Episode Transcript
Pulp Fiction Producer Lawrence Bender, Telling Jewish Stories About Oct 7th with Zionist Filmmakers
Somehow the world's against us now.
I want to do something that's gonna change hearts and minds.
I said, raise your hand.
Who here feels scared and alone?
And everybody raised their hand.
I understand that then you felt abandoned by that community.
Bullets are hitting around him and he's taking video and he doesn't even know he's gonna make it.
My God.
What are the films, Goodwill Hunting, Pulp Fiction and Inconvenient Truth, and Inglorious Bastards have in common?
They're all classics and they were all produced by my guest today.
A kid from the Bronx who ditched civil engineering for a career in the arts.
He's been busting out blockbusters since the early nineties, but like so many of the guests on this show, the events of October 7th and the Harrowing Silence from Hollywood in its aftermath pushed him down a new path, one that led him to produce Red Alert, the new miniseries now streaming on Paramount Plus that Dramatizes four remarkable true stories of horror, heroism, and hope from that terrible day.
He's a three Time Academy Award nominated producer and a Lion of Zion.
Please welcome Mr. Lawrence Bender.
Thank you.
Welcome.
Thanks for, thanks for being here, man.
Kids from the Bronx.
That's right, Lawrence.
You and I actually got to hang out last night a little bit at an event for Red Alert, which was, I have to say, one of like seven events for Red Alert that I was invited to in the past couple weeks.
What really impressed me was not just how deeply you are invested in this project, but you know, from your remarks and from a little video clip we saw of you on the ground in Israel during production, how invested you are in Israel, in the people, in the people whose stories you're telling.
It's clear there's like a mission there for you.
So let's start with how did you get involved in this project?
Uh, the way I got involved with this is, um, I went to a, a meeting that Rick Rosen at William Morrison Del, he's a partner there.
Um, he had the CEO of Keshet, the big time Israeli production company.
Exactly the biggest network in Israel.
Uh, Vinnie is the CEO and Vinnie came in and, you know, typically Avi does these meetings, but this was a particular meeting.
It was a few months after October 7th, and he gave a presentation on what it was like for him as a person of Israel, a father, um, just a regular per a per husband, but the CEO of a network where all the information is coming in, in real time and he's seeing it all.
So he's got reporters in the field.
So the government didn't know what was going on yet.
So all the information going out to everybody was from Keshet and the reporters in the field with their, looking at their phones and saying, you know, there's a terrorist in my kibbutz.
Where's the army?
Please send somebody.
And they're, they're reading it on camera in real time.
And afterwards I asked Rick, I said, I, I have to meet him.
We gotta do something together.
You just said what?
You said.
Hey, I, I feel moved in this moment.
I want to be involved in Israel in some way.
Like, find something for me to work on.
YI said, actually something more than that.
I said, somehow the world's against us.
Now.
We need to do something.
We need to work together.
I wanna make some, I, I want to do something that's gonna change hearts and minds, and we can do this together.
Let's partner up.
Let's figure it out.
And the, the world hasn't exactly been fawning over Israel for, for quite some time now.
Ha.
Is this something that had been brewing in your brain at all prior to this, or, or this was not on your radar at all and it was the crater impact of October 7th that that pushed you down this road?
Historically, I've been doing things around Israel for about 20 years.
Um, I went to Israel in 2003 with the Israeli Policy Forum.
Shout out to IPF.
I'm a Broman convener, uh, former, you know, uh, member of that fellowship, great organization.
They took us into Ramah.
During the second ada.
Right?
This is, we went into Ramallah.
Sounds safe.
It was a little bit scary, I have to say, Susan, you know, and we went into, we met Alba Mazen in a building with no windows.
Wow.
Um, and it was starting to get dark out and we needed to leave before it got dark.
You know, maybe it sounds super naive today, right.
But at that time he, he had won on a peace ticket, even though he was at, comes from terrorism.
Right.
And we as American Jews trying to figure out how, what can we do to help?
And he said, you know, our police cars in Gaza, they have flat tires.
They don't have radios.
We had them no money.
They can't go after bad guys help but help me with those guys.
And we were trying to come up with practical things.
I mean, it all sounds so Well, it's, I mean, it's 20 some years ago.
It's, you know, yeah.
Different time.
And we met with Mubarak.
We went into, uh, we met with the, the old dictator in, in Egypt.
In Egypt.
We flew into Egypt.
We took a private jet, went to Egypt.
We met with his son.
Um, did you spend any time in Israel.
Yeah, we did.
We started Israel, then we went to these other places and we went and then we came back.
When we were coming back, as we were landing, we got word that a suicide bomber had just blown up a bus and on Jfa Street.
And we were like, we were, we were feeling good coming from our conversation, Barak.
And we were just feeling like, oh, we're, we're making headway.
We felt like mu bark felt the need to continue to do business with Israel.
That was important.
Even the street was Arab Street was not happy about the whole thing.
And then, uh, our world just shattered.
And then my buddy, I was with Bois who was on the trip with me and I made a few movies with him.
His family lives down the street from where the bomb exploited.
So we, uh, we found out they were okay, but we, so we took off and we went down to, to see where the, where the explosion was and uh, make sure his family's okay.
And, um, they had cleaned up like within an hour.
The whole thing was like, you would never have not known it happened 'cause they're ready to go.
It's just extraordinary.
It was like, you know, I've heard that that's the what you do, but they do.
And let me just skip to October 7th.
Um, that was a game changer for I think, if anyone who's Jewish was a game changer.
Sure.
A couple things.
One is that over the years I've made movies with so many different types of people.
Right.
Um, and before you were supposed to, before the woke, like you need to do Right.
I made three TV shows with three women showrunners.
I did a tv, I did a movie about Matthew Shepherd, a gay man, young man who was died on the anatomy of the hate crime anatomy.
There you go.
I made movies.
I know.
We, I made a short film that when the Academy Award about the Black Lives Matter thing, it just goes on and on and on.
I mean, I walked the walk.
It wasn't just the person who talked, I grew up this way.
Right.
But on October 7th, I didn't feel the same support I was giving to all my friends.
I didn't feel that at all.
I felt really a, a silence.
Um, and it was, it felt lonely.
It felt isolating.
A few weeks after October 7th, they had a bunch of, uh, actually three survivors at my house had a hundred, 150 people there.
And I ra I said, raise your hand.
Who here feels scared and alone?
Right.
And everybody raised their hand.
So you feel that way, and then the whole world's against you.
That was a moment, like a come to Jesus moment.
If I can say, come to Moses, maybe come to Moses moment.
Going back to that, you know, the silence from your peers when you, when you did these different projects, anatomy of the Hate, crime and, and Inconvenient Truth and Jackie Brown or whatever it is.
Did like, was there a sense of you choosing these projects because of what they were about and, you know, putting yourself out there in that way at the time where you thought, you know, the, that was explicit for me.
