The Gobblings: The Movie (sort of)

I stole a story from the Baal Shem Tov. Well, I sort of stole it. The part about it being in space, the aliens, the toy robots, the overprotective parents, and the saving the universe without the universe knowing about you saving it -- those parts I may or may not have made up myself.

(Except for the overprotective parents. That part's based on real life.)

Anyway: Here's a movie where I talk about The Gobblings and writing and how the rest of the world tells stories to put kids to bed, and we tell stories to wake ourselves up. Thanks to Daniel and David for filming it, and JAKEtv for making it real, and the wondrous people at Hevria for letting me be egotistical for a change.

The Greatest Love of All

Today was long and intense, and almost entirely devoid of adults, and after I put the kids to bed -- we read the last chapters of Baby-Sitters' Club #3, Mary Ann Saves the Day, the graphic-novel adaptation, which has an amazIng scene (which I can only guess was not in the original, as it was wordless, and well-paced and utterly beautiful) where Mary Ann goes to visit her mother's grave and lies down on it -- and I emailed Itta and asked if she could bring me something from the restaurant when she gets home. I was so in the mood for restaurant food. sometimes you need food that you didn't cook, that no human being has cooked, that's fresh and warm and comes to you via a server and some cutlery that someone who's not you will wash (or, alternately, that's plastic and that you can just throw out).





Then I zoned out, except apparently I think I might have zoned out more than I warranted, because instead of writing I watched Sherlock -- a gorgeous episode, and one that I didn't think would come together at all, and in the end it totally did.

And that last scene, where Sherlock really wants to dance with someone and then he almost does and then he thinks better of it, a quick cut, and he's alone outside, hit a little too much home for me.

I really do want to write a great Disney movie. But even though the latest (Frozen, it's so incredible, I nearly had an artistic breakdown watching it just wishing I could make something that good and at the same time that inoffensive), where they (very minor spoiler) replace the girl/prince love story with a sisters/best friends love story. But I think what I really need to write, or to experience, is a movie where you learn that yourself is good enough? And I'm not sure if Disney will ever be capable of making that. I'm not sure if I'll ever be capable of writing that.

Tomorrow is my wife's due date. Or, as I've started saying it, her officially-overdue date. Feels so weird, that the world could change so radically at any given moment. And then I remind myself about what the Alter Rebbe said, that the world is created anew from nothingness at every moment, and I realize that all of us only exist by some whim of some Supreme Being anyway, so enjoy the sameness while we can. I feel like I'm hovering at that moment of Tron right before he gets sucked into the computer and everything turns to neon. Like stuff is nowhere near as cool as it's about to be, but I should appreciate the natural colors and relative boringness while I still can.

See 1/20 at The Hester

Just a little note that the movie I wrote, 1/20, is screening this Saturday night in New York City! Go here to buy tickets -- it's at The Hester, this little underground kosher speakeasy that my wife happens to run, and that happens to have been recently featured in the New Yorker and GrubStreet and a whole bunch of other places.

It'll be interesting, and fun, and different. And I'll be onhand, probably to incoherently answer any questions that you may have, and stare at my shoes. And eat kohlrabi pickles with spicy hummus. Which, you probably didn't know, but is one of my biggest talents.

WANTED: Be in My Music Video

Hey, I'm about to put together a little free spoken-word E.P. and I'm making a music video as part of it -- only, of course, without the music, because it's spoken-word.

And I need your help.

There's a poem. Email me, at matthue at gmail, and I will email the text of the poem to you. Then, if you would be so kind, film yourself using an iPod or iPhone, reciting all or part of the poem. I'll splice it together and make it into a video.

If you have any questions, send them to me too! I'll do my best to answer.

Tron. Avatar. Me?

OK, just saying: According to Hollywood Reporter, a sequel to Tron Legacy is in the works. And since I was in the Tron3 prequel -- or a character named after me, whatever --

-- I just want to let you guys know, I am, in fact, available for major motion pictures. Also weddings and bar mitzvahs.


