Dating artists is a way for me to support the arts and get great deals on paintings.
I emailed an artist I know named Amy to paint a picture for my apartment for $100. I gave her a two week deadline and offered to take her out for drinks. She replied that her paintings normally go for upwards of $4,000. In my next email I told her that her talent warrants that kind of money. I just don’t have it.
“I may have something in my studio I can sell you.”
She sold me a painting for $150 and agreed to go out with me. After picking her up, I said “I’m new to Los Feliz so I figured you could show me around.”
“No, I’m not good at that.”
“Not to worry. We’ll drop my car off and have a drink. You can see your painting and then we can go out.”
I opened my most expensive bottle of wine, a $12 Bordeaux. “Pretty good, yea?”
“It’s sour and it needs to breathe.”
“Of course,” I pretended.
“I know that your art work deals with the relationship between architectural spaces and the psyche. What were your intentions behind this painting?”
“If I wanted to paint an elephant I would have painted an elephant.”
“Of course.” I decided to delve further. “So what’s it like being an artist?”
“I party at night, and sleep until 10am or sometimes 1pm. All depends how I feel. Why? Do you have a job or something?” She finished smoking a cigarette on my balcony. “Where are we going?”
“We’ll take a little walk to get a drink.”
“You didn’t tell me we would be walking. These shoes aren’t for walking.”
“Sorry, I thought shoes were for walking.”
We secured a booth on a crowded night at my new favorite bar “Ye Rustic Inn.” I ordered vodka sodas and chicken wings. “So what kind of guys do you normally go out with?”
“I like older men and bad boys. You’re too nice. I like guys who treat me like sh*t. I have to go to the bathroom. Where is it?”
She came back from the bathroom and ordered another drink. “So you know, I’m not going to sleep with you.”
My phone vibrated. I looked and saw that Amy who was sitting right next to me had sent me a nude photo of herself.
“What do you think?”
“I like it.”
“I have lots of photos like these. That’s all I’m going to show you.”
“Will these be on exhibit any time soon?”
Over the weekend I went out with another artist, Jill, a 30 year old grad student who drove an hour to meet me at The Dresden, the classy 1950’s era night-club where “Swingers” was filmed. I ordered a Vodka Collins and she ordered a Whiskey Sour and fried zuchinni. The Jazz band played so loud I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I could hear a few key words and responded back the best I could I while eating her zuchinni.
“Near Wilshire and La Cienega.”
“Of course,” I nodded in agreement.
The Jazz flute softened to the point I could almost hear her mention that I look like Seinfeld. “Did you use to wear braces?”
“Yes, but I’d rather talk about you. Do you have a favorite painting you can show me?”
She scrolled through her Iphone showing me a neon painting of a guy and a girl kissing in front of a volume equalizer.
“This painting would look great in my apartment.” I complimented her earrings before asking the price of the painting.
“This one is going for $1,050. I think I price my art too cheaply.”
“Yea, for sure,” I pretended.
We ordered another drink before walking over to “Ye Rustic Inn” where we sat in the same booth I sat with Amy. After showing her pictures of my week-old niece, Dylan, she said she was tired and that she should go. “I’ll buy this round,” she insisted.
A girl sitting at the bar shot me an evil look and then interjected. “No, you should pay.”
“You should go back to eating your quesadilla,” I mumbled under my breath.
Later that night I looked at Jill’s website where I discovered her series of nude self-portraits. They were colorful, to say the least.
Getting to know both artists made me realize I am less of an art enthusiast and more of a naked enthusiast. For the female body is the greatest piece of art. And I’ve been to LACMA with an Art History major so I’ve seen my share of art. After noticing many phallic paintings I said, “I didn’t realize this was Los Angeles County Museum of Penises?”
“No, this is art.” she shot back.
Receiving a text of a naked female is art. Sending a text of a naked male is harassment.
Who knew such insight could come over fried zuchinni and chicken wings? I’m just supporting the arts.
It’s a fight to the death: As the digital revolution marches on, and more and more people do their reading on user-friendly digital devices, the end of paper’s 500-year reign seems to be at hand.
