Posted on 01/08/2014 6:17:34 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Robert Avrech
Screenwriter and producer Robert Avrech believes in making message films that articulate morals and values. In 2000, he won an Emmy for penning the Holocaust drama The Devils Arithmetic, about a petulant teenager who resists her Judaism until offered a portal into the Jewish past. He also wrote the 1992 film A Stranger Among Us, starring Melanie Griffith as an undercover cop who insinuates herself into New Yorks Chasidic community. On Twitter, Avrech describes himself as a religious Zionist, a Republican and a gun owner. He talks here about his problem with gay marriage, his fear of Islamic jihad and why he's madly in love with his wife.
In your recent piece for Jewish Action, the official magazine for the Orthodox Union, you claim Hollywood is executing a brilliant, insidious stealth attack on Jewish values and American culture. Is that because you would prefer Hollywood to foreground your own conservative values?
Robert Avrech: Obviously I would prefer that there be conservative values pushed in Hollywood movies, the way it used to be. But whats happening now is that the values that are being pushed in Hollywood are pretty radical. There was a tremendous turning point in the culture when the sitcom Friends put on a lesbian marriage. And the redefinition of marriage is a radical idea, whether you agree with it or not.
You seem bothered by the preponderance of same-sex marriage in television and film.
RA: Im not really interested in gay marriage. I believe gays should get married if they want to get married. I have no problem with that. I want people to love each other. Its the state intervention that bothers me, because then the state is going to have to involve itself in polygamy. One has to accept that when gay marriage becomes the law of the land in a majority of states. Then a Muslim is going to come forward with two wives, and hes going to demand the right to marry his two wives. And once that happens, the door to Sharia in America is opened.
As an avowed gun owner, you must be glad that Hollywood frequently depicts the use of guns. Why didnt your article address Hollywoods influence on the epidemic of gun violence in this country?
RA: I dont know that Hollywood has a role in that. I think evil has a role in acts of violence. There is no empirical evidence that Hollywood causes people to act out in violent ways. It simply doesnt exist.
Hollywood can influence the redefinition of marriage but cannot encourage gun violence?
RA: The very first narrative movie that was ever made was The Great Train Robbery, which is basically a bunch of guys riding on horses robbing a train. And the last shot is the actor turning toward the camera and firing his gun toward the audience. Now, that was thrilling for the audience. But people didnt go out afterward and start shooting people that we know of.
So you decry Hollywood for influencing the normalization of same-sex marriage but not its normalization of gun violence.
RA: I dont believe that violence in the movies enables violence in culture. Theres simply no way that movies in Germany in the 1920s promoted violence and caused people to become genocidal toward the Jews. There were propaganda movies, certainly, but violence in movies did not cause genocide.
You claim America wins wars only when Hollywood believes in them. So what do you make of the recent explosive revelations that Hollywood studios were economically intertwined with Hitlers Third Reich?
RA: I havent read those books, so I really cant comment on them. [But] I know anecdotally that if you look at the films made during wartime, the first-tier actors were pretty much absent, because they were in the army serving their country: Goebbels put a million-dollar bounty on Clark Gables head, because he was a machine gunner on a bomber and that infuriated Hitler, because Hitlers favorite movie was Gone With the Wind.
What values should Hollywood promote?
RA: [My first choice] would be Hollywood admitting that the greatest danger to civilization itself right now is jihad and jihadists. Hollywood should confront that the way they confronted the Nazi threat and the imperial Japanese threat.
Dont you watch Homeland?
RA: I dont like the show. I simply found the relationship between Claire Danes character and the British actor dopey. I didnt believe it. It was more of a narrative problem than a political problem.
In your article, you sound kind of peeved recalling a time when a studio hired you to write a script for a film (that ultimately didnt get made) with the caveat: Dont malign all Muslims. Isnt that a reasonable request?
RA: If you read the script, you would see that there were sympathetic Muslims within the movie. One of the characters was quite heroic, as a matter of fact. The problem is CAIR [the Council on American-Islamic Relations], which is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. Their position is clear and unequivocal: No Muslim should ever be presented as a terrorist. Period. End of story.
Considering your strict religious upbringing, what drew you down the unconventional path to the movie business?
RA: I was a very bad student, practically a juvenile delinquent. Im the only Jewish kid that I know of who is basically a high-school dropout. So when my friends were learning Gemara and preparing for pre-med, I was watching The Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa or Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock. That was my education. The only two things I ever wanted out of life were to work in Hollywood and marry my wife.
You recently published the book How I Married Karen, about your love affair with your wife. What is it about her?
RA: She was the only Jewish girl I ever dated who, when I told her what I wanted to do in life, told me it was a wonderful ambition, and that she had faith that I would be able to do it.
ping to self for later...
We need to support this guy’s work.
And this throwing the veterans under the bus by both political Parties tells me that no later 2016 illegals will be voting in U.S. elections. And this voting will be sanctioned by both political Parties.
I don’t recall her name, but a very intelligent and attractive lady occasionally appears on RedEye that is also displeased with Islam. If I’m not mistaken, she is also Jewish.
These are how I first discovered this site:
Sarah Palin: An Unexpected Encounter
By Ilana Angel
http://www.jewishjournal.com/keepingthefaith/item/sarah_palin_my_unexpected_new_bff_20100303/
Shut Up About Sarah Palin Already.
By Ilana Angel
http://www.jewishjournal.com/keepingthefaith/item/shut_up_about_sarah_palin_already_seriously_enough_20100525
that one has a brass pair hidden on her somewhere !
I think many of them have been voting for most of their time in the US. A lot of states issue them driver licenses and they sign up with motor voter.
Haven't read the first one yet, but the second one is infuriating.
I despair of our ever reconciling the decent half of this nation with the depraved half.
A point of no return seems to have passed, one without seeming reconciliation .. only 1861 redux, one of these days . . .
I’m with you on that.
Mama Mia, No Sharia!
The sooner the divorce, the sooner the reformation of “our” half, IMO.
> If you read the script, you would see that there were sympathetic Muslims within the movie. One of the characters was quite heroic, as a matter of fact. The problem is CAIR [the Council on American-Islamic Relations], which is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood.
Thanks 2ndDivisionVet.
bump
“We need to support this guys work.”
He’s got a blog (”Seraphic Secret”), he’s a damn good writer, and just about when you’re ready to despair over the Jewish community’s support of the donkeys, he’ll write something that so forcefully supports basic conservative principles that you’ll realize the Jews are still the chosen.
If you go far enough back in his blog archives, you can find a series of several articles he wrote after barely escaping the riots in LA, an event that convinced him he needed to get some guns for personal protection - as is the standard with him, articulate and heartfelt in his prose.
His blog: http://www.seraphicpress.com/
That is a really excellent blog. Thanks for the link.
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