Academy Awards

About The Boys

Brothers Paul and Chris Weitz share a proudfizmily legacy —
and a nomination for best adapted screenplay

Wesleyan and Cambridge University, respectively,
were determined to launch their own filmmaking
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
careers. Their father initially had his own idea of
how they should proceed: "He kept suggesting that
n a cloudy afternoon in Hollywood, Paul
we ring up Merchant and Ivory," Chris says with a
and Chris Weitz are recounting how their
laugh.
late father, the legendary fashion designer
Instead, the boisterous, bookish brothers snagged
John Weitz, dressed down a man who
script-doctoring
assignments and persuaded
dissed their raunchy comedy American Pie.
DreamWorks
to
let them write the 1998 animated
The elder Weitz had roared with laughter
Antz.
film
throughout a screening of the 1999 film, best
For their directorial debut, they latched onto
known for a scene involving a libidinous teenager
Adam Herz's American Pie, which placed them
and a pastry.
among a growing list of filmmaking brothers (think
"The next day, an elderly gentleman approached
Coens, Farrellys, Wachowskis), whose perspective is
dad in a diner," says Paul, 37, sprawled in a fuzzy
not only shared, but genetic.
beanbag chair in the brothers' rambling
They don't think it's surprising that
offices.
the
scions of all that John Weitz breed-
"He said the movie was vulgar," adds
ing grew up to make a ribald teen clas-
Chris, 33, who, like his brother, is dressed
sic: "There is a kind of old Berlin,
in rumpled jeans. 'And our father, who
knockabout bawdy sense of humor in
was always quick to accept a challenge,
American
Pie, which was our dad's
even in his 70s, said, 'Haven't you ever
sense
of
humor,
actually," Chris says.
masturbated in your life?'"
Nevertheless
—
in part to counter
A photograph of the impeccably-
the
raunchy
image
— they sought to
groomed pereWeitz dominates a corner of
make a more sophisticated, Billy
the casually messy office; father figures
Wilder-ish comedy after American Pie.
loom large, as well, in the brothers' comic
They knew they'd found it upon
films.
About a Boy: Hornby's proga-
reading
In Pie, a well-meaning but dorky dad
tonist
"reminded
us of Jack Lemmon's
(Eugene Levy) mortifies his son with over-
Chris
The
Apartment,"
character
in
ly candid talks about sex. In About a Boy,
says.
"The
story
is
inerringly
opti-
based on Nick Hornby's novel, Hugh
mistic but there's enough cynicism and
Grant plays a selfish London bachelor who
acid in it not to make you gag."
becomes surrogate father to a bullied, mis-
When Hornby and Grant balked at
in
1999,
and
their
parents,
John
Weitz
Chris and Paul Weitz
fit kid.
hiring
the "pie guys," the brothers won
1964
and Susan Kohner, in
John Weitz wasn't required to defend
them
over
during a series of social calls
Boy from bullies, as the witty, heartfelt
(they
bonded
with Grant while getting
film earned the brothers rave reviews and a
falling-down drunk in London). Thereafter, they
thought should change their names were the family
2003 Academy Award nomination for best adapted
begged Universal for two years before landing the
members of ex-Nazis."
screenplay. He never learned about the Oscar nod,
project.
The brothers inherited his subversive streak,
however, as he died in October after a long battle
Grant, for one, was impressed: "As it turns out,
sometimes to his chagrin. Dad wanted them to
with cancer.
Chris
and Paul are probably the most highbrow
wear twin navy blazers with insignias; they preferred
"It was sad because one of my first thoughts was
directors
I've ever worked with," he told Newsweek.
shlumpy jeans.
• that he would have been so tickled," Paul says.
"Bizarrely
so. They sit around on the set reading
When
John
Weitz
hired
a
German
nanny
to
"It felt so surreal," Chris says, quietly. "He was
Freud
and
Dostoevsky."
watch
the
boys,
then
7
and
11,
during
a
vacation,
such a powerful figure that he managed to get
Since receiving the Oscar nomination and critical
"We tortured her," Paul says. "We kept asking her
inside your head to the extent that you felt like it
kudos for About a Boy, the brothers no longer have
what she thought of Hitler until she finally said,
was possible that if one person on earth could not
to beg to direct projects of their choice.
`He made the country work.' We were like little
die, he was going to be the guy."
They've toyed with the idea of filming their
OSS guys undermining her authority and question-
John Weitz, the son of wealthy, assimilated Berlin
father's
story, although they have rejected that idea,
ing her politics until she got so aggravated that she
Jews, fled Hitler to Shanghai and then to New
for
the
time
being, because "you don't want to sen-
left."
York, his sons say. By age 19, he was an OSS spy
sationalize
it
or mess it up," according to Paul.
When
Paul
Kohner's
famous
clients
came
calling
posing as a Nazi officer in that agency's most dan-
Instead, they're working on another comedy, The
(Ingmar Bergman even took them to the circus), the
gerous mission: aiding the German Resistance's
Making of a Chef about the escapades of culinary
brothers remained cheerfully obliviOus. Chris' recol-
plots to kill Hitler.
lection of Billy Wilder, now one of the brothers' cin- school students. Their father would have liked it,
After the war, he helped liberate Dachau, "which
they think.
ematic heroes: "He didn't know us from Adam, but
forever destroyed a kind of innocence for our dad,"
Even though the cooking saga will not feature a
he was nice to us because of our grandparents."
Paul says.
pie.
❑
By
the
1990s,
Paul
and
Chris
Weitz,
graduates
of
He subsequently reinvented himself as a pioneer-

ing designer who starred in his own ads, profession-
ally raced cars, and, in his later years, wrote best-
selling novels and nonfiction books about Hitler's
Germany.
The brothers are the product of his third mar-
riage, to the glamorous actress Susan Kohner,
daughter of the famous Jewish agent Paul Kohner
and the Mexican-Catholic actress Lupita Tovar.
While the Weitz's Park Avenue household was
nonreligious, it was not entirely assimilated: "Our
father identified as Jewish almost out of spite
toward [anti-Semites]," Chris says.
"He was always scornful of people who changed
their names," Paul says. "The only people he

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