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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