← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · weisbrot
Thread ID: 4658 | Posts: 12 | Started: 2003-01-28
2003-01-28 17:04 | User Profile
Jarecki's tikkun olam leads him to defend a poor misunderstood pedophile. Simply amazing how the community turned against him and created "hysteria"- it just has to be more of those evil uncultured Gentiles acting out against Those Who Can Do No Wrong. Maybe the Hebrew Hammer will set things right.
Just before Christmas a local superpatriot "conservative" talk radio jock played Adam Sandler's screeching rendition of "O Holy Night". This version basically lampoons the hymn and its premise; the fambly-values host and his radio team laughed uproariously each time the song was played. These increasingly frequent attacks on traditional Christian culture by TWCDNW are always celebrated as irreverent social comment/satire, as opposed to the outright declarations of contempt they really are. The evangelicals protest the Hollywood atheists, or sometimes go far enough to criticize the "moral relativists", then pony up more dollars to support Israel/bring on Armageddon. Republican-brand "conservatives" shake their head, then team up with the neocons to bring about the necessary and inevitable war for endless peace. Maybe they'll entertain their sophisticated moderate impulses next year and vote for Lieberman; he's sure to clean up them G-wdless Hollywood atheists.
[url=http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.01.17/fast2.html]http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.01.17/fast2.html[/url]
JANUARY 17, 2003 | current issue | back issues | subscribe |
Jewish Films To Watch at Sundance By JADE CHANG The Sundance Legend has become as much a part of Hollywood lore as the Lana Turner at Schwabs story: An upstart with a vision maxes out four credit cards, borrows his neighbor's movie camera, makes an independent film, takes it to the Sundance Film Festival, sells it to a distributor and makes a million.
Andrew Jarecki brings to this year's Sundance a new kind of legend ââ¬â an indie who has already made a million ($388 million, to be exact, which is what AOL paid for his company, Moviefone, in 1999, keeping him on as CEO). The multitalented mogul, who has also penned and performed songs for the WB's late, lamented "Felicity," is showing his documentary "Capturing the Friedmans," one of several offerings topping the list of must-see films with Jewish themes.
Most of the filmmakers descending on Park City, Utah, this week probably aren't Internet millionaires but, like Jarecki, they'll be spending their 10 days at Sundance meeting with potential buyers and searching for distributors. When there are 134 full-length films in a score of different theaters, all scheduled on top of one another, advance buzz can often determine what gets seen and what is forgotten.
Buzz for "Friedmans" is strong. In 1987, New York Newsday broke the story of Arnold Friedman, an upper-middle-class high school teacher from Great Neck, Long Island, who was arrested as part of a federal sting operation against mail-order pornography. Friedman's wife ran a childcare center from their home; Friedman was also a buyer of child pornography. As detailed in "Capturing the Friedmans," during the arrest agents began to suspect that children who came to the Friedmans' home for day care and after-school computer classes were being abused. Jarecki was given surprising access to the family's home videos, which he uses to sort through the various versions of the truth regarding the charges. The filmmaker also examines the Great Neck community that turned against the Friedmans and the legal system that baffled them.
A Friedman figures in another Sundance documentary ââ¬â Andrei Friedman, who dropped his Hungarian- Jewish name for the more dashing moniker Robert Capa when he immigrated to Paris from Budapest. In "Robert Capa: In Love and War," acclaimed filmmaker Anne Makepeace re-creates the life and work of this legendary war photographer. When Friedman first arrived in Paris, "Robert Capa" was wholly imaginary ââ¬â a rich American photographer that he and his collaborator girlfriend invented to gain credibility. The ruse was quickly uncovered, but his work was so good that the young photographer took on the persona of Capa and went on to document the Spanish Civil War, the Sino-Japanese War, World War II and Israel's War for Independence.
