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Somber Heart
Actor David Arquette's role in Holocaust film has
sensitized him to his Jewish identity.
NAOMI PFEFFERMAN
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
A
his success. Five years ago, his mother,
Mardi (nee Brenda Nowak), an acting
coach and family therapist, succumbed
to breast cancer. His 65-year-old father,
Lewis, died of longtime illnesses while
Arquette was shooting the campy 2002
arachnid flick, Eight Legged Freaks.
With his parents gone -- and many
of his family questions still unanswered
Arquette was drawn to The Grey
Zone to connect to his Jewish roots.
As research, he says he visited the
sad-eyed man wearing a
,three-piece herringbone suit
for a newspaper interview is
struggling to describe his
feelings about Auschwitz and Primo
Levi's Holocaust poetry.
Except-for the goatee and the
moussed hair, there's no clue this seri-
ous man is David Arquette — the
youngest of acting siblings
Rosanna, Patricia, Richmond and
Alexis — renowned for playing
doofuses like the cop Dewey in the
Scream trilogy (and for an offscreen
wardrobe that rivals Liberace's).
He says he's wearing the her-
ringbone to match the somber
tone of his new movie, The Grey
Zone, which is as antithetical to
his pop culture image as the suit.
The actor is startlingly heartbreak-
ing as Hoffman, the most fragile
and guilt-ridden of a squad of
sonderkommando at Birkenau.
David Arquette is startlingly heartbreaking
Of his unorthodox casting
choice, director Tim Blake Nelson as Hoffman, the most guilt-ridden of the
says, "I've always felt David's corn _ gas chamber attendants at the Birkenau
edy is based on shame. The comic death camp.
tension in his work is about his
characters trying to be something
they're not, so they're ashamed of who
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in
they actually are. And Hoffman is a
Washington, D.C., where the piles of
character full of shame."
victims' shoes "suggested the visual
During an interview, Arquette —
horror Hoffman would have seen
born on a Virginia Buddhist commune
every day." He attended a "son-
to a Jewish mother and non-Jewish
derkommando training camp" where
father — describes childhood auditions the actors learned "to handle the big
where "I'd embarrass myself and get
pokers and pliers used to turn the
rejected and cry" He says his family
bodies in the ovens." .
celebrated Passover and Ramadan after
The first day of shooting, Arquette
his father converted to Islam.
says he lifted a naked extra painted to
Arquette's maternal grandfather, a
look like a corpse when "suddenly I
Polish HoloCaust refugee, lived with
felt I was looking at my mother. She
the family until his death in the
had my mother's body, which I knew
1980s. "I regret so much that I didn't
because when my mother was sick
ask him more about his past," says the
we'd help change her, and her head
actor, who instead immersed himself
was shaved, just as my mother was
in graffiti art in Los Angeles and the
bald from her chemotherapy.
Fairfax High School drama program.
"It was just a glimpse of the shock the
Eventually Arquette, 31, built his
sonderkommando must have felt when
reputation with goofy turns such as
they recognized someone they knew."
the AT&T commercials in which he
The raw experience has helped
behaved, according to Entertainment
shape the actor's Jewish identity: "It's
Weekly, "like a Ritalin-starved child."
given me pride in my heritage and
He married his Scream co-star
respect for the suffering the Jewish
Courtney Cox — but grief accompanied people have endured." E
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