In a 20-minute phone call with Richard Dreyfuss, a lot of ground gets covered. A lot of ground.

George Washington. The American Tobacco Company. Former FCC chairman Newton Minow. American exceptionalism. Obamacare.

And, of course, acting.

After all, it’s the reason Dreyfuss is being honoured at the Whistler Film Festival next week.

He’s also publicizing his latest work, the Canadian independent feature Cas & Dylan. A buddy film, road movie, screwball comedy, and heartfelt drama all in one, it not only features Tatiana Maslany as a particularly Canuck Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but is also directed by Vancouver’s own Jason Priestley.

“I thought that the idea of working with Jason was intriguing,” Dreyfuss says, on the line from a Manhattan hotel room, “because it was his first film, and I’ve always liked him. We hadn’t met until then, and I found him very willing to create a relaxed and creative atmosphere, which is what I ask for from a director. He gave me a lot of latitude in my performance.”

Known, as he says, for playing “brash, cocky go-getters,” Dreyfuss also fits the bill in real life. In between serving as a mental health activist, a cable news political gadfly (defying classification, he refers to himself as a “libo-conservo-rado-middle-of-the-roado”), and running an initiative to restore civics curriculum in America’s classrooms, he somehow also found the time to make three movies in the last year.

Nevertheless, the state of the movie industry today—with a huge reliance on franchises and international markets—is not something that Dreyfuss is enamoured of.

“The film business now has built this distribution thing based upon blockbusters, which means a film that will attract an audience in any culture, and now they’re reduced to people fighting mechanical monsters from under the sea,” Dreyfuss explains. “And you can only do so many sequels. When you’re reduced to doing sequels of films that were made in the ‘80s, you know you’re reaching the bottom of the barrel.”

But that doesn’t mean he’s not optimistic about character-driven features. “They’ll have to go back to smaller films,’ he says confidently, “like they used to, and hope that they will be seen and appreciated by everybody.”

As someone who was there—really there—during the glorious Easy Riders, Raging Bulls period of 1970s filmmaking, Dreyfuss’s résumé reads like a syllabus from a film studies class. With landmark roles in American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, as well as his Oscar-winning turn in The Goodbye Girl, his is a career that defines the decade.

When it comes to Canada, however, there’s one Dreyfuss film that has a particular resonance. Something of a national treasure, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz—based on Mordecai Richler’s seminal novel and directed by Ted Kotcheff—is the film that Dreyfuss considers the greatest role of his life.

Things weren’t always that way, however.

“It was the first time I’d ever seen myself in a feature film as a lead,” Dreyfuss recalls, “and all I could remember was the bad moments that I didn’t succeed at. I didn’t really see the film and the performance as a whole until about 10 years later.”

Aware of the unique place the film holds in Canadian culture, there’s an obvious pride in ownership when Dreyfuss, a native New Yorker, speaks about it.

“Duddy Kravitz is special,” he says with a knowing admiration. “It’s kind of like The Catcher in the Rye of Canada.”

Of course, Dreyfuss also recognizes the unique place that he himself holds in Canada’s national psyche, having played Duddy. And, ever the brash, cocky go-getter, he manages to work it into an angle.

“If you can arrange hundreds of screaming girls throwing themselves at me during the festival,” Dreyfuss says, laughing, “I’d appreciate it.”

Richard Dreyfuss will participate in a public discussion with Steven Gaydos, executive editor of Variety magazine, at the Whistler Film Festival next Friday (December 6) at the Whistler Conference Centre. Tickets are $25.

Cas & Dylan has been selected for the festival’s opening gala on Wednesday (December 4) at 6:30 p.m. at the Rainbow Theatre in Whistler Village. Tickets are $25.