suspend their disbelief.
"When it came down to the logisti-
cal problem of the Friday [night]
rabbi, we decided it was just more
important to have the character than
to stick to what's real."
Asked if there are any Jewish authors
or literary works on his wish list of
future film projects, Terrio strains to
remember titles.
"The Jewish writers whom I most

admire tend to be a little bit less com-
placent in the way that they think
about the world," he says. "They're
more questioning of things. Whether
it's Tony Kushner or Philip Roth or
whoever, there's a sense that things
aren't taken as givens."
A suggestion that a remake of
Portnoy's Complaint might be a good
idea gains Terrio's assent.
"Possibly, yeah," he responds.

" Portnoy's Complaint is actually the one
that I always think I could do some-
thing with."

❑

For your next
function, make it

Heights, rated R, is scheduled to
open Friday, July 8, at the
Landmark Main Art Theatre in
Royal Oak. (248) 263-2111.

Anchamo.

Choose Andiamo Osteria to
your next event and add
New York City

Hitting The 'Heights'

Jewish
Jewish play •

A Touch
of New York
at Andiamo,
Royal Oak

Amy Fox pens first screenplay, for a Merchant/Ivory film.

than if she had
grown up in
Special to the Jewish News
New York.
Her father,
rom a one-act play Off-Off
who is retired
Broadway to a gorgeous
from IBM, is an
Merchant-Ivory film starring
ex-New Yorker
some of the best actors in America —
("Everybody told
quite a trajectory for first-time screen-
me
my father
writer Amy Fox.
sounded
like
is
set
among
the
chic
resi-
Heights
Woody Allen
dences and assorted watering holes of
George Segal, left, as Rabbi
when I was
Manhattan's yuppie sophisticates and
Mendel counsels Isabel
growing up"),
their elders. At the film's center is
(Elizabeth Banks) about her
and her mother,
Isabel (Banks), a beautiful young pho-
upcoming intrfitith Mar--
also a New York
tographer; also with prominent roles
riage in "Heights. •
native, is a
are her mother, a famous actress-direc-
national board
tor-drama teacher (Close), and
Jonathan's "Jewishness" nor the rabbi
member of
Jonathan, a handsome young Jewish
character is in the original play.
Hadassah.
lawyer who is engaged to Isabel
However, Fox said, she added those
Fox, who became a bat mitzvah,
(Marsden).
elements
to clue the audience into the
went
east
to
Amherst
College,
where
All of the characters, with one
fact
that
Isabel
and Jonathan have dif-
she
studied
English
and
playwriting.
notable exception, are not quite what
ferences,
the
extent
of which becomes
She
says
she
was
always
drawn
to
New
they seem, and they carry secrets that
clear
in
the
last
third
of the film. She
York
and
plunged
into
the
New
York
are revealed as the film progresses. The
added that her writing mentor was so
literary world after graduation even
exception is Rabbi Mendel, played by
impressed by the, rabbi character he
George Segal, to whom the non-Jewish though she hardly knew anyone in
suggested
she write a film about him.
town.
Isabel and her Jewish fiancee go for
The
casting
of Elizabeth Banks as
She
worked
in
publishing
but
wrote
premarital counseling.
bride"
is ironic in that the
shiksa
"the
non-stop.
As
of
2005,
she
had
written
Mendel is what he seems — a
actress
converted
to
Judaism before
five
full-length
plays
that
have
been
mentsh and a wise counselor armed
marrying
her
University
of
produced
by
prestigious
companies
in
with a dry wit. The rabbi asks the
Pennsylvania college sweetheart Max
New York, London and other cities.
interfaith couple to draw cards with
Heights began as one of three one-act Handelman in 2003; their Jewish wed-
questions he has written on them.
ding — with a chuppah sewn by the
plays mounted by the respected
One of the cards Jonathan picks says:
bride's
mother — was featured in
Ensemble
Theater
Company
of
New
"How would you feel if you came
magazine.
InStyle
York
in
2001.
A
good
review
in
the
home to Christmas lights? To a
As
for
future projects, Fox said she is
caught
the
eye
of
leg-
New
York
Times
Christmas tree?"
working on a screenplay about the ten-
, endary producer Ismail Merchant
ants of Stuyvesant Town, a New York
(who passed away in May), and he
apartment project that was built after
commissioned Fox to write a screen-
Out Of The West
World
War II for returning veterans.
play based on the play.
Fox, 29, is a nice Jewish writer from
Her
father
grew up there.
Fox
said
she
had
never
written
a
Boulder, Colo., although she now lives
The
screenplay
concerns the efforts
screenplay,
but
with
Merchant's
sage
in Brooklyn.
of
some
leftist
tenants,
mostly Jewish,
guidance,
she
opened
up
her
play,
Growing up in a mostly non-Jewish
to
end
the
then-common
public
added
characters
and
gave
them
a
town like Boulder probably made her
housing policy of excluding blacks.
"back story" For example, neither
more aware of her Jewishness, she said,

NATE BLOOM

F

❑

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7/ 7
2005

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