Arts & Entertainment
Jewish Men Behaving Badly
Client 9 joins a spate of films in which protagonists share
ambition and assimilation as their key characteristics.
Michael Fox
Special to the Jewish News
I
f you appreciate coincidences, the
recent and current movie season offers
unexpectedly complementary studies
of male Jewish ego, ambition and moral
failing.
The Social Network and Client 9: The
Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer ostensibly
highlight the roles that women played in
the fates of their high-profile protagonists.
A closer reading, however, suggests that the
crucial factor was each man's Jewishness.
Some facts, first:
In The Social Network out on DVD
last week while still being shown in theaters
before its anticipated slew of Oscars nomi-
nations — Facebook wunderkind Mark
Zuckerberg, as played by Jesse Eisenberg and
depicted by writer Aaron Sorkin and director
David Fincher, with a measure of Hollywood
oversimplification, embarked on his ulti-
mately lucrative and litigious path in 2003 as
revenge for a girlfriend's rejection.
Alex Gibney's documentary Client 9,
showing this weekend at the Detroit Film
Theatre in the Detroit Institute of Arts,
explores the sordid chapter in which the
former New York governor — who built
a national reputation as the state's prin-
cipled, relentless attorney general — was
—
undone in 2008 by his predilection for a
high-priced call girl.
The film doesn't say it, but Spitzer's Jewish
identity was an obvious advantage with New
York voters — despite never having been a
bar mitzvah and being married to a woman
who wasn't Jewish. He was an assimilated
Jew, in other words, albeit one who was
raised with Jewish values with respect to
accomplishment and ethics.
But no matter what he did in his legal and
political career, Spitzer couldn't fully tran-
scend, or escape, either his upbringing or the
perceptions of other people.
Client 9 offers the small but important
revelation that a threatening anonymous
message was left on his father's answering
machine as a way of pressuring the governor.
A despicable act, but it illustrates that the
way to get to Spitzer was through his roots.
Conversely, The Social Network portrays
Mark Zuckerberg as having no family, or
pedigree. He's an outsider at Harvard with
neither family connections nor wealth, in
pointed contrast to the privileged, athletic
Winklevoss brothers who procure his
software-writing skills and subsequently
accuse him of pilfering their idea for a
social-network website.
Zuckerberg isn't cut from the same cloth
as Sammy Glick or Duddy Kravitz. He's not
a hustler or a salesman, but a giant brain. He
believes — and this, more than arrogance,
is his fatal flaw — that intelligence is the
ultimate meritocracy. Smarts trumps
everything, especially one's origins.
In this way, Zuckerberg is an extension
to an extreme of all the 20th-century Jewish
children of immigrants who thought that
being bright and educated and working
hard was enough to succeed in America.
Sometimes it was, and sometimes it wasn't.
Zuckerberg is seemingly unaware that
Harvard (and the other Ivy League colleges)
once had Jewish quotas. So did the top law
firms and investment banks, compelling
Jews to form their own partnerships.
As portrayed in The Social Network,
Zuckerberg is convinced he'll succeed on the
basis of his own genius and achievement.
One lesson we can take from the movie is
that, thanks to the Internet, this is now possi-
ble. (Not so long ago, Zuckerberg would have
been just another anonymous, well-paid
dweeb writing code for a big company.)
The bigger point is that Zuckerberg aspires
to some idealized pinnacle of assimilation in
which ethnicity and all that other baggage no
longer matters. Eliot Spitzer, for less-discern-
ible reasons, also thought that he was above
and beyond certain rules and laws.
Client 9 makes a persuasive case that a
coterie of Spitzer's corporate and political
enemies, assisted by Bush-era Department
Eliot Spitzer in the documentary Client 9
of Justice staffers, exposed his sex dates and
forced him from office. That doesn't excuse
Spitzer's behavior, of course, or explain his
hypocrisy and hubris.
It does, however, remind us that Gibney
released a detailed documentary last
year, Casino Jack and the United States of
Money, about another Jewish man with a
compromised moral code. Jack Abramoff,
the focus of that film, is currently on the
big screen in select cities (currently at the
Main Art Theatre in Royal Oak) in the
dramatic feature film Casino Jack, starring
Kevin Spacey in the titular role.
The Mordecai Richter adaptation,
Barney's Version, opening next month
in Detroit, finally concludes the spate of
movies about Jewish men behaving badly.
At least that film is fiction.
Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot
Spitzer screens 9:30 p.m. Friday and
Saturday and 4:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan.
21-23, at the Detroit Film Theatre in
the Detroit Institute of Arts. $6.50-
$7.50. Tickets: (313) 833-4005 or
online at tickets.dia.org .
WS
own
Ise
Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News
Portman Pinnacles
1.12 Sometimes the stars align and an
(1) actress seems to be at a publicity
apex. Such is the case with Natalie
(1) Portman, 29.
Most everyone has heard she is
pregnant and engaged to her Black
Swan choreographer, Benjamin
Millepied. She just won the Golden
Globe for best actress for drama for
Black Swan
- and a best
actress Oscar
nomination is
certainly immi-
nent.
Her new
indie film, The
Other Woman,
Portman and
in which she
Millepied
plays a Jewish
tj
38
January 20 . 2011
lawyer in a romantic/dramatic triangle,
is now available for on-demand view-
ing on most cable/satellite systems.
And, opening in theaters on Friday,
Jan. 21, is No Strings Attached,
Portman's first romantic comedy.
Portman plays Emma, a doctor who
works incredibly long hours at a hos-
pital. She chances to run into an old
friend, Adam (Ashton Kutcher). One
night, Adam gets some devastating
news - his "jerky" father (Kevin Kline)
is dating an ex-girlfriend of Adam's.
Adam gets drunk, crashes at Emma's
and, as one thing leads to another,
Adam and Emma become intimate. In
order to protect their friendship, they
make a pact to have relations with no
strings attached - strings like jealousy
or love. But, as you can guess, keeping
this pact is tough.
Strings is directed and co-written
by Ivan Reitman, 64, of Ghostbusters
fame.
A Re-Pairing
George Segal,
76, and Jessica
Walter, 69, co-star
in the original TV
Land cable series
Retired at 35, which
airs 10:30 p.m.
Jessica Walter
Wednesdays (it
debuted Jan.19, but
there are encore showings every day
through Sunday, Jan. 23; check www.
tvland.com ). The premise is that a
successful 35-year-old New Yorker
named David (Johnathan McClain)
decides to leave the rat race and
move in with his parents (Segal and
Walter) in a Florida retirement com-
munity.
Walter and Segal have been
friends for 40 years. She says: "I
first worked with him in Bye Bye
Braverman, a movie directed by
Sidney Lumet that came out in -
are you sitting down? - 1968. Also,
[my husband actor] Ron Leibman
has worked with [George] on such
productions as Where's Poppa?, The
Hot Rock and assorted TV shows. I
played [George's] ex-wife on his Just
Shoot Me series as well. We bring a
history to this."
Enjoy
During a week of bad news (Debbie
Friedman's death/the Arizona shoot-
ing), one thing really brightened my
day.
After being off YouTube for a long
time, a tape of Jennifer Grey sing-
ing "David Crockett: The King of
Delancey Street" has reappeared.
This song parody was penned by
Greys grandfather comedian Mickey
Katz (father of entertainer Joel Grey),
Jennifer Grey is a revelation - so
charming, funny, and musical. Check it
out; you'll smile: http://tinyuri ,com, I 1