Arts & Entertainment

Smashing Stereotypes

In "Murderball," Jewish filmmakers show quadriplegics in new light.

•

NAOMI PFEFFERMAN
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles

Phoro by Jack Rowand-
so,

I

n 2003, Dana Adam Shapiro was
stunned by an article about quad-
riplegic rugby — a.k.a. murderball
— played by testosterone-amped ath-
letes who ram the hell out of each other
in souped-up wheelchairs.
The quadriplegics, at least partially
impaired in all four limbs, were trash-
talking, beer-guzzling, ministry-blasting
gladiators who partied hard, had hot
girlfriends and plenty of sex.
"I had thought all quadriplegics were
like Christopher Reeve," Shapiro said,
sheepishly. "No life, no movement, no
sex and certainly no rugby."
The former Spin magazine senior edi-
tor promptly called his producer, Jeff
Mandel, and announced he'd found the
subject of their debut film.
"But it wasn't going to be just about
the sport," Shapiro said. "It was going to
be about what it's like to break your
neck"
The fierce, powerful Murderball
revolves around athletes such as Mark

road on fire, I
wouldn't p— on
him to put it out,"
Zupan says in the
film.)
The lauded movie
won the audience
award for Best
American
Documentary at the
2005 Sundance
Film Festival.
According to

Entertainment
Weekly, it's poised to
become the latest
breakout documen-
US. Paralympic Rugby Team captain Mark Zupan and
tary (like Spellbound
teammates in "Murderball": Jock philosophers
and Fahrenheit 9/11),
and
Zupan will be
Zupan, a goateed, tattooed Texan who
the
summer's
most
surprising
action
reconciles with the friend whose drunk
hero.
driving put him in a wheelchair. There's
In an interview at LA's Meridian
also Joe Soares, crippled by childhood
Hotel,
the Jewish filmmakers were
polio, who skulked off to coach the
almost
as hung over and trash talking as
Canadians, with the American playbook
Zupan,
whose head was on the table
in tow, when he was cut from the U.S.
after
drinking
Crown and Cokes until 6
team. ("If Joe was on the side of the
a.m. at the film's California premiere.

Henry Alex Rubin, who co-directed the
film with Shapiro, said he somehow lost
his dress shoes in the revelry.
The filmmakers — all 31 — even
sounded like the athletes as they razzed
each other, while describing their Jewish
backgrounds.
Shapiro grew up in a Conservative
home in Newton, Mass.; spent a semes-
ter at Tel Aviv University; and wrote an
upcoming novel, The Every Boy, which
revolves around a Jewish family. Mandel,
from Great Neck, Long Island, read
Torah weekly at the request of his yeshi-
va graduate father. And Rubin, who was
raised in an interfaith household, lit a
"starter kit" menorah that Shapiro gave
him last year.
"Do you remember your bris?"
Shapiro asked Mandel.
"Lees say I have credentials in that
area," the producer replied.
But the talk turned serious when the
filmmakers earnestly described the
Jewish values inherent in the film.
Shapiro was pleased when a rabbi used
Murderball as the topic of a Passover ser-
mon about overcoming obstacles.

Talmudic Debate

Filmmaker revisits father's clear-cut decision to die.

MICHAEL FOX

Special to the Jewish News

T

JN

7/28

2005

36

o call Bob Stern a strong-
willed man is to traffic in
understatement. Diagnosed
with heart disease and prostate cancer
after 77 years lived on his terms, the
entrepreneur refused to cede control to
the doctors.
In full control of his faculties and
unwilling to endure surgeries and
treatment, Stern took his life on his
central California ranch. But first, he
made a videotape explaining his deci-
sion — with his wife and son present
— for his out-of-town daughters.
"What you see in my family is this
epic debate," says one of those daugh-
ters, San Francisco filmmaker Susan
Stern. "That's talmudic. What my

family did was talk through things and
analyze things and debate things."
Stern intercuts her father's tape with
old home movies and postmortem
family interviews in her riveting one-
hour film, The Self-Made Man. A
provocative blend of personal docu-
mentary and hot-button social issue, it
airs 11:30 p.m. Sunday, July 31, as
part of PBS's P.O. V. series.
While most families would bury Bob
Stern's tape in the basement after one
viewing, Susan Stern was convinced that
making it public would be much more
valuable.
"I wanted to bring that talmudic ethic
of debate to other people," she explains.
"That [desire to share is] something I
think is very Jewish. And as soon as I
discovered that white men over 75 have
the highest suicide rate in the nation, I

realized this
wasn't just my
dad."
Stern adds,
"It's a delicate
subject, but we
Jews do take the
lead often in fig-
uring out how
to talk about
difficult sub-
Filmmaker Susan Stern
jects."
A longtime
investigative journalist before gravitating are eight suicides in the Bible, and some
of them are presented in ways that are
to filmmaking with her first documen-
not only rational but heroic."
tary, Barbie Nation, Stern has never
She cites Samson bringing down the
been afraid to ask tough questions.
temple on his own head, which would
"In my research, I found that you can
seem to be a case of self-sacrifice rather
interpret Jewish traditions and the Bible
than suicide.
and teachings to argue either side of the
"I would argue in my own father's
right-to-die issue," Stern says. "There
suicide there was an element of self-sac-