Women may have more earning power than men at the box office. According to a new report from the Creative Artists Agency and tech company shift7, the top films of 2014 through 2017 that had females in lead roles outperformed male-led ones. The New York Times reports that the CAA and shift7 came together through…
Lena Dunham has signed on to write the screenplay for a Steven Spielberg and J.J. Abrams movie about the survival of Syrian refugee Doaa Al Zamel, Variety reported today. Here at the Schmooze, what we noticed first is that this list is stacked with Jews! What we noticed second is that this list is really…
Stephen Sondheim, the lyricist for “West Side Story,” dislikes the movie version of the seminal musical for sticking too closely to the source material. “I don’t think ‘West Side Story’ [is] a good movie at all because it’s not a movie. It’s a photograph of a stage,” the Tony-winning composer said in a 2016 interview…
1974 was among the worst years of Steven Spielberg’s young life. His second feature, “Jaws” ran over time and over budget. The mechanical shark — known to the crew as “Bruce” — kept malfunctioning. Shooting at sea proved more difficult than anyone could imagine. The film’s most bankable actor, Robert Shaw, was often drunk on…
Hillary Clinton lost the United States presidency. But she may win an EGOT — an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. On the heels of the news that the former Secretary of State will make a cameo on HBO’s “Madam Secretary” is the news that Clinton and legendary Jewish filmmaker Steven Spielberg are developing a TV…
Readers: You may have assumed that writing about culture for the Forward has earned me vast, uncountable riches. Your assumption is wrong. To date, I’ve probably made enough money at the Forward to plant, uh, half a tree in Israel. So why work here? The answer is simple: I have a passion for crafting concise,…
Imagine what hell it must be to make a movie, write a book, or put together any piece of work about the Holocaust. Full immersion in the facts of mass genocide for months or years on end is psychological torture, whatever accolades or payment one may receive for it. Reflecting on the making of “Schindler’s…
NEW YORK (JTA) — Out of all his celebrated films, Steven Spielberg is most proud of “Schindler’s List,” the 1993 Oscar winner about a German businessman who saved over 1,000 Jews during the Holocaust. The filmmaker made the claim at a Tribeca Film Festival event on Thursday marking the film’s 25th anniversary that brought him…
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