In February, a film about a neo-Nazi skinhead who receives shocking retribution because of his racism won the Academy Award for best live-action short. No one was more surprised than Israeli writer-director Guy Nattiv, who made “Skin” with his wife, actress-producer Jaime Ray Newman. The short version of “Skin” was made as a stepping stone to a feature film of the same name.
The true story of Bryon Widner, a white supremacist who turned his life around, captivated Nattiv, who then acquired the rights to Widner’s story. Four years ago, Nattiv wrote the script for a full-length film. “But no one wanted to make the movie. Skinheads weren’t on the surface like today,” Nattiv told the Journal. “So I decided to make a short in order to make the feature happen.” With hate crimes on the rise, the timing was right.
“Skin,” starring Jamie Bell as Widner, will make its debut at the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival on May 6. It will be released on DIRECTV June 27 and in theaters July 26.
“It’s a redemption story,” Nattiv said about Widner, noting they have become close friends. “It’s about a skinhead who falls in love with a woman and her girls, and wants to become a better person.” Widner had his racist tattoos removed in a painful process, but doubts remain. “ ‘What happens if they take all my tattoos off and I’m still the same piece of [expletive]? Do I
still have those demons inside of me?’ There’s no definite answer for that, but I wanted to arouse the question,” Nattiv said. “I’m asking the audience, ‘Do you have a place in your heart to accept someone who was a monster and wants to become a human?’ That’s a question we all have to ask ourselves today in order to start a dialogue.”
I’m asking the audience, ‘Do you have a place in your heart to accept someone who was a monster and wants to become a human?’ That’s a question we all have to ask ourselves today in order to start a dialogue.” — Guy Nattiv
Nattiv added, “This guy was an extreme neo-Nazi skinhead five years ago. People can change. We need to find a place in our hearts for forgiveness. We, as Jews, forgave the new generation of Germans. Israel made peace with Egypt. I think redemption is very Jewish. We have the place in our hearts as Jews to forgive, and I want to find this place within characters.”
Nattiv praised the contributions of actors Bell and Danielle Macdonald; “right hand and love of my life,” Newman; and producers Oren Moverman, Trudie Styler and Celine Rattray, “who had the balls to tell this story when everybody said no,” he said. “I owe them a lot.”
Having grown up on 1970s movies such as “Midnight Cowboy,” “The Deer Hunter” and “Taxi Driver,” Nattiv said he always aims to tell “hard, politically-charged stories that not only entertain but have a message.” Born in Tel Aviv, Nattiv is the grandson of Holocaust survivors from Romania and Poland. He said he “had a bar mitzvah like every Israeli boy, but I’m not religious. It’s more of a cultural thing for me. But I want my baby girl to speak Hebrew and know all about Judaism. It’s important to me that she has a Jewish heritage.”
His 7-month-old daughter, Alma, was born amid the whirlwind of the “Skin” Oscar campaign and finishing the feature. “We fought for many years to bring Alma into the world,” Nattiv said, explaining that Newman had a stillbirth and tried in vitro fertilization before finding a gestational surrogate. “It was a hell of a year. Overwhelming. But in a good way.”
Nattiv and Newman met in 2014 after his agent suggested Nattiv meet his girlfriend’s sister. “She came to Israel and we met at a coffee shop the day before she was to go back to the States. She didn’t get on the plane,” he said. “It was love at first sight.” He moved to Los Angeles the next year, and they’ve been marital and professional partners since.
Right now, they’re traveling for “Skin” appearances while gearing up for new projects. “The Oscar opens doors to meet with people that you wouldn’t meet [otherwise] and compete at a higher level,” Nattiv said. “It gives you a chance to bring your art and have a better chance of making it happen faster.”
The first project is based on a story about his maternal grandmother. Depressed and vulnerable as an empty nester at 55, she fell under the spell of a woman who was a professed healer. This woman took all his grandmother’s money, and lured her and other women to a cult-like retreat called Harmonia in Virginia. “My mother and her sister went there to bring her back home,” Nattiv said.
The other film is about Julie Ann Johnson, a pioneer stuntwoman in the 1970s and ’80s, who won a sexual-discrimination lawsuit decades before #MeToo. The story hits home, because Newman was one of Hollywood producer and director Brett Ratner’s accusers in the sexual-harassment case against Ratner.
Nattiv and Newman recently returned from a trip to Israel where, he said, “We got so much love. When I’m in Israel, I feel like it’s a gas station and I’m refueling myself. It feels like home.”
Reflecting on his greatest accomplishments, Nattiv puts his daughter at the top of the list. “Waking up next to her, seeing her smile and grow every day is magical,” he said. “You understand what’s important in life. Although my art and everything we did last year is very important to me, it’s a bonus. My wife and daughter are my base, my power. That’s what keeps me going.”
“Skin” will screen May 6 at Laemmle’s Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills,
followed by a Q&A with Guy Nattiv and Jaime Ray Newman.
