Arts & Entertainment

The Odd
Couple

In Crazy Love, filmmaker
Dan Klores documents a
not-so-magnificent obsession.

Burt and Linda Pugach: A funny kind of love.

Curt Schleier
Special to the Jewish News

D

an Klores, 57, first became aware
of Burt Pugach and Linda Riss
almost five decades ago. "I was 9
or 10 years old',' the public relations execu-
tive turned filmmaker says in a telephone
interview. "I remember reading about
them. I remember hearing about them."
Pugach and Riss are the subjects of
Klores' strangely compelling new docu-
mentary, Crazy Love, which opens Friday,
June 15, at the Maple Art Theatre in
Bloomfield Township.
Pugach was a successful but "shady"
lawyer. Married and age 32, he met Riss,
then 21, at Joyce Kilmer Park in the Bronx.
It was Rosh Hashanah 1957. They dated,
they broke up, they dated, they broke up.
He harassed her. The cops and courts
were no help despite her complaints. And
in 1959 — when Pugach discovered that
Riss was engaged to someone else, he
hired a thug to throw lye in her face. She's
been legally blind ever since.
If this story isn't sufficiently weird,
there's more. Pugach served 14 years in
prison and was paroled in 1974. Eight
months after his release, the couple wed.
On the surface, it seems they're perfect
for each other: He's abusive; she's needy.
It's hard to take your eyes off them — like
watching a train wreck from the window
of your passing car.
The film came about three or four years
ago, when Klores spotted an article about
the couple in the New York Times. "It
jogged my memory, and I thought [a film
about them] could be interesting. I was
looking for another project."

They were listed in the phonebook, so
he just cold-called. "They were interested
in doing it, and I spent a lot of time alone
with them before I put a camera on them:'
says Klores. "I insisted on interviewing
one with the other not there!'
On the surface, it seems an unlikely
subject for a film — two main characters
so unsympathetic. Just don't tell that to
Klores.
"I never looked at her as being unsym-
pathetic at all:' he insists. "I think she
made a choice based on all sorts of psy-
chological reasons, and one should take
the time to try to look at [that]. I'm not
saying she's working from a normal or
healthy emotional place. But not to feel
something for her, I don't quite get that."
Does a film with so negative a theme
risk turning off potential audiences?
"I wouldn't presume that:' says Klores.
"It's already played outside New York, at
festivals in Durham and Dallas. There
were huge audiences. It won the Best
Documentary Award at Santa Barbara.
I don't think about if I'm going to get a
huge audience. I just think about making
a good film!"
If not unsympathetic, the Pugaches
certainly are not a couple one describes in
positive terms. Did Klores, who is Jewish,
have reservations about doing a film that
portrays two Jews in such a negative way?
Klores answers forcefully: "A friend of
mine said that to me when he saw an early
cut of the film. But I disagree with that.
They happen to be Jewish. So what? I don't
work like that, and I don't think like that.
I'm not a Jew who sticks his head in the
sand.
"I'm not afraid of anything, and I don't

need to compromise. I'm not going to hold
back my art because these two people
happen to be Jewish. I'm the opposite of
walking away from confrontations because
of my religion, and I have little regard for
those who do!"
Klores developed his
pugnacious personality
in Brooklyn. He grew up
in what he describes as a
lower-middle class family
in Brighton Beach. Both
sets of grandparents were
immigrants from Russia,
and Yiddish was frequent-
ly the lingua franca of the
Klores home. At Hebrew
Filmmaker Dan
school, one of his less
fond memories has to do
with a rabbi's last-minute realization (two
weeks before Klores' bar mitzvah) that the
wrong Haftorah had been assigned.
"I laugh about it now;' he chuckles,
though, he adds, it wasn't funny then. "I
think I broke out in a 103-degree fever!'
He took a while getting through college.
"I had a lot of issues, and I ended up going
to four colleges!"
Issues? "My issues were of self-esteem,
so I acted out through drug abuse he
says. Eventually he earned a bachelor's
degree in journalism and a master's in
history and began working as a writer.
From there he moved into public rela-
tions, setting out on his own in 1991. Even
though he had a great roster of boldface
clients — singer Paul Simon, Saturday
Night Live creator Lorne Michaels, Donald
Trump — it wasn't enough.
"I always wanted to do more, something
different',' says Klores.

He had an idea for a story about a park
and playground near where he grew up.
His first impulse was to do it as a book. "At
about that time, I got to be friendly with
[documentary filmmaker] Ken Burns. I
just observed and watched him
at work and said, `Maybe I can do
this.' That's how it began."
That film became The Boys
of Second Street Park, a heimish
look at a largely Jewish group that
hung around and played ball in
Brighton Beach. It was bought by
Showtime. Two other documen-
taries followed, one about boxer
Emile Griffith and another on
Latinos in baseball. And now,
Klores
Crazy Love.
Klores currently is working on
another documentary, has a feature film
in the pipeline and expects his first full-
length play to be produced Off Broadway
next season. Ironically, the man who was
a counselor to celebrities has become
a boldface name himself. A recent New
York Post Page Six item raved about the
film and offered a long list of celebs set to
attend the red carpet premiere.
In another irony, the agency handling
the p.r. for Crazy Love is not Dan Klores
Communications. "I felt that would be
unseemly," he says.
Asked if he thought he was a good cli-
ent, he responds: "I don't know. I know I'm
hard to bulls---, I'll tell you that!'

Crazy Love opens Friday, June 15, at
the Maple Art Theatre in Bloomfield
Township. (248) 263-2111.

June 14 t 2007

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