January 15, 2012 | 10:14 pm

Top Jewish moments at the 2012 Golden Globes [UPDATED]

Posted by Danielle Berrin

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Ricky Gervais plays it safe. Harvey Weinstein is “God” and Seth Rogen admits “a massive erection” at the 2012 Golden Globe Awards.

Here’s a loose collection of memorable moments for Hollywood Jews and their tribal sensibilities at the annual ceremony everyone hates to love:

Howard Gordon takes home an award for best television series – drama, for “Homeland,” based on the Israeli format “Hatufim (Prisoners of War)” but does not even mention Israel in his acceptance speech! Instead, Gordon thanks his agent, Rick Rosen at WME (William Morris Endeavor) who brought him the show, Dana Walden and Gary Newman at 20th Century Fox, who had a first look deal with Gordon but graciously passed the show to Showtime for whom it was more suitable. Gordon also mentions David Nevins, “who has been the great champion of this show from the beginning” because Nevins picked up the show for Showtime in one of his first moves at the company after he left Imagine Entertainment (for the full story, tune in to my upcoming series on the deepening relationship between Hollywood and Israel).

Entertainment blogger Nikki Finke, who “live snarks” the ceremony writes: “Well the HFPA morons get at least one award right. Homeland was the best TV I’ve seen in a long, long time. Claire Danes was transformative. Damien Lewis even better than in Band Of Brothers. Mandy Patinkin not annoying like he usually is. Granted, it’s a remake of an Israeli show. But I’d follow 24‘s Howard Gordon anywhere that terrorism takes him.”

Madonna, clad in bulging biceps and decolletage, wins Best Original Song for writing and performing “Masterpiece,” the theme song from her directorial debut feature “W.E.,” which she also wrote. Though few will likely see the film (remember “Swept Away?” Neither do I), Madge thanks her distributor Harvey Weinstein, for giving her a chance to be even more smug about her talents. She calls him “The Punisher.” A reaction shot from the crowd shows Weinstein cracking up.

Peter Dinklage wins Best Supporting Actor for a Television Series – Drama, for “Game of Thrones” created by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, and although not Jewish, appreciates his mother’s admonition that his competitor, Guy Pierce would win for “Mildred Pierce.” “We love our moms cause they keep us humble,” Dinklage said wryly.

Steven Spielberg wins Best Animated Feature for “The Adventures of Tintin,” which I haven’t seen but must be better than “War Horse,” and thanks fellow M-O-T studio chiefs: “I want to thank two studios that really proved the adage that Peter [Jackson] and I could have made the telephone book if we wanted to: I want to thank Amy Pascal and Michael Lynton and…Brad Grey [Paramount] for his courage.” Finke notes the diplomacy in Spielberg’s speech, adding her comment: “Hilarious, considering that Steven et al at DreamWorks did everything they could to get Grey fired when Paramount owned them.”

Standing beside a beautiful Kate Beckinsale, the recently married Seth Rogen (Rabbi Sharon Brous performed the nuptials) admits trying to “conceal a massive erection,” at which point Beckinsale blushes and begins to giggle uncontrollably.

The incomparable Woody Allen wins Best Screenplay for “Midnight in Paris,” topping Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin’s “Moneyball” and Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants” but true to form, does not show to receive his award. This prompts presenter Nicole Kidman to flip her hair and chide, “Come and get it, Woody.”

Madonna presents the Best Foreign Film award to the Iranian film, “A Separation,” which beats Angelina Jolie’s stellar debut feature “In the Land of Blood and Honey” and Yimou Zhang’s “The Flowers of War.” The filmmakers thank the Iranian people, whom, among much political friction between the U.S. and the rapidly nuclearizing nation, they insist are “a peace-loving people.”

Claire Danes wins Best Actress for Television Series—Drama, for her starring role as a suspicious, bipolar CIA agent on “Homeland.” Her performance is pretty exceptional; she does crazy well, but everytime I see her break down, I am haunted by the final scene of “Romeo and Juliet” when her ridiculously overwrought sobbing turned Shakespearean tragedy into melodramatic camp. Danes says, “I first won this award when I was 15 for ‘My So Called Life’ and I was stunned and utterly overwhelmed, and the first thing I did when I walked offstage was burst into tears because I realized I forgot to thank my parents.” Tonight, however, she had a second chance, since her mother was her date. “Any fulfillment I have as a person and an actor I owe in large part to you,” she said, adding thanks to her husband, British actor Hugh Dancy “who keeps me sane and happy as I play someone who is not so sane and happy.” Danes also thanks Gideon Raff, the creator of the original Israeli format “Hatufim” and a co-writer on “Homeland” but again, no mention of Israel. The horror! The horror!

