Hoffman lashes out at industry

Multiple Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman has lamented the state of modern film-making using a promotional session for his latest feature to pan a money-hungry, marketing-focused industry. "The whole culture is in the craphouse," Hoffman said.

The Rain Man and Tootsie star was speaking at a press conference to publicise his new comedy, Meet the Fockers.

He said: "You go to the cinema and you realise you're watching the third act. There is no first or second act.

"There is this massive film-making where you spend this incredible amount of money and play right to the demographic.

"You can tell how much money the film is going to make by how it does on the first weekend.

"The whole culture is in the craphouse. It's not just true in the movies, it's also true in the theatre. Broadway, and now London, are the same. Special effects are in great demand. It's not a good time culturally."

The 67-year-old said he stopped working a few years ago because "I just lost that spark I always had."

He added: "A couple of years ago I didn't like the parts I was getting. Studios weren't interested in the kind of films that people of my generation wanted to see.

"I thought I would stop and just try writing and directing. I wasn't aware of the depression that set in."

He has since returned to film, and enjoyed roles in the quirky I Heart Huckabees, Finding Neverland and now Meet the Fockers, which also stars Robert De Niro.

The movie is the sequel to Meet the Parents, a comic take on getting to know the prospective in-laws.

Hoffman said: "My first wife was Irish Catholic, Anne Byrne. The first time we went to her parents' place I was unemployed.

"I felt the hostilities at the first dinner, and then for the next two dinners, and for the whole year ... and for the next two years.

"I couldn't understand whether it was racial or because I was seen as a bum, an unemployed actor waiting tables."

Hoffman drew on his relationship with his second wife, Lisa, to play out the lusty relationship he has with Roz Focker (Barbra Streisand) in the new film.

He said: "We didn't want those so-called amorous scenes you see on screen which are bullshit ... where they've got their tongues down each other's throats and the camera pans down to the ground to see her panties.

"The sexuality that exists between a couple is a prolonged foreplay, which goes on during the day.

"It can be a touch under the table, a hand under the leg, a look or a smell. I love the neck. I love to snuggle into my wife's neck.

"So we did what felt real. I whispered to Barbra in one scene, 'I love your breasts, they look great today'.

"She loved it. She loves her breasts. We made it more real. We wanted it to be real."

- NZPA