Why Hollywood's Jewish guys fall in love with shiksas

From Diane Keaton to Mariel Hemingway to Scarlett Johansson, Woody Allen's favorite women have been WASPy blonds. [UPDATE: As many readers have noted, Johansson is actually Jewish, so perhaps I should call her a WASPy blonde Jewess.] At any rate, Allen is not alone. As Liel Leibovitz writes in a fascinating new essay in Tablet magazine, "Since the dawn of American entertainment, Jewish women were largely rendered invisible, absent everywhere from burlesque to Hollywood to prime-time television. Instead, they watched as their sons and brothers and husbands became successful producers, directors and impresarios, powerful men who then chose to populate their works with a parade of sexy, sultry shiksas who looked nothing like their female kin."

It's a big, bold accusation, but Leibovitz does a pretty persuasive job of proving it, digging all the way back to the earliest days of burlesque, when if you worked for the striptease kingpins the Minsky Brothers, you had to be a blond or a redhead, never a brunet. The early Hollywood moguls, eager to shed their shtetl roots, quickly dumped their first wives for Gentile trophy dames and largely banished both Jewish men and women from their all-American hymns to assimilation, forcing Jewish actors like John Garfield (Julie Garfinkle) and Danny Kaye (David Kaminsky) to change their names to far less ethnic-sounding monikers.

But Leibovitz argues that even today, long after Jewish TV execs allowed male characters to be named Seinfeld, Steinberg and Fisher, they still required the guys to lust after decidedly non-Jewish women. She points to a slew of shows, including "Mad About You," "Chicken Soup," "Flying Blonde" and "Anything But Love," that all feature neurotic Jewish (filmmaker/pajama salesman/biz exec/writer) men pining after gorgeous and free-spirited shiksas. Each show was designed around the idea of transformation, or more specifically, the power of a non-Jewish woman to extricate her Jewish lover from his suffocating, crass and unhealthy environment.

When it comes to being an onscreen presence in a Jewish guy's life, blonds clearly have more fun, whether it's Cheryl Hines playing opposite Larry David in "Curb Your Enthusiasm" or Drew Barrymore being Adam Sandler's love interest in "The Wedding Singer" and "50 First Dates." (Maybe I'm forgetting someone, but by my count, it wasn't until 2008's "You Don't Mess With the Zohan," where Sandler played an Israeli hairdresser, that he cast an actual Jewish actress -- Emmanuelle Chriqui -- as his romantic partner.)

Leibovitz could expand her critique, since when it comes to being invisible, African American women have it even worse than Jewish women, rarely if ever getting a meaty part playing opposite black mega-stars like Denzel Washington, Sam Jackson and Will Smith. But her point is well taken. In an era where Jewish women have cracked the glass ceiling time and again as producers and studio executives (from Sherry Lansing and Laura Ziskin to Gail Berman and Amy Pascal), it's slim pickings when it comes to parts for actresses looking to shine in the spotlight. In Hollywood, if you're a Jewish woman, your best career possibilities are still behind the camera, feeding all the good lines to the shiksa goddesses.

Speaking of shiksa goddesses, here's one with a spider in her bathroom:

  

Can Jeffrey Katzenberg save 'Shrek: The Musical'?

DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg's "Shrek" movie franchise has been one of the most lucrative animation series of all time, with more "Shrek" 3-D installments still in the pipeline. But Katzenberg's "Shrek: The Musical" theatrical extravaganza has been one of the biggest flops on Broadway, the New York Post's Michael Riedel reports today. He quotes production sources who say that the "over-produced, under-imagined cartoon musical" has lost more than $1 million since Labor Day, despite heavy discounts and an aggressive ad campaign.

While other shows have been doing business this fall, with several shows posting weekly grosses of more than $1 million, "Shrek" has been stuck at roughly $500,000 a week, which the Post says is nearly $300,000 short of the show's weekly running cost. So why is Hollywood's favorite 3-D booster keeping the ailing show afloat?