Octavia Spencer wins Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama for her role as a beleaguered housekeeper in “The Help” and is the only award winner the entire evening to draw attention to the marginalized. In a timely tribute to the slain civil rights leader, Spencer quoted Martin Luther King Jr.: “Martin Luther King Jr. once said, ‘All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance,” and then thanked the film’s champions, among them Steven Spielberg and his second-in-command, Stacey Snyder, “Everybody at Dreamworks, everybody,” Spencer said.

“Modern Family” once again snags Best TV Series Comedy or Musical and creator Steve Levitan and actress Sofia Vergara traded off acceptance speech lines in a mock bilingual joke where Levitan appeared to be translating Vergara’s words, though he was really telling Hollywood film actresses to give their phone numbers to “pasty and nervous and out-of-shape” writers who, according to Levitan, make great lovers. Finke seems to have a crush: “Not only is Steve Levitan gorgeous, but he’s also the only genuinely funny guy 24/7 in Hollywood. (As Brad Grey when he was a manager once said about his client Levitan: ‘He’s the only Jewish guy I know who’s a 40 tall.’)”

Meryl Streep, in her acceptance speech for Best Actress for playing Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady,” said, “I just want to thank my agent, Kevin Huvane, and God—Harvey Weinstein – ‘The Punisher.’ Old testament, I guess…” Weinstein is back on top after a few destabilizing years filled with financial woe. Many in the industry were about to write him off, but as Finke writes, “Now he’s The Don again.”

Case in point: “The Artist” by Michel Hazanavicius and produced by The Weinstein Company wins Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.

George Clooney wins Best Actor for Motion Picture Drama for Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants” (Payne considers himself “1/16th Jewish” and has visited Israel several times), and the film also wins Best Motion Picture – Drama. But the best line comes when Clooney thanks fellow nominee Michael Fassbender for taking on the full-frontal nudity mantle in “Shame” by suggesting he play golf by swinging his body side to side.

If the Globes are any indicator, it looks like the Oscars will be a face off between “The Artist” and “The Descendants.”

Spotted:
WME founding partner Ari Emanuel, standing at the top of the stairs during a crowd shot
Universal Pictures chief Ron Meyer sitting against the wall dividing the all-important movie stars and the fringe TV hoi polloi
Sony Pictures Co-Chair Amy Pascal sitting next to Brad and Angelina
Sony Chair and CEO Michael Lynton (and author of the Newsweek rabbi list) sitting near George Clooney
And Harvey Weinstein, who got almost as many close-ups as Angelina Jolie

Alessandra Stanley writes in the New York Times:

Under all the froth, fuss and Champagne fizz, the Golden Globes are a sideshow that has swelled by straining and striving for industry relevance. Mr. Gervais put it less delicately. The Golden Globes are to the Oscars, he said, what Kim Kardashian is to Kate Middleton, “a bit louder, a bit trashier, a bit drunker and more easily bought.”

The Golden Globes are also a little like the Iowa caucuses: neither contest is a reliable harbinger, both are decided in a mystifying process by an unrepresentative group of voters, and yet merely by being first and so closely watched, both matter. So much so that eventual winners, like presidential candidates, almost always show up.

Indeed, the stars were out in full force last night: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, George Clooney and his latest arm candy girlfriend, Stacy Keibler, Madonna, Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis and Sacha Baron Cohen. The star power attracts the television audience (according to Finke, the HFPA and the telecast producer, Dick Clark Productions make approximately $30 million on the Globes), and the ceremony is often ridiculed and derided for pandering to movie stars and powerful studios

The best thing about the Golden Globes is what Stanley calls “the scrim of informality” which is aided and abetted by one thing: the presence of alcohol. Lots of it. It may not be as prestigious as the Oscars but it looks like much more fun.

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November 7, 2011 | 9:21 am

Robert De Niro to play Bernie Madoff in adaptation of Andrew Madoff’s book

Posted by Danielle Berrin

Last week, after a series of revealing interviews, Andrew Madoff released his book, “Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family,” an inside-look at the private pain of the family in the aftermath of their patriarch’s fall from grace. Film rights to the book were immediately scooped up by HBO, who then signed Robert De Niro to star in the film. It has also been reported that De Niro’s Tribeca Productions will produce what is ostensibly the first mainstream rendering of Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme, relying on his son’s tell-all as source material.

