Archive
A smattering of ignorance
By David Amos
David Amos
SAN DIEGO–As a writer of this column, I get to go to concerts, hear new recordings, read new books, and share with you insights and personal observations which may shed light on musical subjects. But this time, it is different. For some unexplained brainstorm, I felt the urge to go to my library and pick up an old book that I have owned for decades, but for whatever reason, never got around to reading.
The result was the delightfully witty A Smattering of Ignorance by Oscar Levant. In case you are not familiar with this name, here is a brief summary as to who he was.
Oscar Levant was born in Pittsburgh in 1906 to Orthodox Jewish Russian immigrants, and became a respected and popular Jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and a relentless promoter of his idol, George Gershwin. What made him such an entertaining personality and a favorite of the press was his outrageous behavior, colorful, witty vocabulary, and hilarious quotes which are in still use today. Levant acted in several films, most notably in An American in Paris, and is recognized as one of the greatest Gershwin interpreters. In the 1950’s he hosted a television talk show from a Los Angeles station (which I remember seeing as a teenager), but his program was discontinued after he made off-color, but clever remarks about other famous stars. He was a frequent guest in NBC’s Tonight Show, which at the time was hosted by Jack Paar.
I have his memorable long-play recording of the Rhapsody in Blue, and the Concerto in F. He was seen in thirteen films, playing the piano and acting, and recorded over 100 albums.
Levant’s first book, A Smattering of Ignorance, was published by Doubleday in 1939, quickly became a national best seller, and was called “brilliant” by Clifton Fadiman of the New York Times. It is a series of essays on Levant’s various life experiences, his early days, his studies (which included years of lessons with none other than Arnold Schoenberg), his encounters with famous musicians and show business personalities, such as Harpo Marx, and above all, his relationship with Gershwin and his family.
There are a few aspects of this book which I found fascinating. First, were Levant’s explanations on how music was scored for films. He details the relationships between the producers, directors, composers of film scores, and the roles of the arrangers. In the 1930’s and still today, not all film composers write all the music, all the tunes, and choose which instruments of the orchestra will play the arrangement. Many times, the latter is the job of the orchestrator, or arranger, who may actually be the person to bring out the greatness of a particular film score. For example, in many of the Rodgers and Hammerstein hit Broadway musicals, the orchestrations were done by a composer who may be remembered as the best ever at what he did, Robert Russell Bennett. Just look at your R&H musicals in albums which you may have at home, and you’ll see Bennett’s name there.
Also Levant details how film composers relied on familiar sounds already created by famous classical composers. You want a “French” sound? Imitate Debussy. You want the open prairie for a Western? What could be better than the familiar sound of Copland? Many other examples are given, together with entertaining and at times amazing anecdotes. He called these musical scores “generic” or “derivative”, probably differentiating between imitation of other styles, and open-faced stealth of musical material. He also credits truly original material.
He spoke of the famous producer, Daryll Zanuck, whom he described as “a man who knows, unfortunately, what he wants”. He wrote about the Russian born composer Sam Pokrass who struggled to be understood: “His mother tongue was broken English!” His detailed descriptions of being a guest many, many evenings at the home of Harpo Marx are also revealing. During the 1930’s Hollywood and Los Angeles became the home of many great creative minds, in music and other disciplines. This was in part driven by the many refugees from Nazi Germany who sought refuge and work in the U.S., the emergence of Hollywood as the film capital, and the changing opportunities in the New York area. The nicer weather helped too.
Just imagine the cccollection of great musicians which sought refuge and work opportunities in the West Coast: Arnold Schoenberg, Miklós Rósza, Erich W. Korngold, Otto Klemperer, Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky, Artur Rubinstein, Gershwin, Bronislaw Kaper, Max Steiner, and many, many others, to say nothing of other artists, authors, scientists, entrepreneurs, and actors. The list is endless. All of the above met socially, played tennis and ping-pong, exchanged ideas and opinions, artistic and political, worked with each other, and enjoyed each others’ company. They also received frequent visits from Easterners, Copland, Morton Gould, publishers, and impresarios. All of this is vividly explained in the book.
It’s hard for me to visualize an encounter between Fanny Bryce and Schoenberg, possibly the most austere and misunderstood of the great composers. But, at the death of Gershwin, Schoenberg delivered this eulogy in a broadcast: “George Gershwin was one of this rare kind of musicians to whom music is not a matter of more or less ability. Music to him was the air he breathed, the food which nourished him, the drink that refreshed him. Music was what made him feel, and music was the feeling he expressed. Directness of this kind is given only to great men, and there is no doubt that he was a great composer. What he achieved was not only to the benefit of a national American music, but also a contribution to the music of the whole world.” These words ring true even more today.