Here at The Jewish Journal, we don’t take this development lightly. We have a thriving Web site and great mobile apps, but, as with other newspapers, our paper continues to be our bread and butter. Digital revolution aside, advertisers still prefer to see their ads on paper — and who can blame them? No banner on a digital screen can compete with the power of a printed ad you can hold in your hands and that has the same visual prominence as editorial content.
For readers, though, it’s a different story.
Newspapers can’t compete with the extraordinary immediacy and convenience of the digital universe, where copy changes can happen instantly and at virtually no cost, and readers can surf billions of sites to their heart’s content. Whereas the printed word is permanent, the digital word is restless. It never stops moving. This is changing the way we read. Many experts don’t even call it reading — they call it scanning.
In this restless new world of surfers and scanners, does paper stand a chance?
As it happens, I got one answer to my question on New Year’s Eve, after I took my kids to see the movie “New Year’s Eve” and one of them asked, “Can we go to Toppings now?” (Talk about lifecycle events. Before procreating became a big part of my life, on any New Year’s Eve I might be slipping a $50 bill to the doorman of Studio 54 in New York City. Now I go to Toppings for kosher frozen yogurt).
Of course, I said yes. But little did I know that waiting for me at Toppings would be a subject for a future column: an abandoned newspaper, lying humbly on one of the counters. While my kids were debating the relative merits of pistachio, butter pecan and vanilla cheesecake, I looked at the paper and thought: “Hmm, a little cerebral boost to spark up my New Year’s Eve. Why not?”
It turns out the paper was the December issue of The Boiling Point, a monthly publication produced by the students of the Modern Orthodox Shalhevet High School.
Well, maybe I was desperate for intellectual stimulation (sorry, kids), but I ended up taking the paper home and reading it cover to cover.
There were at least 30 interesting stories inside: a new Sephardic minyan at the school; the “slippery slope” of marijuana; a symposium with three local rabbis discussing the evolution of the Los Angeles Orthodox community; a school visit by 1960s civil rights “Freedom Rider” activist Earnest “Rip” Patton Jr.; a dissection of the tradition of gift-giving at Chanukah; the national scandal of cheating on the SATs; the Friday afternoon school tradition of “song, spirit and a whiff of chulent”; an environmental program in Israel to create a sustainable world, called “eco Israel”; a visit to a retro-design exhibition at LACMA; a student’s report from Occupy L.A. and whether anti-Semitism played a role; the modern relevance for teenagers of the school production of “Pride and Prejudice”; a lively debate on the merits of the school’s new advanced Judaic studies program, and so on.
However great the content was, though, what got me was this: I would never have stumbled on all these stories had they not been printed on paper. Yes, paper — paper that I could see, hold, touch, feel and take home.
You can’t stumble on a digital screen and take it home with you. Digital screens can’t be coddled and treasured. They’re virtual, not real. They carry electronic flickers that can come and go at any moment.
Words printed on a page, however, are not flickers. They’re evidence of a commitment. A commitment by a group of writers and editors that says: “We have thought all these words through and are putting our ink where our mouths are. We believe in these words strongly enough that we are ready to make them permanent.”
This seriousness comes through to the reader, who, in turn, takes the words more seriously. Also, because printed words don’t come with “related links” that keep sucking you away from the main story, you’re more likely to read the whole story. Imagine that.
So, does all this mean paper will survive? Hardly. Some experts predict that newspaper readership will drop by one-third within 15 years and eventually become marginal, but for papers like The Jewish Journal, there’s a silver lining: Many experts also predict that local community papers with a well-defined niche will be a lot more resilient. The way I see it, it’s hard to beat the intimacy of a community paper — and, let’s face it, the digital screen can’t compete with paper on intimacy.
But maybe the best reason not to sit shivah yet for paper is its cutting-edge technology, which is perfect for impatient people who want everything now. Think about it: Here is a device that never crashes, needs no plugs, batteries, chargers or Wi-Fi codes, and loads instantly.
And as if that weren’t enough, you’re even allowed to use it on Shabbat.
In addition to our prizewinner, we also want to honor some of the other exceptional books that came to our attention in 2011, each of which is accomplished and provocative.
The headlines in The Jewish Journal and other newspapers serve to confirm the acuity and even the prescience of Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg, who sounds an alarm about the threat to both the democratic values and Jewish character of Israel in his very personal history of his homeland’s past and present, “The Unmaking of Israel” (HarperCollins: $25.99).
