them fatuous questions and The questions that are asked are answered fatuously.
But why didn't someone say this is for the presidency of the United States?
And I can't sit here anymore and trample on my responsibility as a journalist.
You're back on the presidential debate.
Well, I would put it to you, as you probably remember.
Some of us were not afraid of asking the tough questions of Donald Trump and certainly would have been glad to do it to Hillary Clinton had I been placed in front of her as well.
And did bring up not just policy positions, but character issues.
But there's only so much of that.
You know, you can do that and you can, you know, make your point, but you're not there to be the kindergarten teacher.
Once.
Once and walked off and you would have made history.
You would have been admired by your own children.
Okay.
Challenge.
Challenge.
Listen, you're talking to the wrong person about this particular subject because there's a history there.
And I've got a lot of thoughts on it, but it's fine.
I don't want to make it about it.
Speak as a journalist, just a journalist, not just Megan Kelly.
Richard, do you not remember me calling out Donald Trump and his behavior and his comments about women and so on?
And I did that very publicly.
And he came after me for nine months and that was fine.
I continued to do my job.
But you can't beat a dead horse.
You can't show up at every debate thereafter and continue to say, what about this?
It's like the American populace got to know who he was.
They didn't like that particular aspect of Trump.
A lot of them, some of them did.
But overall, they decided he was a better option than the other ones out there because they wanted to bust up the system.
They wanted somebody who didn't follow norms.
They wanted somebody who would say these crazy things and do these crazy things.
You are one of the more famous journalists in America because you stood against Trump.
But Trump did not cause the decay we're living in.
He's a consequence of that problem.
He's the result of that.
And if anyone had said that, if anyone had said this is not about Trump, this is about our kids and about our grandkids, you would have been sainted.
Okay, we're going to have to agree to disagree on that one.
Truth Over Audience Approval 00:12:03
Listen, there's so much more that I want to go over with you, including I have been told, I don't know whether it's true, that you like to play a trivia game when it comes to jaws.
So let's just say it's on.
The torso has been severed in mid thorax.
There are no major organs remaining.
May I have a glass of water, please?
Right arm has been severed above the elbow with massive tissue loss in the upper musculature.
Thank you very much.
Partially denuded bone remaining.
This was no boat accident.
Did you notify the Coast Guard about this?
The enormous amount of tissue loss prevents any detailed analysis.
However, the attacking squalus must be considerably larger than any normal squalus found in these waters.
Didn't you get on the boat and check out these waters?
No.
Well, this is not a boat accident.
There wasn't any propeller.
There wasn't any coral reef.
And it wasn't Jack the Ripper.
It was a shark.
Oh, so classic, classic, classic, classic.
Welcome back to the Megan Kelly Show.
Richard Dreyfus is our guest today.
And by the way, you're up after Richard, so call me now.
Get on the line at 83344-M-E-G-Y-N with thoughts on the show or Richard's best movies.
Okay, so Richard, that moment is truly iconic.
I know that word gets overused, but it is.
Everybody has seen that scene.
You played it so perfectly.
Matt Hooper comes on in Jaws and completely steals every scene, including the ones involving the shark.
I read that, you know, earlier you had played one of your first movies was in Small Part, well, decent part, an American graffiti.
And you had said, I didn't understand what was so magical about the movie.
I was the only member of the cast who didn't know we were shooting a classic.
Then on Jaws, I read that you said, I didn't think it would be a hit.
I said, everyone thought that they had struck gold.
And I said, what are you talking about?
It's just a little movie.
And I left thinking, these are inauspicious comments for amazing, amazing results.
So why did you not know that this was going to be movie magic?
Let me first say this.
The reason I asked to be on your show is because I think of you as different and better than the long list of American journalists who have let us down.
You didn't.
And I really want the people to hear that from me, that Megan Kelly really did not let America down.
And it's important for you to know that that's why I'm here.
We are people who work and without thinking about it, we construct every day the invisible culture that we live in.
And the quality of your energy and the quality of your courage when you interviewed Putin was a remarkable lesson to everyone and certainly to me.
And I have just finished a book.
It's taken me six years to write and four years spent at Oxford.
And I came back and said to myself, I am going to introduce this on any show that Megan Kelly is on.
I didn't know where you would be.
I didn't know what you were up to.
But you showed the courage and class of your best.
So that's why I'm here.
And you can ask me.
You can ask me whatever you want.
And I don't like to talk about my acting career anymore because I'm lucky enough to have found another passion, and that's saving my country.
