It’s rather unnerving to talk with one of your idols, and when I called Eleanor Bergstein last week—the writer and co-producer of Dirty Dancing—I was unreasonably nervous.

“I’ve loved Dirty Dancing for as long as I can remember, so this is just a huge honor for me,” I gushed.

“Always sweet to hear, thank you,” she replied.

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

The post A Conversation with Eleanor Bergstein, Writer and Producer of ‘Dirty Dancing,’ on its 30th Anniversary appeared first on Jewcy.

Well, my fears were not unfounded. The ABC Dirty Dancing did remove all traces of Jewishness (I think the most explicit reference was Baby mentioning dance classes at the JCC). But it also removed most traces of anything remotely likable, so I can’t even be mad at that.

Look, I’m supposed to come out here and do a brutal takedown of the movie, but frankly, I’m too emotionally exhausted. There are plenty of other writers out there doing just that. Sure, I have the Jewish angle, but there’s not much to say. It’s a gentile Dirty Dancing.

I had to shut down the part of my brain that feels empathy in order to avoid second-hand embarrassment of watching professional actors in this thing. I’m currently listening to the original movie soundtrack to cleanse myself.

Alright, if you must know what I’ve been through:

I had to watch a “musical reimagining” of a movie that already has music, so that practically speaking it just meant that the actors sing the iconic songs as they’re dancing to them or whatever even though the conceit is halfhearted and therefore comes off as weird.

I had to watch an actor (poor, poor Colt Prattes) dance technically well in Patrick Swayze’s shoes but with zero charisma and a punchable face.

I had to watch Abigail Breslin star as Baby. Remember, her Oscar-nominated role was for an adorable little girl who can’t dance. Extras applaud her performance, and the camera angles tries to hide her body, but it is so obvious she can’t dance that I literally do not understand why she was cast (she has no chemistry with Prattes either).

I had to sit through a ham-fisted feminist narrative that was inconsistent and vague— This Baby is smart. She reads books. Books like The Feminine Mystique and The Bell Jar, both of which came out the year the movie takes place (good timing, Baby).

I had to watch a subplot in which Baby’s parents consider getting a divorce, but then they have sex, so it’s OK. Hey, remember that weird semi-feminist vibe? Katey Sagal (looking great, by the way,) plays a divorced woman who talks about how free she is now that she’s left her cheating husband, but really she’s lonely and jealous and shrill. So it’s a good thing Baby’s parents bone and save their marriage!

I had to remember how much I miss Jerry Orbach.

Remember on Will & Grace, the running joke that Grace can’t sing? Let’s give Debra Messing a solo number, a cover of “They Can’t Take That Away From Me.” She makes it through in one piece, but what have we gained, really? Nothing. No one has gained anything from anything about this movie except a line on their IMDB page and I sincerely hope a good paycheck.

Speaking of paychecks, I had to watch Billy Dee Williams show up for about three scenes because a gig is a gig.

I had to watch the character of Neil Kellerman (the grandson of the resort’s owner) elevated into an interesting, dorky Jewish male feminist, only to have him completely disregarded, presumably because he’s dorky and Jewish-looking.

I had to watch Nicole Scherzinger in a movie that didn’t deserve her, even though she was playing a character half her age. Hey Nicole, stop trying so hard. You’re making Prattes look even worse by comparison.

I had to watch Sarah Hyland, who people forget was a Broadway performer prior to Modern Family, also do better than most of the people around her. The movie teases a romance between her and a black resort employee that doesn’t go anywhere except a cute duet at the talent show. I decided then that I would rather watch a movie about the two of them as woke folk singers in New York City in the 1960s then the movie I was watching. But it was too late.

I had to watch bad CGI. In a Dirty Dancing remake. And for what? For making it look like characters were outside of a Broadway theater with a marquis for a fake show (well, OK, there is a Dirty Dancing stage musical, but I don’t think this film was being that clever).

I had to watch a framing device (spoilers, not that you should care) in which we learn that Baby grows up, gets married to some guy who isn’t Johnny and has a baby in her twenties, and writes a book about something (who cares what). Does this tie into the feminist message of the show, or contradict it? Who even cares!

Listen, some movies are ripe for hate-watching. But save yourself the time and just read funny tweets about it. Insert joke here about putting this Baby back in a corner, where she belongs.

Me as each minute goes by in this show #DirtyDancing pic.twitter.com/ERllNjIF7z

— (@lWasFeeIingEpic) May 25, 2017

I’m going to go listen to the original soundtrack some more.

Image via Twitter.

The post I Watched the ‘Dirty Dancing’ Remake So You Don’t Have to appeared first on Jewcy.

Did you know this was happening? I feel like I knew this was happening, and I forcibly removed that knowledge from my brain.

But now, the fact has returned— returned with a trailer that proves that yes, there is about to be a TV remake of Dirty Dancing.

