SHABBAT SHALOM
Jonathan Kesselman discusses with Scott Macaulay the anarchic Jewish satire of his new film, The Hebrew Hammer.
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| Adam Goldberg and Jonathan Kesselman. PHOTO: RICHARD KERN. |
It was baffling to me," remembers writer-director and USC Film School grad Jonathan Kesselman of the various Hollywood meetings to which he took his first screenplay. "Everyone told me the script was a great writing sample but it would never get made. I think they found it too Jew-y."
The script he’s referring to is The Hebrew Hammer, which in its produced form premieres in the Midnight section of the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. And "toning down the Jewishness" is not advice that Kesselman took when making his film. Indeed, The Hebrew Hammer is a cheerfully anarchic comedy that in its wacky creation of a new subgenre, "Jewxploitation," upends every idea of religious correctness. Around a plot by Santa’s evil son to destroy Hanukkah – and Adam Goldberg’s stylin’ lead performance as an unorthodox Orthodox enforcer – Kesselman has meticulously constructed a hilarious parody of both religious ritual and exploitation filmmaking.
For Kesselman, who won accolades while at USC for a short-film incarnation of The Hebrew Hammer, calibrating the film’s many punchlines and gags wasn’t the tough part of making the movie. The biggest challenge was giving this independent production, shot on 24P HD and transferred to film, the required slickness of much higher-budgeted Hollywood comedies. With over 50 speaking parts and dozens of locations, many of which are fantasy environments like Santa’s workshop and a Jewish Justice League, the film is a marvel of economical filmmaking.
Comments Kesselman: "I didn’t want this to be indie, talking head, handheld camera – I wanted it to feel like a big movie. That’s why I chose High Definition, which is the only [video] format that approximates that [look]."
Originally, Kesselman had met with producers in L.A. – including one who wanted to reconceive it as a black-Jewish buddy movie – but wasn’t able to get the film made until he hooked up with ContentFilm in New York. Says Kesselman: "I met lots of good people out of the indie film world [in New York], but I didn’t want to do a Dogme film. I found a production designer named Kevin McMullen, who came out of television but had never done a feature. And when the d.p. I wanted went off to do The Hot Chick, I met Kurt Brabbee from L.A., who has done a lot of L.A. low-budget movies."
If Kesselman had any qualms about making the film on a less-than-Hollywood budget, they don’t show in the finished product, which also features such mainstream names as Mario Van Peebles, Nora Dunn and Andy Dick. "With comedy," explains Kesselman, "you want to do a lot of takes. But I would get maybe three takes max per setup, so most of the time I had to pick and choose what parts of scenes I would cover."
Of course, Kesselman’s entire conceit wouldn’t fly without the right actor in the lead. "I asked my friends who was the coolest Jew they knew, and Adam [Goldberg]’s name kept coming up," he says. "So, he was on our list, and he happened to also have gone into ContentFilm [about another project]. [Content’s] Sofia Sondervan gave him the script, and he called three hours later. I answered the phone and he said, [quoting the screenplay], ‘Shabbat Shalom, motherfucker!’"
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