A spate of books about the Madoff scandal has thrust the family back into the spotlight, though it has not been a forgiving comeback. During a recent appearance on 60 Minutes, while enduring Morley Safer’s repeated charges as to whether she knew anything about Bernie’s scheme, Ruth Madoff seemed tired, her words drawn and slow, as if she were sedated. In a separate interview, Andrew clung tightly to his fiance, Catherine Hooper, the author of the family biography and who, as Andrew reported, will be the beneficiary of the book’s profits. The family’s opening up comes two years after Bernie’s confession and arrest and almost one year after the suicide of Andrew’s brother, Mark.

De Niro seems a smart choice for the Madoff role, though any actor is in danger of imbuing Madoff with more humanity than he possessed. It is unclear how much Madoff’s Jewish identity will factor into his characterization, though his disgrace came with plenty of accusations about Jewish power and corruption on Wall Street. Will the film address this theme in any significant way? Or rely on stereotypical allusions and insults? On the one hand, Madoff’s scheme confirms anti-Semitic notions about Jewish relationships to wealth; but on the other hand, Bernie Madoff was a tremendous source of shame for the community and is not emblematic of any macro-concepts about Jewish power. He is part of the Jewish community, yes, but he is the snake in the Garden of Eden.

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November 1, 2011 | 11:15 am

Why Kim Kardashian’s fairy tale failed

Posted by Danielle Berrin

I admit it: I watched the Kim Kardashian “fairy tale” wedding last week. I was about a month late, I know, but it was still pre-divorce, and as fantasies go, this multi-million dollar extravaganza looked more like a nightmare. The designer Vera Wang, who designed not one, but three, wedding gowns for Kardashian could barely conceal her distaste for the laughable frolic that was The Kardashian Wedding, evinced, plain as day, when the entire clan of Kardashian/Jenner women visited her Los Angeles store for Kim’s fitting.

After two, not exactly painful but fascinating hours observing the Kardashian antics, I can tell you that no licensed professional was necessary to determine that the relationship between Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries had no chance – excuse the vulgarity – in hell. There was barely flint between these two, let alone a kinetic spark, and I half wondered why they got together in the first place. To label their union an actual “relationship” is too generous and aggrandizing. What they were enacting was no fairy tale, but a delusional fantasy in which the obscene preoccupation with a façade celebration won out over the love, knowing and trust required for a lifetime of commitment.

The irony in all this – the reason millions of people watch “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” – is it purports to represent “reality”. But there is nothing about the Kardashians’ lives that is reality-like. How many people in this world, at age 30, wear 20-carat diamond rings, fly a private jet full of their girlfriends to a bachelorette party in Las Vegas, and have three – three! – custom-made Vera Wang gowns created for their wedding? Kim Kardashian’s fairy tale is not a fantasy about romance, it’s a fantasy about consumption.

If the Kardashian wedding has anything to teach, it’s simple: Loving stuff more than people does not a marriage make. Kim is aesthetically pleasing to gaze at, yes, but she is repulsive to spend time with. Her false masquerade of marriage with Humphries stands in stark contrast to her sister Khloe’s marriage, who with NBA star Lamar Odom, actually seems to have a relationship based on real things, like communication, friendship and love. There is hope for the family name yet.

Which is also a bit ironic, since in the big 2-hour wedding special, Kim and Kris have what constitutes their most serious dispute over whether Kim will change her name to Humphries. At first, she says ‘yes,’ as a kind of gift to her fiancé who she deems “very traditional.” But when her mother (and business manager) Kris Jenner chimes in with rebuke and disapproval, followed by her sisters, Kim recants. A disappointed Humphries tells the soon-to-be-married woman it’s time she learn to make decisions on her own. And then he gives her the best advice of all: “Grow up.”

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October 25, 2011 | 11:37 am

Is Anton Yelchin the next leading man?

Posted by Danielle Berrin

That’s what a New York magazine profile of Russian-Jewish actor Anton Yelchin suggests. But thus far, Yelchin is best known for supporting performances in J.J. Abrams’s “Star Trek” and 2009’s “Terminator Salvation”. His next film may change that, since he plays the romantic lead in Drake Doremus’s long-distance love story “Like Crazy” which won the Grand Jury Prize at least year’s Sundance Film Festival. The film is intimate and intense, with scenes that finely detail the nuances of young love, but it fails to boil the blood. While Yelchin plays a lovelorn American separated by immigration law from his British gal-without-a-green-card, he actually seems far more interesting in person, with a penchant for profanity.

“Indie symbolizes that you are not a dominant order? Bullshit!” Yelchin says. The worst, he adds, are “those fashion stores in L.A. that have a music section and a DVD section—everything a cool person should know. Some Godard because he’s French and that’s cool. But not Fellini’s films. Why?”