And I don't put those two things together.
So since Rupert Murdoch was silly enough not to hire me as a half-hour show after you, then I'm saying it to you, and I'm saying it to you from my heart.
And I, you know that I could have done this on any show, but I didn't.
And I didn't because you deserve it.
And I'm honored.
I'm not sure to keep it up.
Oh, thank you so much.
I'm, you're, I'm a little, I'm humbled and I feel slightly embarrassed, but I'm really honored to hear that because I'm such a big fan of yours.
You've brought me so much joy over the years.
We had our one interview with your son on the Kelly file before I left Fox News.
And it was thrilling for me that you would take that risk and express your opinions, you know, in that kind of a forum, which can be dicey and it can be controversial.
And when you reached out to us on this show saying you'd like to come on, I was like, didn't hesitate for two seconds.
I would talk to you any day about anything because you're fascinating and you've always been a straight shooter, really.
I've known politically, you've always been a straight shooter, and that's separate and apart from your enormous talent.
So, and I appreciate your commitment to civics too.
I share in it.
I've been looking for a way of bringing it back myself.
I've had a couple of organizations come and sort of propose stuff to me.
Haven't found the right vehicle.
But anyway, thank you.
Thank you for the comments.
All right.
So if I can.
Yeah, go ahead.
Whenever I'm in Los Angeles, if I can, I stop at the Museum of Radio and TV and I dial Jon Stewart on Crossfire because on that show, Jon Stewart eviscerated the premise of the show, Tucker Carlson, and the other guy.
And it was something, it was a sight to behold.
And I cannot commend any other incident like that, except for you.
I watch you and I watch you engage with your bosses.
And I can't tell you how refreshing it is that you're still there.
Thank you.
Holding on by a thin read, but I'm there.
Listen, I will say this.
I want you to read my book.
And I think that, and if you like it, and I don't think there's an if involved, this book is called One Thought Scares Me.
And it's about the fact that we, like the stupid jerks that we have become, we destroyed our audience.
We have, we're not anchored to anything.
We are not anchored to anything except greed and money.
And that's something that if you believe in a, in a, in a God who is mortally involved in our morality, a lot of people who are being admired now should look over their shoulder because they're being pursued.
And they're not being pursued by good people.
Well, let me tell the audience, so it's the title is One Thought Scares Me.
We teach our kids what we wish them to know.
We don't teach them what we don't wish them to know.
And that actually makes sense to me, having spoken with you for this, you know, better part of an hour and a half, because we're afraid, right?
We're afraid of exposing them to ideas.
And that's exactly the wrong instinct.
You know, they can be exposed to ideas and the way of combating bad ideas is with good ones.
And that we used to understand that inherently.
We don't anymore.
I'll just say one word on Tucker.
Let me say one word on Jon Stewart and Tucker because I've seen that exchange a million times and I know Tucker very well.
I believe that I'm not a Jon Stewart fan because it's a long story, but I'm not.
But I believe that was a, that was a good moment because that show should have been destroyed because it was dumb.
And I think Tucker would say that.
And I think Tucker needed to be sort of that version of him destroyed and reinvented because I do believe he's become one of the most important voices in America now.
And I applaud that.
I applaud that.
I think he's a heterodox thinker.
He challenges conventional thinking.
You may love him.
You may hate him.
But to your point, I'm glad he's out there.
I'm glad he doesn't say what everybody else says.
And I'm glad he has the fortitude to do it and that Lachlan Murdoch allows it.
And I'm glad Rachel Maddow's there too.
She's not my cup of tea, but I wouldn't want to see her censored or pulled down.
You know, that's kind of what you and I are talking about right now.
Let me offer what I offer in the book.
Yeah.
If those shows merely changed one word and did not say that they were news channels, but that they were opinion channels, I would have no argument.
I hear that.
I would not.
But they insist that they're news channels and that they're not.
And whether you, what they are, are affirmed channels.
They affirm the thoughts you already have.
They don't inform.
They don't expand upon the knowledge.
They don't do anything that should be part of what a news person or a teacher or a parent does.
But they don't.
And that's the thing to remember that you used to have.
When I say you, American journalists, used to have a lot more territory.
And you don't anymore.
I agree with that.
I said this at the press club, and I said that they were all corrupt.
And Tim Russert, may rest in peace.
Tim Russert's hand shot into the air and he said, Richard, why am I a villain?
And I said, Tim, you're a villain because you no longer do what you used to do, which is ask the impolite question for the fourth time.
