Writer (Investors Business Daily, The Forward), critic (Seattle Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune), author (How to Think Like the Masters of M&A)
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Articles by Curt Schleier
REVIEW: 'Kutchinskhy's Egg'
Email Print Kutchinsky’s Egg: A Family Story of Obsession, Love, and Loss By Serena Kutchinsky (Scribner) The family saga at the heart of Kutchinsky’s Egg starts as a great Jewish immigrant success story. Fleeing pogroms, Hesh and Leah Kuczynski come to London, and, over the next few generations, their family builds an internationally renowned jewelry empire that served British royalty and celebrities such as Elton John and Elizabeth Taylor.
Hoffman untamed
Jackie Hoffman is well armed with schtick. At her friend Stephen Colbert’s wedding, his bride, Evelyn, tossed her bouquet into the crowd of celebrants. When it didn’t land near her, Ms. Hoffman threw two things: herself on the floor, and a temper tantrum. “It’s a shtick of mine,” Ms. Hoffman, 65, explained in a Zoom interview. “I’ve done it at several weddings.
How brave are you?
After a harrowing experience overseas, Josh Goldman is back living with his parents in an upscale Washington, D.C., neighborhood. A freelance journalist on assignment in Afghanistan, he’d been captured by the Taliban but improbably managed to escape. His translator, though, was murdered. Following a regimen set by his doctor and his mom, he is slowly recovering, physically and mentally. “It’s been more than six weeks now, and I’m doing fine,” he tells his lawyer-turned-lobbyist father, Allan.
The belly of the whale
It is a metaphor created about 40 years ago by a Muslim sheikh, who suggested that much like Yunus (Jonah) in the Quran, Arab Israelis were swallowed by a whale. And they needed to find a way out. Today that allegory likely applies to all Israelis, stuck in a cycle of violence, hatred, and political turmoil that is slowly destroying the very fabric of its society.
‘The Fix’ is in
The genesis of the film “The Fix” is an urban legend of sorts. According to a former CIA operative, a story that made the rounds of the agency’s grapevine claimed that in 1979, when the American embassy in Tehran was about to be overrun, the station chief took wads of cash used to pay local assets, checked into a hotel, and buried it in a wall. Folklore? True? It actually doesn’t make a difference. In either case, it is the perfect basis of a great caper movie.
‘The Bridge’ over troubled waters
Ostensibly, we’re Zooming to discuss David Fishof’s film project, “The Bridge.” The documentary is a moving testament to the power of music to heal even the heartbreak of October 7. But, instead, unbidden, Mr. Fishof starts the conversation about his North Star, his dad, Mark Fishof. And about growing up in Hackensack, reading the Jewish Standard every Shabbas. David’s father “was a cantor in Hackensack at Temple Beth-El for 32 years,” he said.
Let it be a good year
Howard Tilkin, 37, grew up in Livingston — “the little hub of our Jewish community,” as he described the town to me in a recent Zoom interview. “I was really involved in theater growing up as a kid,” he continued. “There were really great theater programs at the JCC in West Orange,” just one town over. “So I spent a number of years there and sort of discovering that I loved theater. The JCC became a place of community.” Those sentences encapsulate why I’m interviewing him.
Old characters, new lives
Novelist Allegra Goodman talks about ‘Apple Cake’ growing into ‘This Is Not About Us’ Allegra Goodman (Joshua Meyer) About a decade ago, author Allegra Goodman wrote a short story called “Apple Cake” that appeared in the New Yorker. In it, Jeanne, the youngest of the Rubinstein sisters, lies on her deathbed. Flower arrangements sent by well-wishers fill the room. The mums, already wilting, make her feel “she wasn’t dying fast enough.” Her family hovers there every day, hoping to provide comfort.
Summer outside the city
Screenwriter and playwright Pamela Gray grew up in the Flatlands section of Brooklyn, in what she describes as a lower-middle-class family. Her father, Lawrence, was a salesman — of the World Book Encyclopedia, of storm windows, of funeral supplies. Her mom, Arlene, dropped out of college to help take care of her father, who was diagnosed with cancer. She went back to school when Ms. Gray was 5, earned two masters degrees, and went on to teach in the New York City public school system.
