Dustin Hoffman rips the current state of movies: 'It's the worst that film has ever been'

For as long as motion pictures have been around, someone has been saying that Hollywood isn’t making them like they used to. The latest to repeat the complaint, however, is someone who’s been around for some high highs of cinema: Dustin Hoffman.

And he might have a point.

In an interview with The Independent, the two-time Academy Award winner bemoaned the current state of the industry and its status compared to TV. “I think right now television is the best that it’s ever been,” he said. “I think that it’s the worst that film has ever been — in the 50 years that I’ve been doing it, it’s the worst.”

Though we have no confirmation at this time, we’ll just assume that Hoffman hasn’t seen Magic Mike XXL yet.

The culprit, according to Hoffman, is stinginess on the part of studios and financiers, who would never pay for a film like The Graduate anymore. “It’s hard to believe you can do good work for the little amount of money these days,” he said. “We did The Graduate and that film still sustains, it had a wonderful script that they spent three years on, and an exceptional director with an exceptional cast and crew, but it was a small movie, four walls and actors, that is all, and yet it was 100 days of shooting.”

Later in the interview, Hoffman also explains that penny-pinching is the reason he hasn’t directed since 2012’s Quartet. “I’m looking at everything that comes to me,” said Hoffman, who has a small role in the upcoming Lance Armstrong movie, The Program. “I’m not getting much as far as directing is concerned. I don’t think that has anything to do with whether you are good or not, it’s just about whether your films make money or not.”