“For Israel to establish itself again as a liberal democracy, it must make three changes,” he concludes. “First, it must end the settlement enterprise, end the occupation, and find a peaceful way to partition the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Second, it must divorce state and synagogue. … Third and most basically, it must graduate from being an ethnic movement to being a democratic state in which all citizens enjoy equality.”
First, can we all just acknowledge the obvious hypocrisy?
Imagine that over the past year Israel had slaughtered 5,000 Palestinians. The Arab reaction would be massive street protests, suspension of all diplomatic ties, demands for expulsion from the United Nations, calls for outright war, the launch of the mother of all BDS movements and unrelenting terror attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets anywhere and everywhere.
For almost a year now, since Jan. 26, 2011, the Syrian leadership has overseen the murder of at least 5,000 of its own Arab citizens and the torture and detention of countless more.
And the reaction? Verbal condemnation and a long, drawn-out visit by Arab League observers.
Judging by their muted response, I can only conclude that either Palestinians are more precious than other Arabs, or that Arabs have much higher expectations of behavior from Jews than they do of fellow Arabs. Hey — take your compliments where you can get them.
People who are quickest to point the finger at Israelis for stopping Palestinian civilians at checkpoints have barely made a peep about Syrian children being mowed down outside their homes.
Starting last April, the Gulf nations strengthened their stand against the Syrian violence, but only after statements from the U.N. Security Council, Russia and Turkey. A cartoon in Al-Arab, a Qatari newspaper, depicted Assad with a Nazi armband and a Hitler mustache — which looks a lot like Assad’s own mustache, come to think of it.
But Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas hasn’t condemned the massive killing, though he did urge the Syrians not to harm Palestinians forced to flee refugee camps.
One recent story sums up the Assad regime and shows the absolute moral backwardness of these avatars of human rights:
Last April 25, during the Syrian army’s siege of Daraa, thousands of demonstrators carried milk, bread and olive branches and chanted, “Peaceful change.” Among them was a 15-year-old boy named Tamer Al-Shar’i. Syrian troops arrested the boy along with 300 other demonstrators.
Later, the army thugs returned him to his parents, in pieces.
“What did they do to him?” Al-Shar’i’s mother said on Al-Arabiyya TV. “He doesn’t have a body. Where is my son? They left nothing of him. His hands were broken, his legs … I identified him by his hands, which are broad, just like his father’s.”
A Health Ministry report confirmed what Bashar Assad’s men did to the boy. They shot him in the forehead, through the cheek, in his left arm and through his teeth. There were two bullets in his left leg and three in his right thigh.
“It was Bashar Al-Assad who gave the order to open fire,” the boy’s father said, “and I hold him personally responsible.”
From my limited brush with Syrian officialdom, none of this comes as a surprise. As I read the tragic news unfolding on the streets from Daraa to Damascus, I keep thinking back to a private meeting I attended between local Jewish leaders and Syrian government representatives on Dec. 7, 2003.
It was a lunch for a dozen or so people in a private room at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel.
The meeting was arranged at the initiative of Dr. Hazem Chehabi, a specialist in nuclear medicine in Irvine, who also serves as Syria’s honorary consul general in Southern California. Ten Los Angeles Jews gathered to share a meal and views with the Syrian Minister of Expatriates, Buthaina Shaaban; an adviser to Assad; and Imad Moustapha, Syria’s acting ambassador to the United States, on what was their first official visit to Los Angeles.
Very quickly it became clear that no matter what we heard or thought, Syria was a progressive, peace-loving country. This was eight years ago — Tamer Al-Shar’i would have been 7 years old. The strongest concern the Jewish leaders expressed at the time was over television shows airing in Syria, produced by their state-run TV, which depicted Jews plotting to destroy the world. Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, showed the Syrians actual images from the show, as well as actual pages from Syrian government books, that accused Jews of blood libel. The Syrian response? That Syria was a progressive, peaceloving country, and Assad would never dare to censor a free press.
It was, as one Jewish participant said, like being in “a room full of Stalinists.”