Oscar Levant was married twice, first in the 1930’s, a marriage that as expected, lasted less than seven months, and then to June Gale, with whom, in spite of their highly publicized spats, he remained married until his death in 1972, . He was notorious for speaking about his prescription drug addictions, neuroses, mental hospital treatments, and hypochondria. They had three daughters. Levant is credited with so many quotes and quips that are worth recalling. I will share some of them with you in the next issue of San Diego Jewish World. Meanwhile, all the best for the New Year, Shana Tova, and Tizku L’Shanim Rabot.
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Amos is conductor of the Tifereth Israel Community Orchestra in San Diego and has guest conducted numerous professional orchestras around the world.
Astronaut Garrett Reisman to lift off San Diego Jewish Film Festival Aug. 29
SAN DIEGO (Press Release) – An Article of Hope, the first film for the 21st Annual San Diego Jewish Film Festival, will be screened on August 29 at 7:15 p.m. at the David & Dorothea Garfield Theatre at the Lawrence Family JCC, Jacobs Family Campus.
Sponsored by the Leichtag Family Foundation, the featured speaker following the screening of the one-hour film is astronaut Garrett Reisman, the first Jewish crew member on the International Space Station. Reisman will highlight the events that led to the filming of An Article of Hope. The film’s director, Dan Cohen, will also participate in a discussion session.
On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia broke up above Texas on its way to a Florida homecoming. Its seven astronauts from around the world, including Colonel Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut, all perished.
Also destroyed was a very special artifact that had survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during the Holocaust: the tiny Torah scroll that Colonel Ramon carried into space. An Article of Hope explores the journey of the Torah from pre-World War II Europe, to Israel, and then into space.
Dr. Reisman, a native of New Jersey, earned his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from California Institute of Technology in 1997 and was selected by NASA as a Mission Specialist in 1998. He was a backup crew member for Expedition 15 and joined Expedition 16 aboard the International Space Station for a short time before becoming a member of Expedition 17. Reisman sent a greeting from space to the people of Israel during the celebration of Israel 60th Independence Day in May 2008. He returned to Earth in June 2008 on board STS-124 on the Space Shuttle Discovery. He was also a member of the STS-132 mission that travelled to the International Space Station aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis from May 14 to 26, 2010.
Reisman, a self-proclaimed member of the “Colbert Universe,” was interviewed live from space on the May 8, 2008 episode of The Colbert Report after being seen wearing a “WristStrong” bracelet. After returning to Earth, Reisman appeared in person on The Colbert Report as that night’s featured guest. Reisman presented Stephen Colbert with the WristStrong bracelet he had worn while in space. Reisman also filmed a cameo appearance as a Colonial Marine for the series finale episode of Battlestar Galactica.
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Preceding provided by the San Diego Center for Jewish Culture
Documentary follows Greenberg, Koufax, other Jewish baseball icons
Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story, directed by Peter Miller, narrated by Dustin Hoffman, produced by Clear Lake Historical Productions.
By Donald H. Harrison
Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – A new documentary, sure to hit the circuit of Jewish film festivals is Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story. Although actor Dustin Hoffman is the off-camera narrator, the real star power comes from Jewish major leaguers, alive and dead, whose skillfully edited interviews provide first-person perspective on a story that began in the late 1800s and continues to this day.
The longest segments of the 91-minute documentary cover the careers of Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax, but plenty of other Jewish players appear in this work of love including Buddy Myer, Harry Danning, Norm Sherry, Ron Blomberg, Shawn Green, and Kevin Youkilis.
The essential thesis behind the documentary is that Jews love America, nothing is more American than baseball, and that success in baseball represents success in America.
There are some great tidbits along the way, and one not so bad pun. Did you know that the Bible contains the first account of baseball? Yup, it’s right there in Genesis, which starts “In the Big Inning.”
The first known Jewish baseball player was Lipman Pike, who played for various teams in the 30 years following the U.S. Civil War. The first Jew to appear on a baseball card was pitcher Barney Pelty of the St. Louis Browns, who pitched during the first two decades of the 1900s. The New York Giants recruited Jewish players in the 1920s, to win Jewish fans. Moses Solomon, a big home run hitter, was dubbed “the rabbi of swat,” which was a rhetorical challenge to Babe Ruth of the cross-town Yankees, who was known as the “sultan of swat.” Another giant Giant was Andy Cohen, who was so popular at the Polo Grounds they sold “Ice Cream Cohens.”
Here’s some impressive trivia: The second-most sung song in the world behind “Happy Birthday” is “Take Me Out To the Ballgame,” which was composed by the Jewish musician Albert Von Tilzer.
These kind of factoids were warm ups for the story about Hank Greenberg, which his son, Steve, assisted in telling. Described as the first Jewish baseball superstar, Greenberg was a 6’4 first baseman who spent most of his major league career with the Detroit Tigers. In 1934, he set a precedent for Sandy Koufax, when he decided not to play on Yom Kippur. Rosh Hashanah, ten days earlier, was another matter. A rabbi found some biblical precedent to permit him to play, and Greenberg hit two homeruns that day to beat the Boston Red Sox.