"The Death of Klinghoffer," a film adaptation of John Adams's 1991 opera, focuses on a single incident, but it is as historically charged as Capa's photographs. In 1984, a group of armed Palestinian terrorists hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. All of the hostages were eventually released except for one, the wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer, a Jewish man from America, who was executed on board the ship. Adams's dramatization of the event premiered under intense scrutiny and was denounced by both Jews who thought it tried to advance the Palestinian cause and other opponents who called it a Zionist plot. Performances were canceled, debate reigned and the opera hasn't been performed in America in the past decade.
Director and screenwriter Penny Woolcock reworks the book, adding extra narrative and using archival footage to update the material and bring it to life onscreen. When "Death of Klinghoffer" opened in 1991, the Gulf War was just ending. With our current heightened awareness of terrorism it may take a brave distributor to bring this film to screen.
A welcome antidote to these weighty projects is "The Hebrew Hammer" ââ¬â first-time director Jonathan Kesselman's hilarious spoof of 1970s blaxploitation fare such as "Shaft" and "Superfly." Mordechai, played by Adam Goldberg, is an undercover Jewish superhero called into service when Santa's evil son, played by Andy Dick, tries to eliminate all holidays that might compete with Christmas, including Chanukah. Mordechai becomes ââ¬â what else? ââ¬â the Hebrew Hammer, described in the Sundance catalogue as a "badass mofo with chutzpah enough to kick ass for the Tribe. Sporting pais (earlocks) and black leather, he's a Manishewitz-slugging Semitic Superfly."
Kesselman should be getting plenty of offers at the festival. Star Goldberg is doing his share of promotion, telling talk show hosts that his favorite line in the script is "Shabbat shalom, motherf--ers!" With that addition to the tough-guy phraseology, "Go ahead, make my day" and "I'll be back" don't stand a chance.
The timeliness of "Klinghoffer," the sensational nature of "Capturing the Friedmans," the fact that Makepeace helmed the Capa documentary and pop culture's need of a superhero billed as the "baddest Heeb this side of Tel Aviv" mean that all four films are good bets to be picked up at the festival.
2003-01-28 17:07 | User Profile
Stories of an American family, with nothing to hide...
[url=http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/cl-et-horn20jan20,0,5827817.story?coll=cl-calendar]http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/cl-et-h...oll=cl-calendar[/url] January 20, 2003
SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL An American family, unvarnished In "Capturing the Friedmans," the filmmaker uses home movies to document how child porn and hysteria can cause a family's collapse.
By John Horn, Times Staff Writer
PARK CITY, Utah -- It's a Sundance Film Festival certainty: countless movies telling disquieting stories of picture-perfect families destroyed by adversity, teens facing terrible decisions, the personal price of dark secrets. The twist this year is that among these tales, one of the most dramatic isn't even a drama, but a documentary.
"Capturing the Friedmans" is an account of how both pedophilia and hysteria can topple an outwardly stable family. It's also a story about truth and dishonesty, of sacrifice and abandonment. The title holds two distinct meanings, because this is a movie not only about how the criminal justice system captures its suspects, but also how three generations of the Friedman family captures itself on film, videotape and audiocassettes.
In an era of reality TV, where little is left to shock, this footage is unnerving. These are home movies unlike any you have seen before, but not because they reveal anything sexual. They instead bare the family's emotions, the Friedmans' cameras rolling even after the father of this well-off family is arrested for allegedly possessing child pornography.
With the audience seeing first-hand how everyday people try to handle an extraordinary situation, "Capturing the Friedmans" essentially picks up where "An American Family" left off. Unlike the 1973 miniseries, the stakes are no longer a divorce and a son's coming out, but years in prison and total ruin.
"This is not a classic miscarriage-of-justice story," says Andrew Jarecki, the film's director and producer, even though it challenges many conclusions about the case. "It's a classic tragedy. It's a story of a father who in many ways was a good and noble person who clearly had a tragic flaw, which leads certainly to his undoing, but also his family's. It's a story about our responsibilities to our families."