Riedel's take: "The general sense on Broadway is that it's an ego thing. 'Shrek' was DreamWorks' attempt to take on Disney, which conquered Broadway with 'Beauty and the Beast' and 'The Lion King.' If DreamWorks closes 'Shrek' -- on which it's spent something like $25 million -- after only a year or so, that is a dramatic admission of defeat. And that's something Jeffrey Katzenberg...is loath to do."

Meanwhile, the Post reports that a number of theater producers are circling "Shrek's" Broadway Theatre like buzzards, eager for access to a prime piece of Broadway real estate. Riedel says, "It's time for 'Shrek' to hit the road."

I, for one, would never underestimate Katzenberg's P.T. Barnum-like skills. Maybe it's time for the debut of "Shrek: The 3-D Musical."

Photo: Brian d'Arcy James as the ogre in "Shrek The Musical." Credit: Andrew Eccles / DreamWorks Theatricals.

Has Vince Vaughn nuked the fridge?

I guess having to sit through "Couples Retreat" finally sent my colleague Betsy Sharkey around the bend. Our film critic, never one to mince words, is offering 10 things she loathes about Vince Vaughn, circa 2009, feeling nostalgic for the days when he was "a long, lean panther in a shiny suit padding through L.A.'s late-night lounge scene, stalking beautiful babies." Are those days really long gone? Or does Vaughn still have his mojo, despite being at the center of a raft of mediocre star vehicles that've been populating the multiplexes in recent years? Speak your mind on the comments section. 

Photo: Vince Vaughn and Malin Akerman in "Couples Retreat." Credit: Universal Pictures.

Emmy-winning producer decodes Hollywood, bleeds Dodger blue

In recent years, no one has emerged as a more biting satirist of Hollywood buffoonery and excess than Ken Levine, the Emmy-winning writer-producer who keeps us all entertained at his blog with posts like today's Decoding Hollywoodspeak, which offers all-too-accurate translations of various happy-talk industry dodges. It being Hollywood, there are an extraordinary assortment of euphemisms (from "creative differences" to "I want to explore other exciting opportunities") for being fired. My favorites include:

"Hiatus."-- Canceled.

"They're still good friends." -- The ugly divorce settlement is still pending.

"They're just good friends." -- They're humping nine times a day.

"They have a lot of respect for each other." -- They despise each other.

"No comment." -- He did it.

"Hospitalized because the actor was simply feeling dizzy due to a medication he was taking because of an ear infection." -- Drunk. 

Levine is the only TV writer I know who's enjoyed a successful second career as a baseball announcer, having been a broadcaster for a number of major league teams. He is currently the host of Dodger Talk, which airs before and after every Dodgers playoff game on 790 KABC. With the National League championship series starting later today, I asked Levine to combine his writerly talents with his baseball prognostication abilities and make some predictions, both serious and comic, about the Dodgers-Phillies series, which promises to be a great showcase for both team's impressive array of sluggers and pitchers.

Here's what Levine had to say, As you can see, he managed to come up with a few surprises. Keep reading:

The 2009 Brown List: Who does Hollywood hate the most?

I keep hearing that it's time for a new generation of executives to take control of Hollywood, which is still being run by the same old bossy big shots who've been at the helm of studios and agencies for years. So I guess it's no surprise to see that the 2009 Brown List compiled by the Temp X at the Hollywood Temp Diaries has a whole new generation of worthies making up the least-liked execs in the entertainment business. Out with the old -- meaning Harvey Weinstein, Jeff Zucker and Ben Silverman, none of whom even crack the top five -- and in with the new!

The top vote-getter is certainly a signal of generational change: He's Randall Emmett, the 40-year-old co-chairman of Family Room Entertainment and producer of such action fare as "Righteous Kill," "Day of the Dead" and "88 Minutes." No. 2 on the least-liked list is Jason Lust, a senior VP at the Henson Co., who is followed at No. 3 by 20th Century Fox exec Jeff Arkuss. The only all-too-familiar name to make the top five was Scott Rudin, a perennial member of any least-liked boss list, who made No. 4 on the list. You have to go all the way down to No. 8 on the list to find (in a dead heat) the likes of Silverman and Weinstein, with Ari Emanuel and Jeff Zucker among those tying for 9th place.