TRON The Next Day - Flynn Lives Revealed (TR3N... by daftworld

Casting the Losers Movie

I got asked by the folks at the My Book, The Movie blog to draw up a dream cast for my book Losers. Since casting movies with 14-year-olds is sort of an impossible feat anyway, I decided to throw all the rules out the window. Half my cast is dead. The other half are way far away from being fourteen years old. Here's a snip (or read it from the start):

Hollywood would probably want Jupiter to look like Christian Slater in Heathers. I'm going to go with Ewan McGregor, though -- five years before Trainspotting, with his hair a little shaggier and his eyes a little more feral. His best friend, Vadim, in my head was always an Igor type. (Except, of course, that in Russia "Igor" is a name that real people actually have, and one of my best friends is named Igor, so I need to watch the references around him.) He's cool in his own way, but we'd probably have to prettify him up, so instead of, like, a 14-year-old Kyle MacLachlan who isn't quite ready to star in Blue Velvet, we'll probably have to go with what can only be described as a Wesley Crusher-type.

Read on ----->

Oh, and I talk a little about the process of making the movie 1/20, from the writer's point of view anyway, which usually doesn't mean much, since they try and keep the writers far, far away from the production -- except that I snuck my way onto the set running for coffee and stuff. Fun. Illicit fun.

A Day at the Movies

Today was the first NYC screening of 1/20, the movie I wrote! My whole family was there -- my kids, my parents, the generation in between (uh, my wife and me). It was wonderful. I was more uncomfortable than ever. It's so hard to see something you wrote and not be able to stop and change the lines before you recite them. When I read live, I'm always rearranging the words on the page so they sound better coming out of my mouth. Watching a movie you wrote, you're like rubbernecking at your own accident. (Not that i was reciting them in the first place.)

(And honestly, I think the movie turned out amazing. Such good actors. The director makes everything look beautiful, even electric toys with their guts hanging out. Not to mention the city of Washington DC. But I keep hearing my lines, and thinking, did I really write that? No. Once the music's left your head, it's already compromised.)

I think i'm a lot more successful at being a father than being a writer. Not that I'm that good at either one, but being a father, you just screw up and you have to keep going. Being a writer, you're never sure if what you're doing is good enough, so you just keep redoing it, until someone rips the pages out of your hand and gives them to a publisher.

And I should say, thanks to Rew Starr and her posse for making the showing so successful. And for making me feel at home at a theater with that many animal heads hanging on the walls.

Best Reason for a Border Crossing

The cast and crew of 1/20, the movie I wrote, were invited to speak at New York Law School last week. I wasn't there, but Ayako Ibaraki and Kayla Dempsey were. Gerardo, the director, was Skyping in, which is why he looks like a talking head from Futurama.

Also, if you're in Mexico City, 1/20 is showing at La Casa Del Cine this Monday, August 24. Admission is free, so if you really want to see it, you can buy a plane ticket and count that as your admission. (Plus, bonus, Mexico!)

C MALO PRODUCCIONES Presenta la cinta: “1/20” El documental “1/20” muestra la perspectiva de México desde unapunk inmigrante japonesa orgullosa de los Estados Unidos.  No hay subtítulos, porque la sutileza de las demandas de actuación se centra en la audiencia.  La presentación es suave e infantil como una nueva forma de rebelión contra las convenciones cinematográficas.   La generación de “1/20” ha rechazado todas las reglas, mientras que secretamente busca el sentido en una cortina del nihilismo. La presentación de “1/20” se realizará en Lacasadelcine.mx el miércoles 24 de Agosto a las 9 PM. ¡LA ENTRADA ES LIBRE! ¡NO FALTEN!

Meanwhile, I'm still pretty lost in my new memoir. (In a good way, I think.) (Uh, mostly.) With fiction, you're creating a story, and every part of it--characters, plot, setting, accidents--goes toward building the story. When you write nonfiction, you're dealing with stuff that already happened, and trying to magically change those things into a story. Even if you already know what the story is, you don't necessarily know what needs to be there for the story to happen. So you can -- hypothetically -- write a chapter that's 15,000 words long, and then realize that it doesn't belong in there at all. And then you just hit DELETE, or tuck it into your back pocket and think it might be good for another story someday, and then you just carry on.