The movie, which is playing in Sundance's documentary competition and which screened for the first time Friday night, certainly didn't start out that way.
A father of two boys, Jarecki was sucked into Manhattan's birthday party circuit, where wealthy parents spare nothing throwing the best bash for their 4-year-olds, including hiring the top clowns. "I wanted to figure out who these clowns were and where they came from," Jarecki says. More than three years ago, he decided to profile David Friedman, a legendarily popular children's entertainer.
He filmed David for six months, but whenever he asked him about his family, David stopped talking. Jarecki eventually persuaded David to take him to the Long Island house where he grew up, which had been sold to another family. Jarecki waited outside, and 20 minutes later, David wobbled out, clearly traumatized by some grim memory it held. When Jarecki interviewed David's mother, Elaine, she strangely said, "We were a family once," even though all three of her sons were still alive.
"When I heard that, I wanted to know why they stopped being a family," Jarecki says.
Jarecki, who made his fortune as the founder of Moviefone and is making his first documentary, started piecing together David's past. He eventually learned that David's father, Leonard, had been arrested in 1987 for allegedly possessing such pornographic magazines as Jail Bait and Incest. Yet those first charges were only the beginning of Leonard's, and all of the Friedmans', problems.
At first, Jarecki attempted to incorporate this new information into his documentary about a clown. It clearly didn't fit together. So he began work on another film. He tracked down law enforcement officials, neighborhood kids, lawyers -- anybody who could shed light on Leonard's arrest, and how his case snowballed toward his family.
Jarecki's most important asset was the Friedmans' home movies. They include fierce arguments, a riveting video diary, and a haunting "Cheek to Cheek" played by Arnold on the piano. Jarecki said he agonized about using the film, videotape and audiocassettes, fearful that he would make public a family's most private moments. "I thought there was a possibility I would make the film and never release it," Jarecki says.
He eventually decided that no matter how difficult the footage is to watch, the Friedmans wanted their story told.
It's unclear whether he was entirely successful. One of the three Friedman sons refused to participate. And while some other family members bravely attended the film's first Sundance screening, David was noticeably absent. "He continues to be in a quandary about the film," Jarecki says.
"It is borderline exploitation," admits Jesse Friedman, one of the sons central to the documentary who supports the film. "But this is not the first big event that this family has been through. No one is supposed to air their dirty laundry, but we always had a sense we wanted to tell our story. And I don't feel like I have anything to hide." For that part, neither does the movie. Several distributors have expressed interest in the film. It could be in theaters before year's end.
2003-01-28 18:06 | User Profile
[url=http://movies.yahoo.com/news/fs/20030124/104345052800p.html]http://movies.yahoo.com/news/fs/20030124/1...345052800p.html[/url]
ââ¬ÅThatââ¬â¢s what is so fascinating about the shifting sands of the film, just me as an observer as this thing is going on, it is amazing to me that every one is so smart,ââ¬Â said Jarecki. ââ¬ÅThis is not some backwoods Appalachian family. This is a successful Jewish family. And yet, there are all these smart people and no one can agree on anything. So the information doesnââ¬â¢t matter. Information isnââ¬â¢t driving them. Needs are driving them.ââ¬Â
This is especially true in what Arnold reveals about himself throughout the film.
ââ¬ÅThere were some very personal things in Arnoldââ¬â¢s diary and if he werenââ¬â¢t so narcissistic, he would have never wanted them in a movie,ââ¬Â Jarecki noted. ââ¬ÅBut I think he would be pleased that theyââ¬â¢re in the movie.ââ¬Â
2003-01-28 23:41 | User Profile
Sundance started as an "independent" festival. But it hasn't been that for years. It is, for the most part, a jew-fest, of course. Of the "independent" films now shown, many of them have million dollar budgets. Not as expensive as studio films, but they are vanity pieces put together by the well connected already working in the biz, or by wealthy, well connected individuals who have decided to make their entry into Hollywood. Some non-jewish outsiders do get in, but invariably their films are exhibitions of the same, tired old themes that the chosenites feel they need to use as a hammer on those ignorant gentiles: Anti-semitism, homosexuality (always the coming of age, or misunderstood brilliant homo as one of the story lines), racism (non-Whites MAKING IT! despite prejudice and interference from ignorant Whites), the Holocaust™ and so on.
