arts & entertainment
Page Turners from page 59
analysis to take us into their thought pro-
cesses and teach us all to think a bit more
productively, more creatively and more
rationally.
Theoretical physicist Alan Lightman
contemplates science, the cosmos and why
we must sometimes "believe in what we can-
not prove" in his new book, The Accidental
Universe: The World You Thought You
Knew (Pantheon), a series of seven essays
that elucidate complex scientific thought
in the context of everyday experiences and
concerns.
In Otherhood: Modern Women Finding
a New Kind of Happiness (Seal Press),
Melanie Notkin, a spokesperson for the
nearly 50 percent of women who are child-
less, reveals her own story as well as the poi-
gnant, humorous and sometimes heartbreak-
ing stories of the women of her generation
who expected love, marriage and parenthood
but instead found themselves facing a differ-
ent reality
50 Children: One Ordinary American
Couple's Extraordinary Rescue Mission into
the Heart of Nazi Germany (HarperCollins),
.4..,•______7
.1_
‘A''
by Steven Pressman, is based on the
acclaimed HBO documentary of the same
name and expands on the film to tell the
story of the single largest group of unaccom-
panied refugee children allowed into the U.S.
in 1939.
The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the
End of the World (Other Press), by George
Prochnik, is a biography of the celebrated
Jewish Viennese author who, in the 1930s,
was the toast of the literary world, a world
changed by Hitler, forcing Zweig into exile
and finally, in 1942, a double suicide com-
mitted with his wife, Lotte. Zweig's stories,
as well as the author himself, helped inspire
the recent Wes Anderson film, The Grand
Budapest Hotel.
In The Shelfi Adventures in Extreme
Reading (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), Phyllis
Rose reads the novels on a random library
shelf (fiction authors LEQ-LES), searching
for greatness, and observes how we read
today.
Nothing Like a Dame: Conversations
with the Great Women of Musical Theater
(Oxford), by journalist Eddie Shapiro, is a
collection of exclusive interviews with 20 of
the greatest leading women of Broadway,
including Jewish performers Judy Kaye, Bebe
Neuwirth and Idina Menzel.
Jerry Bruckheimer: When Lightning
Strikes — Four Decades of Filmmaking
(Disney Editions), by Michael Singer, cov-
ers the Detroit-raised uber-producer's entire
body of film and television work, from The
Culpepper Cattle Co. (1972) to The Lone
Ranger (2013).
Gary Zola, a rabbi and historian of
American Jewry, explores the storied rela-
tionship between Abraham Lincoln and
American Jewry in We Called Him Rabbi
Abraham: Lincoln and American Jewry,
a Documentary History (Southern Illinois
University Press).
The newest titles in the Jewish Lives
series from Yale University Press include
Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life, by
Dorothy Gallagher, who sorts through
the facts and the myths surrounding the
American dramatist; Jabotinsky: A Life,
by Hillel Halkin, about the celebrated
journalist and novelist, political thinker
and founder of the branch of Zionism
now headed by Benjamin Netanyahu; Ray
Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution,
by Yehudah Mirsky, about the first chief
rabbi of 20th-century Jewish Palestine
and the founding theologian of religious
Zionism; and Becoming Freud: The
Making of a Psychoanalyst, by Adam
Silver, a British psychotherapist and
expert on Freud, who writes of Freud's
early life as the favored son of Jewish
immigrants from Eastern Europe.
❑
r-
"Book lust forever!"
— Nancy Pearl
,===
11141 1
Real-Life Rom-Com
A standup portrayal of abortion.
Michael Fox
Special to the Jewish News
G
oing back at least as far as Moses,
Jews have taken public positions
at personal risk. Jenny Slate and
Gillian Robespierre's inspiration comes from
more recent role models: Larry Fine, Lenny
Bruce, Mel Brooks and Woody Allen.
The star and writer-director of the brac-
ingly honest indie comedy Obvious Child
embrace their Jewish comic influences —
and their Jewish upbringings. But they don't
view the frankness of Slate's character —
New York standup comedian Donna Stern,
who (for better and worse) draws her act
from her personal life, including an unex-
pected pregnancy — as uniquely Jewish.
"When I think about why the humor is
so open, it's just Donna's nature from birth:'
Slate says during a recent interview "Maybe
she's been encouraged by her dad to be out-
ward, but it doesn't have anything to do with
religion. Also, you know, we live in a world
where a certain cultural Judaism includes the
goys' now"
The young women share a laugh, and Slate
describes a phenomenon she encountered
when she moved to Los Angeles a couple
years ago and met other transplants.
"The seders and the Rosh Hashanah par-
ties become less typically religious and more
cultural, and social becomes familiar Slate
explains. "Whatever the modern Jewish sort
60 June 26 • 2014
sums
1111:111 NUR 121101
Gillian Robespierre, left, and Jenny
Slate embrace their Jewish comic influ-
ences in Obvious Child.
of social environment is, that cultural envi-
ronment, you don't have to be Jewish to be a
part of it:'
Robespierre and two other writers caught
Slate's standup act some five years ago and
cast her in their short film, Obvious Child.
Robespierre expanded the story to feature
length and was able to raise the small bud-
get thanks to Slate's visibility on Saturday
Night Live (one season) and recent recurring
television roles in House of Lies, Parks and
Recreation and Bob's Burgers.
A boisterous yet heartfelt hunk of twenty-
something angst, populated by self-aware,
hyper-verbal characters still seeking their
place in the world, Obvious Child opens on
Friday, June 27.
Although it involves revealing a major plot
turn, it should be noted that the film pivots
on Donna's decision to have an abortion. A
conversation with her mother (played by
Polly Draper) provides a key scene, not least
because Obvious Child is that rare movie in
which parents and adult children communi-
cate with and understand one another.
But that neat touch will likely be over-
looked amid Donna's brutally candid and
self-critical quips and the film's willingness to
deal directly with abortion.
"It's not an agenda movie in any way,"
Robespierre asserts. "It's a romantic comedy
with a modern look at a modern woman's
experience: one woman whom we love:'
Robespierre grew up in New York City.
Both her parents are Jewish, but she didn't
have a bat mitzvah because, she says, "I had
dyslexia when I was little so my mother
thought I needed to tackle English before
Hebrew:'
It may seem like a joke, but it's not.
Slate, who is originally from Milton, Mass.,
supplies the humor with her childhood
memories of Passover.
"We had really, really big seders:' she
recalls. "My grandfather would read them,
and it was the best; and I would get super,
super scared waiting for Elijah. When people
would sing 'Eliyahu: I would have a straight-
up meltdown under the table crying so hard:'
That sounds more traumatic than amus-
ing, admittedly. But Slate has a tough side,
perhaps developed from growing up watch-
ing the Three Stooges with her father — a
poet who apparently encouraged his daugh-
ter to be outward.
"I remember thinking they're so violent
and loud and just so ludicrous, and I related
to that more than anything else," Slate says.
"I always relate to the things that are just the
most human. And the highest energy. That's
what I go for, I think:'
Our conversation, not unlike Obvious
Child, merges irreverence with serious sub-
jects. Needless to say, Robespierre and Slate
want their movie to provoke laughs as well as
discussion.
"We are excited for any conversations
that it ignites," Robespierre says, "whether
about the right to choose and women's
reproductive rights, or whether it's about our
Jewishness, our heritage.
"But so far we haven't been cornered on
either of those yet, so we've been living in a
comfortable world:' ❑
Obvious Child, rated R, is scheduled
to open on Friday, June 27.