HAG: The Story of the Hassidic Actors Guild
The following are excerpts from the preface to MOM's musical audio book.
HAG: The Story of the Hassidic Actors Guild is a hybrid of fact and fiction, i.e. a mockumentary, focusing on filmmaker Yisrael Lifschutz's career as an actor and/or consultant--and sometime insultant--on numerous feature films and TV fare. While constantly running afoul of producers and directors, Lifschutz, a.k.a. Izzi de Liff, is excommunicated from the Jewish community for being associated with so many films showing Jews, and Hassidim in particular, in a much less than favorable light. While finally acceding to the Rabbinate's demand to forswear future participation in Hollywood efforts to Hassidicate, Izzi is allowed to continue performing, but only as a wedding singer.
Students of film will surely delight in the fact that HAG was produced as a "doctoral" thesis in filmography for a NYU graduate student.
Excerpts from such Jewish film classics as "The Chosen," Sidney Lumet's "Stranger Among Us" and Darren Aronofsky's classic indie "Pi", for which Izzi also served as one of the producers, are among a number of films in which the Izzman was involved. TV fare includes "Unsolved Mysteries" and PBS's landmark series "Civilization and the Jews."
HAG was screened at many Jewish film festivals throughout the US and Canada, a screening in Russia and a two week tour in Sidney and Melbourne Australia. Along the way the film picked up a number of prizes, including a best story award at Christian film festival, as well as
a first prize in Israel's Jewish Eye Film Festival. As a result of the latter, Lifschutz was the cover story in the Israeli daily Haaretz's entertainment section
The idea for MOM: Confessions of a Male Orthodox Model / A Musical Morality Play had been bouncing around well before our release of The Jewish Basketball Hall of Fame DVD. However, the real impetus for completing the screenplay was due to HAG winning a first prize at Israel’s Jewish Eye Film Festival: The the winning filmmakers were asked to participae in "Project J," namely, to create a short film, which would then be editied into one whole cinematic cholent (a tasty meat and bean-centric potpourri for Shabbat). My concept for MOM was accepted but unfortunately the money did not materialize. But since I now had a treatmental infrastructure, I was able to complete the script in a matter of weeks.
Of course, the real challenge film-wise was to do something I had always wanted to do, namely, a musical. The fact that I didn’t play an instrument wasn’t particularly daunting, since I had proven to myself that it could be done, as exhibited in HAG, where I wrote and performed two songs.
With his new found wealth, Izzi begins to produce his songs--and has a modicum of success. However, along the way the Music Hall of Fame, Izzi loses his voice. Not wanting to give up his otherwise late-in-the game career, he concocts a scheme whereby he calls a press conference to announce that he will have a vocal cord transplant. Said concoction is conceived after a “chance meeting” with
singer-songwriter-musician Kenny Vance--of Kenny Vance and the Planotones--who is a judge at a shofar blowing contest where Izzi is a participant.
Meanwhile, thanks to the “wonders of medical science,” the operation is a “success,” with Izzi now lip-synching Vance’s vocals in his new music videos. Eventually, Izzi’s hoax is dramatically and most embarrassingly revealed, leading to Izzi’s ultimate confession and subsequent acts of repentance.
Plot-wise and quite remarkably, Izzi, at the age of 65, gets a shot at living his life long dream of being a singer-songwriter (read “rock star”). This comes about as a result of Izzi having posed for ads and a poster for The Jewish Basketball Hall of Fame DVD. While the DVD fails to generate any significant revenues, the poster goes viral and Izzi’s royalty is seven figures!
Striking up a friendship with Vance, an original member of Jay and the Americans, Izzi learns that KV was the voice of actor Armand Assante in the film Looking For An Echo. Well if it was good enough for Armand, ditto for the Izzman!
One such act is an investment in an Israeli software company that has developed a product which alerts the caller as to when the other party is lying. Izzi’s innovation: The software product will also inform the caller when he himself is lying!
