It’s no secret that Woody Allen has a deep disaffection for organized religion. And it definitely ain’t a secret that Judaism, the filmmaker’s born religion, is the most frequent target of his jokes. (Here’s my personal favorite, from “Zelig”: “I’m 12 years old. I run into a synagogue. I ask the rabbi the meaning of…
Talk about the pot calling the kettle all sparkly and shining. Woody Allen went on record this past weekend at the Cannes Film Festival defending fellow filmmaker Roman Polanski. Polanski, who has been under house arrest in Switzerland since September and who faces possible extradition to the U.S., pleaded guilty in 1977 to statutory rape…
On March 22, I went to a “Serious Night” party at B’nai Emet synagogue, in St. Louis Park, MN where the bar mitzvah scenes as well as some others in the Coen brothers film “A Serious Man” were filmed. One of the audience members recounted his query to one of the Coen brothers asking why…
In a second season episode of Larry David’s HBO comedy series “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Larry is caught whistling a Wagner tune outside of a film premier and is accused of being a self-hating Jew. On the show it’s all for laughs; “I do hate myself, but it has nothing to do with being Jewish!” Larry…
Although Shabbetai Zevi naturally gets most of the attention, Jewish history has been marked by a series of impostors. On February 16, Bloomsbury USA publishes a collection by the late New Yorker reporter St. Clair McKelway, “Reporting at Wit’s End,” which includes the complete 1968 book “The Big Little Man from Brooklyn” about the Jewish…
Larry Gopnik, the main character in the Coen brothers most recent and most Jewish film, “A Serious Man,” has been widely understood as Job-like figure. But what would Job be without Satan to test him? (Besides having more children and fewer boils, that is.) Enter Sy Ableman, Larry’s beardy nemesis, whose role as self-righteous cuckolder…
Carla Bruni, steamy chanteuse and — marginally more recently — wife of French Prime Minister Nicholas Sarkozy, has promised Woody Allen first refusal if she starts a film career. Despite admitting that she can’t really act, she said she’d be excited at the idea of working with Allen on his next movie after he visited…
Israeli news site Y-Net reports that Woody Allen is expected to go to to the Israeli Red Sea resort town of Eilat for its film festival. The thought of the consummate New York nebbish in Eilat brings to mind that scene in “”Annie Hall” of a very uncomfortable Woody Allen in sunny Southern California. I…
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