Abstaining on Yom Kippur prompted some doggerel about Greenberg:
We shall miss him in the infield
We’ll miss him at bat.
But he’s true to his religion
And we honor him for that.
Not everyone honored Greenberg or other Jewish players, however. Catcalls like “Heeb!” “Kike!” “Throw him a pork chop!” plagued Greenberg, who occasionally did not turn the other cheek. In 1938, the year historians say was the beginning of the Holocaust with the Kristallnacht in Germany, Greenberg was chasing Babe Ruth’s single season record of 60 home runs. The documentary debunks the rumor that opposing teams were so anti-Semitic they refused to pitch to him. Pitch to them pitchers did, including Bob Feller, who was interviewed on camera about one of the last games of the season in which he faced—and tamed—Greenberg.
With anti-Semitism rampant in Nazi Germany and with some Bundists hoping to import similar hatred to the United States, Greenberg considered every good game he played – every home run – a way to show the world how wrong Nazi racial myths about Jews being inferior really were.
At the height of his career, Greenberg went into the Army to fight in World War II. “I’m in the Army now, and now I’m playing on Uncle Sam’s team,” he said in one news clip.
Greenberg played his last season when Jackie Robinson, the first African-American major leaguer, played his first. The documentary described a collision at first base when Robinson was running for a single. “Fans,” who were yelling cat calls at Robinson from the stands, wondered whether there would be a fight between the two men. Instead, Greenberg helped Robinson up, and told him not to worry about the invective some people screamed. They used to yell similar things at him, Greenberg told Robinson.
Greenberg mentored Al Rosen, and later disappointed him when he decided to trade Rosen from the Cleveland Indians, which Greenberg served as a general manager in his career off-the-field. Rather than be traded, Rosen decided to quit baseball, a sad chapter.
The story of Sandy Koufax’s career was the next large segment of the documentary. After his retirement, Koufax shrank from the limelight, so this interview is one of the longest—and most comprehensive—about the superstar Dodger pitcher, who threw a perfect game against the Chicago Cubs one season, and decided not to pitch on Yom Kippur in the 1965 World Series against the Minnesota Twins.
Don Drysdale pitched that World Series game instead, and got drubbed in the first two innings, giving up seven home runs. When manager Walter Alston came to the mound to take Drysdale out, the pitcher quipped that he’d “bet you wish I was Jewish too.”
In the 1950s and 1960s, baseball had a $100,000 salary cap—but Drysdale and Koufax decided to hold out together for a better salary, shutting out baseball owners who tried to resist their twin juggernaut. Eventually, their actions helped to empower the baseball players organization – led by Marvin Miller, another Jew.
There were quite a few Jewish owners in baseball, among them Charles Bronfman of Montreal, and Bud Selig of Baltimore, who eventually would go on to become Commissioner of Baseball.
Other Jewish baseballers included in the documentary were Art Shamsky of the 1969 Miracle Mets, Kenny Holtzman of the Chicago Cubs and Oakland Athletics, and Ron Blomberg, a first-round draft pick of the New York Yankees, who later in his career would become Major League Baseball’s first designated hitter.
One player who many folks believed had converted to Judaism was Rod Carew of the Minnesota Twins and California Angels. In fact, he had not, although Carew’s wife was Jewish and his two children were raised Jewish. Another African American who did convert to Judaism was Elliott Maddox, an infielder and outfielder who played on six major league teams, and quipped about his conversion: “I always considered myself a good two-strike hitter.”
In the 1990s, Shawn Green of the Los Angeles Dodgers was considered the standout Jewish baseball player, and in the 2000s, Kevin Youkilis of the Boston Red Sox has been a dominant player.
Not all the stories in the documentary were happy ones. Adam Greenberg was called up from the minors, and as a Chicago Cub pinch hitter, he was beaned on the very first pitch. The concussion he suffered knocked him out of baseball, although he has not given up on the idea of making a comeback.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World
The Jews Down Under~Roundup of Australian Jewish News
Garry Fabian
Compiled by Garry Fabian
Booksellers agree to pull books
MELBOURNE, 19 May - Three of Australia’s biggest book retailers this week agreed to pull a number of virulently anti-Semitic titles from their websites, following an investigation by a community watchdog.
Among the poisonous works that could be purchased on the Borders and Angus & Robertson websites were The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which alleges that Jews are plotting to take over the world, and The International Jew by Henry Ford,
which states: “Whichever way you turn to trace the harmful streams of influence that flow through society, you come upon a group of Jews.”
Visitors to the stores’ websites could also purchase Martin Luther’s The Jews and their Lies, in which the medieval theologian describes Jews as “base, whoring people, full of the devil’s feces, which they wallow in like swine.”
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, meanwhile, was also available online from Dymocks.
The investigation into the sale of hate literature on the net as part of the community alert to this type of display, and campaign against, cyber-racism.
