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Even Maidelehs Don Pasties

Keren Engelberg February 24, 2005

Jewish girl stereotypes get tossed — including one you might have heard about them being prudes — when \”Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad\” makes its West Coast debut this Thursday night at Tangier.

As creator and emcee Susannah Perlman describes it, the variety show features comedy, spoken word, music and burlesque acts that speak to the Jewish condition, performed by women who have appeared on Comedy Central, HBO, MTV and late night television.

A Kushner Series That Will Offend All

Sally Ogle Davis December 4, 2003

After director Mike Nichols took his wife, Diane Sawyer, to the first screening of his six-hour HBO film of Tony Kushner\’s epoch-defining, \”Angels in America.\” She said, \”I know what this is about. It\’s about being Jewish.\”

She\’s right, but it\’s also about being gay in the latter 20 years of the 20th century. It\’s about friendship and redemption. It\’s about the feeling we all have in our darker hours that as a species, we could be on the verge of extinction. It\’s about the struggle for the soul of America between the right and the left, and it\’s about so many other things that it\’s virtually impossible to describe.

Stone’s ‘Persona’ Wears Out Welcome

Tom Tugend May 29, 2003

Oliver Stone, working with French and Spanish producers, makes it harder to follow the already complex thread of the story by constantly intercutting between different scenes and spokesmen.

‘Under’s’ Rabbinic Supervision

Naomi Pfefferman April 11, 2002

\”Six Feet Under\” writer-producer Jill Soloway admits the HBO funeral parlor family drama is like a weekly commercial for taharah, the Jewish ritual of cleansing a dead body prior to burial.\n\nForget the no-open-casket Jewish tradition: On Alan Ball\’s quirky hit, words like \”skin slippage\” are de rigueur and corpses are regularly drained and made-up for display. \”It\’s pretty gross,\” concedes Temple Israel of Hollywood member Soloway, who\’s invented a rabbi character to proffer Jewish perspectives on death.\n\n

Rabbi for the ‘Summer’

Naomi Pfefferman March 21, 2002

So he laid on the shtick to play Rabbi Jacobsen in Pete Jones\’ melodramatic film, \”Stolen Summer,\” which opens today in Los Angeles. The comedy-drama follows a Catholic kid bent on converting the rabbi\’s son. But Pollak didn\’t need to study Torah to prepare for his role. \”I\’m an old pro,\” he says. \”My first act was lip-syncing Bill Cosby\’s \’Noah and the Lord\’ bit when I was 10.\” By age 18, Pollak was performing hilarious \”Columbo\” impressions while moving just one eye.

Planning the Holocaust

Naomi Pfefferman May 17, 2001

Kenneth Branagh, dapper in his SS costume, his blond hair neatly slicked back, coldly spat out the words during production of the HBO film \”Conspiracy\”: \”Dead men don\’t hump. Dead women don\’t get pregnant. Death is the most reliable form of sterilization.\”\n\nHe was sitting on a soundstage that was an exact reproduction of the luxurious Wannsee villa where 15 high-ranking Nazis, over lavish food and drink, matter-of-factly planned the Final Solution on Jan. 20, 1942. Branagh, the Oscar-nominated actor-director, was playing SS Gen. Reinhard Heydrich, who led the brief, top-secret meeting like a ruthless CEO. His fellow actors sipped liquor and puffed cigars as Branagh, feeling revolted, completed the scene. \”It was very claustrophobic, very smoky, because once those set doors were closed, all the actors were in there all the time,\” said Branagh, who is best-known for directing and starring in film adaptations of Shakespearean plays. \”That meant that at the end of every take, you rushed out of the room, peeled off your SS uniform, and took a breather from that creepily atmospheric place.\”\n\n

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