Where the hell was I when the Jewsploitation genre began to burgeon? I thought it was just a jokey term invented for the marketing of Jonathan Kesselman’s Semetic Shaft comedy, The Hebrew Hammer. Now it’s a full-blown movement? And Judd Apatow had nothing to do with it?
As a huge fan of the chosen people, I say, "Mazel Tov, Motherfucker!" It’s high time they rise up against the Christian Scientist-dominated movie industry and cry, "Enough!" No longer shall they be depicted as a bunch of Paul Reisers and Julie Kavners, kibbutzing and kvetching and noshing Chinese food on Christmas. It’s time to own their cinematic identity.
And Jesse Eisenberg (not, regrettably, Eric Bana) shall lead them in Holy Rollers, where he’ll star as an "impressionable", Brooklyn-bred Jewish kid who gets caught up in an Orthodox drug ring run out of Israel. Justin Bartha (the nebbishy comic relief from the National Treasure movies) will play Eisenberg’s equally Jewish buddy who introduces him to the world of Ecstasy dealing. If Ron Rifkin is not cast as the Israeli kingpin, this movie is a lie.
Holy Rollers will mark the feature debut of Kevin Asch. He’ll be working from a screenplay by Antonio Macia, which is evidently based on the real-life use of Hasidic Jews as drug mules during the 1990s. The independently produced film (a joint effort by Caro Entertainment and PS Pictures) is scheduled to start shooting in Spring ’08, after which it will get shopped around to hostile studios.