After alerting the retailers to the pernicious nature of the books they were selling via their websites, on Tuesday all three agreed to withdraw them.
Dymocks buying manager Sophie Groom said: “We have taken the decision to remove the title from our website and this will be completed within the next two business days.”
Briony Lewis, general counsel for Redgroup Retail – the parent company of Borders and Angus & Robertson – also confirmed that the publications were being pulled.
The swift action taken by the retailers was welcomed by community leaders.
Expressing his disappointment that “such vehemently anti-Semitic and racist literature can be so easily obtained”, John Searle, president of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV), said: “Nevertheless, I’m pleased the bookstores concerned have immediately agreed and acknowledged that it’s inappropriate for such
books to be available. It is precisely the dissemination of this kind of material that leads to ongoing problems of vilification and racism within our community, which the JCCV, together with other organisations, is working to eradicate.”
The sentiment was echoed by Vic Alhadeff, CEO of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies.
“Given the disturbing ease with which the internet is abused and pernicious and racist material disseminated, it places an onus on all disseminators of information to exercise care and diligence over what they put out there,” he said.
“We therefore applaud these bookstores for their responsible approach when the issue was raised with them..”
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Cannes coup for small film maker
MELBOURNE, 19 May - Ariel Kleiman’s status as one of Australia’s fastest-rising film talents was confirmed with the recent announcement that his short film, Deeper Than Yesterday, will be screened at Critic’s Week as part of the Cannes Film Festival.
Critic’s Week has showcased films by up-and-coming filmmakers for nearly 50 years, and has given artists such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Jacques Audiard and Ken Loach their start.
Kleiman, 25, leaves for the French Riviera on Sunday, on the second stop of his festival-hopping itinerary.
In February, he was in Salt Lake City, Utah, for the Sundance Film Festival, where another short he wrote and directed, Young Love, won an honourable mention. He was also the director of photography on Muscles – a film by long-time friend Edward Housden – which has been nominated for the short film Palme d’Or.
“We make these films in a little bubble and we work pretty hard on them for quite a while,”Kleiman said. “So it’s definitely a nice feelingeven just to have it screened so other people can see it. It has been a crazy couple of months.”
And Kleiman will get his wish.
Cannes is comfortably the world’s most prestigious film festival and has long been considered a hotbed for talent-spotting and a launcher of careers.
Deeper Than Yesterday is one of seven shorts that will be screened as part of Critic’s Week, along with seven feature-length films. At nearly 20 minutes, Kleiman’s film is an awkward length and was too long to be considered in the short-film competition at Cannes.
“I was quite surprised [the film was selected for Critic's Week] because I thought Deeper might have been too long. I didn’t know how it would be accepted at film festivals, because it’s quite a commitment to watch for a short. I had low expectations.”
Set on a submarine, Deeper Than Yesterday is a Russian-language film that explores the effects of prolonged isolation on a group of sailors. As the men become increasingly savage towards one another, they discover the body of a woman floating in the water.
The film was the Victorian College of the Arts student’s third-year project and was shot in eight days with a Russian-speaking cast, comprised of security guards and members of a local Russian drama school.
“I wrote it in English and then we workshopped it with the actors. I understand Russian, but I
don’t speak it. The actors really made the script their own in Russian, which was great.”
On a tight production schedule that allowed little room for error, Kleiman and his crew spent eight days bunkered down in a decommissioned submarine docked near Hastings, on Victoria’s Western Port Bay. But it wasn’t the first choice for the film’s location.
“Originally when I thought of it, it was going to be about a group of fisherman that find a woman in the ocean, but we couldn’t find a fishing trawler that would let us shoot on there. But it was probably a blessing because the sub was amazing.”
Kleiman and his housemates – girlfriend Sarah Cyngler, the film’s production designer, and Benjamin Gilovitz, a producer – built corporate websites to pay for the making of the film.
Kleiman said sharehouse living inspired Deeper Than Yesterday. “I guess the concept of living with people and
being with the same people day in and day out, I think that might be where it came from.”
The exposure of Kleiman’s films has earned him a contract with Warp Films (which produced the 2006 indie hit This is England) to pen a feature, which he is currently writing with Cyngler.
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Change of guard at Victorian Zionist Council
MELBOURNE, 19 May – It’s the end of an era at the Zionist Council of Victoria (ZCV), with president Dr Danny Lamm announcing last week he will retire from the post at the next Annual Assembly.
The longest-serving president of the organisation, he has held the role for eight years, two longer than any of his predecessors.
“I have had a tremendous amount of job satisfaction doing the job on behalf of the community and Israel,” Dr Lamm said. “I look back on this period with only satisfaction.”
When asked why he is stepping down, he said simply “it’s time”.
Dr Lamm credited his board for “a really productive period”, that has included advances in advocacy, public speakers, improving the utilisation of Beth Weitzmann Community Centre
and the purchase of 304 Hawthorn Road, adjacent to the centre.
