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Actor Peter Riegert identifies with "bad Jews"
in directorial debut.
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989400
MICHAEL FOX
Special to the Jewish News
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he genial actor Peter Riegert,
who adds feature-film director
to his resume with the empa-
thetic and rewarding comedy King of
the Corner, was in Buffalo doing what
directors do. That is, fielding comments
from strangers after a screening .
"Somebody who was obviously
Jewish raised a question about how peo-
ple who weren't Jewish would interpret
— or misinterpret — what a bad Jew
was," Riegert recalls.
Cause for possible concern lies partly
in the film's source material, a volume of
short fiction by Gerald Shapiro provoca-
tively titled Bad Jews and Other Stories
(Bison Book).
But the major instigation is Leo
Spivak, the central character played by
Riegert himself A jaded marketing exec
blindsided by a belated midlife crisis,
unsure of who he is or what he wants,
Leo responds with some squirrelly (and
very funny) behavior that is inconsistent
with various tenets of Jewish law.
'A group of four people stood up,"
Riegert continues, "and said, 'Well, we're
Irish Catholic, and we don't think you're
going to have any problem,' because
they thought of themselves as bad
Catholics."
So much for creating worrisome
stereotypes or, for that matter, doubting
the universality of lapsed faith.
King of the Corner opens Friday, June
24, at the Landmark Maple Art Theatre
in Bloomfield Township. As he has in
select other cities, Riegert will appear at
opening-weekend screenings.
Behind The Camera
The actor, who won over audiences in
Animal House, Local Hero and Crossing
Delancey — the latter as Amy Irving's
pickle-peddling mentsh of a suitor —
made his debut behind the camera with
the Oscar-nominated short By Courier.
He accepted an invitation to show the
film in Lincoln, Neb., and while in
town he received an envelope from
Shapiro. The author, a university litera-
ture professor whose depiction of lusty
and deeply flawed Jewish men evokes
comparison with the late, great Stanley
`Bad' Jew, Good Film
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MICHAEL FOX
Special to the Jewish News
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here is nothing distinctive about
Leo Spivak. Like a lot of men in
their 50s, he's good at his job,
makes a decent living and has a lovely,
stable family.
And like plenty of middle-
aged guys, he's vaguely dissat-
isfied in a way that he can't rec-
ognize, let alone articulate.
King of the Corner, a gentle and gener-
ous comedy directed by and starring
Peter Riegert (Crossing Delancey), follows
Leo as his cork gets tighter and tighter.
When it finally pops, at an unexpected
moment and in an unforeseen way, the
results are both hilarious and profound.
This is precisely the kind of low-key
but satisfying movie that adults lament
(with good cause) and nobody makes
anymore. It's likely that it won't play for
weeks and weeks, so don't delay.
Riegert's directorial debut mirrors his
own screen persona, which is to say it's
unpretentious, self-deprecating and
uncommonly decent. That last is the
most remarkable, given how deeply
flawed most of the male characters are.
Based on Gerald Shapiro's Bad
Jews and Other Stories, which
Riegert adapted with the
author, King of the Corner centers
on a marketing executive with focus-
group expertise who's starting to find his
work banal and crass.
His teenage daughter is becoming a
bit of a problem child, and his wife,
Rachel (Isabella Rosselini), wants him to
lay down the law with her. Leo's main
concern, though, is his elderly father in
Arizona, whom he jets out to see every
other weekend.
Sol (Eli Wallach) is a curmudgeon of a
high order, full of complaints and