Posts with tag LewisBlack
Adrian Grenier Nabs a Bunch of Celebs for New Paparazzi Doc
Filed under: Documentary », Casting »
He's already made a documentary about the quest to meet his father, and now Adrian Grenier is heading for doc land again for what sounds like a pretty funky endeavor.The Hollywood Reporter posts that Grenier has nabbed a number of big names that include Alec Baldwin, Whoopi Goldberg, Eva Longoria, Paris Hilton, Rosie O'Donnell, Martin Landau, Noam Chomsky, and Lewis Black for his new documentary titled Teenage Paparazzi. While this sounds like it could be centered on the phenomenon of Lindsays and Britneys, the film will focus on Grenier's "relationship with a 14-year-old paparazzo who took his photo," while also discussing the culture of fame.
But here is where things take an interesting turn -- the film "will interweave the relationship portrait with philosophical interviews in the style of Ricard LInklater's Waking Life." If that means just a bunch of discussions, cool. If that means that those discussions will be rotoscoped, that would be awesome. RIght now, the film is getting shopped to distributors, but hopefully we'll find out more soon.
The Write Stuff: Interview with 'The Hebrew Hammer' Screenwriter Jonathan Kesselman
Filed under: Comedy », Casting », Scripts », Home Entertainment », Interviews », Comic/Superhero/Geek », Columns », The Write Stuff »

Jonathan Kesselman wrote and directed The Hebrew Hammer, a comedy about an Orthodox Jewish Blaxploitation hero (Adam Goldberg) who saves Hanukkah from the evil offspring of Santa Claus (Andy Dick). The film has become a cult favorite, and you should add it to your holiday viewing list this year. In addition to being a successful screenwriter, Jonathan teaches Writing Comedy for Film and Television at Yale University. He has some great tips for aspiring comedy writers.
Cinematical: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Jonathan Kesselman: I always loved writing. When I was in the 5th grade, I was pulled out of my class and put onto the 12th grade yearbook staff writing copy. For a while, I thought I wanted to be a journalist. In college, I majored in Psychology -- neuroscience was my field. I realized that I didn't like slicing rat brains. I remember really searching for what it was that I wanted to do with my life. And I had always been obsessed with movies. I remember having this existential crisis pre-graduation, and then seeing a documentary on Your Show of Shows, and it hit me that I was put on this earth to make fun of people.
Cinematical: So you threw the rat in the air triumphantly...
JK: I ate the rat -- tasty! Yeah, I graduated, and decided I wanted to go to film school. I eventually went to graduate school at USC for film production.