The Jewish Standard
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Arguing is our ‘Birthright’
‘Birthright,” now at the MCC Theater in Manhattan, is over three hours long, so long, in fact, that it requires two intermissions. But it is the most rewarding time you can spend in a theater this summer. It is enthralling, insightful, inciteful, and very much speaks to the time. It follows six young people who bond during a Birthright trip to Israel in 2006 — and the mother of one of them — as they meet in the mother’s house three times over the next 18 years.
Why it was hard to finish this story
I didn’t want to write about Sari Bashi — but I couldn’t ignore her Curt Schleier’s reasons for interviewing Sari Bashi were complicated, and so was his reaction to her. (Clara Podhany) This is a story I almost didn’t write. Twice. Twice. Until my grandparents interceded.
‘Don’t Cry For Me, My Yeshiva’
Joseph Fox’s father, an Orthodox rabbi, died in 1992. The day before the funeral, “My cousin, who also was a rabbi,” approached him, Mr. Fox said. “He said to me, ‘You don’t have to sit shiva for your father, because you’re adopted, and if you’re adopted you’re not halachically related to your father.’” Of course, Mr. Fox already knew that he was adopted. But the comment was unnecessary, hurtful, and cruel. “It also was bad timing,” Mr. Fox, 65, said during a Zoom interview from his Brooklyn office.
Kind of big numbers
Leon Cooperman of Short Hills and Boca Raton received his MBA from Columbia Business School in 1967 and immediately began looking for a job. He’d been a straight-A student, so generating interest wasn’t a problem. “I had 15 job offers, but I was totally broke,” Mr. Cooperman, 83, said in a Zoom interview, Of those offers, he was most interested in joining Goldman Sachs, “but Goldman was not the best offer,” he said. “They were the fifth best offer financially, but I liked the people I met.
Lew Frankfort Turned Coach Into A Coveted Global Brand
Lew Frankfort, 80, helped built Coach into a brand known for quality. (AP)
‘Beaches’ Is Finally a Broadway Musical
Email Print Jessica Vosk (center, left) and Kelli Barrett (center, right) star as Cee Cee Bloom and Bertie White in ‘Beaches, a New Musical.’ Marc J. Franklin Beaches, first published as a book in 1985 and adapted into a popular 1988 film that was remade in 2017, is now a Broadway musical.
Being Jewish, there and here
Elliot Levey loves New York. Mr. Levey, a Brit, is in the United States now; he’s appearing on Broadway in “Giant.” The rapturously reviewed drama stars John Lithgow as Roald Dahl and Levey as Tom Maschler, his British publisher. It is a fiction based on real people and a real event. Maschler, who died in 2020, when he was 87, spent four decades at the prestigious British publishing house Jonathan Cape, where he became publisher and editorial director.
War Hero Col. Jack Jacobs Brings Battle Lessons To Boardroom
In the heat of battle and still just in his 20s, Col. Jack Jacobs learned a lifesaving lesson: Take action. Following that rule served the highly decorated U.S. Army colonel and recipient of the Medal of Honor well. It also guided him in a later-in-life career in finance. Jacobs, now 80, founded AutoFinance Group, a car loan company, later sold…
Getting on the Baklava Express
When I suggested that Josh Kaye’s motto might be, “I sing, therefore I am,” he laughed. “That’s a good one,” he said during a Zoom interview from his home in Brooklyn. “I may have to steal it.” Mr. Kaye, 36, is a composer and leader of the band Baklava Express, which will be among the headliners at the Greek Jewish Festival on May 17. Oh, and yes, he’s also a professor of philosophy.
‘If not now, when?’
Jack Jacobs was a young lieutenant when he was sent to Vietnam and assigned as an advisor to a battalion of Vietnamese soldiers. At first, he said, he was involved in a series of “relatively small firefights.” Inevitably, though, not long into his tour, his troops became embroiled in more intense combat. “We were caught in the middle of a square. The enemy was lined up in a very advantageous position.