And that is your job to be rude for us.
That's so true.
Richard, my gosh, that is such a good encapsulation of the awkward responsibility a journalist has.
It's not about building a relationship with that person.
It's about your relationship with your audience and the truth.
I haven't heard a better synopsis of it than what you just gave.
Well done.
Okay, enough about me and my profession.
Let's talk about you in these last few minutes and yours because you got to give this to me because you said you would.
The Awkward Journalist's Burden 00:13:17
I need it.
Jaws, let's talk about it.
Is it true you like to play this little trivia game about like, you know, you pay me $10 if I stump you and I pay you $10 if you stump me or if I can't stump you?
Yeah, kind of.
Okay, I got one for you.
I got one.
I think it's a medium difficulty.
Okay, I wrote it down so I didn't forget it.
What was the song that the youngest Brody son, little Sean, was singing on the beach when the older son, Michael, was in the bay with the shark and Chief Brody had to run over and he was sitting there and he was humming a little song.
I will even hum it for you if you would like to, if it, if, if you need that reminder.
Yeah, you'll take it.
Okay, it went.
I'll just hum you the tune.
So if I sing the words, you'll know.
Okay.
Okay.
I don't remember the lyrics, but he was singing a children's song about here he come the muffin man, the muffin man, the muffin man.
That's it.
That's it exactly.
I'm not sure.
I think that was a draw.
The only person I lost to, the only one were a pair of nine-year-old twins who had already seen the film.
And they asked me some question I didn't know.
And I got up and I paid them.
The whole audience went crazy because they didn't think I was going to do that.
But that was it.
And I've made a lot of money winning the other question.
I'll bet.
Wait, now I heard, is this true?
I heard that you've made more money, though, in your career on this one little sliver of American graffiti that George Lucas gave you and all the actors in the movie.
I guess he divvied up his shares of the movie.
And you got a tiny portion because you had a tiny role, but that you've made just a ton of money off of that versus a lot of other stuff you've done.
Yes.
First of all, I bet.
And I bet that one.
And I bet against myself that I would not be nominated for another The Apprenticeship of Diddy Kravitz.
And then I bet the next year that I would, I won $100 for each time I said, ask, tell me who won last year for the best actor.
That was your best trick.
Yeah.
Well, that's amazing.
I love that story about George Lucas and how incredibly successful that movie was.
George did not have to do that.
George, that was his own personal generosity.
It was before the film came out and before the reviews came out.
And it might have been considered, oh, just something he cheaply threw away because he knew that he was going to become a multi-azillionaire from that film.
But it wasn't that.
It was that he said, I like and appreciate your work.
In Star Wars, he made multi-millionaires out of the lead four actors.
That's great.
Love to hear those stories of, you know, generous Hollywood directors or producers.
It helps rebuild your faith in humanity.
Then, okay, can I just add, let me ask my dumb question because I have to fangirl for one second.
What's your favorite scene in Jaws?
And why is it the scene where you talk about Mary Ellen Moffat?
It is that scene.
I knew it.
Mine too.
It's amazing.
Couldn't be any other scene because all the other scenes were us staring at a cardboard or paper-mâché fake animal and us going, ooh, look how big he is.
And I would, I said, and it was heard on every radio mic on Martha's Vineyard, the shark is not working.
The shark is not working.
And then one day you heard this.
The shark is working.
The shark is working.
The ship is sinking.
The ship is sinking.
And I was on that ship.
And it was sinking.
And yippee.
It worked either way, sinking not.
It worked.
Now, did the movie have in any way the same effect on you that it had on so many of us in that we didn't want to get in the ocean again?
Well, Steven Spielberg may deny it now, but I and Stephen then and for a long time after would not walk in to the water from the beach.
Would not do it ever.
And it's 50 years later, and I still wouldn't do it.
Well, in your defense, you went through a lot.
I mean, you lost Quint.
There was a lot to justify that basic.
Well, I was just terrified of sharks.
That was it.
And I would go scuba diving.
That I do because you can see.
And I did.
But I would not walk in and just not know what was underneath.
And I could be freaking out.
As a matter of fact, the actor who doubled for me in Australia, who played me in the cage, had lied about his talents.
And he had never worked with sharks.
He had said that he had.
So that when he got into the cage and within seconds, a real great white appeared in the merch.
Oh, boy.
He had a nervous breakdown.
Of course he did.
Of course he did.
Which I have been told he's still suffering from.
Same, all of us who saw the movie.