There's a mixture of the way I see the world when I was a, a little boy.
Uh, in the late sixties and early seventies, um, my mom had lost her hair when she was a little girl.
She has, it's called alopecia.
Mm-hmm.
So in those days, it was like, don't trust a man, don't trust the corporation, don't trust anyone over 30.
Um, but people loved my mom and we had moved to South Jersey and so my mom would have like the Black Panthers and the draft invade and the longhaired hippies.
And as I grew up with all these people around, I was on the buses with my parents down against, uh, the, to the march in Washington against the Vietnam War.
At, at what age?
Like, uh, eight.
Fuck.
I mean, it was, it was an incredible thing.
Yeah.
That's formative.
So I, it's this part of me as this part of me.
And so I long to do.
I love, I not that long.
I love to do, um, movies and TV shows about different types of people.
I, I'm attracted to that.
Yeah.
Um, and then some bitch just happens like Quentin on Jackie Brown.
Uh, we had optioned this book, rum Punch, uh, and in the book, Jackie Birch is a blonde hair, blue eyed.
Stewardess and Quin goes, I'm gonna make this my blaxploitation movie.
Right.
So some of it just kind of happens, and some of it's because I want it to happen.
Like, uh, the two distant strangers, um, and cops and robbers of both award-winning shorts.
These are the Black Lives Matter era shorts.
Yeah.
And it was like, I want to do something, uh, post George Floyd during the pandemic is like, I need to do something.
Yeah.
This is, I felt really moved and passionate about that.
And when we did the, the movie, um, the Heart of They Fall, uh, Aris Elba, Virginia Kings, Ozzie Beast, Keith Stem, it was like, uh, all black, uh, Western that took place in the, like the late 1880s, you know, post, you know, during reconstruction.
Those are all things that I felt like were important to do.
Mm-hmm.
I just wanna find cool ways to do it.
So I, I, I understand that then you felt, you know, abandoned by, by that community.
Yeah.
By all these communities.
I felt like it's.
It's like October eight, you know, where are the, where are the phone calls?
Are you okay?
Do you have family over there?
Are you friends?
Like, you know, what are you going through?
And that was tough, right?
I was talking to someone whose family was destroyed, murdered and so forth.
And she said to me, do you think those people knew you were Jewish?
Um, 'cause a lot of people don't talk about their Judaism, don't talk about their being Jewish.
I'm like, I think they know I'm Jewish.
I mean, I don't like say, Hey, I'm a Jew.
I'm a Jew, everybody, but I, you know, I'm Jewish and I think I, it's gotta come up sometimes.
It's kind of a fair question though, right?
Because like, as I've learned, I, I think I've talked about it on the show, but, uh, van Jones, who I had on the show, he explained to me once that like, black folks don't even know that like Goldberg is a Jewish name.
He's like, you guys take that for granted.
And that all these different sort of things that we think are explicit but are actually.
Implicit.
Yeah.
I think a lot of people don't even understand the connection between being a diaspora Jew and Israel and, and knowing that that's the thing I need to call this person about.
I mean, it's a little bit of a cop out, like you should know that, but I, I don't think a lot of people do.
Yeah.
I think it's a mixture of like you're saying, a cop out and probably You're right.
And the inte I'm talking about very intelligent people here.
We're talking about people who are educated artists.
It's a bummer.
Yeah.
It's a major bummer.
Yeah.
To bring it back to Red Alert, so you hook up with Keshet.
This was not your first dance with, with Israel.
Um, but you, you talk to the CEO and you say, I wanna be involved.
Yeah.
So they hook me up with, um, people on their team in Israel.
Uh, we start going back and forth talking about ideas.
Should we do a movie?
Should we do a TV show?
Should we in English, should we in Hebrew.
Um, at the same time, I gotta talk about my movie wife toward Donna Rubin.
Okay.
We were doing stuff.
She's the person, like right after October 7th, you saw these electronic billboards at the faces of hostages, right.
All over Times Square, all over the country.
She did that.
She got the pictures.
She formatted them.
She called the people who have the, the billboards.
Wow.
She got them to put 'em up.
I mean, she is a doer and she had just been connected to this Israeli company called Green Green Productions, and it's this woman named Maya Fisher and Shanice Schroer.
So they were talking and we didn't know that I was talking to Keshet and I, one day she tells, oh, I'm talking to this Israeli company, and I go, oh, I'm talking to this Israeli company.
Like, why don't we just all do this together?
Bam.
Then they had this director that they'd been working with, Lior Heitz.
And just to be clear to this point, there is no project being discussed yet.
It's just, we gotta do something here.
We gotta do something.
And I'm about to dive in full, full.
I don't know the green production folks, and I don't know Lior, but I do know Avi near, and he's vouching for this whole group.
Then I went to see Leo's movie, the Stronghold, which is a wonderful movie.
To me, the most important thing and anything we do is the emotional involvement.
The idea.
It's about idea to go through character.
Right?
Character, character.
I knew that I would be able to pull off the action stuff and all that.
I just, I knew I could just make that all happen.
But you know, your director has to be able to deliver an emotional story.
Was Red Alert his project?
Yeah.
So he, he tells a story that one of the producers on the show, she had gone through a whole list of different stories.
He was going through the stories we talked about the stories.
He started, he was writing.
Okay, you wanna ask why these stories, right?
Um, and why exactly these stories.
And so we all felt pretty much the same.
It's like, let, we wanna do underdog stories, we wanna do stories that people can relate to.
So who can't relate to family?
A mother trying to save her son, a man with his little infant, you know, a man trying to save his wife.
The human stories.
And the most important thing in this is that, you know, you've seen a lot of documentaries, you've seen a lot of the pain and suffering, but what you don't see a lot, uh, is from the point of view of the person who's actually having to deal with all this, is being attacked, what they have to survive, and they're real.
They, you know, they're real people, uh, going through real everyday life experiences, you know, um, feed the baby, you know, get the job, whatever, you know, and then this day happens, and in the middle of all this, this day happens.
And, and the other part of this a lot of people don't understand is.
These alerts have been going on their entire life.
Uh, the rocket alerts.
The rocket alerts from Gaza, and you have 15 seconds to get into, uh, the safe room that they all have.
Um, but you know, most of the time, almost all the time, it never really hits anybody.
Right.
So they're like, ah, okay, I'll get out of bed.
Okay, it's 6 29.
Like why now?
You know, they're rolling their eyes okay, that they do what they're supposed to do.
But this day was different.
Were you part of selecting the stories?
How many are you picking from?
'cause there, I mean, there are thousands to choose from.
They had a hundred.
That's a lot.
And I didn't go through all those hundred.
They presented us with different stories.
Uh, there were a couple things that were really important to us is one, as the outsiders, basically Jordan to me and my, and my partner Kevin Brown, as the Nonis Israelis, we felt it was super important that we have an Arab Arab family.
