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PARAGrRAPE 175'

`A FISH IN THE BATHTUB'

`THE THREE WOLFS'

NAOMI PFEFFERMAN
Special to the Jewish News

Director Joan Micklin Silver and her producer-writer

Joey Craine and Steve Jasgur, friends since attend-

husband, Raphael (Ray) Silver, who have been mar-
ried more than 40 years, bring a lot of understand-
ing to their feature film A Fish in the Bathtub, which
explores long-term marriage.
So do Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, who star in
the film. They have starred as a comedy team and
also have passed the 40-year marriage milestone.
"This certainly isn't my story or Anne and Jerry's,
but all my life I've observed couples who have very
different dynamics with each other, and these rela-
tionships really interest me," says Silver, whose six
previous films include Hester Street and Crossing

ing the University of Michigan, have collaborated
on a new film, The Three Wolfs, which is being
shown for the second time after a New York pre-
miere.
Starring stage, screen and TV actress Tovah
Feldshuh, once an Interlochen camper, the full-
length feature builds around conversation at a
seder, where a family secret competes with the story
of Passover.
"It's a good family film," says Craine, who recent-
ly had another script optioned by a production
company,. 'Although its a Jewish film, you don't
have to be Jewish to relate to it. Anybody who's had
any kind of family dinner can find parts that res-
onate."
Craine and Jasgur, both 32 and single, had been
pursuing independent entertainment careers for
nine years when they decided to invest their per-
sonal finances to produce a film using a Craine
script.
Craine, a Groves High School graduate who has
been affiliated with Temple Beth El, had been
doing TV production work in California and writ-
ing screenplays on the side. Jasgur, a West
Bloomfield High School graduate affiliated with
Adat Shalom, had been acting in All My Children,
various Sears commercials and theater in New York.
"Digital equipment made the making of this film
affordable," says Jasgur, who moved back to
Michigan to continue in Joe Cornell
Entertainment, a business he runs with his sister.
Craine also has returned to Michigan, buying and
selling industrial paper in the family business and
writing scripts on his own time.
"After making the film in New York, we realized
we didn't have to be [out of town] if we wanted to
make films," says Craine, who is working with
Jasgur to have the The Three Wolfs screened at more
4 , festivals.

einz Dormer is almost 90 years old, but his
JIM faded blue eyes take on a terrified, faraway
look as he remembers an awful place called "the
singing forest." As a young man, he was arrested
under the Nazi's and-gay laws and incarcerated
in a camp where homosexuals were tortured in a
forest clearing.
"It gave us all goosebumps," he says of the dis-
tant screams of homosexuals hoisted onto hooks
in the woods. "The howling and the screaming
were inhuman."
The frail, elderly Dormer, a tiny figure in a
wheelchair, is one of six interviewees in
Paragraph 175, a deeply unsettling documentary
that explores a phenomenon
heretofore neglected in the
history books.
Though everyone knows
about the Nazi persecution
of Jews, few are familiar
with the suffering of 100,000 men arrested
under Paragraph 175, the Reich's anti-gay
statute. While the 10,000 to 15,000 homosexu-
als who landed in concentration camps were not
slated for the gas chambers, they endured slave
labor, castration and surgical experiments.
(Because the Nazis viewed lesbianism as a tem-
porary, curable problem, lesbians were rarely
arrested.)
The searing movie is the latest documentary
by filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey
Friedman, who have been lauded for their previ
ous films on the gay experience.
Common Threads (1989) about the AIDS
Memorial Quilt, won the Oscar for best docu-
mentary; The Celluloid Closet, about gays in the
movies, won an Emmy; and Epstein's The Times
of Harvey Milk won him an Oscar in 1985.
But the gay producer-directors never tackled a
film that touched upon their Jewish roots —
until Paragraph 175.
Time was running out. Fewer than 10 sur-
vivors were known to be alive; most were elderly
and had never publicly spoken of their experi-
ences.
The filmmakers were hesitant. "We were wary
of becoming entangled in the thicket of
Holocaust politics," Friedman said.
"But as gay men and as Jews, we had obvious
personal reasons to be drawn to this issue,"
Epstein noted. "We felt it was crucial to record
what stories we could while there were still living
witnesses to tell them." Ei

"Paragraph 175" screens 8 p.m. Wednesday,
May 2. The film's producer, Michael
Ehrenzweig, will discuss the film.

Delancey.
"Anyway, I don't think you need something that's auto-
biographical to connect to it. What you need as a director
is to be able to feel your way into every character. You
need to be able to get it from your character's point of
view. You need to see that everyone has his reasons."
A Fish in the Bathtub centers on problems that
arise between Sam and Molly Kaplan as he begins
retirement. A large carp he buys and keeps in the
bathtub is one trigger in their parting ways, and that
decision wreaks havoc on people around them.
"I think it's essential that a film create its world
interestingly, so I get totally involved working with the
art director, costume designer and so on, and I also
invite input from my actors," says Silver. The mother
of three grown daughters intensified her career interests
after her children were able to go off on their own.
Silver first met Meara in 1984, when she wrote a
sketch for My Name Is Alice, a feminist comedy
revue that Silver co-conceived and co-directed for
the stage. She got to know Stiller while directing a
series he helped record for National Public Radio —
Jewish Short Stories from Eastern Europe and Beyond.
"I love it when a script has interesting secon
characters because the challenge is to introduce enough
complications and other plot elements so that the
audience wants to see how it all plays out," Silver says.
`A Fish in the Bathtub" screens 9:45 p. m.
Saturday, May 5.

"A Fish in the Bathtub": The newest film by Joan
Micklin Silver stars Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller.

1.7

"The Three Wolfs" screens 12:30 p.m. Sunday, May 6
A talkback with the filmmakers follows.

"The Three Wolfs" kicks off the Young Filmmakers
Forum and stars Tovah Feldsuh.