To a person, they reminded me of the lines from W.H. Auden’s “Epitaph on a Tyrant”:
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
Those same Stalinists are now managing the massacre of their own people. In a recent statement, Minister Shaaban blamed Sunni clerics for inciting the uprising, while other officials blamed — surprise! — the Mossad.
I know there is no guarantee that what comes after Assad will be orderly, or even less cruel. The Arab Awakening has thrown the region into turmoil and made Israel’s challenges even greater. Who, for instance, is going to get control of Syria’s arsenal of tens of thousands of rockets? How will the Jordanian regime survive between a chaotic Iraq and a fractured Syria? Just because the death of a dictatorship is good and inevitable, doesn’t mean the aftermath is inevitably good.
But Assad must go. This week he said that it is terrorists attacking his country, and he’s right — except that he is the terrorist. No decent country, no decent people, can remain quiet and let the Syrian people fight, and suffer, alone.
Since 2009, when I was first given the opportunity to serve as book editor and chief reviewer for The Jewish Journal, we have been able to significantly increase The Journal’s coverage of the literary world, including biweekly reviews in the newspaper and weekly reviews on jewishjournal.com. We also have created a book blog, 12:12, and we publish additional reviews by a group of esteemed authors and reviewers.
This year, in recognition of the strength and range of our book coverage, we have established an annual prize, dubbed The Jewish Journal Book Prize, in recognition of a book of exceptional interest, achievement and significance. The award will be presented each January to a book published during the previous calendar year, and it carries a $1,000 honorarium.
The Jewish Journal Book Prize for 2012 recognizes Nancy K. Miller’s unique and compelling family memoir, “What They Saved: Pieces of a Jewish Past.” The book was published in September 2011 by the University of Nebraska Press and reviewed in The Jewish Journal on Oct. 4, 2011.
Miller is a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has authored and edited more than a dozen books, including works of feminist literary theory, such as “The Heroine’s Text” and “The Poetics of Gender.” Recently, she has turned her focus to autobiography and memoir as tools of self-discovery, writing “But Enough About Me: Why We Read Other People’s Lives” and “Bequest and Betrayal: Memoirs of a Parent’s Death.”
During Angelina Jolie’s and Brad Pitt’s visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C earlier today to promote Jolie’s directorial debut, “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” Gil Tamari, the Washington bureau chief for Israel’s Channel 10, pressed the most famous movie stars in the world for their two-cents on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Snagging some on-camera time with Jolie, Tamari went right in with his Big Question.
Tamari: I wondered, do you see yourself in the future doing also a story about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Jolie: Israel and Palestine; I have not spent time there. I would like to spend more time.
Tamari: Would you like to come and visit and see the situation yourself?
Jolie: Of course, of course. There’s no good reason I haven’t been.
Tamari: Do you have any idea about the current situation and maybe some ideas how to solve the conflict?
Jolie: Do I? Oh my… (she laughs, nervously) I wish I had the perfect answer for you. I wish I knew how to solve it. If I feel that I could help in any way, if I felt like I could be a part of the solution I’d like to help be a part of the solution, not just visit..
Then Tamari asked Pitt what he thought of his “wife’s” movie:
Pitt: I’m really proud of her. It’s difficult subject matter, it’s something I think stands above the normal movie fare.
Tamari: Do you see her doing stories about other conflicts, maybe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Pitt: It’s really her main interest. She works on it everyday, diligently. Yes, absolutely.
Prior to their Holocaust Museum stop, Jolie and Pitt popped by the Oval Office to visit with President Barack Obama.
Five minutes late to an interview at House Cafe on Beverly Boulevard, Jonah Hill apologizes like a contrite teenager. “I’m sorry I’m tardy,” he says, explaining he’d just flown in from shooting “Neighborhood Watch” in Atlanta and was scrambling to finish his Chanukah shopping. His 28th birthday is the next day, but that’s secondary: “It’s better to give than to receive, right?”
He’s almost adorably awkward, channeling his inner nice-Jewish-boy; this perfect gentleman is not what one might expect from the guy who helped reinvent the modern stoner-slacker in films like “Superbad” (2007), in which his libidinous character had a mouth so foul he could make Howard Stern blush.
