•

•

AUTHENTIC SZECHUAN COOKING

Introduces

Instead, she married Howard, a
Missouri-bred non-Jew, in a ceremony
conducted by a rabbi on Thanksgiving
Day in 1996. She had another son,
Babe, now 4, did theater with hubby
and taught a course at Harvard.
When Howard began nudging her
about Love, she gave him lists of other
actresses to consider. He lured her by
rewriting her character as an Ex-Wife-
Against Type: a former spouse who "is
not bitter, whose heart remains open,"
says Winger, herself an ex-wife.
To play the estrangedlovers, the
actress says she and Howard "accessed
the couple of days every year when
you imagine your divorce."
If Winger has a rebellious streak, it's
extended to her Judaism. She says her
parents were "horrified" when she
decided to intensify her religious stud-
ies by attending Los Angeles Hebrew
High School: "My mother had moved
away from Cleveland to escape my
grandmother's Orthodoxy, then I
became her mother," she says, with a
boisterous laugh.
After graduating from high school at
15, Winger ran off to a kibbutz and
contemplated living in Israel, but left
after a stint of army training.
Back in Los Angeles, she resolved to
become an actress while recovering
from a car accident that left her par-
tially paralyzed and blind for several
months.
Eventually she earned three Oscar
nominations for her performances in
Terms, At Officer and a Gentleman
(1982) and Shadowlands (1993), in
which she played a secular Jewish

divorcee who weds author C.S. Lewis.
She admits she's been outspoken
with directors: During production of
Costa-Gavras' neo-Nazi-themed
Betrayed, for example, she testily
argued that the racist violence wasn't
shocking enough.
On the set of Big Bad Love, based
on Larry Brown's short stories,
Howard says his wife created a "pro-
ductive adversity."
"You don't direct Debra," he says.
"You tell her stories."
The strategy apparently worked.
While Love has received some mixed
reviews, Winger has been unanimously
lauded for her understated yet raw
performance. She says the experience
has whetted her appetite for more film
work, if the right project emerges.
Meanwhile, she's content being a
Westchester County, N.Y., mom —
lighting candles on Shabbat, arranging
for Noah's weekly Jewish studies tutor
and teaching Babe the aleph-bet.
Suddenly — in another big, bad
flourish — she reveals she hasn't set
foot in synagogue since the tragedy of
Sept. 1'1. -
"I've become convinced that organ-
ized religion is the root of all evil," she
says. "Because I'm still pulled toward
Jewish ritual, that's a dilemma. But I'm
willing to sit with it and see how I
feel." ❑

Big Bad Love, rated R, opens
today at the Main Art Theatre,
(248) 542-0180.

***1/2 stars
Oakland Press

of Milford

114r1.,
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xpiieS 5/31/02

t;, Mt at both rev,furants.

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Orchard Lake Rd.

Just N. of 13 Mile
On the East Side

Now, with Cat's Meow and a recur-
ring acting role on The Sopranos, the
popular HBO cable series where he
plays Dr. Elliot Kupferberg, a Jewish
psychiatrist, Bogdanovich appears to
be on a lucky streak in a career that
has seen its share of lows. Anyone
remember Daisy Miller and At Long
Last Love?
Playing Jewish is no stretch for
Bogdanovich, whose mother was an
Austrian Jew (his father was a Greek
Orthodox Yugoslav). In 1939, the year
of his birth, his parents went to New
York on tourist visas and never left.
Taking this action, Bogdanovich has
said, saved their lives. Most of his
mother's family died in the Shoah.
One of Bogdanovich's few projects
with a Jewish theme was Rescuers,
about non-Jews — Righteous Gentiles
— who saved Jewish lives in Europe

(248) 626-0804

during World War II. He directed one
segment of the film series for the
Showtime cable network.
With The Cat's Meow, Bogdanovich,
a film historian, has indulged his
affection for the 1920s, a decade, he
says, when filmmaking was in its hey-
day and most Americans attended
movies weekly.
Bogdanovich has penned numerous
books on the history of film and the
great filmmakers, .including This is
OrsonWelles, John Ford, The Cinema of
Alfred Hitchcock, A Moment with Miss
Gish and Peter Bogdanovich on the
Movies.0

The Cat's Meow, rated PG-13,
opens today at the Maple Art
Theatre, (248) 542-0180.

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4/26
2002

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