Throughout the piece, Yelchin rails against capitalism and details an experimental film he’s making about “the clash between commodification and identity”. He states (somewhat ironically) that images are “the most important commodity in our culture.” Acting, he likes, though he is not fond of celebrity or photographs, because they feed into the commodification of images which he distrusts. Observing a scene of college girls sitting in the grass, playing with their iphones, Yelchin posits some dark under-web of disorder brewing beneath the benevolent surface. Logan Hill writes:

He stops talking for just a few seconds, looks around this beautiful day, the college kids lolling in the grass, reading books, reordering playlists on their iPhones. “I mean, you see all those young, pretty girls,” he says. “At least one of them has some crazy, deep-dark weird shit that’s being contained by this capitalist façade. If you just crack through it, it becomes a sea of complete and utter darkness and just chaos. Which is what we are as people, I think.”

On screen, Yelchin comes off with a kind of naive innocence, an almost feminine frailty that is tender and sweet, but lacks the swagger that makes women swoon. Is this leading man material?

The story sets him up that way, because apparently there’s a shortage of those in today’s Hollywood (the same thing is often said about Ryan Gosling who much more aptly fits the bill in my opinion) but Yelchin does not give off that cool, hard masculinity romantic leads require. He’d be better cast as some slightly bizarre computer genius who’s part of an underground anti-government rebellion. He obviously resents power structures.

But even though he speaks about capitalism as if it were a dark, sadistic force, he is clear on his appreciation for what his Russian-Jewish immigrant parents sacrificed so that he could reap the benefits of the American Dream:

“I’m fascinated by how ethnic communities have assimilated into massive capitalist environments,” says Yelchin, reflecting on our walk through junk-filled dollar stores in Toronto’s Chinatown and comparing it to Blade Runner. When Yelchin was 6 months old, his Russian-Jewish parents, Irina Korina and Viktor Yelchin, stars of the Leningrad Ice Ballet, moved to California. “There’s no one I respect as much or love as much,” he says. “What they went through? Standing at the edge of an abyss: You don’t know the language, the country; you don’t know if you’re going to get a job because you have this weird profession. You’re an ice-skater! And they just did it, because they didn’t want me having a shitty life.”

The guilt factor was huge. His parents wanted him to be a lawyer or doctor—“that standard Russian-Jewish thing”—and Yelchin says that he became an actor so young in part because he wanted to pay his own bills. “Now part of my guilt is already taken care of.” He loves acting and loves the independence, but he’s troubled by celebrity. “I don’t hang out at trendy Hollywood bars,” he says.

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October 21, 2011 | 2:17 pm

The Occupy movement hits Hollywood—at Fox Studios

Posted by Danielle Berrin

Hundreds of protesters overtook the sidewalks outside 20th Century Fox Studios on Pico Boulevard and Motor Avenue to protest what they consider objectionable practices being carried out by Rupert Murdoch and his media empire, News Corp. “Occupy Fox Studios” was timed to coincide with the company’s annual shareholder meeting, which was taking place inside, and where, reportedly, some shareholders had planned to introduce a motion against the reappointment of Rupert Murdoch and his sons.

Amid chants of “This is what democracy looks like” and signs that read, “News Corp. is not above the law” a cohort of watchdog groups and media advocacy organizations voiced their grievances with News Corp. over the phone hacking scandal and what they perceive as the company’s outsized political influence.

“Get big media out of politics,” chanted one protestor.

Dave Saldana, communications director for the media reform group Free Press, based in Washington D.C. said, “It is a real danger to democracy when politicians curry favor with news organizations and vice versa, creating a vicious cycle of money, media and politics that leaves the public out of the picture.”

Citing the first amendment, Saldana spoke out against media and government collusion, insisting that the purpose of media is to hold governments accountable. But, he said, it is not News Corp. alone that is to blame. “About five major organizations control all of cable, news, television, internet, radio and film media in this country, and these organizations are not responsible to the public, they’re responsible to shareholders and their interests.”

Saldana said he would like to see shareholders “vote with their conscience and not with their pocketbooks.”

As chants about corporate tyranny and media destruction of democracy continued, Murdoch endured a grilling at the shareholders meeting. According to The Guardian, Tom Watson, the Labour member of British Parliament who led the charge into investigating the News of the World phone-hacking scandal flew to LA promising to hold Murdoch’s feet to the fire. “I want to leave investors in no doubt that News Corporation is not through the worst of this yet and there are more questions for the Murdochs to answer,” he told The Guardian.

At the meeting, Murdoch reportedly said there is “no excuse” for the events that led to the hacking scandal and he promised to continue “confronting” the issue.