Recently he told Stern he didn’t lose his virginity on prom night because he got too drunk and threw up on his girlfriend. During our hour-long conversation, however, nary an expletive nor a raunchy story comes out of Hill’s mouth. Perhaps it’s the context: This is The Jewish Journal he’s speaking to, his parents’ friends and his grandmother will probably read this story, and, besides, Hill has a message to convey: He’s not just that young actor who made us laugh our buns off in comedies like “Knocked Up” and “Get Him to the Greek.”
These days, Hill can count serious thespian, writer and producer among his credits, and last year, the weight of his dramatic chops was in full evidence in both his heartrending turn as Marisa Tomei’s son in the independent film “Cyrus” and in his portrayal of a baseball numbers nerd opposite Brad Pitt in “Moneyball.” Demonstrating his stretch beyond the familiar bawdy R-rated Jonah Hill comedy, his performance in “Moneyball” already has earned him both Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe Award nominations for best supporting actor in a drama, plus Oscar buzz.
“I’m not saying, ‘Now that I’ve made a “fancy” movie, I’m going to leave comedy behind,’ ” he said. “I’m so beyond proud of the comedies I’ve made. But it’s important for me to note this as a transformation in my career and my life. This period is me becoming an adult, becoming a man. I look completely different; I’ve matured; I’m not just that funny kid you know me as from my early movies. I’m here to do other kinds of things, including dramatic films, as well. I take that really seriously, and you should, too.”
If you’re picturing the Jonah Hill in his most recent flick, “The Sitter,” which was not so well received, or 2010’s “Get Him to the Greek,” which was, put that guy out of your mind. Along with the life-changing experience of his recent dramatic roles, Hill has also slimmed down his overweight physique, and as he sipped iced tea and joked about his newly “girlish figure,” he said his physical metamorphosis reflects the personal makeover within. He has keen blue eyes, and on this day was neatly but fashionably dressed in a Navaho-patterned jacket against the winter chill. During his recent appearance on “The Daily Show,” host Jon Stewart told Hill he looked as if he had taken “handsome pills.”
Hill in “Moneyball.” Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon/Columbia Pictures
“I was embarrassed, even though I knew it was a compliment,” he said, blushing slightly. “Jon Stewart thinks I’m handsome — that’s nice.”
Hill’s life, these days, is distinctly grown up, or at least moving fast in that direction. When we spoke, he was ogling the baby at the next table: “I can see the feet. They’re in, like, these little socks; they’re really cute,” he said, adding, “I’m dying to have kids one day. I think I’ve been put on this Earth more to be a dad than an actor.”
He said he had just spent his first two nights in the home he recently finished building in Los Angeles; it’s a universe away from the frat-boy apartment he moved into when fellow Judd Apatow protégé Seth Rogen moved out. Those were the days when a bong was practically affixed to the dining room table, and Hill appeared on the cover of Heeb magazine, in a pose reminiscent of his lecherous but nuanced “Superbad” character, shmearing K-Y Jelly on his morning bagel.
The shmear was Rogen’s idea, but when I ask more questions involving Rogen et al, Hill’s had enough. “Is this whole interview going to be about Seth?” he asks, laughing, but it’s clear he’s a little frustrated. “I love Seth; it’s not about that. But Seth became famous right before I became famous, right? He made ‘Knocked Up,’ and then, two months later, I made ‘Superbad.’ We looked alike; he became a big movie star before I had been in the movies, and I’ve spent a lot of time being compared to him or whatever. What’s beautiful is, we’ve gone on to do our different things, and we’ve defined separately. I have nothing but love for all my friends, it’s just that I’ve spent five years doing interviews about my friends, you know?”
He’s talking about actors like Jason Segel and Paul Rudd, with whom he came up through the ranks of Apatow’s hilariously creative posse. Some Apatow-niks once jokingly dubbed the circle the “Jew Tang Clan” because of its preponderance of MOTs.
“Jonah has always been funny because his humor is so grounded in reality,” Apatow wrote in an e-mail. “I cast Jonah a lot because he is so smart and has a unique world view. I know I can put him in any scene and ask him to have a strong funny position on something and he will never let me down.” But, Apatow said, he also wasn’t surprised by Hill’s recent dramatic performances. “He was great in ‘Moneyball’ because he’s a very talented actor. … We believe his characters really exist.”