Listen, there have been plenty of media take-downs of this thing already, and it doesn’t even premiere for another month. They point out all the obvious problems— that it’s a movie that doesn’t need to be remade, that the songs sure as hell don’t need to be re-recorded, that there was already a terrible sequel, that despite ABC insisting that this movie is going to add some sort of epilogue, it looks practically identical to the original, but worse, etc.

So let me spare you all that and add one additional fear: that this movie is going to be goyishe.

Listen, Jews don’t always need to be played by Jewish actors. And it’s not like this cast is completely Jew-less; Baby’s mom is going to be played by Debra Messing. Abigail Breslin, playing Baby, has a Jewish father, though she doesn’t seem to identify as Jewish. But for the most part, it looks like a poignant look at secular Jewish culture in the Borscht Belt is going to be swapped out for ham-fisted (emphasis on the treyf) messages about race and gender in the 1960s that’s going to erase Baby’s ethnic identity beyond her surname.

The original movie wasn’t full of Yiddish songs and references to Yom Kippur, but it still feels authentically Jewish to Jews— the statements about American Jewry and class and changing tides are subtle but present. Heck, a New York Jewish theatre troupe used the film as a core text of a project they did just a few months ago.

And of course, the most important detail here is Baby herself. Perhaps the producers were thinking that casting Breslin would reflect the original decision to cast an actor who’s not a conventional sex symbol. But that completely misses the fact that what made Jennifer Grey not fit normal beauty norms were her ethnic features— her curly brown hair, her large nose (z”l Jennifer Grey’s nose). Other than Streisand, traditionally-Semitic looking women in Hollywood are far and few between. Baby didn’t need to do or say anything Jewish in the original film— seeing her was enough to raise the spirits of Jewish girls like Baby soaring above Johnny’s head.

At least one executive producer of this film, Eleanor Bergstein, is Jewish. The writer, Jessica Sharzer, is Jewish. So they may prove me wrong! But odds are, this is going to be a bland disaster.

And the worst part about all this is, I’ll probably hate-watch it for the followup article.

Dirty Dancing airs May 24 at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on ABC. Hold your children close.

Image via Twitter.

The post We Need to Talk About the ‘Dirty Dancing’ Remake appeared first on Jewcy.

The wildly talented Natalie Portman is featured on the cover of the Elle UK November issue. Besides looking predictably gorgeous, she’s also provided us with quotable lines, giving us—and our boyfriends—even more reason to love her. Interviewed by her Thor: The Dark World costar, Tom Hiddleston, Portman discussed feminism, love, and most importantly, Dirty Dancing. Elle UK reports:

On love:

‘I see it a lot – this romantic view of the world where you fall in and out of love on a whim. It ignores the depth of trying to know another human being and respect them and love them, and puts in its place the excitement of an immediate intimacy. But really knowing some? That is such an opportunity.’

On feminism:

‘I want every version of a woman and a man to be possible. I want women and men to be able to be full-time parents or full-time working people or any combination of the two. I want both to be able to do whatever they want sexually without being called names. I want them to be allowed to be weak and strong and happy and sad – human, basically. The fallacy in Hollywood is that if you’re making a “feminist” story, the woman kicks ass and wins. That’s not feminist, that’s macho. A movie about a weak, vulnerable woman can be feminist if it shows a real person that we can empathise with.’

And, save the best for last, on Dirty Dancing:

‘To this day, it’s the movie that I’ve seen most in my life. “I carried a watermelon”… I can’t talk about it too much, or I’ll start getting teary. There are other movies I love, but no other movie that I have watched over and over.’

Do we smell a remake with Portman? Dirty Dancing: Jerusalem Nights. OK, fine. That’s pretty unnecessary. But, we would all go see it… just saying.

(Still image from Elle UK)

The post Natalie Portman On Love, Feminism, and ‘Dirty Dancing’ appeared first on Jewcy.

The final chapter of Welcome to Kutsher’s: The Last Catskills Resort, a new documentary centered on Kutsher’s Hotel and Country Club, begins with a prescient clip from Dirty Dancing, the film which serves as a reference point for the former Borscht Belt experience. “It all seems to be ending,” says Max Kellerman, the owner of composite fictional resort Kellerman’s, to his staff member Tito. “You think kids want to come with their parents and take fox-trot lessons?”

The kids may no longer come up to dance, but they are, as some believe, the last hope for revitalizing the once thriving vacation area. A recent New York Times article highlighted the Catskill Park Resource Foundation’s efforts to raise $5 million to rebrand the Catskills. As the article put it, “The idea is to make people think of the Catskills in terms of trout fishing, artisanal cheese and Zen retreats, rather than Simon Says, rimshot comedians and Dirty Dancing.” Brendan Burke, artistic director of nearby Ellenville’s Shadowland Theater, is quoted saying, “You hear [the term Catskills] and think bungalow colonies and resorts with bad carpet.”