Hulu's 'The Faithful' Reimagines the Biblical Matriarchs
Email Print Fox Entertainment Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel. These are names that echo through Jewish scripture and liturgy. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the Hebrew Bible knows their basic stories. Now, Julie Weitz wants the audience to get to know them a little better. Weitz is an executive producer of The Faithful, an ambitious miniseries about the biblical matriarchs.
A double time capsule
“Reunion,” a brilliant film that seems to have passed largely unnoticed when it was released 37 years ago, is receiving a much-deserved revival next month. Set largely in Stuttgart, Germany, during the rise of Nazism, it is intelligent, suspenseful, and, given today’s daily headlines, surprisingly relevant.
A monument to what?
“Monument” is an intelligent, exciting, and suspenseful movie about building a peace bridge in the Middle East, specifically Lebanon — a bridge that sadly and inevitably collapses. It comes from director Bryan Singer (the “X-Men” movies, “Superman Returns”), his first feature after a nearly decade-long absence from motion picture screens. As anyone with access to Wikipedia knows, the likely reason he virtually disappeared was a series of sexual assault accusations leveled by young boys.
Not just any Phil and Lil
‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ creator and his daughter write a children’s book together Father and daughter Phil and Lily Rosenthal (Max Wanger) In the newly published book for young readers, “Just Try It: Someplace New,” dad Phil needs to convince his reluctant daughter, Lil, that it’s okay to sleep at grandma’s house. Lil likes the comforts of home.
Phillip Allen Sharp improved human health with breakthroughs
Phillip Allen Sharp grew up on a small tobacco farm in rural Falmouth, Ky. That may seem an unlikely place to launch the career of a Nobel Prize-winning scientist.But in many ways it's where he learned the lessons and values that led him to a career of scientific achievement. Today, Sharp is MIT professor of biology emeritus and a member of the university-affiliated David H.
Phillip Sharp, 81, unraveled secrets of DNA. (MIT)
‘The 99 Year Old Man’
New documentary looks once again at the legendary life of the real Mel Brooks Mel Brooks (Courtesy of HBO) Filmmakers Judd Apatow (“The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling”) and Michael Bonfiglio (“George Carlin’s American Dream”) faced a couple of potentially daunting obstacles making the documentary “Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man” for HBO.
REVIEW: 'Playmakers'
Email Print Playmakers: The Jewish Entrepreneurs Who Created the Toy Industry in America By Michael Kimmel (W.W. Norton) “My aim in this book has not been to recount some triumphalist parade of extraordinary Jews, nor to celebrate Jewish creativity and entrepreneurialism,” Michael Kimmel writes in his new book, Playmakers. But he doesn’t acknowledge that until Chapter 12—and by then, it’s too late.
It’s all about the threads of Art
“The Choral,” which opened around the country in late December, is a remarkable movie about the power of art — in this case, music — to heal people (or at least help us cope) with the problems life throws at us. It is set in the fictional town of Ramsden in Yorkshire, England. It’s 1916, and the War to End All Wars is almost two years old. Telegrams bearing devastating news are being delivered to loved ones daily. Until recently, Britain’s army was all volunteer. But the war has taken its toll.
Aging at center stage
June Squibb, the 96-year-old star of the new Broadway play “Marjorie Prime,” remembers when she saw an earlier production. “It was first done at the Mark Taper theater in Los Angeles,” she said in a Zoom interview from her temporary, run-of-the-play apartment in Manhattan. “I think somewhere between 11 and 13 years ago. “I liked it. But I wasn’t knocked out by it. So when they asked me if I was interested in doing it, I immediately said, ‘Send me a script,’ which is my answer to everything.
Lights, cameras, focus groups
Kevin Goetz did not think the “Barbie” movie would work. Which is kind of ironic, since Mr. Goetz is the founder of Screen Engine, a film research and analytics company and makes a living telling studio executives how successful a movie will be.
‘Holding Liat’ holds the unexpected
Shortly after October 7, Brandon Kramer began filming Yehuda Beinin, whose daughter and son-in-law, Liat and Aviv Atzili, were kidnapped by Hamas. The result is “Holding Liat,” a complex, occasionally heartbreaking and — depending on your politics — often unexpectedly infuriating documentary about how one family dealt with what happened. Mr. Kramer, a documentary filmmaker, and the Beinins are distantly related by marriage.