“I have had tremendous support from my board all the way through,” he said. “We have had a really good level of cooperation.”
Remaining chairman of Beth Weizmann Community Centre, Dr Lamm said his retirement from ZCV
would not be the end of his community work, revealing that he is in discussions with another organisation.
ZCV executive director Ginette Searle said that the organisation would announce a replacement
later this year to coincide with the Annual Assembly.
The ZCV is the main representative body for more than 59 Zionist organisations. It enables the expression of Zionism in Victoria.
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Court weighs weighty edifice issue
MELBOURNE, 21 May – The Sassoon Yehuda Sephardi Synagogue found itself fighting a Supreme Court injunction over a large sign on the synagogue’s facade last Friday.
Victoria’s Supreme Court dismissed the injunction asking for the signage, which identifies the St Kilda East centre as the “Lyndi and Rodney Adler Sephardi Centre”, to be removed before Saturday, when a ceremony was to be held in honour of one of the congregation’s founders, Jacques Balloul.
The prominent sign is a modification of an earlier, less conspicuous, version.
Costs of $5000 were awarded against the applicant, solicitor Dan Horesh, a nephew of Albert Sassoon Yehuda, the shul’s founder, who is the executor of his late uncle’s estate.
The estate last year launched legal action, claiming the founder was entitled to naming rights to the centre in perpetuity, based on donations he, and later his estate, have made.
A loan for an undisclosed amount was forgiven by the estate due to the centre’s financial
difficulties, and the centre is currently carrying another loan from the estate.
After the injunction was refused, Supreme Court Chief Justice Marilyn Warren, who heard the case, recommended the matter be resolved via a civil trial.
Rodney Adler, who is not a party to the case, told The AJN this week that when the shul approached him around 18 months ago, it was “in great financial trouble”. Pressed to help by Sephardi friends, the Adlers donated $150,000 in exchange for naming rights.
“I live in Sydney . I’m Ashkenazi . We don’t go to the shul, we’re not Melbourne people,” said Adler, who pleaded guilty in 2005 to criminal charges relating to his dealings over insurer HIH, and served 30 months in prison.
He bristled at comments made in court by Horesh’s lawyer David Sharp that the Adlers made the donation by way of “re-establishing themselves in society, particularly Jewish society”.
“It’s got to be a lot more than one little synagogue whose name is going to change my global perception,” he said.
Sephardi Centre president Paul Berman said the Adler name pertained to the centre as a whole, and that the synagogue would continue to be known as Sassoon Yehuda.
“We wish to honour all the benefactors who contribute greatly to the operation and the survival of our community,” he said.
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Jewish contender for parliamentary seat
SYDNEY, 21 May – When nominations closed for ALP preselection in the Sydney seat of Wentworth last
Friday, lawyer Steven Lewis discovered he was the only contender with his hat in the ring.
The business executive turned lawyer will be formally declared as Labor’s candidate next month, pitching him against Liberal incumbent Malcolm Turnbull, as Australians switch into election mode.
Lewis remained the sole candidate for preselection, after NSW Jewish Board of Deputies (JBD) colleague Robin Margo withdrew from the race.
“I’m excited and honoured . We’ve always said it’s going to be a very tough campaign. While you’ve got to be realistic about it, the nature of the electorate is changing.
“There are a number of factors that voters will take into account. Are they looking to the future to have a local member represent their local interests, or to the past?”
Lewis said at this year’s election he would offer voters a grassroots alternative.
“Malcolm Turnbull has been preoccupied for a number of years now with much wider issues, [including] the leadership of his party. My goal is to be a good local member.”
Asked if, given Turnbull’s record with the Jewish community, this challenge will become a battle for the hearts and minds of eastern Sydney’s Jews, Lewis emphasised that the community “is oneof a number of groups that make up the electorate”.
“I’m not a Jewish candidate. I just happen to be a candidate who is Jewish. That’s a very important distinction,” the longtime JBD member said. “I’ve had a long association with the [Jewish] community and I hope that association
continues . It would be very nice if the [Wentworth Jewish] community have a representative in Federal Parliament, but that is not the only reason people vote. But I certainly would be a vocal and supportive representative of
the Jewish community’s needs and concerns.”
The Slater & Gordon lawyer said he also wanted to fight for improved mental health care, noting that his electorate includes The Gap, “which is unfortunately a place where a lot of people go to take their lives”. He is also keenly interested in improving the conditions for homeless people and helping with measures on the environment.
Lewis, 53, cut his political teeth protesting against the visiting Springbok rugby team from apartheid-era South Africa in 1971.
He joined the ALP in 1979 and is currently the Premier’s appointee on the NSW Election Funding Authority. Lewis was involved in the campaign to free Soviet Jews and visited the Soviet Union in 1988 as the personal assistant to communal icon Isi Leibler in negotiating the release of refuseniks. He was also involved in the contempt-of-court case against Fredrick Toben that saw alleged Holocaust denier jailed for three months last year.
