It sounded like the perfect pairing: Richard Dreyfuss up on stage discussing his career and the making of "Jaws" before the lights dimmed and the movie played on the screen behind him. Instead, Dreyfuss used his time on stage at the Cabot Theatre in Beverly Saturday night to spew hatred at both women and transgender people he just wouldn't stop and people began to walk out, even if they had paid up to $125 for a ticket. Read more.
It’s not like they expected this when they organized the event. Dryfus should be the one offering a refund, but you know he believes it is his god given right to spout hatred at unsuspecting movies fans.
Dryfus has been very vocal about his views for some time. As the theater acknowledged, they needed to do a better job vetting guests. Also I’m going to guess that they didn’t have any language in their agreement that would have made Dryfus responsible for damages incurred by his actions. Also, there is insurance for this sort of stuff which they should maintain as a cost of doing business.
I hope that all the prep and insurance doesn’t make the whole venture unprofitable, or we will never have nice things. It sounds like they are trying to do the right thing, but you are correct, the contract needed to make him responsible and they needed to do the bare minimum effort to check if they were hiring a monster.
Our business has to do this. In our case it’s called Errors and Omisions insurance but I have no doubt that similar insurance exists for entertainment venues. It is also not crazy expensive.
It’s a lessoned learned. Unfortunately it is one learned exclusively at the expense of the patrons.
It’s still their responsibility.
How is it any more their responsibility than the ticket buyers’?
Yes, the theater needs to vet their guests, but how can you say a small team of organizers is on the hook while a whole crowd of people shouldn’t have known better based on what Dreyfus’ public persona is and has been?
Uh… It just is.
If folks want to sell venue tickets to ticket buyers over and over again, they need to provide an occasional refund when the speaker goes way off course from the expected.
That sounds like what happened here.
It’s not particularly fair to the venue, but it’s the cultural expectation, here.
It’s also practical economics.
The venue can better afford 20 refunds than it can afford 20 customers out in the community saying “I don’t go there, anymore.”
Also, issuing the refund is a good faith evidence that, should the vendor ever invite that speaker again, they’ve done their due diligence with that speaker, on expectations.
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