At The Movies Ak..tiZZ%., 33MaiRMIRMatt Photo by Vivia n Zin k rTn. Jim (Jason Biggs) is caught in an embarrassing moment by his mom (Molly Cheek) and dad (Eugene Levy). • is pleased to announce the $395 LUNCH SPECIALS Served Mon.-Sat. from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm your choice of: • Soup or Salad • Sandwich and Cup of Soup • Sandwich and Salad for $ 395 Banquet Facilities Available Saturday Afternoons,. Nights and Sundays. Whether a wedding, shower, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, Anniversary or any special occasion, The Sheik would love to serve you. Open lox Lund) one Dinner 7 -Days 4189 Orcharo Coke Root) Orcbaro Lake "I plan to raise my kids Jewish," he adds, "and belong to a synagogue where they actually treat you with respect." But it wasn't their common back- ground that drew Zide and Herz together. It was their shared interest in making a good, entertaining, general- audience Hollywood movie. "I think my taste is very much what a teenager would want to go see," Zide explains. "It's just mainstream, I think, very commercial. My office is filled with stuff from the classic Marx Brothers movies and Star Wars stuff." The office he refers to is Zide/Perry Entertainment in Beverly Hills, Calif. Even if his career path has been unconventional, Zide did what most good Hollywood entrepreneurs do: He found a niche and filled it. After graduating from Michigan State with a finance degree, he headed to Los Angeles, where he spent a year and a half at Southwestern University Law School. Eventually, Zide found a job in the mailroom of New Line Cinema, where he met Perry. His next job, as an agent's assistant at the high-powered agency International Creative Management, convinced him of two things: that he wasn't going to move up the ladder there; and that screenwriters, tradi- tionally one of the least respected pro- fessions in Hollywood, could use bet- ter representation. So he became a lit- erary agent, eventually forming Zide/Perry Entertainment in 1997. "We're a real good complement to each other," he says of partner Craig Perry, and it worked out because he's more the creative [one] — sit down five hours with a writer — while I'm figuring out how to grow our business. "We're able to get five times as much done by having the two of us together than if either one of us did it on our own. One advantage Zide had entering " 7/9 1999 80 Detroit Jewish News 24 865-00LO w 248 - 85 0020 the film business was that he knew firsthand just how difficult it can be. His father, Martin Zide (who now sells commercial real estate), and grandfather, Jack Zide, used to book independent films into Midwest the- aters. It was his father who suggested Warren get a law degree. "I think everybody wants her child to have something he can fall back on," explains his mother, Nancy Zide. "Not everybody makes it." Owner of Nancy's Linens in Sylvan Lake (which sells fine linens and spe- cializes in monograms and embroi- dery), Nancy Zide freely expresses her pride in her children. Daughter Elizabeth recently graduated from Wayne State University Medical School, while Warren's success includes being named as one of the film industry's rising stars in The Hollywood Reporter. Even though she attended an all- girls high school, Nancy Zide found American Pie "a total chuckle. I thought it was very funny — raunchy, but funny. This young man who wrote it has a great, morbid, bizarre sense of humor like I have." She invited several friends to an advance screening, but was concerned about their reaction to the film's sex- based storyline. During the movie, she turned to see them laughing as much as the other audience members. "The guys who were there — who are our age — enjoyed it," Nancy Zide explains. "They thought it was terrific. So obviously, these things have been happening for a few years. Its not new news." That reaction, from audience mem- bers well outside the core teen audi- ence, was something Warren Zide hoped for. "I think our goal," he says, "was for people to come out of the movie theater saying, 'I know somebody like that.'"