In fact, my kids, I won't let them watch it yet.
And we love watching movies with our kids, but I want them to love the ocean and fall in love with it fully before they see that.
But I wonder, because they're like, mom, it's PG.
I can't believe Jaws had a PG rating.
I don't think it would get a PG rating today.
What do you think?
I'll tell you something.
No parent would on her own allow her kid to see that film if he was 12 years old or younger.
Right.
And that's where mine are.
Social absolute.
Now they let their kids see it if they're four.
And that is also part of the spiral of decay that we have been living through since 1972.
Our politics are not the only thing.
It is also our, we've lost, we've blown up the realistic responsibilities of parenting.
And these negative influences that get in front of them.
And yeah, you see the results.
Now, listen, that's another reason I admire you is because you have done so many movies that are uplifting or have a bigger message.
And one of them, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention, led to yet another Academy Award nomination for you for best actor.
And that was Mr. Holland's Opus, which if folks have not seen, they really should see.
It's uplifting.
It's heartwarming.
It's got a good message.
I'll give people just, here's a little flavor of Richard as Mr. Holland giving the school board a hard time for being such losers and ruining their curriculum.
It will sound and look very much to you the way the real Richard Dreyfus is looking at America's education system today.
Watch.
No, no, do not misunderstand me.
I am not talking about my job.
I am talking about the education that students once got at Kennedy High versus the education that you people are willing to give these kids today.
We have been going over and over this, Mr. Holland.
We've done all we can.
Then do it again.
That's what I used to tell you when you were my student, Michael, and it served you pretty well then.
Well, that was a different time, Mr. Holland.
I don't think the time was that different.
I think that more was expected of us.
15 or 20.
The difference is how little you people care and how lazy you become.
I resent your tone, Mr. Holland.
And I don't think you have any real appreciation for our financial problems.
Oh, come on, Michael.
You know, the big problem here is that you people are willing to create a generation of children who will not have the ability to think or create.
Listen, Mr. Holland.
Mr. Holland, as I've said, we've done the best that we can.
Your best is not good enough.
Oh, we need you out there right now.
And I guess you are saying that to America's school boards today.
That must have been an easy part to accept.
I've spoken to 200,000 people personally: teachers, parents, school board members, politicians, 200,000.
I spoke, I said I would not speak in front of the Boy Scouts.
I would speak in front of the Girl Scouts.
Okay?
The Girl Scouts invited me to speak the next day.
And I would say ever, there's not, well, I'll put it this way: 200,000 people personally, when I said, Are you in favor of reviving civics in grammar schools?
Yes, was the answer from 200,000 people.
I went to Washington.
Not one organization, politician, publication, or anyone in any way agreed to endorse, including the Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
The Wall Street Journal said they have a hidden agenda.
That's why I don't like it.
And I said, who's they?
They said, you know.
I said, no, I don't.
Who's they?
You know.
I said, I don't know.
I'm not lying.
Who's they?
And they would not respond to that question.
And personally, I think that they don't know.
And they use they to make sure we don't think of ourselves as the sovereign power we are.
We are the sovereign power in this country.
And we don't.
We're not taught how to be.
We're not encouraged to know how to be the sovereign power.
Yeah.
And all of us together, you're a journalist, you're a mom, you might be a teacher, you might be a volunteer.
You work with people who are politicians.
And this is the worst generation ever.
Someone made you, made the generation drink the Kool-Aid, and you dropped stunned into bad citizenship.
If you in any way bought into an American politician's riff on we can't afford it, you've been succored by the best.
And if you're in favor of charter schools, remember, charter schools have is an attempt to turn public education into a profit resource.
Waking From Political Kool-Aid 00:01:01
And they lie.
And they are a stand-in for the word segregation.
All right, a lot to unpack there, but they'll have to save it for another day because we're at the end of the show.
But listen, provocative, interesting, fascinating.
Richard, I greatly appreciate you coming on.
I want to tell the audience because we're already lighting up on social media.
They want to know if the book is out.
It's not yet out.
When is it coming out quickly?
Soon.
Okay.
All right.
Soon.
And again, one thought scares me.
One thought scares me.
It's been an absolute pleasure.
I hope we get to speak again.
Thank you for inviting me.
All the best.
I want to tell you that tomorrow we're going to be joined by comedian Kyle Dunnegan.
He does an amazing Joe Biden impression.
In the meantime, download the show and subscribe at YouTube if you would.
Would love to see you tomorrow.
Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
No BS, no agenda, and no
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