Oliver Stone Said Working With Richard Dreyfuss Was “The Single Worst Experience” of His Career
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Through the course of their careers, Oliver Stone and Richard Dreyfuss have both come to be considered outspoken and controversial figures, so perhaps it’s no surprise that they clashed when they worked together. Dreyfuss played former vice president Dick Cheney in Stone’s 2008 George W. Bush biopic W. And, apparently, he hated making the film so much that he felt the need to openly diss it while he was on the press tour to promote it. Stone spoke out in response, saying that directing the Jaws star was the “single worst experience” of his career.
Read on to find out more about what happened on W ‘s set and the public war of words that followed.
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Both participants in this feud have found considerable success in Hollywood. Dreyfuss has starred in movies including Jaws , American Graffiti , Mr. Holland’s Opus , and The Goodbye Girl , for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Stone is a two-time Oscar-winning director for Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July , who has also directed Wall Street , JFK , and Any Given Sunday .
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Stone made a 2008 appearance on The View , presumably to get audiences interested in W. , which was set to hit theaters a week later. Instead of stoking enthusiasm, he dragged the movie and the filmmaker.
Asked how he liked working with the Oscar-winning director, Dreyfuss said, “Imagine working for Sean Hannity .” Conservative co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck said, “I would like that,” so Dreyfuss added, “Then you’d like working with Oliver.”
Co-host Joy Behar pointed out that TV news personality Hannity and Stone are “the opposite philosophically.” To this, Dreyfuss said, “You can be a fascist even when you’re on the left.”
“I think it’s 6/8ths of a great film,” Dreyfuss said of W. on The View . “I think the acting is terrific, and I think a lot of the writing is good. But I don’t really know why Oliver didn’t come to a conclusion with it.”
He explained, “I think there’s a character missing from the film. I think it’s a very good and shockingly empathetic picture of Bush … because everyone expects [Stone] to be anti-Bush.” But, he added, “It leaves out us , because we were all terrified of our own president. And that terror was our reality, and that character is not in the film, so that I question whether or not the film will have any historic legs.”
Asked why he took the role, Dreyfuss said, “Money.”
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Four years after Dreyfuss’ View interview and the release of W. , Stone slammed the actor in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter .
“That was probably the single worst experience I’ve ever had with an actor in my life,” Stone said. THR reports that he also said the Jaws star couldn’t remember his lines. “I walked him outside, and I read him the Riot Act,” Stone continued. “I said, ‘You’re going to read these [expletive] cue cards, and if you don’t read them, this scene is over.’ So, yeah, I was a fascist.”
<img loading=“lazy” src=“https://bestlifeonline.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2023/05/dreyfuss-2023.jpg?quality=82&strip=all&w=500" onerror=“this.onerror=null;this.src=‘https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhe7F7TRXHtjiKvHb5vS7DmnxvpHiDyoYyYvm1nHB3Qp2_w3BnM6A2eq4v7FYxCC9bfZt3a9vIMtAYEKUiaDQbHMg-ViyGmRIj39MLp0bGFfgfYw1Dc9q_H-T0wiTm3l0Uq42dETrN9eC8aGJ9_IORZsxST1AcLR7np1koOfcc7tnHa4S8Mwz_xD9d0=s16000';" alt=“Richard Dreyfuss at the premiere of “Sweetwater” in April 2023 - 4”>
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In 2014, Dreyfuss spoke to The Irish Times about his feud with Stone playing out in the press.
“I don’t want to put Oliver down but, once he took all the politics out and made it about a contest between father and son, there was no story left,” he said of the movie. “There are no historical legs. Oliver and I were at loggerheads about that and we still are. He screamed that I was the worst actor he’s ever worked with. I’d held up the production and so on.” He added, “I told him he had made one strategic error: the press junket is yet to come. I told the press exactly what I told you.”
Asked if Stone enjoyed the back and forth, Dreyfuss claimed that the director was upset at him for not praising the movie publicly. “Oh, no, no. He called my agent and said: ‘He’d better stop this because we’re planning an Oscar campaign,’” he recalled. “And she said: ‘What? For the worst actor you’ve ever worked with.’ Ha ha!”
W. received mixed reviews. It was not nominated for any Oscars.