After a bit part in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” Hill went on to co-star in a string of other Apatow comedies before having his own face plastered on billboards with “Superbad.” In “Get Him to the Greek,” he plays a music industry lackey who must escort a rock star-junkie to a concert, a journey that involves threesomes, bathroom sex and smuggling contraband in a bodily orifice onto an airplane.
Hill said he’s essentially had to grow up in the limelight, and looking back on some of his early interviews is “horrifying, because when you’re in your early 20s, you can sound like an idiot.”
But even back then, Hill was fiercely ambitious and looking to expand his repertoire. He saw his chance when he met Sundance regulars Mark and Jay Duplass, who in their early films helped kick-start the youthful genre known as “mumblecore.” After viewing their short film “Intervention,” Hill suggested that should any of them become successful, they should make a movie together.
“When ‘Superbad’ became a big hit, Mark and Jay were the first people I called,” Hill said. “They said they’d been writing a movie for me, and they gave me this gift that was ‘Cyrus.’ They were the first people to say, ‘Jonah can do something more, and we believe in him as a dramatic actor, not just some funny kid.’ And they gave me a part in this movie with John C. Reilly and Marisa Tomei, which was very intimidating, but I knew I could do it.”
Jonah Hill in ‘Cyrus’
In “Cyrus,” Hill plays a 22-year-old who is overly dependent on his mother (played by Oscar winner Tomei) and comes creepily undone when she begins dating her new boyfriend (Reilly). “I loved the character because he’s so heartbreaking,” Hill said. “There were so many mistakes made that he didn’t have a fighting chance, and that manifests in dark relationships, especially in the sad relationship he has with his mother.”
Tomei had seen Hill’s comedies before meeting him on the set of “Cyrus”: “I think everyone fell in love with Jonah in ‘Superbad,’ ” she said in a telephone interview. “He’s so intelligent and quick that he’s always able to improvise and to be spot-on. But he also is a great observer of human behavior, because he has a really big heart. So the things that pop into his brain and come out of his mouth have a real depth and soul, even though they may be hilarious.” It was Hill, Tomei recalls, who improvised what would become the film’s tagline: “Seriously, don’t f—- my mom.”
“Moneyball” came into the equation when Hill’s “Cyrus” co-star, Catherine Keener, recommended him to director Bennett Miller. A table reading followed, which was nerve-racking because Hill knew he was still a long shot —both because of his lack of dramatic experience and the “10 other probably Oscar-nominated dramatic actors who were up for the role,” as he put it.
“So I kind of did a ‘Truman Show’ on Bennett, meaning I asked the Duplass brothers for a ‘friends and family’ screening of an unfinished cut of ‘Cyrus,’ which was all b.s. — a ruse to get Bennett into the theater to see me in that film. But Bennett saw the movie, which was all a fake, set-up screening, and the next day I was cast in ‘Moneyball.’ ”
The film is based on a true story, and Hill plays Peter Brand, a repressed Yale math whiz who helps Pitt’s Billy Beane reinvent the Oakland Athletics through a statistics scheme that, in real life, transformed baseball. “The role was extremely challenging because the character, in a way, is the polar opposite of me,” Hill said. “I tend to over-communicate, probably more than anyone should, and to a fault. I can’t hold things in,” he said, laughing.
“But if my character had a thorn in his foot, he wouldn’t say anything to anyone. He’s someone who has an extremely hard time expressing what he is feeling, and uses baseball statistics, in a sense, to communicate his inner life.”
Miller said he went along with Hill’s fake screening ruse, but had already decided to cast him. “You can tell from Judd’s movies that he’s highly intelligent and very present in a scene,” Miller said. “The other aspect of it is I’ve known Jonah for some years, and he is closer to the character of Peter Brand than you might see in some of these other films. He’s very thoughtful, and he can have an authority about a subject coupled with an insecurity.”
Miller also saw in Hill a personal connection with his character and to “Moneyball,” a story about people who have been overlooked because of preconceptions about what they can do. “There are aspects of Jonah’s talent that might not have yet been given their full opportunity,” Miller said. “When you establish yourself as good in one area, people tend to understand and identify you as a particular thing or trait. Jonah was very fast becoming known as a comic actor of a particular variety, and that was great for him, but it could also present a challenge. So, giving him this role didn’t seem like an eccentric, far-fetched, crazy risk.”
