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adamgoldberg · 7 years ago

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Why I decided now was the time to bring The Hebrew Hammer out of cold storage.

The following is a letter I wrote to friends and family before our current equity crowdfunding campaign went live.

Dear Friends,

If you’re like me you hate nazis. Also if you’re like me you played a character called the Hebrew Hammer a fews years back in a movie called….The Hebrew Hammer. Back in those days, if I had to beg my friends and family for money to make a movie it was an infantilizing, demoralizing affair. But these days not only is it socially acceptable, it’s downright groovy. But before I pick your pocket, here’s a bit of background.

Writer/Director Jon Kesselman and I conceived of a sequel to the cult classic (I can say that because I’m old and I can say that about shit I’m in) some 12 years back. Even two years after the first film’s release there was a lot of fan interest in a sequel. It actually began get annoying how often I was asked (in real life, there was no Twitter) if we were gonna do another one. So I Jon and I got together and I suggested we kill Hitler. Because, you know. Hitler. This was before Inglorious Bastards, by the way. Also I made a short film called Reservoir Dogs when I was in 3rd grade. (That last sentence isn’t true). Jon and I worked on the story, Jon pounded out a script and over the years there have been a variety of iterations and stabs at financing the film. But to be completely frank, between my personal projects, and living-making projects, and ambivalence about being over identified with any particular “franchise,” it got sidelined. My mindset was if it got made, great, if it didn’t, well, I wouldn’t have to wear a banana in my speedos 12 hours a day. (For those of you who missed the original, there’s a love scene in which I needed a little help from the craft service table in order to do the titular character justice).

But as Trump’s ascent and demagoguery began to incite some bonafide anti-semitism, in a sense I began to own my Jewishness which I had often felt owned me. By the time of the inauguration I found myself embroiled in some pretty awful exchanges on Twitter and on the receiving end of hate speech and imagery the likes of which I had really only ever heard or read about. On the other hand I found my inbox full of calls for The Hebrew Hammer. “Now more than ever,” they would often say. It didn’t seem to matter that the movie we made years ago and the movie that we were imagining for the sequel were broadly funny satires; people really considered the character to be a hero of sorts. I was at a Blue Jays game the other day (don’t ask, when in Toronto…) and a young vender asked me if I was The Hebrew Hammer, and when I said yes, that I had played him, the guy enthusiastically told me I was his hero. Certainly I wasn’t. But the Hammer, for all his kvetching, seemed to fill a void that clearly had existed prior to Jon’s conception of the character.

Over the past few months Jon and I retooled to the script to reflect some of the insanity of the Trump era. It was almost as if we had prematurely hatched the conceit to the sequel back in 2005, and needed the last year to occur in order to properly contextualize the story and get our asses into gear. This is not to say I wouldn’t trade the making of this film for just a single morning where I didn’t have to chase my Matcha with an Ativan. But Trump is president. So you might as well give me your money.

We teamed with Indiegogo which recently teamed with Microventures to do something fairly new, known as equity crowdsourcing. In short, instead of a coffee mug, you own part of the film. You can also have a coffee mug. The details are all on the site and Judy Greer and I do our best to explain in more detail at the end of a short Hammer film Jon and I made this last summer for the campaign.

This is the first time I’ve been involved in such a campaign and wouldn’t were I not really passionate about this. Or if I were really super wealthy and just could pay for the thing.

If you’d like to join the party…Let me rephrase…If you’d like to learn more click HERE.

Shabbat Shalom motherfuckers.

POST SCRIPT: THE CAMPAIGN IS VERY LIVE AND SINCE THE ANNOUNCEMENT THE BILIOUS TROLLING ON TWITTER HAS TAKING ON HEINOUS NEARLY COMICAL AND VERY CERTAINLY IRONIC PROPORTIONS, GIVEN THEY ARE PARTLY THE REASON FOR THE REBOOT.

#hebrew hammer #hebrew hammer vs hitler #adam goldberg #jonathan kesselman #donald trump #sebastian gorka #indiegogo

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jewcymag-blog · 7 years ago

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Oh, The Hebrew Hammer. Every Jewish middle schooler’s favorite parody of exploitation film-making featuring swearing, ass-kicking, neurotic “certified, circumcised dick” Mordechai Jefferson Carver as he fights an evil Santa Claus attempting to end Chanukah forever.

The film came out nearly fifteen years, in 2003, but writer/director Jonathan Kesselman has never given up hope of a sequel. Talks started in earnest back in 2006 (yep, a dull decade ago), and back in 2013, for the film’s anniversary, he successfully ran a Jewcer campaign for $50,000.

And then, nothing happened. It turns out $50,000 isn’t a lot of money to make a film, because now there’s another crowdsourcing campaign, this time seeking over a million dollars ($2 million will come from elsewhere). Kesselman has made some changes to his plan for the new film (e.g. cutting a now somewhat dated bit about Mel Gibson), but the title and major premise will remain the same: The Hebrew Hammer vs. Hitler.

#the hebrew hammer #Articles

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