Hmm.
Um, a lot of people just don't understand that Israel is full of Arab people.
Right.
And era people were killed.
Yep.
We wanted to represent Israel.
So a lot of people heard about the Nova Festival.
Sure.
So we wanted a story from the Nova Festival, but maybe something a little unique and a lot of people understand that young people were killed, but people don't really know, A lot of people don't know that there are a lot of police officers or are just everyday people who are also murdered.
Right.
They're not like SWAT team people.
Right.
You know, they're just, this is not what they trained for this small town people who do carry a gun, but still, you know, it's a gun like this.
Right.
It's not against the AK 47, they're given speeding tickets.
Yeah, exactly.
We wanted to show something to do with being gay because like our set, you know, like half our set we're, we're gay people.
People here don't realize, you know, like gays for Hamas, whatever, you know, they call themselves it's, you know, it's like you don't understand the gay parade in Israel is one of the best in the world.
Right.
Right.
So.
You know, it was imp That was important to have like a little, at least something in there to show that.
Right.
Which you have a little moment there, but, so we just wanted to show Israel.
Mm.
What role did you expect that you were going to play beyond just, you know, I'm gonna come in, I'm gonna manage the budget, and I'm gonna help us pull this off.
Like, you are this veteran American producer, as you were saying to me before we started rolling.
Like, you've got like double the length of experience of most of these people.
You know, what, what did you feel like you were there to do?
You know, one of the things I do a lot of work on is with script and material.
So I read the scripts and um, you know, they need a lot of work, but that's just part of the process.
I'm not, it doesn't scare me, but it's just like, okay, you need a lot of work.
You know, Keshe said, we want this to come out on October 7th, but where the scripts were and where we would need to start shooting and get to get to there, it's like.
That's gonna be tough.
Yeah.
Now, when Quentin gave me the script in glorious bastards and said, can we make, can, do you think we can make, can, I pulled out my Blackberry at the time and counted the weeks.
This is, he's, we had this conversation on July 3rd, Thursday night before July 4th.
And uh, I counted all the weeks out.
I wrote it down, little piece of paper.
I went on the phone and I, I said to him, I said, look, we'd have to start shooting in 14 weeks from Monday.
Uh, we'd have x amount of time to shoot X amount of time post anyone you talk to is gonna tell you it's not possible.
I'm telling you it's possible, but you gonna have to really want it.
And if you really want it, we can make it happen.
So he said, okay, gimme two days.
'cause I just finished the script.
We meet on Sunday at his house, and then we planned it out and we started 13 and a half weeks from that day, 13 and a half weeks.
That includes raising $75 million, putting two studios together.
Moving to Berlin.
Ne neither of us have shot in Germany.
That includes casting crewing ba you know, do you ever think you'd one day be making an Israeli miniseries and he'd be living in Tel Aviv with Israeli kids and Israeli wife?
No.
No.
Uh, pretty crazy.
Yeah.
I have to tell you, when we did in glorious basses, um, I took him to the, I said, you gotta go to the Em.
It was his idea to go to Israel because with glorious basses, he just, it's not like Israel's normally on your stop of doing movie tours, right.
Because you go into promote box office.
It's not like Israel's like a big box office for your, about some huge market.
But he said, it's really important we go to Israel.
So that was his idea.
Cool.
Which is amazing.
Uh, the moment we were there, I said, we gotta go to the em.
Um, and what was amazing about the trip to the Em, it was extraordinary how much he knew, because years and years of developing the script, he had done so much research and he's got like this encyclopedia brain he knew.
It's like he's, oh, here, that side.
The guy was showing his screen was like, okay.
Wow.
Yeah, that's kind of the stuff.
Yeah.
I want to ask about that movie specifically.
Like what, what was the genesis of that story and how did you feel like when he brought it to you and you were like, we're gonna make a movie about Nazi killers, you know, we're gonna rewrite history, we're gonna take down Hitler.
He'd been working on that script for a long time.
Were you aware of it?
Oh yeah.
All that time.
Oh, okay.
Yes.
He never gave me pages.
Uh, he would always read me, see, he said, come over to the house, I wanna read you some scenes.
Or at that time we had an office there.
Lemme come to your office.
I wanna read you some scenes.
And the way he solved it was there were three halves he had of a script, which doesn't add up as you know, just so we can do that.
But it makes sense when I, I'm like thinking about his movies, they sort of feel like they have three halves.
Right.
But one of the three halves was about the black soldiers in World War ii.
Yes.
And, and he had these incredible barbershop scenes.
Wow.
The Nazis and the, and the Native American Indians, and this kind the way they, the Nazis, you know, recognized Native Americans and, and how the Nazis, uh, were blown.
Like, were like, wow.
The slaves that these guys had, you know, I mean, it's all this crazy bizarre stuff.
Uhhuh.
So, um, I hadn't seen him in a while, and he calls me up and he says, Hey, you wanna come to my party, my birthday party?
I'm throwing it with Fergie.
We're in, uh, we're having my birthday party in Vegas.
And so I'm like, yeah, okay.
I'm, there's like a good time.
So, um, we're, they have this big suite for few hundred people later on in the night, and he says, Hey, you know, I'm, um, I'm, I'm writing, uh, Floris bastards.
I go, oh, cool.
But like, I didn't think that he'd been writing for years.
Right.
Sounded like I'm happy that he's back into his creative process, but it didn't occur to me.
This is in April.
It didn't occur to me.
Uh.
It was almost done.
Right.
That'd be coming out next summer.
Yeah, exactly.
So then when I got the phone call, I'm like, oh, now we had stopped working together before, um, we had like a falling out, like a professional falling out or a personal phone.
We had like a professional falling out, but we're still friendly, we're still friends.
Me to his premieres, you know, he called me, I get my answering machine and he says, uh, hey, I want you, I, I got, I finished my script.
I want you to read it.
I'm like, oh, cool.
I wanna see what I think.
Nice.
Yeah.
That's nice.
I like that.
And I read the script and I went to pick up the phone to call him again.
And, uh, I actually read it again.
Wow.
And I called him and I was like, wait a minute.
What did you just do?
This is amazing.
Like, holy shit.
Yeah.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Are you fucking kidding me?
This is like, this is like as a Jewish guy.
This is incredible.
Yeah.
This is like, wow, Quentin.
Holy shit.
You said you and he had, you'd already had your a falling out.
Mm-hmm.
Prior to this.
Why do you think he came back to you for this one?
Do you think it was because of the Jewish connection or just like he knew you would, you were the guy to make this 'cause of your relationship or what?
I think it was two things.
I think the, the unconscious thing was that I'm Jewish.
Yeah.
I think that's more unconscious than unconscious.
But maybe not 'cause everything with him, because he's a very conscious guy.
Um, I think the main thing was he wanted to get the can.
Right.
He knew you could make it happen.
He knew I would, I would make it happen.
Right.
