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positively redolent of the classic Tap
album Break Like the Wind — the
passing of Irving Steinbloom, a
beloved folk manager, inspires his son
Jonathan (portrayed by Jewish
actor/director Bob Balaban) to stage a
memorial concert.
As a youth, Jonathan founded the
Young Jewish Polo League — they played
on Shetland ponies to minimize any
damage from falls — and at the insis-
tence of his mother, wore a protective hel-
met while playing chess. Naturally, his
show is televised by public television.
The Folksmen haven't played together
since their glory days, when they made
such classics as "Blood on the Coal" —
perhaps the ultimate folksong, being
about a train wreck in a coal mine.
Mitch & Mickey (Levy and Catherine .
O'Hara) are famous both for their
romantic music and for Mitch Cohen's
subsequent appearances in a straitjacket
on solo albums such as A Cry for Help.
The New Main Street Singers, mean-
while, are a reconstituted good-time
group that plays a lot of theme parks
and includes only one original member.
The only faction of '60s folk not
represented are the protest singers.
"The Folksmen come as close as any-
body," says Shearer. 'And for them, it's
more pretension than anything else. They
sort of tiptoe around it by doing a song
about the Spanish Civil War. But nothing
about events within living memory."
While the film has plenty of fun
with the earnestness and well-meaning
banality of traditional folk, Levy
insists it's not meant as satire.
"Satire is cutting and sharp," he says.
"It holds something up in a way that is
immediately laughable. This is not that.
"I think this really is a character .coni-
edy that is set against the world of folk
music, like all our films are set against
whatever their world is — whether it's
small-town Blaine, Mo., in Gu f fman, or
a dog show [in Best in Show].
"We're not lampooning the people
involved. I think we have too much
affection for the subject matter to be
true satirists.
That seems especially true of Levy, a
self-described "Dylan fanatic" who was
deeply immersed in folk during the '60s.
In a twist that's nearly as weird as any-
thing conjured up in A Mighty Winch
Levy will be a principal actor in American
Wedding, the third in the American Pie
series of naughty teen comedies (all of
which Levy has starred in).
Weird — because the film's director
is Jesse Dylan, son of Bob.
"Such a sweet guy, Jesse," Levy says
of the young filmmaker.
"He asked, 'Did you get into folk music
when you researched [A Mighty Winc4?'
I said, 'No, I didn't get into it. I revisit-
ed it. I was into folk music in the '60s.'
"And he said, 'Yeah, we had a lot of
that stuff growing up.' And, of course,
I'm just [slack-jawed].
"Uh-huh. Really. No kidding. I
guess you did.'" 0
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countries with pop culture."
Tony Gerber's Side Streets inter-
twines five storylines snaking through
the five New York City boroughs like
the subway the characters use for
transportation.
In fact, it was the transit system that
inspired Gerber to transform his short
film dealing with the emotional
reawakening of a Romanian butcher's
assistant, A Small Taste of Heaven, into
a full-length feature.
"Just by getting on a subway train
and going five or six stops out of
Manhattan, you're in another world
thousands of miles away, culturally,
says Gerber, whose mother's family is
of Romanian-Jewish descent.
"The idea that someone from Trinidad
and someone from Bucharest could ride
in the same subway car and never know
each other but ride in that same subway
car on a daily basis, that's one of the
beautiful things about New York."
But Gerber found the heart of his
original short, which played at
Sundance, in his own family history.
His wife's mother — who is African,
American — and Gerber's father grew
up in the predominantly Jewish
Crown Heights area of Brooklyn. His
mother-in-law even learned Hebrew as
her second language in high school.
"A generation later their kids are mar-
ried and have a child together and are
making a movie together but are from
two very different worlds," Gerber says.
"Thinking on that experience, on
these very different worlds that con-
stantly crisscross, was the inspiration for
the film." 1-1
Madstone's Film Forward series
runs through June 11. Side Streets
plays through May 14. Bunny
plays May 29-June 11. For more
information and show times, call
(734) 994-1000 or go to
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