Animal House actor Stephen Furst laments Academy rule changes

Actor Stephen Furst, known for Animal House and Babylon 5, has publicly hit out at Oscars organisers over their proposed membership and rule changes.

Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs has pledged to double female and minority members amid a row over the lack of diversity in the nominations.
Furst said the Academy was being ageist and sexist in blaming its membership, made up largely of older, white men.
He said the problem was not enough members watching all the films.
Furst suggested the Academy was to blame for this by not keeping tabs on just how many of the advance screening DVDs, which members are sent, were indeed being watched.
“One of the many reasons for the lack of diversity in nominees this year is that many members vote without watching all the films,” he said in a open letter published by Variety.
The all-white line-up in the four acting categories for this year’s Oscars has prompted protests from actors and film-makers.
Among them, director Spike Lee, actress Jada Pinkett Smith and her husband Will Smith announced they would not be attending next month’s awards.
The main criticism levelled at the Academy has long been that its members are disproportionately, older, white, middle-class men.
In response to the growing protests, the Academy said it was going to create three new seats on its board of governors to improve diversity in leadership.
It also said voting rights would be stripped from those who had not been active in the industry for the past decade.
Academy president Boone Isaacs said in a statement the move would “begin the process of significantly changing our membership composition”.
But Furst, 60, expressed his disdain at the “disturbing” move.
“Like many other members I know, I was saddened, as well as offended, to learn the Academy Board of Governors has chosen to scapegoat the older members of the Academy in order to deflect the criticism about the lack of diversity this year in the nominees for Academy Awards.”
He said he feared he, and fellow older, male members, would be branded “irrelevant” from now on.
“The Academy can’t fight issues with diversity by engaging in ageism and sexism,” he said, adding that there was absolutely no proof that he or other members like him, were in any way “racist, do not appreciate the art of minorities, or refuse to vote for minorities’ work”.
On the contrary, Furst said, he fully recognised that “diversity in film is important, and having that diversity represented in Oscar nominees is important”.
Credit: BBC