Finding the Holy in Hollywood

Saul Blinkoff, an animator, had been hired to work as a director on a new “Winnie the Pooh” film for Disney. As he was sitting at the drawing board, ready to put the final touches on some art and approve them for the movie, suddenly it occurred to him: Don’t Disney artists hide things in movies?

With that, he picked up his pencil and drew a mezuzah on Winnie the Pooh’s doorpost. “To me, he was no longer Winnie the Pooh, but Winnie the Jew,” Blinkoff said. 

The proudly Orthodox Jewish Disney animator also hid the Hebrew word for Hashem in the opening credits of the film. And when he was directing “Kronk’s New Groove,” he handed the movie’s artists his wedding album, and lo and behold, Kronk – a character from “The Emperor’s New Groove” – got married under a chuppah, with the glass smashing, shouts of “Mazel tov!” and all.

“I’m not just a filmmaker, I’m a Jewish filmmaker … We have to put these values into what we do … The stories that Hollywood tells affect the entire world.”     

“I’m not just a filmmaker, I’m a Jewish filmmaker,” said Blinkoff. “We have to put these values into what we do… The stories that Hollywood tells affect the entire world.”

The animator, who is also an in-demand motivational speaker in the Jewish community, is now branching out and sharing his experiences in the corporate world and beyond through his brand, Life of Awesome. And in a time of rising antisemitism, he’s become much more outspoken about his Judaism; he doesn’t hide it but spotlights it in all the work he does. “I proudly wear a kippah to work, whether I’m at Disney or Mattel,” he said. “I think it’s really important, especially now, for Jews in the professional workspace to not hide their Judaism, but instead, proudly display it.”  

Following His Dreams

Born in Philadelphia in 1972, Blinkoff’s family moved to Long Island, New York in 1980. From an early age, he drew constantly and dreamed of working in the arts. 

“I used to draw Snoopy and Garfield on the walls with my mother’s lipstick,” he said. “My mom would put my artwork on the fridge. That’s the best gallery. It’s better than the Met and the MOMA. I used to say, ‘I’m going to be an artist someday.’”

“As the credits [for ‘E.T: The Extraterrestrial]’ rolled, I tapped my mom and said, ‘Mom, this is what I want to do one day. I want to make movies’”

Blinkoff had what he calls the “classic middle child syndrome.” He was the creative, misunderstood one who just might have had ADD. “Doctors suggested to put me on Ritalin,” he said. “But my mom refused.” When he was 11, he went to the movies with his mom and saw “E.T.,” and it was then that he decided he wanted to work in Hollywood. “As the credits rolled, I tapped my mom and said, ‘Mom, this is what I want to do one day. I want to make movies,’” he said. “It spoke to me. It empowered a child to do something important. The adults in ‘E.T.’ were oblivious and the child was empowered to do something important.”

It was his mom, Lynn Lantz, who encouraged him to go after that dream and supported him every step of the way. She traveled with him around the country looking at eight animation schools where Disney would recruit animators. He got into the Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio, majored in animation and had the opportunity to attend a presentation from a Disney rep.

He sat in an auditorium with 750 students and the rep asked, “Who wants to work for Disney?” Every hand shot up, and the rep added, “Maybe four of you will be chosen for an internship,” telling the eager students to focus on anatomy and figure drawing, advice which Blinkoff took to heart.  In his sophomore year, he sent in his portfolio to Disney, but was rejected. He spent every waking moment drawing and perfecting his craft and tried again – and was rejected a second time. 

Blinkoff wasn’t going to give up that easy; he called Disney and asked how close he was to being accepted. They told him he missed the cut-off by only three slots out of thousands. He was determined to keep going. 

When Bill Matthews, a veteran Disney animator, came to campus, Blinkoff asked him what could be done to improve his portfolio. Matthews told him to add more special effects to his work, which he did. He subsequently turned in his portfolio and anxiously waited to hear back. 

And then, one day, he received a call: He’d gotten in.      He called his mom, yelling, “We did it!” and the two celebrated together.

It was finally happening: He was going to intern at Disney Studios in Orlando and start to fully realize his dreams. And at the same time — though he didn’t know it yet — he was going to connect with his Jewish neshama and determine what he really wanted out of life. 

Connecting to His Judaism

Blinkoff excelled in his internship and was offered a full-time, salaried job at Disney. He was living the life, with a great job, a fancy sports car and a beautiful girlfriend. He was working on movies including “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” “Pocahontas,” and “Mulan,” which took four years to complete. 

After giving it all to “Mulan,” Blinkoff had some downtime — so he did what any 20-something-year-old would. He had fun at the Disney parks in Orlando, shopped in high-end designer stores and checked out the different hotel swimming pools. It was in one of those pools that he had a life-changing moment.

He was thinking about the trip to Israel he’d taken with his family a year earlier. While he was sitting in a café with his parents in the Old City, in walked a 23-year-old man, who was the same age as Blinkoff. The two started talking about sports, and Blinkoff asked him, “What are you doing in Israel?” “’I’m on a learning program at a yeshiva,” the man      told him. Blinken didn’t understand what that was.

The animator had grown up in a Conservative and traditional household, where they celebrated Jewish holidays and lifecycle events. He went to Camp Ramah in the Poconos and his mom was the first female cantor in Philadelphia, but he had no exposure to Orthodox Judaism. 

The meeting with the yeshiva student stuck with him, though. And a year later, when he was pondering the meaning of life, he decided he had to figure it out. “I decided to get out of the pool,” he said. “I told all my friends who were not Jewish, ‘I am going on this [yeshiva] program. I want to find out how I fit into the Jewish people.’

