Matt Sax, the baby-faced composer-performer whose new show, “Venice,” was dubbed “the year’s best musical” by Time magazine, has a penchant for creating works in which life imitates art.
Just weeks before she graduated from Yale University in May 1959, Eva Hesse — a child survivor of the Holocaust who would become renowned for her sculptural assemblages — railed against artists of the day: “The hell with them all,” she wrote in her journal. “Paint yourself out, through and through, it will come by you alone. You must come to terms with your own work, not with any other being.”
Johnny Mathis got up from the mah-jongg table where he was conducting an interview at his Los Angeles home to answer the telephone: “We’re discussing my career as a cantor,” he quipped.
Peering from behind oversize green-framed glasses, dressed in rumpled khakis and yellow sneakers, Todd Solondz looked the part of independent cinema’s reigning nerd incendiary as he discussed his new film, “Life During Wartime,” which turns his caustic lens on assimilated American Jewry.
Everything was at stake for Bryan Fogel before “Jewtopia,” the comedy he wrote and starred in with Sam Wolfson, opened at the Coast Playhouse in May 2003 and became a runaway hit.
Rhea Perlman rented an antique gown from a movie costume house for her wedding to Danny DeVito in 1982. She’s Jewish, he’s Italian Catholic, but neither a rabbi nor a priest officiated. “Danny found this French-horn player in the Los Angeles Philharmonic who also happened to do weddings,” Perlman remembered with a laugh. She donned her dress as DeVito rushed home during his lunch break from “Taxi” so they could march down the aisle to “Our Gang’s” Alfalfa crooning “I’m in the Mood for Love.”
Writer-director Nicholas Stoller regards British comedian Russell Brand as an honorary member of the “Jew Tang Clan,” the creative posse led by comedy wunderkind Judd Apatow. Members of the clan, including actors Jason Segel and Jonah Hill, have riffed on their heritage in films such as “Superbad” and “Knocked Up.” Who can forget Seth Rogen kvelling that the buff Israeli agent in “Munich” would help him and his buddies score?
Writer-director Nicholas Stoller regards British comedian Russell Brand as an honorary member of the “Jew-Tang Clan,” the creative posse led by comedy wunderkind Judd Apatow. Members of the clan, including actors Jason Segel and Jonah Hill, have riffed on their heritage in films such as “Superbad” and “Knocked Up.” Who can forget Seth Rogen kvelling that the Israeli agent “kicking f—– ass” in “Munich” would help him and his buddies “get laid?”
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