Hypothetically, I mean.

1/20 at the Guadalajara Film Festival (photos!)

This week was the Guadalajara International Film Festival, and 1/20, the film I wrote, was an official entrant. Guadalajara is basically the Sundance of Latin America. It's a clearinghouse for everything artistic, political, and a combination of the two, which 1/20 ended up being. Gerardo, the director, is from Mexico, and this was his triumphant return, riding into town on the back of a donkey and all that.

They assailed me with stories of champion drinking and famous-people elbow-rubbing and guerrilla advertising. I started complaining that they left me behind. They reminded me that they had lots of important business meetings, too, which I would have either been too scared to walk into in the first place or vomited with nervousness as soon as they began. "This is why you write the stories," they said. So I settled into my bed and felt better about myself.

Yeah, guerrilla advertising. There were 2,000 films showing in Guadalajara, and exactly one film hung any sort of posters. Sometimes they were minimalist and subtle:

And sometimes they were not.

I think my mind is officially blown, just thinking of my name in another language hanging on a poster on a wall in another country. Once, an anthology I was in got translated into Turkish, and it was so cool, seeing a few words I recognized ("challah," for one) interspersed with entire sentences that I didn't recognize at all, but that I wrote. At least this time, they didn't have to translate the title.

Here's Berwin, the producer, with Damián Alcázar, who's one of Mexico's most famous actors. I don't recognize him, mainly because I basically don't know any actors who weren't on an episode of Doctor Who (ask my coworkers if you don't believe me), but he's in The Chronicles of Narnia and some Gabriel Garcia Marquez film adaptations, which is sort of the dictionary definition of awesome.

And here is an award of some sort, I think.

Or maybe it's a statue? At least there isn't food on the tables behind. Then I'd really be jealous.

A Puppet Purim

This week, we got ready for our new Purim video, which we're getting prepared and mixed and psyched to show you. It's a big first for MyJewishLearning, where diversity is always important. We've worked with actors and filmmakers from all types of backgrounds before. But several of you have complained that we've been conspicuously human-centric in casting for our videos, and that we've never used puppets before.

Well, we've heard your voices and we've decided to do something about it! Together with Ora Fruchter and Chistopher Scheer, we're putting puppets back on the map. Follow the jump for some behind-the-scenes shots from the making of our Purim movie, starring the classy Mr. Dingo...and an adorable little troublemaker named Joey.


All puppets have a union-mandated coffee break every 15 minutes.

The Red Skull Scares Me

Confession time: Captain America has never been my favorite superhero. I'm a Marvel boy, tried and true, and even though the X-Men have my heart and most perfectly embody my geekiness, the Avengers, the team that banded together around Captain America and have him as their leader (more or less), are probably my favorite superhero team.

So, as you might imagine, I'm watching the news and the previews of Captain America: The First Avenger pretty intensely.

I don't know if you caught the Super Bowl (I didn't) or the TV commercials (I've been trying to), but there was a spot for Captain America, and it's online. It starts as standard superhero fare -- there's this kind of wimpy soldier who gets put through the ringer, an explosion or two, he get stuck into a tube and comes out all steroidy and pumped up...

And then this guy whips on screen.



The Red Skull scares me. No, more than that: He freaks the hell out of me. It's bad enough that most supervillains have names like Doctor Doom or Darkseid and can blast nuclear endorphins out of their palms, but this guy is an actual Nazi. He shows up in comics wearing a swastika armband. He peppers his speech with references to "the annihilation" and "the future Reich." In a few of the more noiry comics, his I'll-get-you speeches include personal reminisces of him and Hitler.

And this is what I was reading as a ten-year-old.

The Red Skull has always been a serious character. His "skull" used to be a mask, but at some point it became his skull. More recently, he was shown (in Ultimate Avengers) giving a superhero's wife a choice between stabbing him to death with a fork or throwing their infant child out the window. (She chose the latter. He did the former anyway.) He's dabbled in genetic manipulation, social manipulation (he's been elected president and been one of the richest businessmen in the United States) and mind control. He rarely just takes a gun or a bomb and blows up Fort Knox. Instead, he just messes with our heads, which is worse, or quietly plots genocides. He's not just evil. He's creepy.