Admittedly, it's hard to say how accurate the list is. Temp X says it tabulated 1,200 votes, but since people could vote for as many people as they wanted as many times as they liked, I suspect the top names could well have made the list based more on very specific contempt instead of widespread loathing. On the other hand, the accompanying most-liked list -- topped by another newcomer, James Waugh of Blizzard Entertainment -- is populated with a number of execs generally accepted to be popular figures inside the business, notably Warner Bros. production exec Greg Silverman and DreamWorks co-president Holly Bario (who tied for No, 4) and Lionsgate's Mike Paseornek, who was at No. 5 on the best-liked list. So the list may not be too far off the mark.

But take a look for yourself and see if you think Temp X left out any obvious choices.

A shout-out to John Lennon: Hey, it's your birthday!

How's this for a shock: John Lennon would've been 69 today. His influence lives on in so many ways. I'm sure I'm not the only one who, when I discover a new filmmaker or musician, wonder if he or she will have the same abiding passion, eloquence and artistic ferocity that Lennon did. Of all his great songs, none felt more personal than "In My Life," which Lennon wrote in 1965 (with a little help from Paul) for the Beatles' "Rubber Soul" album. It was inspired by a British journalist, who told Lennon he should write some songs about his childhood. Lennon first wrote a long poem, which ended up being reworked into "In My Life." It's a beautiful song, with a nice, bittersweet vocal from Lennon and a piano solo from none other than Beatles producer George Martin himself. Happy birthday, John!

The band didn't make a video of the song but here's a clip with some classic images from the group's early days: 

Photo of John Lennon by the Associated Press

Is the 'Twitter Effect' on box office just big-media hype?

In the past few months, I've been reading story after story about the Twitter Effect, all of them essentially saying that movies like "Bruno" may have suffered unprecedentedly precipitous drop offs in their opening weekend audiences thanks to the speedy proliferation of bad buzz from Twitter-happy moviegoers. As Time magazine's Richard Corliss put it recently: " 'Bruno's' box-office decline from Friday to Saturday indicates that the film's brand of outrage was not the sort to please most moviegoers -- and that their tut-tutting got around fast. 'Bruno' could be the first movie defeated by the Twitter effect."

But is it really Twitter or just regular old-fashioned word of mouth being spread more rapidly than ever by all sorts of instant communications tools -- texting, Facebook page updates, etc? OTX, one of the movie industry's leading market research firms, recently did an in-depth survey of movie buzz that came to a surprisingly contrary conclusion -- the Twitter Effect is overrated.

"Our research found a significant overestimation of the Twitter Effect," Kevin Goetz, the president of OTX's worldwide motion picture group, told me. "The number of people who use Twitter are only about 10% to 12% of all moviegoers. And when we asked people what was the most influential source of moviegoing word of mouth, Twitter finished last, at the bottom of the list."

OTX did an online survey of nearly 1,500 moviegoers in mid- September, the bulk of the sample being moviegoers from age 13 to 49, the key moviegoing demographic group. When asked what was the most influential source for word of mouth, most respondents picked "family and friends and coworkers," which scored 40%, followed by Facebook (31%), MySpace (9%), IMDB (8%), with Twitter and online message boards bringing up the rear with 6% each.

"The data suggests that all the media play for the Twitter Effect is really jumping the gun," says Vinnie Bruzzese, the exec VP of OTX's motion picture group. "It has an impact, but it's coming much later on, not as initial reaction. There may be people with a lot of followers on Twitter, but the most influential people in terms of word of mouth are still the people you're talking to every day -- your friends and co-workers."

The data offered similar results when word of mouth was broken down into more specific categories: very influential, somewhat influential and not at all influential. Friends and family still led the very influential category, with Twitter and online message boards ranking last. Bruzzese says that age wasn't a defining factor either. "We didn't see a teen effect at all. The teen numbers for Twitter weren't substantially different, in terms of word of mouth influence, from the older age groups."

