Daniel Lubetzky

Watch this to the end.

With OVI and OVP Youth leaders

At dinner wearing OV pin

With Mika Almog and Lior Shlain

Avi Cohen, the "godfather" of humor in the Israeli TV, learns about OV from Gil Shamy

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Behind the scenes, in the green room at the Oscars, what are they serving the celebrities? KIND Fruit and Nut bars.

The Oscars’ Green Room is the exclusive territory of Hollywood’s A-list: award presenters, winners, and Academy big-wigs. So when you see your favorite actor or actress on stage, there’s a good chance they were snacking on KIND just a few minutes earlier.

Thanks to Phil Walotsky, Laura Ziskin and Michael Seligman for sharing the #1 healthy snack in the US with the Oscar winners!

We saw this movie last week and it is still on my mind.  My favorite this year, and certainly among my all-time favorites. I recommend it to all.

Several friends called or emailed to let me know Danny DeVito was hilarious at the Israel Film Festival, where he also encouraged the audience to get involved with OneVoice.  This article will give you an idea…

“Look around. A lot of you are bald,” said the actor, who was introduced by Michael Douglas — DeVito’s oldest show business friend and former roommate in a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment — with a crack about absent hair. DeVito went on to make an earnest plea for support of the grass-roots organization in which he and his wife, actress Rhea Perlman, are involved: the OneVoice Movement, which pushes for peace in the Middle East.

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Eytan Heller’s creative video to inspire people to visualize what could be in the Middle East in 2018 (part of our Imagine 2018 campaign) has been nominated as one of 24 finalists (out of several hundred contenders) for the Viral Video Awards. 

Check it out and vote for it.

http://www.viralvideoaward.com/

When the movie Life is Beautiful came out back in 1997, I felt a gnawing guilt at enjoying the movie so much, when the protagonist, as a concentration camp prisoner, found a way to laugh and make others laugh, amidst dehumanizing circumstances.  Could a sense of humor have a place in such a dark episode in humanity?

After overcoming the tears from the final scene, I called my Dad and asked him whether people actually laughed in a concentration camp. I was surprised to learn that indeed, the jokes his Dad told may have been the only thing that kept him and other inmates at their bunker in Dachau going – finding some crumbs of humanity to feed their frail hearts, to keep them going.  In fact, in a weird way, my Dad felt Life Is Beautiful was among the movies that best captured his experience as a kid protected by his father (my grandfather), who refused to give up his ability to smile even in – or particularly amidst – such adverse moments.

This weekend we saw Counterfeiters, and I wish I had my Dad around to ask him what he thought of the movie.

I wish I could ask him how he related to the poignant dilemmas presented in the movie: to sabotage the Nazis and risk your life AND the life of your inmates or loved ones, or to pursue your survival while adding fuel to an evil enterprise?  The movie does an excellent job at providing a nuanced story that avoids black and white heroism and forces us to grapple with questions about the human spirit, about the struggle of accepting the privileges of a rotten apple when others don’t have even that to eat.

If you rent this fast-paced, excellently acted and directed movie, make sure you listen to the interview with the writer, Adolf Burger, whose book "The Devil’s Workshop" this movie is based on.

Quiet for decades about his ordeal, Burger finally forced himself to look back and tell his story when the "Holocaust Denial" movement rose among neo-Nazi youth.  He even describes some of the techniques he used for forging British notes, which the British government never caught.

Hollywood has for many years taken for granted people who speak languages other than English.  It is the most annoying thing to listen to actors break their teeth as they pretend to speak in "Spanish" – or French, or Hebrew, or Russian – and I gather any other foreign language.  It is bad enough that foreigners tend to be the villains, but at least let them be legitimate sounding villains!

I wonder if this results from carelessness from the Directors, or if desperate actors claim they "speak" a language and nobody bothers to ask a native to check it.

It’s even sillier when movies like Vantage Point (which we just wasted 90 minutes watching) try to philosophize about the arrogance and blindness of American foreign policy, all the while using actors that don’t nearly resemble the nationalities they pretend to represent. I guess Hollywood figures most Americans won’t notice. 

But this is what worries me about America.  As globalization continues, more people across the world are learning English and learning about other cultures, but Americans are not investing enough into learning about other cultures and countries.  This will have very real implications for American competitiveness.

If you do nothing else today, make sure you view this – The Story of A Sign – La Historia De Un Letrero – it is well worth it.

http://en.zappinternet.com/video/nilSqaMboM/HISTORIA-DE-UN-LETRERO

(and it happens to be shot in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico, a town my Mom is from)

Every line in Cameron Crowe’s script for Jerry Maguire (one of my favorite movies) is at once witty and apt.  IMDB has a good compilation of some great lines. Besides the ones that have made it into every day life, like "Help me help you", "You had me at hello," and "Show me the money!", here are a couple examples:

Rod Tidwell, Jerry’s only remaining client: You are hanging on by a very thin thread and I dig that about you!

Jerry Maguire: I’m finished, I’m fucked. Twenty four hours ago, man, I was hot! Now… I’m a cautionary tale. You see this jacket I’m wearing, you like it? Because I don’t really need it. Because I’m cloaked in failure! I lost the number one draft picked the night before the draft! Why? Let’s recap: Because a hockey player’s kid made me feel like a superficial jerk. I ate two slices of bad pizza, went to bed and grew a conscience!

Avery Bishop, Jerry’s hard-core fiance: If you ever want me to be with another woman for you, I’d do it. It’s not something I’m interested in. Once, yeah, it seemed normal, but it was just a phase, a college thing, like torn Levi’s or law school for you. Would you like something from the kitchen? I’m gonna get some fruit.

Copy store clerk, after reading Jerry’s Mission/Manifesto: That’s how you become great, man. Hang your balls out there!

Ray, Dorothy’s munchkin son: D’you know that the human head weighs 8 pounds?
Jerry Maguire: Did you know that Troy Aikman, in only six years, has passed for 16,303 yards?
Ray: D’you know that bees and dogs can smell fear?
Jerry Maguire: Did you know that the career record for hits is 4,256 by Pete Rose who is NOT in the Hall of Fame?
Ray: D’you know that my next door neighbor has three rabbits?
Jerry Maguire: I… I can’t compete with that!

Avery Bishop: There is a sensitivity thing that some people have. I don’t have it. I don’t cry at movies, I don’t gush over babies, I don’t buy Christmas presents 5 months early, and I DON’T tell the guy who just ruined both our lives, "Oh, poor baby." But I do love you.

Dorothy: I just want to be inspired.

Dorothy: He’s coming over.
Laurel: Tonight?
Dorothy: He just lost his best client. I invited the guy over.
Laurel: Dorothy, this is not a guy. It’s a syndrome. Early mid-life. Hanging on to the bottom wrung. "Dear God, don’t let me be alone or I call my newly long suffering assistant without medical for company settlement."

Marcee Tidwell: [shouting, to Jerry] What do you stand for?
Dorothy: How about a little piece of integrity in this world that is so full of greed and a lack of honorability that I don’t know what to tell my son! Except, "Here. Have a look at a guy who isn’t yelling ‘Show me the money." Did you know he’s broke? He is broke and working for you for free! Broke. Broke, broke, broke. I’m sorry I’m just not as good at the insults as she is.
Marcee Tidwell: No, that was pretty good.

Dicky Fox, Jerry’s mentor earlier generation agent: Hey, I don’t have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my wife. I love my life. And I wish you my kind of success.