What do you think -- is the Red Skull just pushing our buttons? Or is he pushing the boundaries of what's socially acceptable?

Jerusalem Suicide Bomber Monster Movie

I just wrote about this Jerusalem of the Future contest for MyJewishLearning, but right before I posted, I found this. The title of this post is a bit of a spoiler, but keep watching till the end. KEEP WATCHING.



What does it MEAN!? Who made this? If anyone knows, please tell me. I'm baffled and astounded and, like, not sure whether I should be offended or wowed. I'm leaning toward the second.

Jaws

We watched Jaws tonight (on Netflix Instant--is there someone who keeps a list of amazing movies on Netflix Instant, to weed out the great stuff from the trash?) and I am agonizing, agonizing. Every scene of that movie is so well-thought out. Made in that way that movies don't get made anymore, with long lingering scenes and visuals that any 12-year-old would decry as fake in a second, but you know that's the way these things work in real life. One second you're just smokin' a cigarette

and the next, you're, well, lunch.

Then of course, because I am obsessive, I dove into Wikipedia and read about the Hollywood impact of Jaws (and read the complete Wiki summaries of its three sequels, which is probably as close as I'll ever get to watching them) (not because they're bad -- usually that's an incentive to watch movies, peoples -- but because of the no-time thing). And that studied, minimalist storytelling thing (there are, what, 3 scenes that comprise the entire last hour of the movie?)...yeah. It kind of doesn't show up in the sequels.

I'm the last person to say that fast and furious isn't a great way to tell a story. I like to think that Losers, in its 189 pages, is the two-minute punk version of a five-minute anthem. But slow can be good too. (Please don't take this theory and apply it to the Green Day musical. I mean, come on. Green Day. Made a musical. I'm sure it's good or whatever, but please don't tell me.)

It's also National Novel Writing Month. I've definitely written novels in a month before (Stephen King says to write fast, while the idea's fresh in your head, and edit slow) and I actually did the November 1 - November 30 thing once. But this November I'm taking it purposefully slow. I've been working on this book for ten years -- I remember because the main character used to seem way too old for me to write him, and now I keep wondering if he isn't way too young. And I'm writing a book where the main character is a dude. Why does that keep weirding people out?

(Okay, so realistically, of the 4 books I've published, 2 have had male protagonists and 2 have been female. But, of the boys, one was a memoir where the protagonist was me {well, more or less me} and one was basically a 14-year-old version of me. {There's a longer answer to that, essentially, that Jupiter isn't me, he's my best friend, only Russian and Jewish and not dead. But that's another post, I think.} And then my two ladies, Hava from Goldbergs and Candy from Candy in Action, are both basically superheroes. Which says something about how I variously idealize and torture the people in my books, right? How did I start analyzing my own books? I should stop. Now.)

Annyway. I planned to come on here and write about Jaws for a minute and then leap back into the book and as you can see, that hasn't really happened. But Bram from YIDCore is asking me questions about his new book and I have about 20 pages of tinily-lettered rewrites to type and two tiny children who are already plotting their evil ways to wake up at sunrise, which suggests that this should be the point where I jump into the water, make my own fingers-pressed-together shark fin, and do my slow descent.

Only, not slow anymore.

Jonathan Ames Doesn't Look Jewish

OK, first up -- HBO's series Bored to Death just premiered. Here's the whole first episode of the new season:



Jonathan Ames, the creator of the series, is a hilarious writer, and the author of a dozen or so books. (One of my favorite things about him: he recently told Stephen Elliott that the turning point in his career came when he stopped wanting to be a great writer and started wanting to tell great stories.) He's Jewish, and doesn't look it. This conversation comes from a recent interview with Powell's:

Georgie: In your novels, and sometimes in your columns, you have mentioned being Jewish but looking fair and somewhat "Aryan." Did you ever witness anti-Semitism by people who presumed you weren't Jewish?

