Photos by Brian I

Right: Ater Ben Kurtzman's (Ben Foster) high
sc ool class integrates its first black student, a
self-assured young lady named Sylvia (Rebekah
Johnson), Ben is irresistibly attracted to her.
Together they explore their religious, social
and racial differences.

Below: Older brother Van, a college student played
by Adrien Brody, becomes infatuated with Dubbie,
a rich and ultimately troubled gentile girl
played by Carolyn Murphy

bered how I thought for a time that the whole world
was Jewish, and how [later] I began to realize that
almost no one in the world was Jewish," he says.
The realization came to Levinson, now 57, the
same way it does to the character of Ben Kurtzman,
played by Ben Foster, in Liberty Heights.
In grade school, young Barry was invited to the
home of a non-Jewish classmate, where he couldn't
eat the "luncheon meat with mayo" sandwich that
was placed before him for lunch.
"There's too much white here. The milk is white,
the bread is white," Ben says. But its really Levinson
speaking.
Also like Ben, Barry met his first African-
American classmate when desegregation came to
Baltimore's public schools, in Barry's case, his ele-
mentary school, P.S. 64. And, like Ben's older broth-
er, Van, played by Adrien Brody, Levinson eventual-
ly borrowed the family car to explore the affluent,
restricted gentile neighborhoods across town. The
trips promised the allure of the forbidden: the
chance to date non-Jewish girls.
We thought we were being so daring," Levinson
says.
The Kurtzman boys take a similar journey in
Liberty Heights, a coming-of-age comedy-drama set
in 1954, which explores racism and anti-Semitism,
along with the rise of rock 'n' roll and the car cul-
ture.
But the movie, which includes Rosh HaShana
scenes at an old Baltimore synagogue, is more than a
trip down memory lane. "I'm not interested in nos-
talgia," Levinson says. "I'm interested in subject
matter that is relevant today. We've had a bigot
shoot children at a Jewish community center in Los
Angeles; a gay man murdered in Wyoming. All you
have to do is look at the headlines to see that issues

Naomi Pfefferman is entertainment editor of the
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.

of race, religion and class distinction
are as urgent as ever.
Liberty Heights gave the filmmaker
the chance to go home again, for a
time. The Kurtzman residence was set
in a house just a block from
Levinson's childhood address at 4211
Springdale Ave.
It's not far from where he filmed
Avalon, his 1990 film about the
assimilation of his Jewish parents and
grandparents; Diner (1982), recalling
his days hanging out with his high
school buddies and talking about
girls; and Tin Men (1987), about the brash alu-
minum-siding salesmen who frequented the other
side of his neighborhood diner.
Liberty Heights is dedicated to the writer-director's
best friend, his late cousin Eddie, who was portrayed
by actor Steve Guttenberg in Diner. Like
Guttenberg's character, Eddie really did sleep until
2:30 p.m. in the afternoon; he adored fried bologna
sandwiches; and he refused to marry his fiancee
until she passed a 140-question football quiz.
There is a lot of the quirky Eddie, too, in
Liberty Heights, specifically when the fictional
Ben appalls his family by dressing up as Hitler
on Halloween.
Eddie, a failed jewelry businessman turned
kitchen remodeler, died three years ago at the
age of 54. And so there were ghosts on the
Liberty Heights set for Levinson, far more than
in any of his other Baltimore films.
"It was very vivid, very emotional, because
Ben's house was set in a home that was three
doors down from Eddie's old house," he says.
"We would be filming and then I would look
over at that house and see myself as an 8-year-
old, remembering conversations that took place
between my cousin and [me].
"I could remember the two of us on his
porch and we were playing this game where one
of you closes your eyes and when a car comes
down the street, just from the sound of the
engine, you tried to tell what make it was. I could
remember the back yard and all the little things
that we did. And then to think that he died was
so eerie, because when you're a kid, you think that
no one dies, that your friendship is forever."
In the last line of Liberty Heights, Levinson
alter ego Ben wishes he could remember better.
"There was no videotape," the director says, You
can't play anything back."
Like the fictional Ben, young Barry Levinson was

Now, he has weal , power, respect, and what
his morn describes as "a gorgeous, magnificent
house and spread" not far from San Francisco.
During his childhood, Yiddish was spoken in
the house by his parents and maternal grandpar-
ents, but being Jewish rarely transcended the
cultural level, noted Levinson.
"I didn't have a strong formal religious
upbringing," he said. "In my family there are
two sides — the Levinsons and the Krichinskys.
My grandfather Krichinsky loved crabs. My
grandmother would never eat steamed crabs —
she ate crab cakes. My grandmother on the
Levinson side kept two sets of dishes — real
kosher, the whole works. So you went from one
side to the other."
Still, Levinson's Jewishness is a big part of his
identity, as evidenced by a good deal of his work,
particularly the Baltimore series. "But there's a
big difference in being Jewish and being reli-
gious. Its not so simple," he said. "There is no
one kind of Jew."
In his body of work and personal life,
Levinson, who doesn't belong to a congregation
and whose wife is not Jewish, says he generally
tries to keep away from all philosophies, move-
ments and schools of thought.
"I don't think of myself as part of anything,"
he said. "I've never been one to want to join the
group. I go whichever way I want to go."
But when working on certain projects, he
admits, he often finds him-
self wrestling with the con-
cept of what it means to
be a Jew.
"I just cant help
my-self," Levinson said.
"I know it extreme-
ly
t turf to

the id

riences of

frient, that I'd
own
lik e tot
line," he said
os#4Ts are
still quite Vivid in
my mind." LJ

Vi Levinson,
shown here
dancing with her
son at a relative's
wedding five
years ago.

12/1)
1999

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