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