He knew I would put this, he knew what I would want it as much as he would want it.
Right.
And I'd find a way to make it happen.
You're both not afraid, clearly to show Jews be powerful on screen.
You love Israel.
He loves Israel.
I think we gotta get the band back together.
Make the greatest movie about Israel of all time that people would actually go and see.
Oh my goodness.
I'm putting it out there.
Yeah, that's a good thing to put out there.
Yeah.
I've run into Quentin, uh, a couple times recently, like in The Shook.
Unfortunately, at two memorials, at his Vista Theater.
Uh, two people we love.
Uh, we gave each other a big hug and so forth.
And, um, uh, so yeah, I don't know what he's writing.
I have no idea.
But obviously I, I think he's done that movie though.
I think he, well, he's done the movie about Jews.
It very different.
Very different.
You know, American Jews gone around in Europe.
Very different than in Israeli story in Israeli.
That's true.
You know, listen, if there's anybody who could pull it off, it's, you guys, it, there's, there's no question.
And I would lobby that.
Okay.
You heard it here, Quentin.
You hear that?
Yeah.
I love that someone gonna send this to you.
You know, I learned a lot from Quentin, right?
I learned a lot of things from Quentin and um, one of the early things I learned was the word no does not exist.
There's no reason to say no.
You always have to figure out.
Right.
Find your way to the s Yeah.
And well, you know, I'm not the only one who does this.
Right.
All good producers do this.
Right.
The Israelis are used to working with such a small amount of money that they're constantly used to, you know, compromising because they don't have the money.
Mm-hmm.
And I'm like, no, you know, it's not a good day to do this.
We're switching days.
Oh, that set won't be ready.
Oh yeah.
We'll make it ready.
It'll just work around the clock until it's ready.
You know, I, that set can be made ready.
No, no, no.
And I think Lyor appreciated and, and my co-producers, who, by the way, you know, the Israeli crew, these guys, what they accomplish with a third of what we have is extraordinary.
Mm-hmm.
They, that's that one word chutzpah, right?
Yeah, sure.
But it, it's real.
Of course, they don't have all the toys.
They don't have all the equipment that we have.
Right.
Uh, but they have a very small crew, small amount of equipment, and somehow it all works.
And you know, red Alert is proof of that.
Is there anything that you.
Are gonna take away from that experience in terms of, oh, I like how they do X, Y, z and I'm gonna bring that into how we're doing it here.
Yeah.
I mean, yes is yes, I, I know that it, I know what a real Israeli budget looks like, and I know that crews can be smaller with the right group of people, but that, that way of making that movie wouldn't work here necessarily.
But unless you're like a first time filmmaker, right?
You mean I did Reservoir Dogs for a million bucks.
You know, I did this movie Fresh, he shot for 40 days in New York City.
It was a $3 million movie.
I mean, that's like a miracle.
It is.
So I've done it, but I haven't done it in a few decades, you know, so maybe it was a good reminder.
It's probably stressful.
On the other hand, um, I looked at this first schedule they gave me, and, and by the way, Lyor said, okay, you know, this works.
And I'm like, Lyor, what are you talking about?
This doesn't work.
How could you say that?
And, but I'm not, I'm just realizing that they're just used to doing things differently.
So I, first of all, I said we, we, we gotta add days.
We add, we, there's no way we're doing this like this.
We're adding days and, but we're gonna have to cut back.
And I, I don't care.
We have to add days.
Um, because that's like one of the most important things is having enough days to film what you wanna film.
Sure.
So then we, so the, the, the, uh, the cast start getting the call sheets, they're not used to seeing so little being done on each day.
Yeah.
It's like, is there a mistake?
Right.
They're used to like soap opera, let's just shoot a all day a hundred band.
Exactly.
And then it was like, but then we were filming, it was like, we barely made every day it was like there was a lot to shoot and he's like, how do you do it for?
And half the time, I don't understand like how you guys do this, but, so it was like a good combination.
Something you spoke about at this event last night that I'd like you to speak a little bit about now is how much in relationship you are with the real people whose stories are being told on screen, how much they were around the set, how much you were communicating with them.
Can you, can you share a little bit about what, you know, whatever stands out to you right now that you wanna share?
I really did a deep dive.
Uh, I really felt like it was important for me to really be in Israel and take Israel in.
So like every Saturday night I went to Hostage Square.
Um, and because I was making this movie and people kinda knew who I was, I was always backstage, which meant I had the privilege of meeting all the families that have people that were hostages.
Mm.
That was rough.
But one of the, amongst a lot of people I met, uh, be Sheva, AMI, uh, who was played in our show by ela.
Um, and so I got to know her a little bit 'cause I met her a few times there.
Um, and then so we, we, we had a relationship before she came to the set.
Um, and um, just in this particular, there's so many incredible moments, but yeah.
I had been with this, uh, this guy named Ziv Koran.
Ziv is this incredible, uh, photojournalist at work war photographer.
And on October 7th, he jumped on his BM BMW motorcycle and head South.
Wow.
And went right into the fire, like right into the lane.
He's got this video.
It's like he's hiding behind the wheel of a car and gunshots, a good bullets are hitting around him and he's taking video and he doesn't even know if he's gonna make it.
Oh my God.
And the IDF is over there and these terrorists are over there, and it's like, you know, it is like, oh my God.
Uh, so he was showing me, he's on the front cover of Figueroa and this one all, just all these different magazines from different countries.
And he's showed me this picture of a hand print and blood on the wall at ba at their house, at the Alami house.
And he said, yeah, this is, uh, this is Hoads hand print.
And Ohad has been re recently returned dead.
This is the, the husband, the father of the family, the father of the family who was in the story.
So then.
A couple days later, uh, um, be Beva showed up to the set.
She knows Ziv as I was with Ziv, and he showed me this picture of, and I didn't even say your husband.
Oh, I just started losing my words to be honest.
And I said, of Oh's hand, bloody hand on the wall.
Have you seen that picture?
She goes, no.
I go, do you wanna see it?
Like now I'm really stumbling here.
Like what to do.
Yeah.
And, uh, but I, I think, I imagine she's gonna see it and she said yes.
So I got my phone and I showed her the picture.
He had sent it to me, so I had it.
And, um, she goes, that's, that's not his hand.
And, um, and has the number 10 on it.
So the IDF for whoever, when they goes through the homes, they, they number all the mo places that are, that need to be marked right.
For evidence or whatever.
And so I said, no, it's his hand.
Uh, he siv was there like.
And he was there.
He went in, he, that's your, that's his hand.
So she pulls out her phone and she said, look, here are all the pictures.
And she starts going through her pictures and you see all the numbers.
And then she gets to number 10, and it was the same picture, but it was like a month or two later.
So it was very faded and you couldn't barely see it.
She goes, oh my God, that's his, that's his handprint.
Whoa.
It's just this like, ter.
But, but it was like an incredible moment.
