Three ‘Jews’ walk into a film
NEW hotel. New movie. New looks. The new hotel, West 56th’s Whitby, an offspring of downtown’s Crosby Street Hotel, screened the new movie “Norman.”
The new looks? Richard Gere plays a schloomp. Steve Bus
cemi, who’s Italian, plays a rabbi. And Hank Azaria, soon seen as Frank DiPascali, Madoff’s chief financial officer in “The Wizard of Lies,” now playing a New York schlepper.
Gere: “My character falls under that Jewish word hondler. Used a lot on New York streets, it means fast-talking guy who makes deals. A wheeler-dealer.”
What’s Buddhist Gere know from wheeler-dealer hondlers?
“Please. I’ve lived here. I worked in theater. My first job I earned $27 a week. How can you not know about a New York City Jewish hondler. The script blew my socks off. Like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become their own special characters in ‘Hamlet,’ it’s the same with my character, who’s unique.”
Sipping from a water bottle, those silver-haired good looks and eyeglasses peered at me as he said: “Makeup worked to change my face a little. Redid eyebrows. Stuck out my ears.”
Buscemi: “I have Jewish friends. And I researched with Rabbi Mintz to hear his comments, what his calling means to him, how he’s different things to different people. Not holier than thou. Rabbi, shmabbi, he’s just a person like the rest of us. “We shot a lot on the Upper West Side. New Yorkers don’t care. They’ve seen enough filmmaking here. They just keep on walking. Don’t even stare at the cameras. “Me, I’m spoiled. Studios send me screeners, so now I don’t even have to go out to see a movie.” Azaria: “Being a 100 percent Sephardic Jew, I love this part. I play a nooj. A pest. Big heart, well-intentioned mensch, an oldschool type right out of a shtetl trying to find himself. It’s how those oldies — a con artist, shyster, a huckster — operated for centuries.
“They’re like characters in the stories of Tevye, Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Bashevis Singer. It’s called hondling.
“For the Madoff movie, I interviewed the FBI guy. But for this one? Please. I love this town’s Upper West Side. I know these people.”