ââ¬ÅThis is not some backwoods Appalachian family. This is a successful Jewish family." Is there any jewish family that could succeed on its own, without the aid of the tribe, without the nepotism/cronyism that moves them into successful posts, good schools, and the like? Doubtful. Despite all their braggadocio, they are an unconfident bunch without the mass of the hive behind them. I'll credit them for the support they give each other, but the disingenuous arrogance is sickening. Imagine if one wrote "This isn't about some loud jewish family always squabbling and shouting each other down. It's about a backwoods Appalachin family working together to survive." Jarecki's "Moviefone" wasn't even the first service offering what it did (movie schedules over the phone, etc.) but it was the first one owned by a jew, and that helps when it comes to press and advertising, especially when it can become more expensive for your gentile competition.
2003-01-29 01:45 | User Profile
Father a pedophile high-school teacher.
Mother runs childcare center from home. Pink,innocent tykes paraded like sushi before child molester day in, day out.
Sons damaged neurotics; at least one has chosen ostensibly silly occupation which gives him constant access to children.
Family home movies' feature entire brood screaming at each other, eaten alive with neurotic hatred in their own private Buchenwaldon Long Island.
Jewish millionaire wannabe-filmmaker talks these deranged Jews into signing over their home movies to him; transfers home movies to 35mm stock, shows them at Sundance as "his" movie. Justifies entire loathsome enterprise with psychobabble like, "Information isnââ¬â¢t driving them. Needs are driving them."
Press, already nervous seeing the words "Jew" and "Friedman" appear a lot in the promo material, decide to revert to default setting, praise "film" reflexively.
The guy's right! This is a successful Jewish family!
2003-01-29 01:52 | User Profile
:P What about Cleopatra Shwartz?
"She was 6 feet of Black Dynamite...
He was a short, Hassidic Jew..."
(from Kentucky Fried Movie)
How soon we forget.....
2003-01-29 18:59 | User Profile
ââ¬ÅThis is not some backwoods Appalachian family. This is a successful Jewish family."
Where's that world-famous jew compassion for the poor underdog zhids like Jarecki are forever boasting about? For some strange reason it's always instantly transformed to smirking contempt when Whites are the poor ones.
When they look at an Appalachian "hillbilly", they see a maniacally grinning Slav peasant with a bloody sickle in his hand.
2003-01-29 19:17 | User Profile
When they look at an Appalachian "hillbilly", they see a maniacally grinning Slav peasant with a bloody sickle in his hand.
I hate to burst your bubble, palie, but do you think they see anything different when they look at you? Or me?. Or any other goy.
2003-01-29 21:08 | User Profile
Originally posted by eric von zipper@Jan 29 2003, 13:17 ** > When they look at an Appalachian "hillbilly", they see a maniacally grinning Slav peasant with a bloody sickle in his hand.
I hate to burst your bubble, palie, but do you think they see anything different when they look at you? Or me?. Or any other goy. **
No bubble to be burst there, I'm sure. No doubt Forrest is keenly aware of the contempt they have for us all, the hillbilly/slav being only an example, as it was used here.
2003-01-31 01:16 | User Profile
My father's family are Appalachian mountain people - palie.
2003-01-31 01:39 | User Profile
Dean Martin would be ashamed of all of you! (It's pally.)
2003-01-31 03:13 | User Profile
Originally posted by il ragno@Jan 30 2003, 21:39 ** Dean Martin would be ashamed of all of you! (It's pally.) **
Not in the hills.
Back home anyone saying pally gets a can of whupass opened up on him, even if he does know some guy named Guido.