Local guy in good flick

By Nate Bloom, Stars of David Contributing Columnist

Editor’s Note: Persons in bold are deemed by Nate Bloom to be Jewish for the purpose of this column. Persons identified as Jewish have at least one Jewish parent and were not raised in a faith other than Judaism—and don’t identify with a faith other than Judaism as an adult. Converts to Judaism, of course, are also identified as Jewish.

“Chemical Hearts” is an original Amazon film that’s now streaming. Austin Abrams, 23, co-stars as Henry, a sensitive young man who meets Grace (Lili Reinhart), when they are selected to co-edit their high school paper. Grace is smart, beautiful and, for quite a while, hard to figure out. I won’t spoil it for you by saying more. But this film is much smarter than almost all teen dramas. A film for everybody, it received good reviews from most, if not all, respected critics.

Abrams, a very cute guy, grew up in Sarasota, the child of two doctors. He’s had recurring roles on “The Walking Dead” and “Euphoria.” Veteran actor Bruce Altman, 65, a practicing Jew, has a smallish role as Henry’s father, and makes the most of his screen time. You’ll probably recognize him from scores of TV guest shots. continued on page 22

New documentary

Mitzi Shore (1930-2018) co-founded The Comedy Store, a Los Angeles nightclub, in 1968. She had a truly great eye for young talent and is credited with giving many great comics their start or big break (a partial list: Robin Williams, David Letterman, Andy Kaufman, Jay Leno and Garry Shandling). A 5-part Showtime documentary about the club will premiere on October 4. The director is sometime actor Mike Binder, 62.

Mitzi was the real talent in the family. She effectively ran the club from its inception because her husband and club co-founder, “so/so” comedian Sammy Shore, was usually on the road. Mitzi became the club’s sole owner after she and Sammy split in 1974. Their son, “so/ so” comedian Pauly Shore, now 52, had a mini-burst of fame in the ’90s, but has really faded.

New series

“Monsterland” is an original Hulu series that begins streaming on Oct. 2. It is an 8-episode anthology series (each episode stands alone) about “broken” people who have encounters with mermaids, fallen angels, and other strange beasts. Jonathan Tucker, 38, who has many film and TV credits, co-stars in the first episode. Tucker will also co-star in the NBC sci-fi series, “Debris,” which will premiere sometime early next year. The seventh episode of “Monsterland” co-stars Michael Hsu Rosen, 30ish. He is just breaking into TV/film work, following years as a ballet dancer and stage actor. His father is Jewish. His mother is Chinese.

The original “Showtime” series, “The Good Lord Bird,” was set to premiere months ago. The premiere was moved to Oct. 4. As I wrote before, a lead character is the famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who escaped from slavery. Daveed Diggs, 38, (“Hamilton”) plays Douglass.

“Cobra Kai,” a sort of reboot of “The Karate Kid” movies, got little attention when the first two seasons streamed only on the little-watched YouTube Red channel. However, it got huge viewing numbers when Netflix started streaming the first two seasons on Aug. 28. (A third season will appear “sometime” on Netflix).

The original film was about the conflict between sweet teen Daniel (Ralph Macchio) and the teen bullies who study karate at Cobra Kai, an “evil” karate school run by the nasty John Kreese (Martin Kove, 74). Daniel meets a Japanese/ American karate expert who turns him into a black belt. In the film’s climatic scene, Daniel defeats Johnny, Cobra Kai’s top student. The re-boot is set in the present. Johnny re-founds Cobra Kai, but he runs it more humanely than Kreese did, and Daniel re-founds the school that his mentor ran.

Reprising their film roles are Maachio, Kove and Randee Heller, 73 (she played/ plays Daniel’s mother). Kove is not like Kreese: he goes around the country giving anti-bullying lectures. In 2017, he told a Chabad-affiliated, South Florida-based rabbi, that he tries to be as observant as he can and that his two children were b’nai mitzvah.

More fun

Here’s a Jewish-related entertainment anecdote to make you smile in these difficult times.

On YouTube, I recently came across a 1970 Dick Cavett interview with star actor William Holden. Cavett asked him about on-set difficulties. Holden said that getting into makeup and costume can take hours. He then told a story about Charlton Heston, who played Moses in “The Ten Commandments” (1956). Heston, he said, was dressed up as the elderly Moses when he met Bob Hope on a studio street. Heston told Hope that it took hours to put on and take off his heavy makeup, which included a full white beard. Plus, he said, he was dying from the heat in his heavy robe and he was drenched in sweat.

Hope replied, “Well, as I have always said, it’s hard to be a Jew.”