50 | OCTOBER 24 • 2019
Arts&Life
celebrity jews
AT THE MOVIES
Opening Friday, The Current War:
Director’
s Cut is about the cor-
porate battle that pitted Thomas
Edison (1847-1931) against
George Westinghouse (1846-
1914) and Westinghouse associ-
ate Nikolai Tesla (Nicholas Hoult).
After inventing (1879) the first
commercially viable light bulb,
Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch)
went straight into the electric utili-
ty business. His power plants sent
DC current to customers. But DC
current (unlike AC current) can’
t
travel more than a mile, making
the Edison-type plant only viable
in heavily populated areas.
Westinghouse, who invented
(1873) the first very good railroad
brake, plunged into AC transmis-
sion in the 1880s. Utilizing Tesla’
s
AC motor innovations, he built
many AC power plants. For more
than a decade, he was in a war
with Edison as to whether DC or
AC would be the dominant form of
transmission (spoiler: AC won).
The film was written by
Pittsburgh native Michael
Mitnick, 36. I learned from the
Pittsburgh Jewish paper that his
fiancée is Jessica Brickman,
36ish. She’
s also a writer, mostly
for TV. Jessica’
s father, Marshall
Brickman, 80, has worn many
hats: In the early ’
60s, he had
success in folk music; in 1965 he
switched to writing TV comedies;
and in the ’
70s, he teamed with
Woody Allen to co-write Sleeper,
Annie Hall and Manhattan. The Kill
Team, opening this Friday, stars
Nat Wolf, 24, as a young soldier
who is serving in the invasion of
Afghanistan that occurred shortly
after 9/11. He witnesses other
soldiers killing innocent civilians
and considers reporting them, but
he’
s afraid he’
ll be their next tar-
get. The film is based on a 2014
documentary of the same name
by Dan Krauss, 46. Krauss, who
has received two Oscar nomi-
nations for other documentaries,
is making his feature film debut
with this film, which he wrote and
directed. Rob Morrow, 57, has a
supporting role as Wolf’
s father.
“MY BLACK MITZVAH”
Comedian and actress Tiffany
Haddish, 39, was long a stand-
up comedian before becoming
famous via a great performance
in the 2017 film comedy Girl’
s
Trip. In 2018, she got a co-star-
ring role on The Last O.G., a TBS
series that was just renewed for a
third season. The same year, she
became the first African American
woman to host SNL. Her SNL gig
earned her an Emmy for best
guest performance in a comedy
series. On Oct. 6, she began host-
ing Kids Say the Darndest Things
on ABC.
Her late father was an Eritrean
Jew, who was deported when she
was 3. She was a teenager when
she learned he was Jewish. She
got to know him as an adult. She
told USA Today she recently went
to Eritrea to bury her father and
now feels “more connected to her
Jewish heritage.”
She added she
is studying Hebrew and plans to
have a bat mitzvah. Plans are to
have the ceremony coincide with
the premiere of Black Mitzvah, an
upcoming Netflix special about
her spiritual journey (no streaming
date set yet).
NATE BLOOM
COLUMNIST
Actors Nat Wolff and
Alexander Skarsgård in a
scene from The Kill Team.
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