Searching for more satisfying rhymes and melodic frequencies became the name of the game; it was just a matter of doing it. So I sang all the time. This maddening process of repetition became an obsession--hardly appreciated by my family--my wife especially. And just as my wife Barbara served as the hilarious LOL moral compass of HAG, so too does her real-life personage influence a number of well-timed scenes.
Becker and Fagen’s songs--from the very first hearing--were a natural for the Great White Way, so much so that I proceeded to devote my energies to writing a play entitled EGO: The Making of a Musical. An account of this event has been written up for posterity in a number of books, including "FAQ about Steely Dan" and Brian Sweet's “Reeling in the Years.”
In real time, however, the idea for MOM as a musical began in July 2006, during the Israeli-Hezbollah war. Despite being deeply concerned about the fate of friends and family in the Holy Land, the battleground fireworks seemed to ignite a spark in my own personal Palace of Melodies. (According to the Kabbalah, the source for music in the metaphysical scheme of things). Call it an epiphany. It was as if I had waited a lifetime for these magic moments of words and music to finally come together and socialize.
Basically, I had discovered that, finding a phrase to my liking, perhaps from Scriptures or the liturgy, such as He Chooses the Songs We Sing, I would simply start singing the words. It was uncanny, but whatever came out seemed to have its own inherent melody. Of course, this was far from “instant” song. The true ability to writing a song--like everything else in life--was the perseverance to constantly repeat and tweak the tune.
My friend since the 4th grade, Vance was an original member of J and the A’s. I frequently accompanied him to “Tin Pan Alley,” where his group had an office. And of course I was smitten with the idea of writing songs. But more to the point: When I heard Becker and Fagen’s original tunes, I flipped. What I heard was the making of a musical. You have to remember we are talking about the time when Hair was the radical darling of Broadway.
Truth be told, my first foray into a musical genre took place as the sun was setting on the Sixties. It was then that I met Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, founders of the highly acclaimed rock band Steely Dan. Before that incarnation, however, they functioned as the back-up band and arrangers for Jay and the Americans.
MOM, like HAG, as well as our other, subsequent musical narratives–The Magic Beard and The Book of Lot: Genesis Revisited–share the common theme of Tshuva, or Repentance. While this is certainly an aspect of the process–repenting–the concept of Tshuva is better served by the definition of “returning” and reconnecting with the Ultimate Source and Force of the Universe. Primarily, this involves learning the ways and practices of the Torah: The reward for such is finding a more meaningful way of life. This is the key to Jewish survival--it certainly has been for me.
And kiruv just maybe the simplest mitzvah of all to perform: Merely by transmitting a Judaic law, commentary, custom, tradition, etc., the listener, reader, observer is invariably brought “closer” to our Creator. The approach is simply a matter of providing other Jewish souls with an opportunity to learn more about their spiritual heritage. That being the case, it became obvious to me as a returnee that the media is the mechaya, literally the “enlivening” means by which reaching out to others would have the most impact.
According to Tradition, each individual, each generation, has a particular mitzvah or commandment by which all the other (612) miztvot are energized. The Returnee, the Baal Tshuvah--literally Master of Repentance or Returning--invariably turns to kiruv, the mitzvah of bringing others closer to the Holy One Above.
This journey began with our first film (1977) The Return: A Hassidic Experiene. Introduced by Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Return was broadcast prime time on PBS a number of times; our documentary also received a Red Ribbon in the Lifestyle Category from the American Film Festival which then took the winning entries an a yearlong, nationwide tour.
And as for the icing on the cake, The Reuturn introduced me to Jeremy Kagan, director of The Chosen, who hired me on the spot to be the consultant an actor for the film version of Chaim Potok's best-seller...
And voila! the start of the Hassidic Actors Guild:HAG whose motto runs Pay Us For Payos...
MOM was eventually finished in January of 2024 and acquired by JLTV.
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