Interview conducted by Josh Horowitz
December 19, 2003
I would be willing to bet that THE HEBREW HAMMER is the first film to come with a glossary of terms in the press notes ranging from “dreidels” to “YENTL.” Yet in the film, when Adam Goldberg as the title character strides down the streets of New York, he looks closer to Richard Roundtree than Topol. Yes, HAMMER is that rare bird, a Jewish exploitation film. Did I say rare bird? I meant only bird. If nothing else, director Jonathan Kesselman’s film will probably go down as one of the greatest Hanukkah-themed movies in history. Take that, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE!
HAMMER is a film you will either respond to or you won’t and it will likely be an extreme response either way. Let me put it this way, Andy Dick portrays the evil son of Santa Claus, Damian, who is hell-bent on destroying Hanukkah and only Goldberg as the “baddest Heeb this side of Tel Aviv” stands in his way. By now you should know if you’d like this film or not.
Stylistically, the film owes as much to THE NAKED GUN as it does to SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAAD ASS SONG. Speaking of the latter, that is indeed Mario Van Peeples on the poster and his dad, the legendary director Melvin Van Peeples, showing up for a cameo.
Last week I had a chance to talk to the Hammer himself, Adam Goldberg, in New York. Best known for roles in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, DAZED AND CONFUSED, and HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN TEN DAYS, The 33-year-old has recently directed his second film, I LOVE YOUR WORK, starring Giovanni Ribisi, Joshua Jackson, as well as Goldberg’s girlfriend, Christina Ricci. With that film seeking distribution and THE HEBREW HAMMER on the eve of opening, he seemed to have a lot on his mind.
Josh Horowitz: I imagine you’re doing some unusual interviews for this. I was reading an article in JEWISH WEEK this morning about you for instance.
Adam Goldberg: I had this thing where I had a sort of mandate about not doing interviews with Jewish newspapers because after SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, it was becoming too much. It was starting to feel inappropriate somehow. In this case we were being a bit picky about which ones to do. What happens is questions are asked about my personal background [Goldberg is half-Jewish] and it becomes more about that than my part in the movie. It’s just really not that relevant.
JH: It’s true that in nearly everything I’ve read about you and the movie your parents’ religions are mentioned.
AG: I guess partly it’s my fault for reiterating what my background was but it’s only because I don’t think if somebody says “you’re a Jew”, you should
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say “yeah I am” when really you’re many things. I directed this film [I LOVE YOUR WORK] this year and I noticed a couple of the early reviews, particularly one by this fucking cocksucker called Kirk Honeycutt of THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER who is clearly one of the angriest men alive. It was as though he was reviewing my press kit. It wasn’t even as though he was reviewing the movie. He imagines my motivations for making this film. It was so vitriolic and so based on information from the press kit. It seems the more people’s personal lives get exposed the more they are being reviewed than the movies that they make.
JH: So what’s the solution? You don’t want to be someone who doesn’t promote your movies…
AG: No, that’s my whole thing. I think it’s great to have a platform to promote the things that might otherwise go unseen. For instance this TIMOUT NEW YORK cover [I did] was a fantastic way to let people know about this movie. They got some really angry letters, one of which was clearly from this racist freak. He was basically saying, “why are you picking a group that represents such a small segment of the population to be on the cover of your magazine?” Nevermind that it’s a fucking weekly. This week it’s got Scarlett Johansson [on the cover] who’s like the picture of the Aryan nation. He was like, “why not represent all people or basically majority groups?” Like the majority really needs a mouthpiece! I guess I have a lot on my mind!
JH: You do! I’ve asked like one question!
AG: I know. I was walking for 20 blocks.
JH: Anything else on your mind you’d like to share?
AG: I think that might be it. I haven’t seen my shrink in about a year and I’m used to these morning shows where you don’t much of an opportunity [to talk].
JH: I was just thinking that this film, THE HEBREW HAMMER, would be a good double bill to go with Mel Gibson’s THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST.
AG: I said something about Mel Gibson today on CNN. I just blurted it out. They asked me if I had gotten any negative response from Jews and I was like, “yeah, they want to crucify me literally to the cross like Mel Gibson.” Oh well, I’ll never hear from Mel.
JH: You think this film is just going to knock ELF out of the theaters?
AG: (LAUGHS) Yeah, in the biggest fluke in the history of cinema, a picture playing three theaters is going to make such an astronomical per screen average that it’s going to blow out one in a thousand theaters.
JH: That attitude is not going to get you anywhere.
AG: That’s true. We will pack the theaters in Florida. No, I imagine we’ll have some kind of cult life.
JH: It’s a true modern exploitation movie. You even have Melvin Van Peeples in it.
AG: That was pretty rad. He was a really cool dude. He’s about as smooth as they get.
JH: His son too.
AG: Yeah, Mario is one smooth motherfucker. Yeah, he [Melvin] kind of lent it credibility in a way.
JH: This film was shot in 24 days. You’ve got 30 locations. How do you like guerilla filmmaking?
AG: It’s completely insane especially for something like this, which is ambitious. Obviously if you’re looking for it, you can see a lack of coverage in a certain scene. Actors say it gives them a sense of urgency and excitement, which I think is true because you wait around for fucking ever on big movies. You start to go a little crazy. I can’t keep myself occupied. I can’t read. I can’t concentrate if I know I’m supposed to work.
JH: In a somewhat strange strategy, this film was shown on Comedy Central before being released in theaters. What did you make of that move?
AG: Truthfully, when all this deal making was going on I was so immersed in my movie [I LOVE YOUR WORK] that it was such peripheral noise that I couldn’t process it. And now I’m sort of realizing that it’s definitely odd. In the end, I don’t know if more people see it that way.