Blinkoff had time off from animating before his next assignment, “Tarzan,” was to go into production, so he flew to Israel and went on a 10-day program called Isralight, under the guidance of Rabbis David Aaron and Binny Freedman, the latter of whom was a commander in the IDF. “He spoke about the meaning of the mezuzah in 10 minutes, and those 10 minutes changed the rest of my life,” Blinkoff said.

What the rabbi taught was the mezuzah is not just something you put up in a doorway. It’s an opportunity to transition from being in the world to being in your home. The mezuzah reminds us what kind of world we want to create and decide what we are living for. “What [my life] was missing was meaning,” Blinkoff said.

After returning from the eye-opening trip, he worked on “Tarzan,” and eventually his agent got him a job directing a new kids’ show for MTV. He moved to New York’s Upper West Side, a haven for young Orthodox Jews, and began taking his Judaism more seriously. 

He learned how to keep Shabbat, and he and Marion, his girlfriend from a Reform background, became more observant together. They soon got married and moved to Los Angeles, where they discovered the baal teshuva organization Aish Hatorah, and Blinkoff began learning with Rabbi Shalom Denbo and going to his family’s home for Shabbat dinner. Blinkoff and his wife had four children and raised them in their observant Jewish home.

As for Blinkoff’s career, it kept ballooning; he worked on “Tinkerbell,” “Fox and the Hound 2” and “Doc McStuffins,” earning animator, producer and director credits at Disney, Amazon, Dreamworks and Netflix. He also started giving talks inside and outside of the Jewish community about his work, inspiring others to follow their dreams and live a “Life of Awesome,” his personal and professional tagline.

“When I speak in the Jewish world, I have one message: Embrace your Jewish identity in every aspect of your life … It doesn’t mean you have to be religious or Orthodox. You need to wake up and realize you’ve won the lottery every day being Jewish.”

All the while, he continued to communicate how awesome Judaism is — even during the dark time following      Oct. 7. Instead of being scared and hiding, he’s urging Jews to be louder than ever when it comes to their Jewish pride. “When I speak in the Jewish world, I have one message: Embrace your Jewish identity in every aspect of your life,” he said. “It doesn’t mean you have to be religious or Orthodox. You need to wake up and realize you’ve won the lottery every day being Jewish. Someday, it’ll be too late to cash that ticket in. We’ve all won the lottery — some of us are just lucky enough to know it.”

Being Holy in Hollywood

Hollywood was founded by Jews, and yet, that important history has been forgotten. Take the opening of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures — funded in part by Jewish producer and philanthropist Haim Saban — which left Jews out of an exhibit on the early days of Hollywood.

“Most of the world doesn’t realize that Hollywood was built by Jews like the Warner Brothers, MGM, Goldwyn and Mayer,” Blinkoff said. “Jews were trying to be filmmakers in New York. They couldn’t, so they opened up shop in California.” 

In movies and on TV shows, secular Jews are often portrayed in a negative light, as being nebbish or neurotic, while Orthodox Jews are shown as ideological, backwards people engaging in cult-like behavior. Content like this is what caused Blinkoff to become more outspoken. 

“I produced the TV show ‘Madagascar,’” he explained. “Because I had a Black character on the show, and I am a white male, I couldn’t make decisions about how the Black character looked or spoke. We engaged as an organization to make sure we were representing Black culture accurately and responsibly in the production, which was the right thing to do. The same must go for Judaism. How does the world view Judaism? It’s our job as Jewish storytellers to ensure we are being portrayed accurately.” 

Blinkoff spoke to the Jewish Writers’ Initiative, which is made up of 15 Jewish writers in Hollywood, about this very topic. “I [also] talked about what Jewish values are and how we can incorporate them into the stories we tell,” he said.

Along with fighting stereotypes, in the wake of Oct. 7, he’s been decrying Hollywood’s silence on Israel. “They always speak up if women aren’t paid as much as men, but they aren’t speaking up that women were savagely raped or murdered, or mutilated or raped as hostages. They pick and choose which causes to support.”

“I do think it’s disgraceful where Jews don’t speak up … We just had the Golden Globes and not one actor, writer, producer, presenter or any of them said anything about the hostages in Israel. Nothing … Some Jewish people were posting about the writers’ and actors’ strikes and picketing every day, but posting almost nothing about the hostages.”      

What makes it even worse is when Jews in Hollywood don’t say anything. “I do think it’s disgraceful where Jews don’t speak up,” he said. “We just had the Golden Globes and not one actor, writer, producer, presenter or any of them said anything about the hostages in Israel. Nothing …  Some Jewish people were posting about the writers’ and actors’ strikes and picketing every day, but posting almost nothing about the hostages,” he said. Now is not the time to shirk or run away from Judaism. It’s the time to become closer than ever to it and display it to the world – which is what he does. 

Whether Blinkoff is posting on his popular Instagram account, hosting his “Life of Awesome” podcast, giving a 45-minute corporate keynote presentation, speaking to Jews or working at Disney’s animation studio, he makes sure to incorporate inspiring Jewish teachings into his work. “No matter what I do, I’m embracing my Jewish identity through all those things. My Judaism helps me make decisions in every aspect of my life.”

He urges others to connect with their Judaism and do the same.

“We need to wake up every day and know what our purpose is,” he said. “All of us have unique abilities. There are no two people in the world who are the same. There are no two people in the world with the same purpose. [I wake up] and [clarify] what I am living for individually and figuring out how I can take my abilities and respond in the world. A life of awesome is embracing my Jewish identity to take responsibility for the world.”