Like a year and a half later, she's seeing new things.
And I happened to be witness of her seeing this, this other thing.
Was that a moment of connection to her husband in that way?
Is that, I mean, was there something to it beyond just the, the tragedy of it?
I felt like it just brought her back for a second.
I just brought her into her family.
You know, I could feel her.
I mean, I don't, I didn't ask her what she's feeling at that moment.
I didn't ask her, what are you thinking?
But I feel like she had a moment and I, it was something connecting.
There's so many of these stories.
I know, I'm sure.
I mean, these are, these are what people want to hear for sure.
There's a, there's an actress that was on the set.
Her name is Moran, and, uh, she plays one of the police officers at the Nova Police thing that is murdered.
So Moran has a niece, um, who was on vacation, and her niece says to her, if a police officer with red hair, a woman shows up, she's the one who saved my life.
And, um, you have to say hello.
So I didn't know any of this yet.
So I'm sitting at lunch with her.
We're spending, and we're just talking to her.
And this woman, she saved like a hundred pe literally not like a hundred people.
She saved.
Who saved all these people?
The policeman, her name is Bot.
Bot, right.
Uh, redheaded, uh, police officer.
Um, and I don't think I'm talking esco, it's not like someone who runs, uh, the, the, the, the a hundred meter in nine seconds.
Like you not someone who would particularly like, you know, she's just like a regular, ordinary, everyday person.
She did a hundred people or peach.
She hit very close to her and she flew to the air and she had to have facial reconstruction.
Oh yeah.
She got up and ran after that.
So, and we were asking her, do you remember the names of the people you saved?
And she says, I remember the names of the people I didn't save.
Um, and you could just feel the pain.
I mean, this is not a person who's talking lightly about anything, right?
Yeah.
So Moran gets the, uh, gets her phone and she says, FaceTiming with this niece of hers and bot comes over.
She says, you saved my niece.
She's here on FaceTime.
And she says to the niece, I can't remember her name, she says, you saved my life.
You saved my life.
I was.
By your feet while you were firing, while you were shooting.
You were, I was literally by your feet while you were shooting to the terrace.
And the niece was like, so thankful.
Um, and but was very, it was like, there was not a lot of emotion.
Um, she said, thank you and smiled and you can, you could feel like a glimmer of that was a nice thing.
Yeah.
But she had so much damn pain in her that even that beautiful, you see my life.
I mean, that's an incredible thing.
Right.
Probably still doesn't balance the scale for the guilt she feels for.
Yeah.
And recently, just a couple nights ago, we were at the, uh, creative Coalition for Peace.
And I was driving back with, um, a couple of people and one of them, uh, said, oh, I was on the phone with Bot.
I'm like, bot?
She says, yeah.
She says, do you know Lawrence Bender?
Uh, say hello?
I'm like, wow.
I was like, so moved.
This hero remembers me.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
She's like a superhero.
But the one thing that I really got outta this as to speaking to many people on the set, it was like distressing that the very people that are in trauma that were in first person attacked or had to survive.
They're the very people that are being, people are still attacking them from outside.
They're alone, they're isolated.
And it's just terrible that these people feel alone.
They need love, they need to be hugged, they need support.
So I felt like a, a real, uh, obligation is not the right word, but just a, just a need to like.
To tell their stories.
Right.
I felt it was super important that, that, that became a real mission for all of us.
One story you mentioned last night that I, I want you to share again, had something to do with Scorpions at Chevy Ami when she came to the set one day, she brought a scorpion, a little scorpion, metal scorpion, and she put it on my other Nova necklace and she said, this is for you.
I'm like, Ugh.
And the reason I know, I know what it was, um, because I already knew a lot, um, is that, that Shiva's husband Ohad was a scorpion expert, like a real expert.
He wrote a book on Scorpions and she showed me pictures of her, her, her kids with little scorpions on their wrists.
It's like, that's wild.
That's wild.
So, you know, I carry that a lot of time.
I wear it a lot of times and I'm wearing Ohad.
That's nice.
Yeah.
I gotta, I gotta show you something.
Check this out.
Oh, there's my scorpion.
Look at that.
Yeah.
All right.
Tell me that story.
So, this was my first tattoo I ever got.
Okay.
I'm a Scorpio.
Okay.
And I, I identify very strongly as one.
And it was sort of, you know, I didn't get a tattoo.
I was 37 and was always sort of like, what's gonna be the one thing, like I'll always be, and it was a scorpion.
And I have like words hidden in it.
Husband, father.
Oh.
Jew son and artist.
Oh.
Are hidden in the scorpion.
That's pretty cool.
Yeah.
It makes me think of one thing, you know, I always say, I know it's a weird thing to say, but we're all gonna die.
Sure.
And someday when I die, uh, and if I have a gravestone, I'm gonna have, here lies a father and here lies a dancer.
Okay.
That was gonna be the two things.
Please say more.
I'm an ex ballet dancer.
Right.
And, um, something I carry with me.
I feel like I'm a dancer.
That's who I am.
It's comes out in my producing whatever.
I dunno, like, but that's, that's the, in my core, that's what I feel like I am.
How do you feel like it manifests through producing?
First of all, I just love to dance.
I love dance.
I love watching dance.
My wife is a dancer.
Oh really?
Yeah.
What kind of dancer?
She, she does like all styles she was on.
So you think you can dance?
Oh man, she was an all star a couple times.
She did a lot of tv, film, a lot of hip hop dance for the Knicks.
A lot of different things.
Yeah.
Weekly.
Shout out to Courtney.
So, okay.
What's producing?
Producing is two things, two main things.
Making a bunch of people do a bunch of shit while they complain and make your life miserable.
Was that first?
I wasn't even gonna think of that.
Okay.
But there you go.
That's what it is for me.
The two main things.
What maybe that fits into one of 'em Yeah.
Is okay, I, you know, I have a degree in civil engineering.
Right.
Okay.
So what's civil engineering?
It's all about problem solving.
It doesn't matter where you're at, what you're talking about doing microchips, or if you're talking about building sewage treatment plans or whatever, it's like it's all about solving problems.
Um, half of producing is solving problems.
Right, right.
The other half of producing comes from my dance and my acting background.
Right.
For me anyway, which is the poetic, the ethereal, the magical, the creative.
I also find that dancers work their asses off, so that probably helps as a producer too.
Yeah.
And the discipline.
Yeah.
You're not dancing unless you're a discipline.
Yeah.
That discipline.
Yeah.
It's unusual to shoot dramatizations of moments in the moments where those things happened less than two years since they happened there.
I mean, that had to have been another sort of layer to your experience in production.
Yeah.
For many reasons.
First of all, it just a question, is it too soon?
Right?
There's that question.
Um, and that came up and we're like, no.
Yeah.
That's an easy answer.
Nope.
We gotta make this and we gotta make this fast.
We need people to understand why we are here today.
Yeah.