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Gutnick slams super tax
MELBOURNE, 24 May – Mining magnate Joseph Gutnick has fired a broadside at the Federal Government’s
proposed mining profits tax, claiming it will have a “negative impact” on Australia. He is pessimistic about Australia’s booming mining sector’s chances of staying at full throttle once the proposed impost is introduced.
Gutnick owns US-listed Legend International, a phosphate mining company exploring Queensland’s
Georgina Basin, which through North Australian Diamonds has a controlling stake in Merlin.
The productive diamond mine in the Northern Territory is one of only three in Australia and produces a high proportion of gem-quality stones.
He also has interests in various countries, including gold exploration in Canada.
“When you talk to fund managers and investors, they look at Australia now as a sovereign risk. But it is not only affecting the mining industry – it’s a disaster for the mining industry – but it’s affecting Australia.”
He has heard from foreign investors who are now wary of Australian bonds and there is insecurity
about what Canberra will do next. “Australia is [geographically] far enough without this supertax.”
Gutnick said he is still hopeful the tax “will be substantially changed or given up”. But with
opposition from state premiers and treasurers, he ponders whether it will ever be implemented.
Turning to the political ramifications of the tax, Gutnick said the Government was starting to feel the heat. The tax was “not something people ever expected to happen”.
The former Melbourne Football Club president famously followed the advice of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who urged him 22 years ago to search for gold and diamonds in the outback.
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Fabian is Australia bureau chief for San Diego Jewish World
Another ‘oy vey’ situation
By Carol Davis
Carol Davis
SAN DIEGO–I don’t know when the words “ Oy Vey” made it into mainstream vernacular. It really doesn’t matter. It is often said in so many matter of fact situations that unless you just landed from another planet you would know in essence, if not in fact what it means.
I was weaned on the phrase. From the time I could understand English, some Yiddish, it was a staple in my house like gefilte fish. It’s not unusual for me now to experience Oy Vey situations in almost every decision I have to make that’s unpleasant, hard to do or just plain a pain. Conversely silly, embarrassing and oft times funny times can and should be Oy Vey moments as well. In other words Oy Vey can be applied to anything or anyone you want it to.
It’s no surprise then, that Russian Director Evgeny Afineevsky would title his gay, romantic, film comedy Oy Vey! My Son is Gay! starring none other than the very typically Jewish Lainie Kazan as Shirley (the Mom) and Saul Rubinek as Martin (the Dad) when they learn son Nelson (Nelson?) announces to his parents that he is gay. You see what I mean by Oy Vey situations?
The story takes place in one of the wealthy Burroughs of Long Island. It seems that every Friday night, Shirley and Martin invite yet another Jewish girl to meet their son, who is still single, and look at her as a potential daughter in law. Needless to say Nelson is a bit fed up with the charade but doesn’t have the nerve to tell his parents that he is both gay and has a special someone.
And here comes another Oy Vey situation! When Nelson finally does tell his parents that he is seeing someone, they insist he invite ‘her’ to Shabbat dinner so they can meet ‘her’. Shirley, all ferklempt that their son has a special someone, now wonders if that someone is even Jewish, or white for that matter.
Needless to say the whole film is booby-trapped with OY Vey moments not just for the parents but for almost everyone they and their son’s come in contact with like Nelson’s gorgeous neighbor Sybil (Carmen Electra) who is the centerfold star of a porno magazine. When Shirley pays a surprise visit to Nelson’s apartment and finds Sybil there she assumes Sybil their son’s ‘special friend’. And when Sybil visits Martin at his work, oy vey!
To say that this is a journey for just Nelson (John Lloyd Young) and his boyfriend Angelo (Jai Rodriguez) would be an understatement. Shirley and Martin get themselves into some pretty bizarre situations by first trying to conceal the fact that their son is gay from their family and then by trying to see what the gay life is like with a visit by Martin to a gay bar. Far fetched? Very! But it scored some funny points.
But the parallel story is the real story of what acceptance looks like from both sets of parents’ points of view (and there are some funny and touching moments) as well as the for young men themselves coming to grips with their being an out couple in today’s world.
Its too bad Afineevsky muddied the waters with so much stereotypical goulash when the real facts can stand on their own. Family ties and love of children are strong bonds and even outing oneself doesn’t break that bond. Underneath all the frantic comings and goings is a good story.
To say the acting was award winning would be stretching a point. It was fun, some good points were made and it is certainly a beginning especially now that being gay, coming out and adopting children is just the tip of the iceberg. Next, repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and make marriage a legal state contract between consenting adults.
OyVey! My Son is Gay! was the last entry in the Film Out Festival that went from April 16th -22 at the North Park Birch Theatre. It was a fun evening and according to all involved, a success.
See you at the theatre.
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Critic Davis is based in San Diego
Fee, Fie, Foe, Feiffer!