It's not exactly a shocker that the mainstream media has once again blindly jumped on the bandwagon and wildly overstated the importance of a new social media tool. It seems like just yesterday when MySpace was being touted as a revolutionary social media platform, only to quickly lose steam and cachet in the online world. On the other hand, Twitter does seem like a perfect mechanism for quickly sharing information, so I asked a studio marketing chief for his reaction to the OTX survey.

"I'm not shocked," he said. "Twitter isn't a marketing tool, it's an observational tool. What it is really useful for is to eavesdrop in on a number of private conversations about a movie. You can quickly tell if people are all trending toward liking it or hating it. I think over time it will have more influence. But for now, what you're really getting with Twitter is the leading edge of opinions. It's a small percentage of moviegoers, but it's a very vocal, viral group -- like a online version of a ComicCon convention, floating around every weekend. So as a group, it probably has an influence far beyond its numbers. But can Twitter bring down a movie? Probably not."

He laughed. "I'd say it's still just one of many kinds of instant buzz that make it tougher than ever to be a movie marketer."   

Hollywood liberals under fire: The Polanski debate gets political

It was surely only a matter of time. The noisy partisan divide that seems to infect everything in America today -- from what health care plan you want to what car you drive -- has surfaced again. As soon as commentators started weighing in on Roman Polanski's arrest over the weekend in Switzerland, the debate over whether the filmmaker should be made to stand trial in Los Angeles for his 1977 rape of a 13-year-old girl quickly turned into a series of shouting-match-style denunciations, with conservatives casting Polanski defenders as despicable, soft-headed liberals.

I know because I've been reading my mail, which has been running about 100-to-1 against Polanski. And since I wrote a column that most people interpreted as a defense of Polanski, the mail was also running 100-to-1 against me. I took the position that if California is so broke that it can't properly fund its public schools, assist the elderly and infirm, or even keep criminals off the streets, then when it came to priorities, I was a lot more worried about my kids' and my parents' health and welfare than having the district attorney's office launch a costly legal battle against a 76-year-old man living in Paris.

I didn't say Polanski should be pardoned or let off the hook, since what he did was reprehensible. He is guilty as charged. I did say that we should concentrate on doing a better job of tracking down the bad guys who are breaking the law right now in our own backyard. The response to my argument was divided, to say the least. People inside Hollywood nodded their heads in agreement. People outside of showbiz were outraged. 

"I guess 'art' is more important to you than justice!" wrote Dezi Cardenas. "You are a predictable left-wing moral relativist and idiot," said Lou Bricano. "I know society allows excess for artists, musicians and other talented people, but there was a little girl involved," wrote Lionel Baker. "If this was a 76-year-old truck driver who was arrested for the same crime, would you feel the same way?" "Remember," said Richard Morris, "when the scum of the earth wins an Academy Award, it's still the scum of the earth."

I knew I'd hit a new low when James Gragg said he was so upset that he was writing a letter to the editor for the first time, "and I read all of T.J. Simers' articles." He added, "If there was one thing I thought was completely impossible it would be that no journalist in the world would defend a pedophile. I was sadly mistaken." 

I wasn't surprised that people were incensed -- I get mail from people frothing at the mouth about the size of IMAX theaters and crazed with disgust that PG-13 comedies have curse words in them. We live in an age where everyone is angry about everything. But I was taken aback by how many letters viewed the Polanski issue through a political prism -- if you weren't full of outrage over his crime and subsequent flight from prosecution, then you were a yellow-bellied lefty, always willing to come up with some new excuse for the loathsome behavior of the chic Hollywood elite. 

So once again, we have a right-versus-left divide, with Hollywood, teeming as it is with Prius-driving liberals, being easily tossed into the lefty camp. To hear conservatives tell it, Polanski represents the classic example of the decadent artist who gets a free pass from liberals, the same liberals who'd be the first to express outrage against greedy Wall Street predators or Catholic priests accused of pedophilia.

Is it possible they have a good case? Keep reading:

Hollywood Shocker: Movie producer takes the bus to work!

