48 | MARCH 12 • 2020 

Arts&Life

celebrity jews

AT THE MOVIES
In 2012, the low-budget indie film
Beasts of the Southern Wild was 
the surprise hit of the year. This 
magical realist story about how a 
young girl survived a major flood 
won many major awards and 
scored four Oscar nominations. 
Benh Zeitlin, now 37, received 
nominations for best director and 
best adapted screenplay. 
His second film, Wendy, is a 
wildly reimagined telling of the 
Peter Pan story. In Zeitlin’
s version, 
Wendy is kidnapped and taken to 
a mysterious tropical island where 
no one grows old. Advance reviews 
are mostly good. As with Beasts, 
Zeitlin is highly praised for the oth-
erworldly atmosphere he creates 
via photography and sets, and criti-
cized for uneven storytelling. Zeitlin 
directed Wendy and wrote the 
screenplay with his younger sister, 
Eliza Zeitlin (who also was the 
production designer). Their parents 
(father, Jewish; mother, Protestant) 
are both folklore experts and col-
lege professors. Benh had a bar 
mitzvah. (Maple Theater, Bloomfield 
Township; Landmark Theater, Royal 
Oak). 
Never Rarely Sometimes Always
is about two teenage cousins from 
Pennsylvania who travel to New 
York City following an unplanned 
pregnancy. The film was directed 
and written by Eliza Hittman, 40. 
It received universal good reviews 
when it played Sundance (100% on 
Rotten Tomatoes) and was given a 
special Sundance award for “neo-
realism.” 

NEW STREAMING
The Plot Against America is a six-
part HBO series that starts March 
16. It’
s based on the novel of the 
same name by the late Philip Roth. 
The novel and series posit an alter-
native American history. Franklin 
Roosevelt is defeated in the 1940 
presidential election by Charles 
Lindbergh, the famous aviator who 
was, in real life, a xenophobic iso-
lationist. Lindbergh turns the nation 
toward fascism, tinged with more 
than just a little anti-Semitism. 
The impact of Lindbergh’
s policies 
is told via its effects on a New 
Jersey working-class Jewish family 
called the Levins in the HBO series. 
The story is mostly told through 
the perspective of Philip Levin, a 
10-year-old boy. The cast includes 
Winona Ryder, 48, as Evelyn, 
Philip’
s aunt, and Morgan Spector, 
39, as Herman, Philip’
s father. The 
series was co-created by David 
Simon (The Wire), 60, and he wrote 
or co-wrote four of the episodes. 
If you are older, share this view-
ing tip with young friends and show 
them how hip you are. On March 
2, the New York Times published a 
long profile of the unlikely career 
of David Burd, 32, AKA rap star 
“Lil Dicky.” A Jewish guy from 
Philly, he got good grades and 
went to work for an ad company 
after college. But then he made (in 
2013) a comedic rap video that got 
millions of views on YouTube. Hit 
albums followed and now he has 
a semi-autobiographical TV series 
called Dave (began March 4 on FXX 
cable; also on Hulu). 

NATE BLOOM COLUMNIST

ANGAL FIELD 
/FOCUS FEATURES

Director Eliza Hittman on
the set of her film Never
Rarely Sometimes Always,
a Focus Features release. 

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 eld, MI 48034
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Kahchun 
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