People need to understand the truth of why we're here.
There's, even though, obviously it was a big thing in Israel, big event in Israel, this show, we made it for the rest of the world to see.
And you say you were concerned about people seeing it, which people, the people who had been involved with it we're, we're concerned about the Israelis who are traumatized reliving it.
Right.
I mean, that's a, that's a, a concern.
Sure.
And it's, it's real.
And I've heard it from many people by the way that, you know, you know, I'm Israeli.
I lived there, you know, it was very hard to watch, but I really, I'm happy I did it.
I'm glad I did.
It was important to do.
And I, I, I rec, I mean, I've seen this on TikTok.
I've seen it.
People just, people send me random things that people say.
This is really intense.
It was very difficult.
I really think everyone needs to see it, but in terms of shooting, while the war is still going on, right.
I mean that too, we're shooting the Behe Ami story when her and her little infant and her daughter are running from the war and we're in, in the Gaza envelope area.
So we're less than probably a couple kilometers or whatever away from Gaza.
Right.
And you could hear the, you know, like, I didn't order an explosion from the scene.
The war is going on, and you hear the war, that moment in time, we're not afraid anything's gonna happen to us.
But the same time we're like, wow, that's, we're shooting during the war.
It's just crazy.
And you're, and you're getting rocket alerts while you're shooting, and then we're getting rocket alerts.
And so part of it was okay, especially in the south, uh, in the north, like when you're just living on the weekend or night, you know, if there's a missile attack from the, um, the Houthis, you know.
You learn that there's an eight minute, right?
You got more time and you get eight minutes till telaviv.
Yeah.
The first time I was there for, during this whole period, I get off the plane that, that night, in the morning I had my first meeting at 10 o'clock.
I'm at like the eighth floor of a building and we're in the middle of a meeting and an alert goes off.
You know, it's like, ooh, you're, you're, you're triggering a lot of people right now in their ears right now hurts.
Yes.
And it is like, and the, the people look at me, there's like few people in the meeting and they go, we're really sorry.
They're apologizing to me.
They're apologizing.
I'm so sorry for this interruption.
Sorry you have to put up with this right now.
And they pick up their Danish and their coffee and we, they say, you have to come with us.
We're going to this safe area.
Right.
Slow, orderly, calm, slow, orderly.
You know, it's like, it's something you kind of have to do.
Uh, 'cause you're supposed to, they're not really because you know that the iron, you feel pretty confident the Iron Dome is gonna hit it.
And then you get the alert that it's, it's over.
The thing is, every once in a while it doesn't work.
Right.
So, you know, the day I got there, it had just landed in the, uh, terminal three in the field outside of Bangorian Airport.
Whoa.
Right.
And then Delta and all these, everyone shut the airlines down.
So every once in a while something happens.
So, you know, you just do it.
But by the time I left, just to tell you the story, uh, I be, I feel like I became an Israeli.
'cause I was with my buddy.
We were having dinner at this fun place.
So we all sitting outside and the alarm goes off.
You know, the, the hostess comes over the, the safe room is inside there.
And we look at her, we look at each other like, and the fish is gonna get cold.
Right.
You know, we'll, well, we'll take the risk.
We'll take the risk.
Looks good.
Yeah.
But in the south, different story, different story.
In the south you have 15 seconds.
So we called a red alert.
15 seconds.
You have to put these concrete, uh, safe rooms come Ah, mud.
Trailers and carry them with us.
They're just sitting on like a truck bed.
They're sitting on a truck bed.
And um, and we have them near where, you know, where the catering is or where the crew bases are.
But you know, also if you're filming out in the field, it's not there.
Hmm.
You know?
Right.
So there's a little bit of risk.
Um, we are very clear about everything.
Um, so I mean, that's like stuff you don't think about or, um, we're in this one town, we're shooting a fight sequence between Act they're actors.
Right.
There's the Hamas actors and then there's the IDF actors and the, they all look like the real thing and the mayor's freaking out because, you know what, if sewn up in that building up there sees a gun battle and thinks it's a real Hamas and every other guy that's living in that town has a gun Yeah.
Is gonna run towards the problem.
Right.
Yeah.
This we know, and this he knows.
So we have like a drone up in the sky attached to a tether that doesn't come down.
And the police officer is watching on this big screen to make sure, like an innocent bystander person doesn't walk into the range, that they see something 'cause they're gonna have a gun.
Right?
And then we had these speakers, these loud speakers, every 10 meters, every 10 yards, um, blasting every like 15, 20 minutes.
We're shooting a movie here.
This is a movie.
Everything's okay.
Don't freak out.
Exactly.
And then when we brought the actors to the set from the holding area, um, we had them in these white hazmat kind of suits so that they, no one, there was no chance taken.
Then there's another thing you have to remember that you're in Israel and because of this, a lot of people are carrying guns.
Sure.
Which means crew members can come to the set with a gun.
But we know that if you have real guns on the set and you have prop guns.
Something could happen.
We all know that now, right?
We've seen this, unfortunately, we've seen this movie, right?
And to realize, oh, it's our first gun battle scene and we have all these prop guns, and I see guys with guns, right?
So I called the, you know, the line producer and, and said, okay, I need to know what your rules are.
'cause I, I know what my rules are.
You know, I've, I've shot thousands of guns.
You never had one problem.
And then something happened, you know, I saw a guy, uh, put his prop gun down and the guy sitting next to him had his gun in his pocket.
Now, nothing happened, but I said, look, that prop gun's sitting right there.
What if the guy with the gun just picks that up by mistake and something get right?
Like, there's a lot, a lot of opportunity for, for mistakes.
Some risk.
Yeah.
Needless to say, they were just as, uh, it was important to them like it was to me.
But there was a lot of attention specific to that, because there's more risk built into it like that.
What was the process like trying to sell this film in this climate or this series, I should say?
You know, anything that has a whiff of Israel or Jewish even gets conflated and people are skittish and yet, boom.
It's already, it's already streaming.
So what, what happened?
How is that, how'd that go for you?
Israel just bombed cutter, you know, and then the Hollywood folks decided to boycott the filmmakers of Israel.
This was before the sale had been made.
It was before you guys sold it that this close to October 7th was the sale.
Oh yeah.
Wow.
Yes.
Okay, then I didn't realize.
Yeah.
So these things are happening in like, what, August, September?
Yes, exactly.
So the investors, uh, are asking us, and we're having meetings with our investors.
Look, I know we planned on going out to sell it.
We had a plan September 3rd began, send the first two episodes to the different, we're gonna call, you know, I know all the people.
They know the people.
We're gonna call them all and send them the first two episodes, uh, along with the trailer.
We actually have two months less post than the normal show would have because we wanted to get it an out in time for the first episode to drop in Israel by October 7th.
But we're, we had to have a conversation with him like, it's impossible.
You don't understand.
You don't live here.
You, you are, you're not in this business.
