38 | APRIL 22 • 2021 

ARTS&LIFE
FILM

T

he Academy Awards will be pre-
sented on ABC on Sunday, April 25 
(8 p.m.). Again, this year there will 
be no host. There are fewer Jewish nom-
inees than usual. The pandemic caused 
a reduction in the making and/or release 
of big-budget American films. Here are 
the verified Jewish nominees in all but the 
technical categories.

BEST PICTURE/ACTORS
The best picture award goes to the film’s 
principal producers. Three of the eight 
nominated films (Mank, Nomadland and 
The Trial of the Chicago 7) have a Jewish 
producer.
Eric Roth, 76, is a co-producer of Mank, 
a Netflix film. The title refers to the nick-
name of Herman J. Mankiewicz, and the 
film chronicles how he co-wrote the classic 
movie Citizen Kane (1941). Roth is a top 
screenwriter himself, with an Oscar win 
for Forrest Gump and five other screen-
writing “noms” (including Munich and the 
2019 version of A Star is Born).
Mollye Asher, 43, is a co-producer of 
Nomadland, a gritty film about an older 
woman who is forced to take to the road 
and live in her van after her financial 
supports disappear. Asher is a leading, 
award-winning producer of indie films. 
Her father is Jewish. It’s not clear if her 
mother is.
Asher and Roth compete with Marc 
Platt, 63, a leading film and Broadway 
stage producer. He’s a co-producer of The 

Trial of the Chicago 7, a Netflix film. This 
is his third “nom” for best pic (others: La 
La Land and Bridge of Spies). A practicing 
Jew, Platt and his (Jewish) wife have five 
children, including well-known actor Ben 
Platt, 37. 
Unlike most years, no Jewish actor or 
actress is nominated for a best actor or 
actress Oscar. However, Gary Oldman is 
nominated for best actor for playing a Jew, 
Herman Mankiewicz, in Mank. As I’ve 
written in my column, nine out of the 17 
main, real-life characters in Mank were 
Jewish, but none are played by a Jewish 
thespian. (I guess you could call Mank a 
“kosher-style” movie)
Sacha Baron Cohen, 49, is nominated 
for a best supporting actor Oscar for play-
ing real-life ’60s radical Abbie Hoffman
in The Trial of the Chicago 7. In 2020, 
Cohen told a Hollywood Reporter video 
roundtable (posted on YouTube) how 
he learned about Abbie Hoffman and 
how he got the film role. While a student 
at Cambridge University (U.K.) Cohen 
traveled to Atlanta (1992) to research a 
thesis on American Jews’ role in the Civil 
Rights movement. Hoffman came up in 
his research because Hoffman was a Civil 
Rights ‘Freedom Rider’ (1963). Five years 
later, Hoffman became a famous anti-war 
activist.
In 2007, Steven Spielberg announced 
he was going to make virtually the same 
Chicago 7 movie (written by Aaron 
Sorkin) that was ultimately made in 2020. 

Cohen begged Spielberg for an audition 
to play Hoffman. Spielberg agreed to the 
audition if Cohen could master Hoffman’s 
mix of a Boston accent with a sort-of-Jew-
ish intonation. Cohen worked incredibly 
hard, mastered the accent and got the 
Hoffman role. But, not long after, a 100-
day writer’s strike led to a cancellation of 
the whole project. By 2020, Cohen was a 
lot more famous than he was in 2007 and 
he was a shoo-in for the Hoffman role.

SCREENPLAY WRITERS, SHORT LIVE 
FILM, DOCUMENTARY AND MUSIC
Will Berson is nominated for co-writing 
the original screenplay for Judas and the 
Black Messiah. Nominated for the same 
Oscar is Aaron Sorkin, 59, the writer of 
The Trial of the Chicago 7.
Black Messiah, a best film nominee, 
is based on the life of Fred Hampton, a 
charismatic Chicago Black Panther leader 
in the late ’60s. He was heavily targeted by 
the FBI, and a black informant (a ‘Judas’) 
was planted in his organization. The 
informant (who decades later told what 
he’d done), helped the Chicago police set 
up their unjustified killing of Hampton in 
1969. Hampton’s family got a $1.85 million 
legal settlement from the FBI in 1982. 
The Black Messiah nomination for the 

The Most Complete 
Guide to Jewish Oscar 
Nominees: 2021

NATE BLOOM COLUMNIST

A scene from
The Trial of the Chicago 7

IMDB

WARNER BROS.

A scene from 
Judas and the 
Black Messiah

