Oscars 2016: President Obama wonders if everyone is getting 'a fair shot' following diversity row

Mr Obama says the Oscars debate was an expression of a broader issue, saying: “Are we making sure that everybody is getting a fair shot?”

The president was talking to local television stations about stepping up enrolment for health insurance coverage, but Los Angeles ABC affiliate KABC asked him about this year’s Oscars controversy.

US President Barack Obama (Saul Loeb/Pool Photo/AP)

Some are calling for a boycott of this year’s Academy Awards on February 28 because no acting nominees were black.

Mr Obama said the film industry should do what others practised – “look for talent and provide opportunity to everybody”. Meanwhile, reforms intended to calm a crisis seem to have only further inflamed the situation.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ decision to alter membership rules following the row over the diversity of its voters and nominees sparked another uproar around Hollywood, with many Academy members saying the new measures unjustly scapegoat older colleagues and imply they are racist.

An Oscar statue (Chris Pizzello/Invision/PA)

Fiery letters have poured into the Academy, trade magazines are littered with critical opinion pieces from members and civil rights leaders and others say the Academy’s actions did not go far enough.

“We all have to calm down a bit. The conversation has become unduly vitriolic,” said Rod Lurie, the writer-director of Straw Dogs and The Contender and a member of the Academy’s directors’ branch.

“Nobody in the Academy should dignify any accusations of racism but there obviously are biases that are created by the demographics of the Academy.”

The Academy announced changes following the diversity row (David Crotty/AP)

The Academy’s 51-member board of governors unanimously voted to revamp membership rules in an effort to change the make-up of the largely white, male and older association of some 7,000 exclusive members.

Though Oscar voting was previously for life, it will now be restricted to members who have been active in the industry within the past 10 years, with a few exceptions like for previous Oscar nominees. The Academy also set a goal to double minority and women members by 2020.

Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs (Chris Pizzello/AP)

In a letter to the Academy, Stephen Geller, a member of the writers branch and screenwriter of Slaughterhouse-Five, accused Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs of “grey-listing” its older members.

And Stephen Furst, the 60-year-old actor and Academy member best known as Flounder from Animal House, wrote to the Academy lamenting “the insulting and unfounded generalities the Academy has made about the character and judgment of older Academy members”.

James Woods criticises Oscars reform moves (Evan Agostini/AP)

James Woods, the 68-year-old, twice-nominated actor, went further with a tweet on Twitter implying the Academy was sidelining “Old White People”.

The motion picture Academy announced separate bathroom facilities today: one for Members and one for Old White People. #Oscars

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 26, 2016

The Academy responded indirectly in the “frequently asked questions” section of its website, saying: “We’re not excluding older members. These rules are not about age. In fact, under the new rules many veteran Academy members will retain voting privileges.”