I found out about this movie by accident–I misspelled a URL I was typing and whatever it was I typed got redirected to a site called “tonyandmartin.com.” Some flash thing loaded, and I found myself watching the trailer for an upcoming film with supporting roles by Martin Landau and Tony Curtis! I didn’t even know Tony Curtis was still alive!
It’s a film made in Israel about a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, a Jewish boy and Palestinian girl who fall in love but have more than mere family rivalries keeping them apart.
This looks to be an incredible film, and I can’t wait to catch it in theaters when it’s done. It’s apparently still in production, but after reading Joe Sacco’s Palestine a few years ago, and being friends with folks who have family living in Israel or who are descendants of Israelis (or are former Israelis themselves), I have so many mixed emotions about that young nation, its apartheid-esque treatment of the Palestinians who still live there, and the hatred and prejudice of the countries that surround it that threaten its existence. Reading the papers, you get the feeling that nothing will ever cure the ills that plague that region, especially when bigots and fundamentalists of all stripes give no quarter and pretend that mere geography is worth dying over (and killing over). Maybe this movie will be a tiny pinhole that we can look through to see a potential solution: it sounds hippie, but maybe human love, our most base yet most transformative urge, can provide a way forward when all the rationality and tradition in the world keep us at each other’s throats.
Or maybe I’m just tired.
I knew Tony Curtis was still alive. He’s mostly involved in charity work for Jewish causes, particularly those related to the Hungarian Jewish community like restoring abandoned synagogues destroyed during the Holocaust. I thought he was retired from acting. Guess he’s not.
Never met Tony, but I did know his son Nick Curtis quite well. It’s a shame what happened to him – yet another casualty of the 80s/90s junk epidemic in L.A.