JH: If nothing else, it ruins your Oscar eligibility.
AG: Right, which I was really counting on. I did say something about Comedy Central’s lack of promotion of the film when I was on Jon Stewart’s show and apparently they’re upset about that. I’m sorry but every five fucking blocks you see a KID NOTORIOUS billboard! In the end I think I’m more of a businessman than anything else so things like that annoy me.
JH: When did you feel like you had solid footing in this business? I’m guessing it was right around the time you were in a Pauly Shore movie [THE SON IN-LAW]?
AG: Ok, you want to talk about that. So on DAZED AND CONFUSED we didn’t make any money. However much in debt I was, was how much we got paid. We got paid five grand or something. So I went back home broke and some
time went on and I literally had to pay my rent and I wasn’t going to go back to my job at a bookstore. Up until DAZED AND CONFUSED all I had done were these guest spots. But after having done that movie…I knew it was the beginning of a career. So I remember going to the set [of THE SON IN-LAW] to literally
make my rent and I’m in this Indian costume and it’s like one line. It was totally embarrassing. I’m working with this guy who’s playing the cowboy to my Indian and he asked me what I was up to and I had mentioned that I had done this movie in Texas and he was sort of like, “what are you doing here?!?”
JH: Speaking of playing the cowboy to your Indian, what is up with you and Matthew McConaughey? You’ve done a bunch of movies together.
AG: I don’t know why that keeps happening. I got offered HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN TEN DAYS and I was like, “are you sure that’s the best idea because I kind of just did this already?”
JH: Have you ever played the bongos with him?
AG: I don’t think I’ve played the bongos with him. I’ve definitely had some late night hangs with him but no bongos were involved.
JH: You’ve heard the rumors about Tom Hanks being a dick, of course. Can you confirm or deny?
AG: (LAUGHS) About the third day of our SAVING PRIVATE RYAN junket, I began to crack and tell everybody that he was in fact an asshole who made a great number of sexual advances on us in boot camp.
JH: Did he make advances on [SAVING PRIVATE RYAN military adviser] Dale Dye too?
AG: No, I will not say anything negative about Dale Dye or he will find me and kill me.
JH: Do you get a Christmas card from him every year?
AG: Yeah, he sends you a shell casing.
JH: I’ve talked to both Joshua Jackson and Jason Lee in recent months about I LOVE YOUR WORK. Would you describe it as a black comedy?
AG: I think it starts out as a black comedy. Certainly the complaint by some people is that it’s funny and then it’s not at all funny. It was never meant to be THE KING OF COMEDY. To me it was about being honest for wherever this guy [played by Giovanni Ribisi] was in the course of his degeneration. Giovanni becomes obsessed by Joshua Jackson and his girlfriend played by Marisa Coughlan. We pick him up somewhere far along what you might imagine to be a psychic break that he’s keeping to himself. He keeps hallucinating about this angelic figure from his past played by Christina Ricci. Essentially what he realizes is that his life with his movie star life is fraudulent and that he’s made some kind of Faustian deal and he wants out. He becomes obsessed with this
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couple, one of whom has written him a fan letter. In essence he becomes obsessed with his fan. He wants to basically usurp the existence of this couple. It’s at that point that it becomes more of an exploration of this guy’s schizophrenia more than being an indictment of Hollywood, which is what these angry trade critics have said. I can understand maybe not liking the movie. It’s challenging on some level and you can argue that it’s heavy handed. But these guys think I’m just like, “oh it so hard to be an actor and making money.” It’s not about that. It’s essentially about this guy who was a fan of movies and he made a mistake of becoming a part of movies. These morons who write for these trade papers want to slander a movie before you’ve had an opportunity to sell it.
JH: Have reviews jeopardized the film’s distribution?
AG: It makes it more difficult. Yeah. We’re still going to get it. It’s like, “fuck you. These people did this movie not because they’re my friends. They did it because they responded to the material.” If I see this Kirk Honeycutt, he is a dead man.
JH: So is [girlfriend] Christina Ricci demanding that you add more soft focus moments of her to the film?
AG: Definitely. Yeah. No, for the whole process she was quite a good note giver. She’s just really, really sharp. I trust her sensibility and aesthetic and all that. It was certainly the same thing with Giovanni. He was extremely involved in rehearsals, throughout the shoot and even throughout the editing process. Here was a guy who I trusted to flesh this character out who really became this guy which was very different than what I wrote initially. I think the job of a director is to know what’s a good note and what’s a bad note. It’s not always to make unilateral decisions.
JH: I know you did this RUNNING WITH THE BULLS mock documentary for IFC. Was this inspired by Joshua Jackson’s running with the bulls? He’s done it a few times.
AG: Has he really?!?
JH: Yeah. They just filmed him doing it for a movie of his.
AG: Come on! I had no idea. That is a bizarre coincidence. I fear running with the bulls but he actually does it. That’s the thing about Josh. It just felt like such great casting. You would just want to hang out with Josh. And that’s what Giovanni’s character wants.
JH: Acting wise, anything coming up?
AG: Not really. Eddie Burns has a movie that I’m attached to do and we’re talking about doing that next Spring. Sally Field plays my mom and Mia Farrow plays his mom. That could be really fantastic working with those women. And I’m developing a television program.
JH: Is it going to be called ADAM!?
AG: You hit the nail on the head. It’s going to be called OH ADAM! or ADAM DID IT AGAIN!
JH: Or maybe ADAM…?
AG: Right. ADAM… Or the HALF-HEEB SHOW.
THE HEBREW HAMMER opens December 19th in New York, Los Angeles and select cities.
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