Ames: [I]n my youth, for a brief period, probably between nineteen to twenty-one, I probably didn't look Jewish, my hair was very blonde from being at the beach a lot, from the ocean, so I think I made mention of not looking Jewish during that period. And I think it was during this period that people would make anti-Semitic remarks, assuming I wasn't Jewish, and it had the effect on me that I wouldn't say I was Jewish, because I think that I was embarrassed embarrassed for them, embarrassed for me, and wanting them to like me. But I was also hurt, and a little bit disgusted, and that, I think, has to do with the thing of the Aryan appearance.

It's an interesting phenomenon of the Jew, who is a minority, and yet can sort of assimilate into the culture. Someone I was talking to, during an interview, was talking about the unusual place of the Jew, in the way of being this minority that isn't necessarily visibly marked as a minority. Of course, if one is wearing the yarmulke or is Hassidic, then you know. But sometimes we can walk amongst you!

And then you watch the show and realize that Ames is being portrayed by Jason Schwartzman, who might be the most stereotypical-looking Jew west of the Mississippi. Which is kind of an awesome uber-commentary, and a kind of touching hat-tip to the idea that Jews own Hollywood.

1/20: The Punky Trailer

If you're looking at this on Facebook or something and can't see the embedded film, click here right now, because your life is about to change in the best way possible.

Yep -- it's the trailer to the movie I wrote, directed by Gerardo del Castillo.

(Second trailer to come. Or it's not that hard to find. I like this one better, although the other one features the amazing band Against Me, who helped with the movie.)

The Movie Gets a Little Realer

Just wanted to share two quick items of movie awesomeness with you:

1) "1/20" has an IMDB page! (No, I'm not on it yet. But my title is! Really, though, it has the movie's tagline and the actors and all sorts of official information that I didn't know anyone was allowed to know. But the big thrill is that, dude, it's the Internet Movie Database. It's the Hollywood equivalent of seeing your name in print for the first time.)

2)And we also have a movie poster:

That mohawk in the poster belongs to Xiomara, the star of the  show. The director, the producer, and I were eating hummus on Ninth Avenue and this bubbly, cute, sane-looking girl strolled by. She was wearing a pink dress. Our producer leaped up and chased her down half a block, then dragged her back by one of her ponytails (she had two). "This is Ayako," he told us. "She's auditioning for Xiomara."

I didn't believe him. Then I saw her audition tape -- it was one of those tapes that you think might have been filmed at an asylum, where one minute she's sweet and docile and courteous, the next she's ranting and screaming and about to knock the camera out of the cameraman's hand -- and I was like, okay, this is working. Then she showed up for her haircut on the first day of filming -- I ran into her the next day in the dressing rooms, all spikes and leather jackets and hair that looked like it could pierce skin -- and she blew my mind. She wasn't that bubbly Ninth Avenue girl anymore. She was Xi.

1/20: A Motion Picture

Update: Watch the 1/20 trailer.
Other update: read about our first film fest, or all 1/20 news.

I'm finally allowed to tell the title for the movie that I've been working on, and there it is. The title, I mean: "1/20." (We've been saying it out loud as "One-Twenty," but if you want to be a real geek about it, you're welcome to use the "slash.")

The title doesn't give away all of the movie's secrets. It doesn't even reveal that much about the purpose or the theme of the film (although, if you read it the right way, it might).

I'm not really sure where to begin, so I'm just going to do a little interview with myself about it. If you want to see my older blog posts about the movie -- about 1/20, I mean! -- just look for the label the secret movie (by clicking on those words, I mean). And if you have any other questions, just put 'em in the comments section. I'll try to say everything I'm allowed to.

How did this happen?
A producer read my book Never Mind the Goldbergs and really liked it. Then he read all my other books. Then he asked if I could write a screenplay. I told him I'd never done it before, and he said that was okay, he'd never made a film before either. So that was that. A director (expereinced!) was brought on, and he had his own idea of what movie we should make. Then we enlisted a talented (and also experienced!) production company, who were like the Oompa Loompas, but without all the creepy undertones. They were just that damn good.

What's it about?
This is where it gets tricky -- how much I'm allowed to say, I mean. Two girls are stuck in the suburbs, beating their heads against the wall, and they decide to run away to Washington, DC. There's a little bit of science fiction. A little bit of a love story. A little bit about how to break up with your best friend.

