Zach Braff and ‘Alaskan Mohel Chic’
Image by Getty Images
(JTA) — “Wish I Was Here,” Zach Braff’s Kickstarter-funded film, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival Saturday night. Fans eagerly awaiting the “Garden State” follow up—especially the 46,520 who helped pay for it to be made—will be glad to know it was warmly received. The screening ended with a standing ovation, certain critics had nice things to say, and most importantly, the movie was ultimately bought by Focus Features.
Also notable: It sounds pretty Jew-y. In “Wish I Was Here,” Braff makes his directorial debut and stars as Aiden Bloom, a struggling actor living in suburban LA with his wife (Kate Hudson) and their two kids. Aiden is forced to pull the children from Jewish day school after his dad, played Mandy Patinkin, announces he is suffering from cancer and will no longer be able to pay tuition. Unwilling to send them to the local public school, Aiden decides to home school. This new role leads Aiden on a spiritual journey, complete with a visit to a rabbi.
Braff, who wrote the script with his brother Adam, explains that the pair drew inspiration from their childhood. “It was kind of a combination of both of our lives,” he said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “We did have a very strong conservative/Orthodox upbringing … Themes are in there around our shared experiences but it’s mostly fiction.”
Jewish actor Josh Gad plays Aiden’s brother in the film. Gad says he took the part because of “Garden State,” and also because he grew up “in a very Jewish household,” adding, “I know it doesn’t look that way.”
The Hollywood Reporter also treated us to an on-site video clip, in which the cast is asked about their Sundance fashion. The question elicits a funny little riff on “Alaskan mohel chic.” Now only if there’d been some footage of the cast’s Rosh Hashanah gathering…
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
