Entertainment
At The Movies
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n't get to first base with girls.
"His thing is all about his insecuri-
ty," Herz confides. At his age, I also
used to get very nervous and tense
up and withdraw around girls."
Even today, he quips, "I don't
do 'good date.' And the only other
dates I can find are the women
who don't do 'good date.' So we
butt heads, and it's just futile."
In the sequel — which takes
place the summer after the charac-
ters go off to college — we offi-
cially learn that Jim, like Herz, is
Jewish. His last name, Levenstein,
is revealed just after a humiliating
sequence involving Superglue and
a sensitive body part.
"In my mind, Jim, like me, is a
guy who had a bar mitzvah but protested going to
Sunday school," says Herz, who identifies more
with the cultural aspects of Judaism.
He was one of only a few Jewish kids at his high
school in East Grand Rapids, Mich., but that didn't
stop him from being elected president of his class.
He says his classmates were too ignorant to be
anti-Semitic. "It was like, 'So, you're Jewish. Have
you gotten your Christmas tree yet?'" Herz recalls.
One of his primary goals in high school was
drinking and partying. His term paper of choice at
the University of Michigan: dissecting teen flicks
such as Porky's.
A few months after graduation in 1996, Herz was
working as a production assistant in Los Angeles
Kevin (Thomas
Ian Nicholas),
Jim (Jason Biggs),
Stiffer (Seann
William Scott)
and Us (Chris
Klein) return
to their western
Michigan
hometown after-
their first year at
college and rent a
beach house for
the summer in
`American .Pie 2."
Another Slice Of 'Pie'
Michigan native Adam Herz talks about the sequel
to his ulockbuster teen comedy.
NAOMI PFEFFERMAN
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
t one point on the set of American Pie,
actor Jason Biggs took screenwriter Adam
Herz aside. "Dune, did you do it?" he
whispered. "Did you really hump a pie?"
It's the question everyone has asked Herz since
Biggs' infamous pastry scene made pop culture his-
tory and Pie became a sleeper hit in 1999, grossing
about $240 million worldwide.
So Herz, 28, sets the record straight just before
today's release of American Pie 2. He never got fresh
with baked goods. He didn't make a pact with his
high school buddies to lose his virginity before grad-
uation. His dad didn't try to educate him about sex
with a copy of jugs magazine.
"It's just that I always wanted to bring back the
kind of teen movie where parrying and sex were of
the utmost importance," the cocky, wickedly funny
writer said -n an interview. "But I wanted the char-
acters to be like real, actual kids who acted like I did
when I was a teenager. So I just wrote the way we
talked and the types of people that I knew."
It's yet another example of how Hollywood takes
one Jew's experience and transforms it into a pop cul-
ture phenomenon. Before Herz's Jim, there was
Seinfeld's "Jerry," whose Jewish neuroses provided the
biggest laughs on TV in the 80s and '90s. Billy
Crystal and his cronies lived out their Jewish child-
hood fantasies on the range in City Slickers (1991)
and City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold (1994).
The NBC hit Will 6.- Grace, created by David
Kohan and Max Mutchnick, is based on the gay
Mutchnick's friendship with a straight Jewish
woman. Seinfeld co-creator Larry David essentially
plays himself — an acerbic curmudgeon — in
HBO's darkly comic Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Now comes another slice of Pie, which will again
turn a geeky Jewish kid and his friends into the sum-
A
8/10
2001
70
mer's uncontested teenage heroes.
The character of Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) is
reminiscent of the brainy kids who squeamishly
avoided the bathroom at Herz's school. Michelle
(Alyson Hannigan) is like the doofus who repeated
her band camp stories ad nauseam in Herz's physics
class. Jim (Biggs) is the likeable shlimazel who could-
Funny, He Looks Jewish
Actor Jason Biggs is often mistaken for a "member of the tribe.
E
veryone thinks I'm Jewish,"
says actor Jason Biggs.
The 23-year-old star of
American Pie, Loser and American
Pie 2 is actually an Italian-Catholic
from New Jersey. But he looks like
the kind of nice Jewish boy you
had a crush on in Hebrew
school. Which is why he keeps
getting cast as Jews, he says.
His big break, at age 13, was
playing Judd Hirsch's son in
the Broadway run of
Conversations With My Father.
In 1997, TV mogul Steven
Bochco cast him as Robby
Rosenfeld in the series Total
Security. In American Pie 2,
Biggs' character, Jim, gets a
Jewish surname, Levenstein.
"Yet again, I am playing a
Jew," quips the exuberant, per-
sonable actor.
If the misconception lingers, it
doesn't help that Biggs has a
Jewish girlfriend — a 24-year-
old writer — his first serious
relationship since high school. In
the year-and-a-half they've been
dating, he's celebrated Shabbat
and Rosh Hashanah at her par-
ents' Los Angeles home.
When she flew off to Israel in
Hours after he flew into Lod
airport, Biggs was walking in Tel
Aviv when he heard a loud
explosion.
"When we got to our restau-
rant, all the Israelis were on their
cell phones and suddenly they
In 'American Pie 2," Jason
Biggs reprises his role as Jim
Levenstein, shown here with
his movie dad, played by
Eugene Levy. In real-life,
the actor recent!) , returned
from a trip to Israel with
his Jewish girlfriend.
June to visit her brother, a Hebrew
University of Jerusalem exchange
student, Biggs tagged along.
"I was definitely concerned
about the political situation," he
confides, "but I've always wanted
to see Israel."
were clearing out of the place," he
recalls. "Then our waiter told us
there had been a suicide bombing
at a discotheque less than half a
mile away. It was as if the head-
lines had come to life.
When the shaken actor walked
"