We all know that movie producers are just as status conscious as any movie stars. They worry about what car they drive, what interior decorator does the remodel on their house and what restaurant they're seen in, not to mention what table they're seated at. I know one big-shot producer who'll only make a reservation at the Grill in Beverly Hills if he can get one of the eatery's prized booths. If all they have is a nondescript table in the vast wasteland in the middle of the restaurant, a table that could be landed by any BH matron coming in right off the street, he promptly has his office make a reservation elsewhere.  

I mention all this as a way of saying that when I finally put aside all of the Roman Polanski news and managed to catch up on my weekend reading, I came across a delightful piece in the Wall Street Journal about the hideous perils of using public transportation to go sightseeing in Los Angeles. It took Stan Sesser, who wrote the story, two hours and 37 minutes--longer than a Judd Apatow movie!--to get from the Getty Villa to Watts Towers, an odyssey that involved a Getty shuttle ride, two different bus trips and an excursion on the Blue Line light rail.

Sesser's story is chockful of cheerful testimonials from public transportation enthusiasts, even including one from former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. However, one person insisted on talking about his public transport experiences only on the condition of anonymity--a Hollywood film producer. Apparently, if word got out that he'd left his BMW at home, or god forbid, didn't have a car at all, his standing in the industry would be irrevocably damaged. Here's how Sesser described it:

"It's a preconceived idea that if you take the bus, you're a failure," the producer said. He ticked off things he likes about the bus. "I can read, I can get up to date on my IPhone, I can watch videos on my IPod. There's a lot that can be done with someone else driving." He warned me repeatedly not to reveal his name. "In the entertainment business, if they knew I took the bus, they'd never talk to me," he said, explaining that he hires a care and driver when going to a studio.

I know what you're thinking. Isn't Hollywood the home of environmental consciousness, where using public transport should be viewed as a wonderful example of reducing your conspicuous consumption and carbon footprint? Sadly, until TMZ captures Leonardo DiCaprio hopping on the 305 bus to West Hollywood, it looks like status consciousness trumps eco-consciousness every time.

Is 'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs' Hollywood's latest left-wing screed?

There are times -- actually, many times lately in this era of Dr. No Republicanism  -- when I strongly suspect that conservatives are living on a different planet from the rest of us. Sony has just released a new animated family movie called "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" that, to most sane observers, is a harmless comedy about a tiny island and the food that falls on it from the sky. The Miami Herald's Rene Rodriguez, who I read regularly because he has a reliably mainstream, non-insider perspective on movies, describes the film as "an uncommonly fleet and whimsical cartoon" that is the "rare kind of kiddie flick guaranteed to disarm anyone."

The only messages Rodriguez managed to discern in the movie were an aversion to gluttony and an invitation to be true to yourself, hardly the kind of secret lefty propaganda that would scare a parent. But the New York Post's Kyle Smith apparently saw an entirely different movie, a preachy, practically socialistic take on environmental issues that moved him to describe the latter part of the film as " 'The Day After Tomorrow' plus marinara sauce."

According to Smith, who is actually a critic who writes with verve and precision -- when he's not obsessed with uncovering hidden instances of maniacal Hollywood do-gooderism -- the movie's storyline is actually about liberal guilt about over-consumption. Unfortunately, he seems so enraged by the film's squishy storyline that it sounds like he's responding to a Thomas Friedman column instead of a lighthearted animated film. As he puts it in his review: 

"The town problem isn't complacency or greed -- it's just growth. When steaks the size of Priuses rain down, the father's point is proved. The population is being buried by its own prosperity, and the solution is not to manage the resources but to cut them off. Why not export the surplus and get rich? Because then there'd be no message about our collective guilt....The movie is a high-tech celebration of Luddism, not because the filmmaking digerati are actually nostalgic for low tech themselves, but because they think it, like poverty and ugliness, suits the sweaty throngs out beyond the 310 area code who are messing up the planet." 

This is a familiar conservative litany, that showbiz liberals are always looking down their noses at the riffraff in Middle America or secretly pushing their politics into mainstream movies. But judging from everyone else who's seen the "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," it's a harmless example of family filmmaking. I hate to quote Marx to conservatives, but maybe they will understand the Groucho version of this maxim: Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.