The thing is, though, I loved the carpeting at Kutsher’s. In the many years I spent visiting with my family, it was the most memorable physical component of the space. When we arrived, we’d park the car in front, under the neon yellow “Kutsher’s” sign, hand off the keys to a dapper valet, and walk in with buoyant carpeting underfoot. It felt like landing on the surface of distant yet familiar planet.

My aunt, married to my mother’s brother, is the daughter of Helen and Milton Kutsher, the second-generation owners of Kutsher’s. I grew up going to the hotel every Thanksgiving and for various events throughout the years. And while I may have visited the hotel during its so-called decline, in the 1990s and early 2000s, I remember the place as grand and exotic. Its particularities are frozen in my memory, from the pastel coloring of the walls to the pervasive smell of matzoh ball soup that got stronger as you approached the dining room.

I’ve stopped going to Kutsher’s, because it is no longer a fully functioning hotel. The last trip I made was in 2009, to attend the U.S. version of All Tomorrow’s Parties, a music festival which originated in England but was held at Kutsher’s in 2008, 2009, and 2010. While there, I heard a lot of people talk about the hotel’s state of decay. Many attendees seemed to take ironic enjoyment in comparing Kutsher’s to the Overlook Hotel from The Shining. The epilogue of Welcome to Kutsher’s covers All Tomorrow’s Parties and features interviews with people there, many of whom also make that same comparison.

It’s clear from the film that Ian Rosenberg and Caroline Laskow, the husband and wife team who directed and produced the documentary, were charmed by Kutsher’s, just as I was growing up. When I spoke with Rosenberg over the phone, he recounted a trip to the hotel with Caroline as a young couple in 2005. When Laskow asked if he wanted to take a vacation to a Jewish resort in the Catskills, he replied, “Yeah, but we don’t live in the 1960s.” Despite reservations, Laskow assured him it would be affordable and worthwhile. So they went, ate, and came away convinced that Kutsher’s was perfect material for a documentary.

They began shooting in 2007, and returned to the resort in 2010. Much of the footage and interviews come from the Kutsher family, who had been approached by filmmakers in the past though no projects were ever completed. “The topic seems small–one element of the Jewish American experience—but there’s actually so much in it, from entertainment to music to culture and religion,” Rosenberg explained. “Other projects didn’t move forward because they didn’t have the focus that we did: one Catskills resort and looking at the big picture through that one story.”

I completely agree. The joy of Welcome to Kutsher’s is that it captures what was unique and special about the hotel while also expounding on the larger significance of the Catskills in the American Jewish consciousness. In one particularly memorable scene, as Helen Kutsher talks about hiring Wilt Chamberlain as a bellhop, the film cuts to a clip of a young Chamberlain towering over a guest. It’s a larger than life moment, one of many in Kutsher’s storied history.

There have been two screenings of the film in Manhattan, both during the New York Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center—the first, the world premiere, sold out before tickets went on sale to the general public, and the second sold out within an hour. During the Q&A session with Rosenberg and Laskow following the first screening, a familiar-looking audience member stood up to tell them what a wonderful film it was, and what a gift it was. He continued, explaining that the Kutsher family was overwhelmingly hospitable to him and his wife, who wasn’t Jewish, when they visited. As the man continued to heap praise on Kutsher’s, Laskow leaned over and whispered, “That’s Jerry Stiller.” Sure enough, it was—and Stiller is giving an interview that will be added to the film this fall.

“People are delighted to see the film, because their goal is to try to preserve this piece of Catskills history before it disappears,” Rosenberg told me. “This is the last of the Catskills resorts and we didn’t only want to look back, but also to show you that it is still existing, though it is about to vanish before our eyes.” Yet while the Kutsher’s resort may be nearing extinction, the name and the emotional resonances it evokes in American Jews continues to thrive in new ways. The latest incarnation is Kutsher’s Tribeca, the trendy downtown restaurant opened by Helen’s grandson Zach Kutsher that serves bug juice, duck schmaltz fries, and delicatessen charcuterie. The restaurant is mentioned in the final scene of Welcome to Kutsher’s, an apt reference to the future of the Kutsher’s legacy. I may not go up to the Kutsher’s Hotel to fox-trot, but I’ll get a Rueben at Kutsher’s Tribeca any time.

Welcome to Kutsher’s: The Last Catskills Resort will be screened at the JCC in Manhattan on Tuesday, September 4. Tickets are available here.

The post Relive the Glory Days With ‘Welcome to Kutsher’s: The Last Catskills Resort’ appeared first on Jewcy.

• July is National Pickle Month! But pickles, food staple of Jewish immigrants, were not always loved by all.

• The Catskills region is trying to rebrand itself away from “Simon Says, rimshot comedians and Dirty Dancing.” Rude.

• A walk through New York City’s changing garment district.

• The 10-year-old Orthodox girl behind a record-breaking 209.4-pound deadlift.

• Drake throws a (NSFW) pool party—but it’s no bar mitzvah.

The post Daily Jewce: A Catskills Makeover, Celebrate National Pickle Month, and more appeared first on Jewcy.