The idea of selling an Israeli show right now, it's not gonna happen.
They're wanna touch with the 10 foot pole.
No.
And they're like, this is crazy.
You have to be, one of them said to me, you gotta be like that.
Police off the, uh, the husband going after his wife.
No matter what, he's gonna get there.
You cannot stop.
You have to go.
And they said, I developed that character.
I know that character really well.
I am what with you?
A hundred percent.
But we don't do something stupid here out of the blue.
I, you know, so I'm at Skip Britt Ham's funeral, his memorial.
So Skip Brittingham, for those who don't know are watching is like the, um, the Mount Rushmore of lawyers, as my lawyer would say, this incredible man, this incredible human.
He Skip was also David Ellison's lawyer since the beginning, and they were very tight.
So at this big funeral, I mean, big Memorial.
And, um, I run into David, who I've been friendly with over the last 20 years.
I know that he's, he's a Zionist.
I know that he's a person who has a lot of love for Israel, right?
So I'm like excited to tell him what I'm doing.
I'm just like, you have no idea.
Like, well, here's what I'm doing.
And I didn't get more than a few words outta my mouth.
And you could just see his body expand and his eyes light up.
And he said, this is incredible.
This is so timely.
I would love to see this.
I love to see this.
Please send this to me.
So outta respect for Skip, I wait till the next day.
Very nice.
But I have to tell you, out of the both David and I love to say that Skip Ham is overlooking this.
Is he one more deal that he's one more deal that he's made from heaven?
May his memory be a blessing.
Thank you.
Skip?
Yes.
So, um, I send the trail.
He says, send me everything.
And um, every time he watches an episode, he sends me a message saying, this is incredible.
And he literally said to me, uh, it would be my honor to do this with you.
It's amazing.
And it was like, how humbling from David Ellison, how humbling is that?
So of course he gave it to Cindy Holland.
Um, and Cindy Holland runs Paramount Plus.
Yeah.
And um, they have a little powwow, and I know it was Cindy's idea, but they maybe David's too.
But anyway, David relays the message.
We want them all to drop on October 7th.
So this is like, we had like two weeks to go and you'd only what cut one of them.
They were all pretty much final print cuts.
Picture lock, pretty much, not a hundred, but like music effects.
Uh, what I sent them was temp music, temp effects, temp mix.
And they said, apostle said, of course it's possible because, you know, there's, there's that, there's that lesson again about, you know, you don't say no, you find your way.
It's, I call up my team, uh, Maya and Shawnee and, and everybody and said, okay, here's the good news and then here's the tough news and not bad news.
It's the tough news.
And like, okay, strap in guys, strap in.
Double shifts, triple shifts.
Um, and for me personally, the day goes, goes, and goes here in LA at 11 o'clock at night is when, uh, nine o'clock in the morning is real time is when they start.
So I just kept going through 24 hours a day for, for almost 10 days.
Like when we were doing visual effects.
Uh, I would sit with them and go through for an hour or two on visual effects.
I'd go to sleep for two hours.
They would tweak it, I'd get back on, watch it again, watch it again.
Or the same with the music.
Same with the mix.
One more thing before we, before we get to our wrap up.
So growing up, we mentioned you're born in the Bronx, you moved to Cherry Hill, and I've heard you speak about your upbringing, that it was very white and very antisemitic, and that that was part of your childhood mm-hmm.
Was, you know, getting bullied for being Jewish.
Mm-hmm.
By, by all the other kids.
I mean, what, how, how challenging was that experience as a kid and was it, what, did your parents feel that in the neighborhood too?
Or was it just kids being dicks?
And, and how much of that do you think, you know, affected the person that you've become?
Yeah, it's um, it's weird.
Like when I was in sixth grade.
It wasn't so antisemitic.
It was like, I'm the only kid in the class that's Jewish and I need to stand up and tell people what the holiday's about.
And that's not, not being named.
That's not, but that's just a weird feeling, right?
Because as a kid you just wanna fit in.
You don't be called out.
Even if it's something that's good, right?
But then when I get to high school, they put their hand on the nose like this, like big nose, and they go Dur, Ike.
'cause my nose grew bigger when I was young, you know?
And, uh, and dur Ike was short for Bender Kike.
Um, now we're just kids.
And I'm like, I don't know.
I don't like it.
But it's like not the worst thing in the world either.
It's my best friends, by the way.
These are my best.
These are my friends.
So your friends.
So they, they think it's funny.
They think it's funny.
Okay.
They think it's funny, man.
Um, and I'm like, and, and I'm, I'm like a good kid for a Jew, right?
I'm Jewish, but I'm still a good kid.
I mean, these are like weird, right?
Just like, so I grew up like, you know, that's just normal.
That's just, for me, it was just normal.
The thing, it was a bit of more of a pain.
The ass was the Polish kids and the Italian kids used to push me in the lockers and I have to deal with that.
It was nothing life threatening, like nothing.
I was never feeling for my life or that someone's gonna like do something bad.
But, you know, I was still getting pushed around.
I never told my parents, I dunno, my mom, I told my, my, my mom in a later life.
And why didn't you tell me?
And you know, kids just don't tell the parents sometimes.
When I was in college, I went to, uh, I went to school at the University of Maine.
I was dating a girl.
And as we were walking into her house, she says to me, I think my parents would be fine.
That you're Jewish.
Like, yeah, exactly.
What?
What?
Yeah.
Huh?
And I'm like, yeah, good.
I mean, yeah, I would hope so.
Yeah.
Like, okay.
Anything else I should know before we walk in?
Yeah.
And it never came up, but.
It is just like odd things in my life.
So being Jewish from, from a cultural point of view, my, my grandparents all came from Romania, Hungary, Belarus, in the early 19 hundreds.
So I grew up with eating great food and culturally Jewish.
Um, and, you know, all the, all the wonderful things that come with being Jewish.
I had that in my family and it's great.
Just, it's just amazing stuff.
It's like mm-hmm.
I feel very fortunate to be brought up by two Jewish parents and Jewish grandparents.
And, um, and on the other hand, I got to have this fun time being with people who either know anything about Jews or like are antisemitic, uh, without knowing it or, you know, it was fun time with the, with the Antisemites and what it did.
It did make me feel though when I, when I had my son, I really, it was really important to me that he understood his Judaism.
Mm-hmm.
So at early ages, I brought him to Israel.
I want him to have a fun time.
When he was seven, we went our first time.
Wow.
And, um, I just didn't wanna do anything like cultural.
I just wanted to have, I wanted to think of Israel as a fun place to go.
Okay.
So like meaning what?
Like what kind of stuff did you wanna do about it?
We went to Elott and he learned to scuba dive.
Mm-hmm.
And he learned to scuba dive with dolphins.
Wow.
And the Red Sea.
Uh, we went, uh, you know, uh, um, surfing, we paddleboard surfing in the mid, we took a sailing chip up to like, uh, you know, a friend of mine.
