arts & life

ABOVE: Filmmaker Steve Faigenbaum (left) discusses the tur-
moils of the 1960s with his cousin, Sheldon Koven, at Detroit's
American Coney Island in Internal Combustion. CENTER RIGHT:

Bill Eisner, pictured, has amassed an archive of 150,000 photos of
Detroit fires; he is profiled in Fire Photo -> 1. BOTTOM RIGHT: In

Time I Change, an experimental short, Oren Goldenberg follows Jit
dancer Haleem Rasul.

MOVIE from page 43

faces — while celebrating what
makes it unique — dominate
the lineup of documentaries at
the Freep Film Festival, in its
second year.
Eisner's pursuit of document-
ing fires, which has resulted
in a collection of more than
150,000 images, resonated with
filmmaker Brian Kaufman,
video-content producer for the

Detroit Free Press.
"His pictures give cultural
and historic perspective," says
Kaufman. [But I also] try to
give a sense of who Bill Eisner
is."
Eisner, 77, who grew up in
Detroit's Jewish community and

Celebrity Jews

I

Nate Bloom

Special to the Jewish News

CELEBS BEHAVING BADLY
(OR WANTING TO)
Billy Crystal, 66, writing for
the March issue of the AARP
Bulletin, recounts when he met
legendary
CBS news-
man Walter
Cronkite while
working as
a theater
usher in the
late 1960s.
Excited to see
Crystal
the famous
man, Crystal
rushed up to his seat and asked

44

March 19 • 2015

now lives in Roseville, also has
kept film reels, videotapes and
audio-cassette recordings that
include dispatch traffic from
the 1967 riots.
"When I came out of the
military in 1962, I met a fire-
man and started taking these
pictures," Eisner says. "The
firefighters I got to know are all
heroes. It takes a lot of guts to
go into a burning building."
Among screenings in Ann
Arbor, the five-minute Time I
Change features award-winning
Haleem Rasul, a 1970s street-
style Jit dancer and founder of
dance troupe Hardcore Detroit.
Filmmaker Goldenberg, who

majored in film studies at the
University of Michigan and
was selected the Best Michigan
Filmmaker in 2006, lives in the
Cass Corridor and serves on
the board of the Isaac Agree
Downtown Synagogue.
"I shot the film in 2012
after meeting Haleem," says
Goldenberg, whose project
can be viewed March 29. "It
explores the relationship of
video to time, space and move-
ment in depicting change and
[relates to the transformation of
Detroit]. For me, it depicts the
cyclical nature of modern civili-
zation."

Cronkite if he could do anything
for him. "Uncle" Walter replied,
"Well, you could start by tak-
ing that f---ing flashlight out of
my face." Twenty years later,
Crystal met Cronkite at another
event and reminded him of the
incident. Cronkite replied, That
was you? I've felt bad about
that for years!"
In a recent San Francisco
stage interview, Dick Cavett
prefaced a Jack Benny story by
noting that Benny was perhaps
the nicest man in show busi-
ness: kind to everyone. Then
Cavett recalled how he was a
staff writer for the Tonight Show
in the early 1960s and Benny
was a guest. They chanced to
ride down on the same eleva-
tor, which was supposed to be

for celebs and
staff only, but
some audi-
ence members
slipped on it.
These "regular
folks" pestered
Benny with
Benny
questions, like
"Are you really cheap?" Benny
politely answered until the
elevator stopped and emptied.
Cavett then asked Benny, "You
must have heard these stupid
questions a million times. Don't
you hate them?" Benny's reply
gives insight into how the nor-
mally kind man could lose it.
Benny said, "Yeah, sometimes
I do want to tell them to go f--k
themselves."

❑

AT THE MOVIES
Opening this week: I have
written before that Wild Tales
earned a best foreign-film Oscar
nomination and has become an
international hit. It was written
and directed by Argentine Dami-
an Szifron, 39, and features six
discrete stories about regular
people "losing it" and behav-
ing very badly. The first story is
perhaps the
best – and the
last story fea-
tures the most
bizarre Jewish
wedding you've
ever seen.

Sean Penn,

54, stars in
Penn
The Gunman as
a former Special Forces soldier
and military contractor who is

suffering from PTSD and tries
to reconnect with his longtime
love, but must go on the run
across Europe to clear his name.
Co-stars include Javier Bardem.
Sadly, this action film has re-
ceived mostly negative advance
reviews. Probably more exciting
would be an action-oriented film
about Penn's real-life adven-
ture: In December 2013, Penn
used a lot of cloak-and-dagger
techniques to help get American
businessman Jacob Ostreicher,
56, out of a Bolivian prison and
out of the country. Penn's role in
this escape from unjust impris-
onment earned him plaudits
from persons far to his political
right, like Rabbi Shmuley Bote-
ach, 48, who last May presented
Penn with a Champion of Jewish
Justice award.

❑

