Julie Delpy is nominated for an Oscar this year along side Before Midnight co-writers Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke for Best Adapted Screenplay. No one expects the film to win despite a large audience that would love to see just that. Win or lose, however, Delpy has already said her piece in an interview with France’s “So Film” magazine (via The Daily Mail) in which she slams the Academy as old white men that “haven’t done anything in a long time.”
“It’s 90 per cent white men over 70 who need money because they haven’t done anything in a long time,” Delpy said while adding, “You just need to give them two or three presents and they’re in your pocket. It doesn’t mean anything to me, so I don’t really care if there are women in the selection process.”
And she didn’t stop there, unloading on Bob and Harvey Weinstein saying they’ve “killed” independent cinema. “I think they love cinema, but they also like to take a movie and give it an added value, then kill everything left behind,” she said. “This has a lot to do with the Oscars. In the ’90s, there were real independent movies, but they have slowly been crushed by the majors. The minute they take over something, they crush it.”
Festivals were next on the list as she said, “The problem with certain festivals, the people in charge always choose the same people. They choose their friends, even if the movie’s crap… but a festival is a festival: awards, prizes, decorations. You need to see who votes and who chooses the movies.”
Delpy didn’t even let herself off the hook, calling the 1993 film she starred in, The Three Musketeers, “crap” adding, “Every time I’ve become a part of the Hollywood mainstream, it’s been crap! Let’s be honest.’
To say I love her guts (though she’s no stranger to speaking out against Hollywood) and respect her opinion is an understatement and I can only imagine what would happen if someone like George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese were to say the same thing.