You mean it's not Jewish or punk?
It's not Jewish -- well, not flagrantly. None of the main characters are -- all the characters are collaborations between me and the director and the actors, and I think we all squeezed a lot of our spirituality/religion/punkitude into them. Ayako, who plays the lead character, is the kind of brilliant that shatters glass from miles away when she's angry, and spreads love pheromones to people two counties away. She's this demure, soft-spoken girl who -- literally five minutes into the film -- emerges into something fierce and savage and beautiful.

It's pretty flagrantly punk, though. You'll see as soon as I'm allowed to show the movie poster -- Ayako's hair is an art piece. An art piece that's 18 inches tall.

Where did the idea come from, anyway?
I lived in D.C. for five years, from when I was 17 until I turned 22, moved to San Francisco, and decided to be a poet. It was a weird five years -- I became Orthodox, was homeless for a bit, became a coffee addict, got off coffee, spent a lot of time alone wandering around huge empty boulevards. You haven't lived till you've been alone at the Lincoln Memorial at 4 a.m. Of course, you also probably haven't come that close to being abducted by a psycho and disappearing off the face of the earth, either. D.C. is a beautiful place, but it's also frightening. It's where I learned how to be an adult.

Have you seen the movie yet?
I've seen a rough cut, and I've seen about two minutes with film. It's beautiful. Gerardo del Castillo, who directed the film (he's the only one whose name I know I'm allowed to reveal), is a genius. If he made thirty-second TV commercials, prime-time audiences would be jumping to their feet and giving a standing ovation five times an hour.

Where did you film?
All over the place. Most scenes were shot in Queens, Manhattan, and upstate (well, semi-upstate) (well, Monsey). Some great stories came out of that, mostly involving Ayako's mohawk and Hasidic Jews. The last week of filming was all in D.C. proper. I missed the last day of filming, which was on Thanksgiving and at my favorite location in the city. But I got to be at the White House scenes, which was way worth it.

What's your favorite part?
That would be telling.

Fine, then. Biggest surprise?
Melinda, who did the art direction and props. I didn't even consciously realize there would be an art director. But when I wrote about what Ayako's character's bedroom should look like, I was basically fantasizing -- it was my bedroom if I knew way more about electronics and graffiti art and hacking Christmas lights than I do.

What's next?
Filming was completed in November. Now the movie's getting all professional-fied: The film is being cut and edited in Barcelona. The actual sound is getting mastered in London, and they're working out the soundtrack. And we're trying to get a distribution deal, which sounds like nothing, but it's apparently the hardest and scariest part of this whole enterprise.

And, most of all, drumming up support. Talking to people. Letting you know how good 1/20 is going to be once you're watching it in a theater (it will be amazing, I promise) and letting the Hollywood Industry Folks know that there are people who want to see it. That a movie doesn't have to have naked folks or guns or blue naked people with guns...sometimes, that all it takes is a lot of heart.

Eat Matzah Fast

Jeremy Moses of MyJewishLearning just took it upon himself to break the world record for matzah eating. (Disclaimer: before he tried, there was no world record for matzah eating.)

Every year at seder, we're supposed to eat the entire 2/3 of a piece of matzah (okay, that's if you're eating shmura matzah -- 1 entire sheet, if you go by the machine-made *ahem* cheating *ahem* kind) in one action, without swallowing. Add that to the fact that you're not supposed to have eaten matzah at all in the past 30 days...Well, if you can get it down in one gulp, you're kind of a hero.

(Jeremy also wants me to add that, when he was practicing, he did it much faster than he did on the video. So there.)

Can anyone break it?

Lost Season 6 Spoilers

After you listen to this, you'll know just as much about the final season of "Lost" as you do now. Which is to say: There aren't really any spoilers.

This is just a poem. It's my fan-fiction version of what's going to happen in the next 18 or so weeks.

I hope you like it.

(If you can't hear it here, go to http://matthue.bandcamp.com.)