Jules Feiffer (Cynthia Citron photo)
Cynthia Citron
LOS ANGELES — If you ask Jules Feiffer how he likes L.A., he will launch into a story about the time he spent 90 minutes driving around in traffic, becoming so lost and frustrated that he fled back to New York, thus forfeiting a substantial paycheck by abandoning the job he had come out here to do. Feiffer, it seems, actually lives in the world of his own cartoons.
The iconic cartoonist ventured out here again recently, however, to appear in conversation with Carl Reiner for Andrea Grossman’s Writers Bloc. The two men were not long-time friends, but their obvious respect and affection for each other’s work gave a warm and hilarious fillip to the evening’s discussion. The focus was on Feiffer’s newly published memoir, Backing Into Forward, in which he tells the very personal story of how he became the neurotic voice of a generation.
Two days before his Writers Bloc appearance I had the opportunity to interview him and ask him about some of the incidents in the book. He had arrived in L.A. earlier that day, but his energy level belied his 81 years as we sat in the lobby of the Beverly Hilton and he sipped Glenlivet on the rocks.
He has always worried, he said, about things “almost all of which never happened.” But his career, especially in Hollywood, had more than its share of ups and downs. “I never did anything for the money,” he contends, “and I had my standards. Standards here are the bottom line.” He did, however, write a number of TV pilots: “the usual crap that writers do, half of which I’m proud of,” he says. “I dumbed them down—but not enough!”
Producers, he says, “were always great fans. They loved everything I suggested. Then I would flesh it out and they loved it even more. Then I would write the script and they would say, ‘No, this isn’t what we had in mind,’ and their notes would have nothing to do with what we had talked about.
“Some people just weren’t meant to work together,” he adds. “I could never work with somebody else’s vision.”
One man he did work with, though, was Mike Nichols, whose initial comedy routines with partner Elaine May gave Feiffer heart. “They let me know that I wasn’t alone. They were saying what I was drawing!” he says. Later, when he sent Nichols a play script, Nichols told him it wasn’t a play, but a movie, and offered to direct it if Feiffer would adapt it as a screenplay. “I told him I’d have to think it over,” Feiffer says, “and it took me nearly 30 seconds to agree.”
Feiffer and Nichols moved into David O. Selznick’s house to work on the film that became the classic Carnal Knowledge. “We had a ball,” Feiffer says, “but Hollywood hated the film and I didn’t get another offer for 10 years.”
That next offer came from Bob Evans, who wanted Feiffer to do a screenplay for Popeye, with Dustin Hoffman playing the spinach-eating sailor. “Evans was a joy to work with,” Feiffer says, but then Hoffman decided he wanted a script that was more Beckett-like and Kafkaesque—not the script that Feiffer had created at all. “Evans stuck with me,” Feiffer says, and they gave the role to “that new kid from Mork and Mindy—Robin Williams.”
Feiffer has always written about and drawn the people he knows. Like his mother, who is every Jewish mother in his plays and cartoons. And he readily identifies the whimsical dancing woman of his most angst-ridden cartoons as “a cross-dressed version of me.” A woman, he says, who typified Greenwich Village in the ‘50s, she was “sweet and desperate, full of pretension, full of hope, and full of shit.” And then, of course, there was his Aunt Alva, a woman who “hated men so much that she glued down her toilet seat!”
Another relative, a cousin, was the opportunistic lawyer Roy Cohn, who served as the right-hand hatchet man of Senator Joseph McCarthy during the infamous trials conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the early ‘50s. “Those trials affected me very strongly,” Feiffer says. “They were like hits in the solar plexus; they destroyed a whole generation.”
He recalls one time when he was writing a political play and he wanted to include a “smoke-filled back room” scene. He wanted to make sure his dialogue would be authentic, so he went to Cousin Roy, then a power broker in the New York Democratic Party, for some advice. “Roy gave me a long, involved Civics lesson,” Feiffer says, “but what he was actually telling me was to go f—k myself. He was certainly affable about it, though.”
Feiffer enjoys the fact that he has been friends with some of the major creative thinkers of his time: Bellow, Malamud, Roth, et al. He says when he got out of the Army in 1953 it was “in” to be Jewish. “It was just in the air,” he says. In his memoir, however, he acknowledges that familiar feeling of being a “fraud” as a young man, primarily because of his lack of a college education. “It has to do with being young and immature,” he says now. “All of us struggle with that, and when we have a success we feel lucky, as if we got away with something. It takes time to recognize that you are who you are, and you’re not a fraud!”
In 1956 the Village Voice began to publish his cartoons, and he stayed with that paper for the next 42 years—even getting paid after a while. At the same time he was venting his political and social outrage in plays such as Little Murders and earning a 1961Academy Award for his animated short, Munro, about a 4-year old who is drafted into the Army.
Which led to his children’s books (beginning with his illustrations for Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth) and his gigs as an adjunct professor at Stony Brook Southampton, and at the Yale School of Drama, Northwestern University, Arizona State, and Dartmouth. “I’ve always been against teaching,” he says. “I find it condescending, supercilious, and unhelpful.
