Arts & Entertainment

A Comedic Riff On Not Fitting In

Schmucks director Jay Roach redefines the term.

Naomi Pfefferman

Jewish Journal of Greater L.A.

I

love fear as a motor for comedy,"
director Jay Roach said. "The night-
mare of becoming the architect of
your own humiliation rings true to me."
This propensity for self-doubt isn't what
one might expect from Roach, 53, one of
the top comedy directors in Hollywood,
who has collaborated with Mike Myers
and Ben Stiller to create the Austin Powers
and Meet the Parents franchises, and
whose Dinner for Schmucks, starring Paul
Rudd and Steve Carell, opens July 30.
Yet, at the Beverly Hilton in L.A. recently,
Roach said he relates to the anxiety and
"identity crises" experienced by some of his
own characters. As evidence, he cited the
scene from Annie Hall in which the iconicly
Jewish Woody Allen imagines himself as
a Chasid in the eyes of his lover's WASPy
family: "I was the reverse of Woody Allen
in Annie Hall," Roach said.A convert to
Judaism, he was raised Southern Baptist in
Albuquerque, N.M., where his father worked
for the military, and two of his regular child-
hood activities were hunting and fishing.
Roach remembers being at dinner with
the erudite Jewish family of his future
wife, Susanna Hoffs of the rock group the
Bangles: "I imagined them looking at me,
and I had a coonskin cap on — the hick
WASP. I just didn't think I was qualified for
their level of sophistication," he said.
Roach need not have worried — his
future in-laws were as accepting as Stiller's
were critical in Meet the Parents. Yet he felt

like a "total misfit!'
"I loved my wife, and I really loved her
family, and so I wanted to impress them. I
always was coming up with jokes, or dig-
ging up knowledge about psychology and
just overcompensating.... My father-in-law
is a shrink, absolutely the least judgmental
guy of all time."
Dinner for Schmucks is a different kind
of riff on not fitting in. Inspired by French
director Francis Veber's Le Diner de Cons
(which roughly translates as "Dinner for
Bloody Idiots"), Roach's adaptation revolves
around an ambitious financial analyst, Tim
(Rudd), whose promotion hinges on partic-
ipating in a cruel game: his boss' "dinner for
idiots." Each guest is required to invite the
stupidest person he can find for an evening
of subtle ridicule; initially Tim's conscience
kicks in."That's messed up," he says.
But then he chances to meet an eccentric
amateur taxidermist, Barry (Carell), who
seems too perfect a dunce to pass up. As
Barry proceeds to wreak havoc on Tim's
life — and reveals an underlying sweet
nature — Tim is thrown into a dilemma
about whether to go through with the
nefarious dinner. "He is having that iden-
tity panic," Roach said. "He could get com-
pletely caught up in his materialistic goals
or get in touch with his better self
The moral crisis at the heart of Dinner
for Schmucks came off as the inspiration for
its surprising title, as the comedy is the first
major studio title to feature that tradition-
ally naughty Yiddish word. Billboards with
the phrase "Get Schmucked" have been
placed all over Los Angeles, including sig-