Hasid for a Day

(A few weeks ago, I somehow convinced my bosses to let me work as an extra on the set of the new CBS drama The Good Wife for a day. The episode, “Unorthodox,” is about the Hasidic Jewish community in Chicago. It airs on Tuesday, Nov. 10.)

I've protested so frequently about the portrayal of Hasidic Jews in movies and TV that one would probably figure that I should know how to do it correctly. Being one myself, I'm pretty quick to catch the common errors: eating in non-kosher restaurants (Pi), mixed dancing (A Stranger among Us), being in inappropriate situations between men and women (pretty much every movie out there that involves Hasidim in any capacity). In my head, as I've gone through the little suite of everyday movements that make up our life, I've thought several times about how perfect something would be for a movie -- probably due to a healthy amount of egotism combined with a cinematic outlook. Swishing my talis around me before morning prayers would make a great pan! Washing hands from a double-handled cup would look so meaningful in slow motion! Walking down the street with my black overcoat swishing against my calves like a cape is -- well, yeah, that's my fantasy of being a superhero combining with my fantasy of living inside a movie.

The reality of Hasidic Jews on film, from The Chosen to New York, I Love You, is a different story. When we're not represented as shadowy figures crossing streets in the background, we're old, un-English-speaking naïfs with poor posture and weird hair. The weird hair part, we are totally guilty of, but the rest of it is due in large part to the dumbing down of culture to its barest essence -- when it's not straight-out making stuff up.

But nothing quite prepares me for this: Sitting at a bridge table at 5:45 A.M. with a dozen men dressed as Hasidic Jews, discussing the new Quentin Crisp biopic. Or, more specifically: how one of the 70-year-old rabbi-lookin' guys at the table, whose payos are much straighter and more even and perfectly grayed than mine, is telling me about his role cross-examining an actor playing Quentin Crisp in a new film.

The guys at my table have run through the gamut of Hasidim in films. They're like the gods of Hasidic acting -- they've been in A Price above Rubies and A Stranger Among Us. They've been in sitcoms, dramas, and Law & Order. (This, I will learn, is a benchmark among extras* in New York; as my trophy-wife {we'll get there} will tell me later that day: "If you haven't been on Law & Order, you don't really live in New York City.") These guys have stories as long as their fake beards. Of Stranger, one is saying: "We were filming, and one of the real guys says, 'Hold up! That's not how it's really done.' So the director calls cut, everyone stops, and he shows them how to do it. Then they start again, they roll tape, and someone else says, 'Hold up!' And everyone else has their own way to do it.

"Ah," he cackles, leaning back into his seat, "Jews."

And the whole group starts laughing.

Elli Meyer, nicknamed "the king of Broadway" and known in the industry as the go-to person to play Hasidic Jews, very kindly set me up with this gig. His IMDB profile lists nearly fifty credits to his name (in reality, it's much higher) -- mostly as "unnamed rabbi" or "unnamed Hasid," but he's also played a hillbilly, a trucker, and (once, on The Sorpranos) a Muslim cleric. He put out a call for actors on his Facebook profile -- this new television show needs Hasidim!

It was almost like I couldn't say no. So far, being a Hasidic Jew has only gotten me a whole bunch of fast days that I wouldn't have otherwise known existed. I figured, it was about time looking like a crazy-haired freak should start paying off. I emailed him my details, and he emailed me back the info. Starting, I should note, with the 5:45 call time.

The camera crew isn't scheduled to arrive until seven, but makeup and wardrobe have already set up. One of the makeup artists comes over and starts sending people over to the makeshift station, which is really a bunch of mirrors duct-taped to a wall. The other guys are fishing out their sidecurls. They all have pre-made payos, dyed the exact white of their hair, with little clips at the top. Most of them have beard extensions, too.

The younger guys, the professional would-be actors who are here because it's another gig, and maybe because they happen to look Jewish, are being sent away to be outfitted with fake ones from the wardrobe department. I do a double-take when I see the blond underwear-model guy walk past in his skullcap and tzitzis. The makeup guy does a double-take on me and says: "Oh. You've already been."

Coming on Friday: Part 2. Fake kids! Fake cars! And my fake wife!?

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* — I’m grossly oversimplifying it, I know.