“If we hold others to account, then we must hold ourselves to account… which is why we have devoted so many resources to get to the heart of this matter… and why I am personally determined to right whatever wrong has been committed and to ensure that it does not happen again anywhere in our company,” Murdoch said, according to reporters from TheWrap.com who attended the meeting.

On the street, in front of wall-to-wall advertisements for the Fox shows “Glee” and “New Girl” protesters unequivocally called for Murdoch’s resignation.

Brianna Cayo-Cotter, 30, an organizer with the citizen-led web movement Avaaz.org, which coordinates global campaigns concerning myriad issues, said Murdoch and his shareholders have a moral obligation to listen to the voice of the public. “Media is a public good,” Cayo-Cotter said. “[Murdoch] may dismiss this protest, but it would be grossly arrogant for Murdoch to ignore some of his top shareholders.”

Cayo-Cotter said it is an affront to democracy when media organizations are permitted to buy political influence. “News Corp. is without a doubt the largest, most powerful and most dangerous news organization in the world,” she said. “And it is acting in a criminal and deeply irresponsible fashion. No one should own 70 percent of a country’s newspapers.”

Also at the protest, Hollywood Jew ran into rabbis Dara Frimmer and Joel Nickerson from Temple Isaiah, a reform congregation located several blocks from the Fox lot, who had come to check out the commotion.

“There is a deep Jewish tradition to identify people who are marginalized or made invisible and to recognize them,” Frimmer said of the Occupy movement. It is a Jewish imperative, she said, to “bring them back into the center where they can fully participate in our shared community.”

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October 5, 2011 | 6:09 pm

A Jewish meditation on the death of Steve Jobs

Posted by Danielle Berrin

A light at Apple has gone dark. The sole image on its homepage is of its long shining star, Steve Jobs, who died today after an extended battle with pancreatic cancer.

Just yesterday, I was sitting with a friend who was delivering the play-by-play on Apple’s iphone4 announcement with childlike excitement. I was sort of stunned that such an accomplished adult could descend into puerile giddy fascination in an instant: Was this a 10-year-old boy unwrapping a present or a 30-something director of award-winning films? Then I realized, as he read line-by-line, each new feature as it was announced, that he was being seduced. Grown-up style.

“That Steve Jobs,” I said. “He knows the art of seduction. Whatever will they do without him?”

Then my friend said, “I think there are some stars that are too bright to last a long time, like somehow it makes sense that such a brilliant star would burn, burn, burn and then explode. It’s too much to be contained.” 

I thought of so many stars—movie stars, music stars, literary stars, science stars—who die too soon. I thought of Amy Winehouse; and how a melancholy Tony Bennett recalled to Jon Stewart what a “real jazz singer” she was. I thought of Ralph Steinman, the Canadian-born Jewish biologist who was selected to receive a Nobel Prize in medicine—three days after he too, like Jobs, had died of pancreatic cancer.

Long-burning light is diminished over time; by its end, may barely light a room. But some stars blaze hot, bright, and luminously every moment of their existence, giving off brilliance and blessing to all who encounter them. What human being could store energy enough to deliver such a blaze indefinitely? Every passing day must meet the dark. But what cannot last, what is rare, is treasured and sacred.

Steve Jobs was such a star. And now his earthly light has joined eternal light.

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August 8, 2011 | 1:06 pm

Kanye West and his fetish with Jewish foes

Posted by Danielle Berrin

I wonder if Kanye West has read Mein Kampf. My guess is that he hasn’t, because if he had, he probably wouldn’t liken himself to Hitler.

But that is just what he did during an appearance at the U.K. music festival Big Chill this past weekend, when the rapper ranted: “I walk through the hotel and I walk down the street, and people look at me like I’m f—king insane, like I’m Hitler,” he told the crowd gathered at Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire for the three-day music show.

According to CNN, the crowd responded by booing the outspoken buffoon.

No doubt some of West’s behavior (and even some of his music) could be considered oppressive. For instance, he doesn’t seem to like women very much. Remember the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards when he wouldn’t let Taylor Swift get a word in edgewise? And then there was the release earlier this year of his “Monster” video which features a lot of dead women lying around in lingerie. I wouldn’t say he’s a model citizen; he may even be despised—and for good reason. In “Monster” he cries, “Everybody knows I’m a motherf———monster.”

Misogynistic, angry and insecure seem apt adjectives for the superstar rapper. But genocidal dictator? Not so much. The idea that West is “as evil” as Hitler is so preposterous a comparison I’m almost embarrassed to repeat it. If the two have anything in common, I’d say it’s sheer megalomania. But the guy does seem to have a thing for notorious enemies of the Jews: A lyric in “Monster” wonders: “Have you ever had sex with a Pharoah?”

Um, no thanks, I’ll pass.

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