Famous Astrophysicist Defied The Odds To Become Science Star
Neil deGrasse Tyson, 67, rose through the scientific ranks. (AP)
‘I am that guy’
Jason Kravits began his professional career more than 30 years ago. He’s appeared in dozens of plays, television shows, and films, and has reached the pinnacle of success for a character actor. “I am that guy,” he tells me in a Zoom interview. “People recognize me, but they’re not sure from where. ‘Are you that guy?’ ‘You’re that guy.’ Sometimes they recognize me, and they don’t think it’s from television or film. They just say, ‘Hey, did you go to school in Boston?
Book Review: How one woman spoke for the river in ‘The Water Remembers’
Amy Bower Cordalis’ “The Water Remembers” does not flow in a straight line. kAmw6C 3@@< “:D HC:EE6? :? E96 7@C>2E @7 *FC@< ,E96 =2C86DE }2E:G6 EC:36 :? r2=:7@C?:2. DE@CJE6==:?8[” D96 HC:E6D[ >62?56C:?8 96C6 2?5 E96C6[ >F49 =:<6 E96 z=2>2E9 #:G6C E92E DFAA@CE65 96C A6@A=6 7@C >:==6??:2]k^Am kAm}@ DA@:=6C 2=6CED ?646DD2CJ 96C6] %96 E:E=6 E6==D 2==] r@C52=:D 2?5 2 8C@FA @7 =6256CD 7C@> D6G6C2= }2E:G6 ?2E:@?D E@@< @? A@H6C7F= :?E6C6DED E@ C6D4F6 2 5J:?8 C:G6C]k^Am kAmqFE E9:D :D >@C6 E92?
How one woman spoke for the river in ‘The Water Remembers’
Amy Bower Cordalis’ “The Water Remembers” does not flow in a straight line. Her book “is written in the format of Yurok (the largest Native tribe in California) storytelling,” she writes, meandering here and there, much like the Klamath River that supported her people for millennia. No spoiler alerts necessary here. The title tells all. Cordalis and a group of leaders from several Native nations took on powerful interests to rescue a dying river. But this is more than a feel-good environmental story.
‘They’ll put them on Mars!’
Most folks know that Jews do not really control the film industry in Hollywood. But when it comes to Garrison, N.Y., well, that’s a completely different story. Garrison is the home of Ironbound Films, founded by two New Jersey boys — Daniel Miller, who grew up in Edison, and Seth Kramer, originally from West Orange — and named after the now primarily Portuguese and Spanish neighborhood in Newark.
Review: How one woman spoke for the river in ‘The Water Remembers’
Amy Bower Cordalis’ “The Water Remembers” does not flow in a straight line. kAmw6C 3@@< “:D HC:EE6? :? E96 7@C>2E @7 *FC@< ,E96 =2C86DE }2E:G6 EC:36 :? r2=:7@C?:2. DE@CJE6==:?8[” D96 HC:E6D[ >62?56C:?8 96C6 2?5 E96C6[ >F49 =:<6 E96 z=2>2E9 #:G6C E92E DFAA@CE65 96C A6@A=6 7@C >:==6??:2]k^Am kAm}@ DA@:=6C 2=6CED ?646DD2CJ 96C6] %96 E:E=6 E6==D 2==] r@C52=:D 2?5 2 8C@FA @7 =6256CD 7C@> D6G6C2= }2E:G6 ?2E:@?D E@@< @? A@H6C7F= :?E6C6DED E@ C6D4F6 2 5J:?8 C:G6C]k^Am kAmqFE E9:D :D >@C6 E92?
Review: How one woman spoke for the river in ‘The Water Remembers’
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Review: How one woman spoke for the river in ‘The Water Remembers’
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Review: How one woman spoke for the river in ‘The Water Remembers'
Amy Bower Cordalis' "The Water Remembers" does not flow in a straight line. Her book "is written in the format of Yurok [the largest Native tribe in California] storytelling," she writes, meandering here and there, much like the Klamath River that supported her people for millennia. No spoiler alerts necessary here. The title tells all. Cordalis and a group of leaders from several Native nations took on powerful interests to rescue a dying river. But this is more than a feel-good environmental story.
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