Born Jonah Hill Feldstein, the future actor grew up in Los Angeles, a middle child with an older brother and younger sister. His father, Richard Feldstein, is an accountant in the music industry.
Hill with his young charges in “The Sitter.” Photo by Jessica Miglio/Twentieth Century Fox
Jonah attended religious school at Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, where he became bar mitzvah in a ceremony he described as “magical”; high school was at Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences in Santa Monica. Because his parents are from Long Island, N.Y., the family sometimes vacationed in the Catskills, where, Hill said, “I saw Borscht Belt comedians who were 100 by the time I was old enough to see them.”
Temple Emanuel Cantor Yonah Kliger also remembers Hill’s bar mitzvah as “magical”: “He was electric, completely captivating, and seemed very comfortable in his own skin, which is a rare thing for a 13-year-old,” Kliger said. “It’s not just hindsight to say I felt this person was destined for something great, though I didn’t know what at the time.”
At Crossroads, communications director Martha Goldstein would say only that the faculty is “absolutely delighted by Jonah’s success.” It was there that Hill made friends with Jake Hoffman, son of Dustin Hoffman, and his ties to that family were hugely influential in his life. (Hill stresses that he doesn’t want to sound “opportunistic, like I was friends with them to get something out of it.” Duly noted.)
Yet Hill as a teenager was an aspiring writer, until Hoffman suggested he try professional acting. So how did Hoffman know he had talent? “I used to make crank phone calls for him,” Hill said. Hoffman had friends he’d have Hill call, as well as assorted strangers; the goal was to get the person to buy into the conversation for as long as possible. “I had this bit where I’d phone people, pretend to be a celebrity’s assistant and ask for outlandish things,” Hill said. In one call to a seedy hotel during Oscar season, he pretended to be Tobey Maguire’s assistant and got the owner to agree to install a tank for a pet seal. “I’ve always said crank calls are one of the best improv exercises you can do, because you’re never put on the spot that heavily in a scene,” Hill said. “It’s the most jagged, maneuverable situation possible because you’re dealing with a real person.”
Apparently, Hoffman thought so, too, because he helped get Hill a bit part in his 2004 film “I Heart Huckabees” — the break that eventually led to Apatow’s “40-Year-Old Virgin.”
More recently, Hill has produced and voiced a short-lived animated TV series, “Allen Gregory,” directed a music video for Sara Bareilles and was preparing to co-write and star in an adaptation of the 1980s series “21 Jump Street” when a friend called with some startling news. Hill was up for a Golden Globe award, competing against some formidable names: Albert Brooks in “Drive,” Kenneth Branagh in “My Week With Marilyn,” Viggo Mortensen in “A Dangerous Method” and Christopher Plummer in “Beginners.”
“I freaked out,” Hill said of the news. “I thought he was messing with me. But a second later it was producer Scott Rudin calling, and then Amy Pascal,” Sony Pictures chair. He was so surprised and thrilled, Hill said, that when he spoke to his parents later that day, everyone was crying.
Russell Brand and Hill in “Get Him to the Greek.” Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures
“This whole ‘Moneyball’ year has been the most insane, beautiful, crazy, surreal, dreamlike experience of my life,” he said, before excusing himself for a few minutes. While he was out, a restaurant patron whispered to her friend that this was Jonah Hill, the famous comedian. I don’t mention this to Hill when he returns, but the actor does tell me it’s a common mistake, despite the fact that he’s never done stand-up comedy professionally in his life. Even Forbes magazine referred to him as “comedian Hill” in its list of 30 influential people under 30.
He objects: “I’ve made a lot of comedy movies as an actor, but I’m not a comedian — it’s disrespectful to comedians to call me a comedian,” Hill said, with a flash of the wry, brash delivery that has worked so well in his comic films.
“Everyone wants to pigeonhole everyone; it’s easy. And I did feel pigeonholed for a long time,” he admitted. “Relatively few people saw ‘Cyrus,’ but the people who did were very responsive about me being a dramatic actor.”