“But my books are helpful because I’ve set out not to be helpful.
And with my cartoons I look for the ones I loved as a kid and I only steal from the old masters.”
Fortunately, nobody can steal from Feiffer. He is most definitely one of a kind.
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Citron is Los Angeles bureau chief for San Diego Jewish World
Is ‘Hermione’ part of J.K. Rowling’s secret code in the Harry Potter series?
By Donald H. Harrison
Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – For a moment, my daughter and grandson looked at me as if I were Dan Brown revealing not the secrets of the Da Vinci Code, but the hidden messages in the Harry Potter code.
I had told them that author J.K. Rowling had put herself into the Harry Potter novels, that Harry’s school friend Hermione clearly was Rowling’s alter-ego.
“What makes you say so?” asked Shor, 8, a dyed-in-the-wool Harry Potter fan.
“Sometimes authors like to send messages with the names that they give to their characters,” I suggested. “Rowling picked simple names for her boy heroes—‘Harry’ and ‘Ron’—but a complex name for her girl heroine, ‘Hermione’” I said, adding for good measure: “look how similar the words ‘heroine’ and ‘Hermione’ are.”
“Yes, so?” asked my daughter, Sandi, suspiciously.
“Well look at how Hermione is spelled,” I said. ‘Her-mi-one.’ Pronounce ‘mi’ like the musical note and it is ‘me.’ Separate the name into its component parts and it means “Her” and “me” are “one.”
“Way cool!” Shor exclaimed. You can’t help but love that boy!
“Not so fast,” demanded Sandi, who you’ve got to love despite her tendency to distrust some of her father’s stories. “That sounds like the same kind of faulty reasoning that convinced Beatles fans that Paul was dead. You know, he was wearing different clothes than the other Beatles on an album cover, so clearly he was no longer like them—he was dead—and all sorts of nonsense like that.”
I grinned shamefacedly. When it comes to Harry Potter, I’ve decided that my daughter can do no wrong. She turned Shor onto the series, transforming a boy who had to be coaxed into reading into one who now gobbles up books, even spurning programs on the Disney Channel and the Cartoon Network to read about Harry and the gang at the Hogwarts school.
Sandi is to Harry Potter books as I am to Star Trek movies and television episodes, I bragged to myself. Some years ago, I got Shor interested in Star Trek, winning his attention with the original series, featuring Captain Kirk played by William Shatner. Shor’s favorite character was Mr. Spock,the Vulcan portrayed by Leonard Nimoy. Then it was onto Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which Patrick Stewart played Captain Jean Luc Picard. Shor’s favorite character was Data, the android portrayed by Brent Spiner.
Now we are almost finished watching all the episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine over which Captain Benjamin Sisko, played by Avery Brooks, reigns. Shor’s favorite character is Odo, the shapeshifter played by Rene Auberjonois, although Quark, portrayed by Armin Shimerman, runs a close second because Shor met Shimerman in San Diego during the run of The Seafarer at the San Diego Rep.
My wife Nancy already has purchased for her “boys” Star Trek: Voyager, in which Voyager will be captained by Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew). I can’t wait to learn who Shor’s favorite character will be in that one.
I had never read the Harry Potter novels until Shor asked me to follow him into them, even as he had followed me into the Star Trek world. His reasoning was both endearing and compelling: “It will give us more to talk about, grandpa.”
Star Trek DVD’s have the advantage of ‘pausability’’ Shor and I can stop action anywhere we want in an episode to discuss the questions being raised. One of my favorite episodes came during the ‘Next Generation’ series when the only Klingon in Star Fleet, Worf (Michael Dorn), was asked by a man from his world to join the Klingon cause and to forsake the Federation. Shor and I talked about concepts of loyalty. Here, said I, was Worf being asked to change his loyalty –in essence to switch sides from the Federation to the Klingon Empire.
Shor , a student at Soille San Diego Hebrew Day School, responded that Moses has switched his loyalties—from being an Egyptian prince to being a leader of the downtrodden Hebrews.
Besides Star Trek and Harry Potter, the stories of the Torah are among Shor’s favorite literary reference points.
This most recent Passover, he had the opportunity to help his one-year-old cousin, Brian, search for the afikomen during a seder at our house. Later in the week, visiting his great-grandfather Sam at the sprawling senior complex at the Ocean Hills Country Club, Shor and his brother, Sky, along with Brian, got to see what Christian kids do, participating with excitement in an Easter egg hunt.
Of course, the similarity between searching for the afikomen to later ransom and searching for an Easter egg to win a prize did not escape Shor. Nor did he fail to note that in both Passover and Easter an egg symbolizes the renewal of life.
Whether in The Da Vinci Code, Pesach, Easter, Star Trek or Harry Potter, symbols are an important part of story telling. I give Shor a thumb’s up for catching on.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World
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