[Please Note:  This information was printed in the Standard~Speaker Sunday on March 17, 2002. 
All the views and opinions of a certain group, race, religion, etc. are the writer's (David Germain's) opinions.
They are not all necessarily the opinions and views of The Unofficial Ryan Thomas Gosling Cutie-Patootie Fan Page.
The Unofficial Ryan Thomas Gosling Cutie-Patootie Fan Page treats everybody equally and will not exalt one race, etc.
above another!  :-)  Enjoy the article!]
_______________________________________________


Too Hot For Movie Theaters,
'The Believer' Hits Showtime
_______________________________________________

By:  David Germain
Associated Press
_______________________________________________

LOS ANGELES -- Henry Bean's directing debut finally
is graduating from the film school of hard knocks.

"The Believer" premieres at 8 p.m. today on Showtime,
more than a year after the disturbing portrait of a Jewish
neo-Nazi skinhead won the top dramatic prize at the
Sundance Film Festival, beating contenders that included
"In The Bedroom," a best-picture nominee for this month's
Academy Awards.

Since Sundance, "The Believer" has been heaped with
praise from critics and film-festival audiences.  Yet it was
shunned by film distributors that found it too hot to handle,
prompting Bean to sign with the premium-cable channel.
And its television debut was pushed back six months after
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks because of the film's ending,
centering on a bomb planted at a Jewish house of worship.

That's a lot of baggage for a film that writer-director Bean
initially viewed as something of a dark comedy examining
the love-hate relationship Jews have with their faith.

Raised as a Jew and married to the daughter of an Orthodox
rabbi, Bean knew his story might discomfort the faithful.  But he
thought Jewish leaders would "see the honorable intentions
behind it and see that it's really a good Jewish film," Bean said.

"It always felt to me that this was my love poem to Judaism.
It really was about how much I liked it,"  Bean said.  "To me,
one of the great things about that religion is how self-critical it is
and how much the religion itself is in love with contradiction
and multiple points of view."

"The Believer" stars Ryan Gosling as Danny Balint, a bright
young man so conflicted about his Jewish heritage that he denies
his faith, spouts pro-Nazi sentiments and plots violence against Jews.
The character was inspired by a real-life anti-Semite who killed
himself after it was revealed he was Jewish.

Even as he rails against Jews and what he perceives as their
passivity during the Holocaust, Danny reveals deep-seated
reverence for the religion, meticulously teaching a new girlfriend
how to read Hebrew and salvaging a desecrated Torah from a
skinhead attack.

Danny fantasizes about playing both ends of the Holocaust,
imagining himself as a Nazi thug impaling a 3-year-old Jewish
boy on a bayonet and as the child's father fighting back in rage.

Gosling and Bean would have preferred to see "The Believer"
debut commercially in theaters rather than on television.
For one thing, Gosling said, moviegoers who have paid the
ticket price would be more inclined than TV viewers to stick
with the difficult film.

"Can people really watch this on TV?  Are you going to turn this
on and keep watching when you see a kid stalking a Jewish student
on the subway, beat the h--- out of him, then walk away?"  Gosling said.
"Will you change the channel and watch 'Sex in the City' instead?
My gut feeling is you'll probably change the channel.  You're in the
comfort of your own living room, and this movie is a lot to bring into it."

After Sundance, Bean had requests from Jewish groups wanting to see
"The Believer."  He was quick to make video copies available,
hoping endorsements from those groups would help win over
film distributors hesitant to take on "The Believer."

The opposite happened.  Negative reaction from the
Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights group,
helped solidify misgivings about "The Believer" among
potential distributors.

Studio interest "disintegrated fairly quickly after the Wiesenthal Center
spokesman came out against the picture," said Daniel Diamond,
president of Fireworks Pictures, which produced "The Believer" and
whose distribution arm will handle a limited theatrical release in May.

Wiesenthal Center officials in turn are miffed with the filmmakers,
saying Bean and the producers depicted the center as campaigning
against "The Believer."

Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Wiesenthal Center said his group
did not "invest an e-mail, a postage stamp, didn't even make a single
phone call" about the film.

Cooper said he expressed his opinion about "The Believer" only
when asked -- once by a studio that wanted his reaction and in a
number of interviews requested by reporters.

"I didn't think the film worked," Cooper said.  Unlike "American
History X," a tale of a skinhead who renounces his fascist ways
by film's end, "The Believer" leaves viewers with few clues about
the source of the character's hatred.

_______________________________________________

| Home | Biography | Filmography | TV Guest Appearances |
| Contact Info | Links | Awards | Contests | Pictures | News |