A friend of mine sent me a press release about a new tv show airing tonight on USA at 11pm. The show, “Out Of Character With Krista Smith” features interviews with Gwyneth Paltrow, Seth MacFarlane, and Jason Wu and while normally I can’t stand these vapid celeb puff piece interviews, Krista is actually a great interviewer so I’m looking forward to it. I’ve been watching her for a while because of her day job as Vanity Fair’s West Coast Editor, since VF often posts her interviews to their website to supplement the great articles she writes. VF is one of my favorite mags and seeing as years ago for about five minutes I technically worked there and got to meet Krista, I’m rather excited about it all. Check it out tonight!
In an attempt to better understand the problem that arose as a result of the recent events in Beit Shemesh — the one that succeeded to light a fire under so many people — most of us always return to our comfort zone by declaring that the problem lies in the Jewish religion. But the truth is very far from that. The deeper problem stems from the ability of a capricious, domineering and vociferously vocal minority to set a political dynamic into motion. This is exhausting and worrisome to the extent that no politician is capable of standing up to it. When the spirit of compromise is always one-sided, when the rioting and acting-out side always manages to achieve more, and, mainly, when the quiet and tolerant side begins to feel that it always ends up with less, people begin to ask themselves what God meant when he described us as “a light unto the nations” and what the founders of the Zionist movement meant when they wanted to establish an exemplary society? Maybe we are simply not suited to be the “chosen” people.
As always, Israeli society woke up late to the issue, went into panic mode and began waving the first flag they found next to their beds upon waking — the flag of the secular. It’s a comfortable flag to wave, both basic and superficial enough to satisfy anyone who was moved by the tears of Naama Margolese (the little girl who was attacked by the ultra-Orthodox in Beit Shemesh). But in many ways, it is a flag devoid of meaning, one that is not substantive enough to have any real meaning. And so, every time it has been waved in the past, it ends up collapsing after a short while and returns to its place in the dead-storage space of the “State of Tel Aviv.”
The Jewish religion is not just mehadrin bus lines (connecting Charedi communities), separate sidewalks and spitting at women. The fact is that we, the secular public, have grown lazy and have accepted things deterministically. This is not only sad, it also raises serious doubts about our future as a Jewish people that are enlightened, progressive and pluralistic. Our decision, of which we are not even aware, to give up on our Judaism for the sake of a radical and violent group who have decided to use religion and nationality as it sees fit, means we give in not only to them but also to ourselves, and allow a norm to reign whereby “might makes right.”
When Yohanan ben Zakkai felt that the zealots were threatening to put an end to the Jewish people with their persistent support of the Great Revolt and their attempt to claim ownership of the Jewish religion, he could have opted for the easy response — to lose faith and gather himself behind the door of his beliefs. But instead of giving in to the zealots, he fought them with the “weapon of the Jew” itself: He left Jerusalem for a period of time and created an alternative that would allow Jewish life to continue in the spirit of the time and the changing reality. He understood then what too few of us understand today — that Judaism is not religious fanaticism or a cult; it is first and foremost a culture and a value system. This is the legacy of an enlightened Jewish leader 2,000 years ago. But somehow we have a hard time repudiating fanaticism and a Taliban-like identity, and cleaving to the true essence of our nation (and, yes, we are first a nation and then a religion, in case we forgot).
By waving the militant flag of secularism, we accomplish nothing other than creating an equally fanatic backlash (even if secular fanaticism is nicer than religious fanaticism) and strengthening the notions held by the Charedi community that they are the “real” Jews and we are not. We end the battle by scoring a goal — in our own wrong court.
Everyone believes that a fundamental change has to occur — a genuine social and political earthquake. In order to make this happen (without destroying ourselves) we have to make greater efforts, persist in knowing more, engage our brains in independent and innovative thinking and know how to learn from those, like Yohanan ben Zakkai, who stood before exactly the same kind of cultural war and learned what it takes to win. The secular response to Charedi radicalism does not lie in declaring ourselves atheists, or making a point of eating shrimp for ideology’s sake. The answer is written here — in the history of the Jewish people, in our Bible and in what the Jewish religion was meant to be from its inception.
Elisheva Mazya is the CEO of the Ruach Hadasha (New Spirit) organization which works to prevent the negative emigration of secular young adults from Jerusalem by supporting young idealistic and pluralistic communities.