Wow.
Wow.
Um, we went in the, in the underground, under the, the wall.
Right.
The, we went under that ground there and it was like really cool for a kid to be under the, these kind of really cool places.
And the other thing that's really cool is that you don't think about Tel Aviv is such a safe place.
My friend, he would say he's a couple nights to stay with my buddy Aviv Gidi.
And Aviv's daughter at the time was like 13 and he was seven.
And, uh, he called and they called me and said, yeah, well they're gonna send them down to, um, they're gonna get some ice cream around the corner.
And so the 13-year-old is taking the 7-year-old.
Mm-hmm.
Or maybe she's 11 or 12 around the corner.
I would never let my kid outta the house at that age here.
Right.
In la Right.
As an example.
That's not even Tel Aviv.
I've cousins who live outside Jerusalem and like the, the, the 12-year-old picks up the like 6-year-old from school and walks them home and like other kids who live in the building picks them up too and brings them home.
Not even siblings.
Just like all Yeah.
How, how, how it goes there.
And the other thing I was loved is about Israelis is when you go to an afternoon party and the adults are there and the teenagers are there now, they're like in different parts of the backyard.
Mm-hmm.
But they're all there.
Every once in a while someone would say someone would come over, but they're all there together.
And that's so like, I was like, Hmm, I've kind of, I wanted that.
Yeah.
And I say one last story was this really fun story is that.
Of course you're jet lag.
So as a, as an adult, you learn how to deal with it.
It's not easy, right?
As a kid, they're so dysregulated, right?
You don't know what's going on.
And, uh, and we're on our way to meet Shimon Perez.
And my son at the time, who's 10 now, uh, he's having a meltdown.
He needs to have a soda.
And we're in that area.
It's in Yfa, right?
I think where the, his area is.
Um, but wherever we were, there was no like, store to walk in and get like a, a soda.
I'm like, oh my God.
He's, he's just so upset and so jet lag.
And we're walking to this beautiful building and he's crying.
He's having a temper tantrum.
So I have to say to him, I said, look, we're gonna meet this really important person, um, and maybe you don't care someday you're going to, but if you don't stop, I'm gonna leave you downstairs.
I'm, you are gonna sit here with the security guard.
I'm gonna go upstairs.
So he chills out.
He comes upstairs with me.
Now, I've never let him have soda.
And the first thing Shamo Perez says is My son is, looks like a Coca-Cola.
Yeah.
And he looks at me and I go, if the president says that right Peter have it, the presidential soda.
And he, his mood changed completely and had this great picture of the three of us together.
You know?
How cool is that?
Oh yeah.
My first Coca-Cola from the president of Israel.
Yeah, exactly.
Um, all right.
What, what's next for you career wise?
Uh, Israel wise, you know, what are you up to now?
Well, uh, part of me, to be honest, is still in full scale promotion mode.
I want everyone in the world to see this show.
I did it for a reason.
I want people to really, as I said earlier, know why we are here today to understand the truth, um, have these voices amplified.
And, um, I've gotten just incredible feedback.
Yes.
But also every once in a while I hear a story that's like, I think it's changed my way of think.
Wow, I've heard that a couple times now from, uh, an Iraqi Muslim and a Lebanese, uh, Muslim.
Wow.
Um, and so one by ones that's amazing.
If they're, if they'll, if those people are taking the time to watch this, I mean, that's incredible.
That's a win right there.
So my, I feel like I have a mission to spend more time.
Promoting, get the word out.
Alright, before we finish things off here, usually I like to end the show with a lightning round.
Okay?
But I'm gonna do something a little different for you.
All right.
We're gonna do a new segment that I'm calling Critics Choice.
Oh, no.
I'm going to read a log line of a film, and you have to try to guess what the movie is called.
Oh, I'm gonna suck at this.
This is gonna be good.
All right, so this is Critic's Choice with Lawrence Fender.
A down on his luck.
Ugandan immigrant after interning for his mother and performing rap songs in a food truck, becomes mayor of New York City.
Uh, mayor Mandani, I dunno, don't mess with the Zoran.
Next one.
Years in the making the greatest undercover spy operation of all time results in the simultaneous detonation of thousands of beepers exploding the genitalia of Hezbollah terrorists all over the Middle East.
Um, what can we call this?
Let's see.
Um, reality, um, the correct answer is Muslim Brotherhood of the Traveling Pants.
Ah, this is great.
This is like, you're this is better than Bill Moore.
Thank you.
Hey, spill.
You heard it here.
A janitor with genius level intellect is sent to a therapist as part of a plea deal leading to a life changing relationship that helps him confront his emotional demons.
Means something other than goodwill hunting.
It is goodwill hunting.
Oh, okay.
Great.
Um, this one is a play adapted into a film, a middle-aged actress, so invested in performative activism that when she's not spewing anti-Israel hate, she's turning jihadism into fashion statements.
Bella Iid.
I don't know.
Frosty Nixon.
Frosty Nixon.
Okay.
All right.
Not bad.
Not bad.
A controversial leader facing corruption charges continues to escape trial through a series of self-serving political maneuvers.
Is this the name of a, of a Prime minister?
We're talking Is There's a movie.
It's a movie.
It is a movie.
Um, BB gets his gun very close.
Bebe's Day out.
Bebe's.
Bebe's.
Day out.
Oh, there we go.
Okay.
And last in the wake of horrific tragedy, a career storyteller with a love for social justice refocus on the needs of his people as never before, bringing their pain and triumph to the screen, reaching hearts and minds all over the globe.
Lawrence Bender joins Joan Jonah Platt on his show.
Almost the correct answer is the last layer, bender.
Oh, boom.
Bam.
Lawrence, that was a lot of fun.
Thank you for letting me do that.
Thank you for being here.
Thank for, sorry I suck so bad with that.
Oh no, it's fine.
But did, but you were good.
That was good.
Thank you.
Yeah.
And, and thank, thank you for, you know, putting this on the screen.
It is.
Red Alert.
It is streaming now on Paramount.
Plus you could do a free trial so anybody can watch it.
No excuses.
Lawrence, thank you so much.
Thank you, man.
Appreciate you.
Thank you again to my guest, Lawrence Bender and again, paramount Plus free trial.
You have no excuse and a reminder.
We just launched our new being Jewish community, our Kehillah This is your online community for all things Being Jewish.
Sign up right now beingjewishpodcast.com/community.
We got tons of great perks for you, and also this show is quickly running out of money.
And if you're in Los Angeles, our screening of Fuente Latina’s Testigos Del Terror, the Spanish language documentary about October 7th and what happened to the Latino Israeli immigrants there, is coming up at two nights.
Thursday evening, November 13th at the Writer Guild Theater here in la.
Check the show notes for links.
That's it for me.
I'll see y'all back here for the next killer episode of Being Jewish with me, Jonah Platt.