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(248) 681-6120 — Fax: (248) 681-6121 www.recherchefurniture.com 11/29 2002 90 Hollywood's first major release with a Festival of Lights theme comes to the silver screen. Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles I LUNCH SPECIALS $495 Open 7 Days a Week for Lunch & Dinner Animated Chanukah NAOMI PFEFFERMAN a Restaurant At The Movies 0 OFF . . All Take-Outs over $25 c( - (r pea Arts & Entertainment 073790 n Adam Sandler's animated film, Eight Crazy Nights, a self- professed "33-year-old crazy Jewish guy" comes off like a . tweaked Jewish Scrooge. Haunted by the ghosts of Chanukahs past, ex-Jewish Community Center basketball star Davey Stone (Sandler) rivals the antics of Sandler's previous angry-doofus characters. He gets drunk at his local Chinese restaurant, terrorizes elderly patrons with a nuclear belch (their glasses break), moons Christmas carol- ers and destroys his town's Santa and menorah ice sculptures. It takes a Chanukah miracle — and the intervention of an elfish youth basketball referee named Whitey (also voiced by Sandler) — to turn Stone around and rekindle his faith. Some might say Eight Crazy Nights is itself a holiday miracle. Perhaps the first studio release with Chanukah as a backdrop, it presents the Festival of Lights not as Christmas' weak stepsis- ter but as a vibrant part of the American cultural fabric. Sandler him- self wants the movie to do for film what his hit "Chanukah Song" has already done on the radio: to provide an alternative to the Christmas fare that bombards the popular culture each December. "The intention was to write a funny movie and hope that maybe every year you get to see it somewhere," the Jewish actor-comedian, who no longer does print interviews, told MTV. Sandler, whose past six films have racked up at least a half billion dollars in North America, may be one of few Jews with the clout to convince a studio to greenlight a Chanukah-themed release. While his portrayal of a quirky sales- man in Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch Drunk Love is currently generating Oscar buzz, his penchant for the puerile has made his own films the darling of the coveted male teen audi- ence. Simultaneously, the overt cultural narcissism of his "Chanukah Song" has endeared him to Jewish armchair . sociologists, according to critics such as J. Hoberman of the Village Voice. "Like Barbra Streisand with Yentl and Steven Spielberg with Schindler's List, Sandler is using his stature to produce the kind of Jewish material he wants," said Sharon Pucker Rivo, exec- utive director of the National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis University. Eight Crazy Nights is another Sandlerian brew of Judaism-meets- pop-culture, so along with halachically correct menorah lightings, there are jokes about jockstraps, armpit hair and poop"-sicles (don't ask). Although some viewers will raise eye- brows at the juxtaposition of crude, raw humor and Yiddishkeit, longtime Sandler collaborators think it makes sense. "At its core, this is an Adam Sandler movie," said Allen Covert, the film's producer and co-screenwriter with Sandler, Brooks Arthur and Brad Isaacs. "Adam wanted to address his core audience, and Columbia Pictures is in the moviemaking business," said Arthur, a veteran music producer and the film's music supervisor. "So the movie had to get a little naughty here and there. But at least there is a menorah for the world to see, the first real menorah onscreen. And Chanukah is part of the spine of our movie, not just a passing reference. "It's a great way to introduce the holiday to people who know nothing about Jews. The film's creators have more than a casual relationship to Judaism. Covert, 38, the son of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, is studying for his 2003 bar mitzvah at Stephen S. Wise Temple in Los Angeles. Arthur, who is in his late 50s, served as junior cantor to his Brooklyn Orthodox shteibel and now attends Chabad of Beverly Hills. In a 1998 Jewish Journal interview, Sandler, 36, said he grew up playing basketball on a beleaguered team at his Manchester, N.H., JCC, which closely resembles the fictional New England team in Eight Crazy Nights. He was one of two Jews in his ele- mentary school class and, as he sings in "The Chanukah Song," sometimes felt like "the only kid in town without a Christmas tree." Class clowning was a good way to make friends; it also provided a springboard to his future profession. After an abysmal standup comedy "