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50

August 23 • 2018

jn

BlackKkKlansman (see story in this issue)
opened two weeks ago in theaters and
its great reviews guarantee it will still
be playing as you read this. It’s being
heralded as the best Spike Lee movie in
many years. It’s based on a 2014 mem-
oir, Black Klansman, by Ron Stallworth,
the first African American hired (1979)
as a detective by the Colorado Springs
police department. Stallworth, as depict-
ed in the book and the film, is assigned
to the department’s intelligence division
and, in that capacity, he starts to inves-
tigate the local Klan chapter. Obviously,
he can’t go undercover to infiltrate the
Klan, so he recruits (in the film) a Jewish
police officer, Flip Zimmerman (played by
Adam Driver), to pretend to be a white
racist and get info on the Klan. Stallworth
(played by Denzel Washington’s son,
John David Washington) really did enlist
a white detective to infiltrate the Klan.
However, in real life, Zimmerman was not
Jewish.
The credited screenwriters are
Lee, African American comedian
Kevin Willmott, and two white Jewish
guys: David Rabinowitz and Charlie
Wachtel, both 31. The “Jewish guys”
gave their first in-depth interview about
the “Jewishness” of the film Aug. 9 to
Filmmaker magazine (online). First, the
duo optioned the rights to Stallworth’s
book. Then they began writing a screen-
play. Rabinowitz told the magazine that a
pivotal moment in their writing was when
they decided to make the white cop
Jewish. Wachtel said: “I think it was just
a practical decision. If you’re going to be
living with this character who is going
to infiltrate the Klan, you may as well up
the stakes by giving him some sort of
personal attachment.” Rabinowitz then
added: “It’s already high stakes that he’s
going undercover. Making him Jewish
just makes it that much more. On top of
that, we’re both Jewish, so it just makes
sense writing something a little bit more
from our perspective; it was our way into
the story.”
Wachtel and Rabinowitz reworked
the script for a couple of years and sold
it to Lee. Wachtel and Rabinowitz told
Filmmaker that Lee and Willmott actually
enhanced their script’s Jewish content
and anti-Semitism (as well as racism)
remained a big part of the film. (In other
words, good work all around.)

ON THE HORIZON

Variety reports that Gal “Wonder Woman”
Gadot, 33, is likely to star in a Showtime

David Rabinowitz and Charlie Wachtel

Gal Gadot

Hedy Lamarr

limited series about actress and inventor
Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000). Variety says
that Gadot was intrigued by an interest-
ing take on Lamarr’s life presented to her
by Sarah Treem. Treem, 38, is a critically
acclaimed playwright who also has a
lot of TV cred: She co-created and often
wrote the HBO series In Treatment; she
helped launch House of Cards on Netflix;
and she created and often writes the
Showtime hit An Affair.
Netflix is still showing Bombshell
(see my June 14 column), an excellent
documentary about Lamarr. If you watch
Bombshell, you’ll see that Lamarr’s life
was so multi-faceted and just plain weird
that even an ordinary viewer of this doc-
umentary can appreciate that it would
take an extraordinary writer, like Treem,
to dramatize it accurately. I am especially
interested in how Treem will address
Lamarr’s relationship to her Jewishness.
(By the way, the Wonder Woman sequel
is slated to open November 2019). •