As a Los Angeles Unified School District teacher of world issues for seniors in Los Angeles, I began yesterday\’s class by playing a taped interview of Michael Moore talking about his movie, \”Fahrenheit 9/11.\” I had suggested that the class go see the film, so we could discuss it.
Where can you see all-in-good-fun Jewish stereotypes spoofed alongside 1970s kitsch, such as waterbeds, fondue parties, disco, leisure suits and bad perms?
In the sleeper hit \”Elf,\” Buddy (Will Ferrell) is a lovable\nchildlike oaf, raised by elves, who returns to New York to find his real father\nand spread Christmas cheer. It\’s a hip, witty, charming fairy tale that, like\nmuch of Christmas cinema, was created by Jews.
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.
When veteran producer Tom Rosenberg read Philip Roth\’s 2000 novel, \”The Human Stain,\” he immediately vowed to turn it into a movie. Roth, considered one of America\’s greatest living writers, was his literary hero; the novelist \”not only chronicles what it is to be Jewish in America, he chronicles America,\” Rosenberg, 56, said.
For his third slice of \”Pie,\” Adam Herz upgraded to wedding cake because \”I was hosting bachelor parties and going to like, 10 weddings a year.\”
In his 86th year and in his 86th movie, Kirk Douglas has fulfilled a long-cherished dream by uniting his clan in the film, "It Runs in the Family."
At one point in Jonathan Kesselman\’s \”Jewish exploitation\” comedy, \”The Hebrew Hammer,\” Mordechai Jefferson Carver strides into a seedy skinhead bar wearing a long leather coat, a black fedora, pais, a tallit and an oversized gold chai. A chalkboard advertises beer on tap such as Old Adolf, but the titular superhero orders \”Manischewitz, straight up.\” Then he crashes a bottle over the bartender\’s head, whips out two sawed-off shotguns and shouts, \”Shabbat Shalom, Motherf——s!\”\n\nIn this outrageous world of the Hammer (Adam Goldberg), the Orthodox Jewish hero must battle the evil son of Santa (Andy Dick) to save Chanukah.
Oscar night is almost upon us, and there is considerable talk (and pride) about three of the chief contenders — Halle Berry, Will Smith and Denzel Washington — all of whom are black. But don\’t be fooled: Hollywood and the film industry is still primarily a Jewish story, no matter who deserves and carts off the evening\’s prizes.
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