nificantly Jewish areas.
Rudd, who is the son of
Steve Carell and Paul Rudd in Dinner for Schmucks.
British Jews, acknowledged that
"schmuck" means "penis" in the
Rangers, his producer kept trying to fix
mamaloshen (literally, mother tongue): "I
him up with Hoffs.
know there are some people who might
"I was not interested in meeting her,
[have taken] offense," he said of remarks
actually. I felt it was a joke, like, 'Why are
in the blogosphere, but it wouldn't even
you punking me?"' he said. "She was a
have crossed my mind that somebody
rock star and, at the time, I was driving
might find this offensive." His own grand-
this 1973 VW van that would catch on fire
father used to call him "schmuck" or a
if I didn't drive it at the right speed, and
"putz," he said. "But it seems to me that
I had no money." Finally, Roach was per-
most people use the word nowadays in
suaded to attend a gathering that included
the sense of 'Don't be a fool' or 'Don't be a
Hoffs; he arrived before the allotted hour
jerk' — as in, 'Stop acting like a schmuck!" because, as he put it, "I'm a worrier," and
Roach said the title works because of
found that Hoffs, too, was early because
schmuck's more casual meaning of "jerk"
she also tended to eschew being late.
or "idiot," which could refer to each of
Roach converted to Judaism before their
the protagonists at different points in the
wedding in 1993 at Sephardic Temple
movie. "The question becomes, "Who
Tifereth Israel; the marriage ceremony was
really is the 'schmuck'?" he said.
officiated by Hoff's grandfather and uncle,
This, too, was the premise of the original
both rabbis. "I took it seriously,' he said of
French film, in which Veber, who is half
his conversion studies. "I found it so moving
Armenian and half Jewish, skewers the snob- and meaningful." (The couple's two children,
bishness of his wealthy characters and pro-
now 11 and 15, are being raised Jewish.)
motes a revenge of the downtrodden ones.
"There is something about my wife's
Roach also has an affinity for the
approach to life that I related to: being
underdog. "I was not in any stretch of
vigilant, which comes from pre-visualizing
the imagination smart enough to go to
disaster almost all the time," he added
Stanford — I always assumed I got in on
with a laugh. "I think that's universal
some kind of regional affirmative action,"
— we're all in this pickle — but I think
he said of his undergraduate years. "But,
one of the great things about my wife, and
again, I just overcompensated and found a Jews in general, is that there's more open-
way, at first, to just survive, and eventually
ness about it; it's vocalized more." _I
I did sort of thrive there!'
Roach had completed USC's graduate
Dinner for Schmucks opens Friday,
film program when, while working at
July
30.
his first television writing job on Space

e v ws

Nate Bloom

Mil

I C

Special to the Jewish News

New Flick

Agora, an epic historical film directed
‘110 by Alejandro Amenabar (The Sea
UM Inside) set in fourth-century Egypt

e

l where Roman rule is tottering and
religious feuds in the city of Alexandria
threaten to destroy
the city's famous
library, the world's
greatest repository
of ancient learning,
stars Rachel Weisz,
40, as the brilliant
and beautiful Hypatia,
an astronomer.
Rachel Weisz
She leads a group

48

July 2J-; 2010

of disciples as they fight to save the
library while trapped behind its high
walls. Among these disciples are two
men competing for her heart: the
witty, privileged Orestes (Oscar Isaac)
and Davus (Max Minghella), Hypatia's
young slave. The film opens Friday,
July 30.

Tube Notes
Kevin Pollak, 52,

Kevin

Pollak

stars in his own one-
hour standup comedy
special on Showtime
11 p.m. Thursday, July
29. Pollak, who has
acted in many mov-
ies and TV shows,
began his career as a

quite funny standup
comic and spot-on
impressionist. He's
famous for doing a
great and quite funny
impression of William

Shatner.

Speaking of
Shatner, he doesn't
Shatner
seem to be slow-
ing down at age
79. On Monday, Aug. 2, his new Bio
cable series, Aftermath with William
Shatner, premieres at 10 p.m.
It takes an in-depth look at what
happens when people are tragi-
cally or infamously transformed from
unknown citizens into household
names overnight.

William

Peitz Update

Early this month, I
noted that newcomer
Nicola Peitz, 15, the
co-star of the sci/fi film

The Last Airbender,

might be the daughter
of Jewish billionaire

Nelson Peitz.

Nicola just confirmed to an inter-
viewer that Nelson, the CEO of the
Wendy's/Arby's group, is her father.
While other sources make it clear
that Nicola's mother, Claudia, was not
born Jewish, she may be a Jew-by-
choice — a New York Reform syna-
gogue lists Nelson and Claudia as
members. It seems clear that Nicola
was raised Jewish. Li