Them

by Jon Ronson

  ♦

  The movie director was Tony Kaye, and right now he was half-way through editing his debut film, American History X. This was 1998. New Line films, the producers of American History X, sent me a press release, which read:

  American History X is a profound and stirring drama about the consequences of racism as a family is torn apart by hate. A graphic examination of extremism in America, the film follows one man’s struggle to reform himself and save his brother after living a life consumed by bigotry.

  Produced by New Line films.

  Directed by Tony Kaye.

  So this was it: a millionaire Jewish Hollywood director finishing off a movie about a psychopathic neo-Nazi who sees the light in jail when he pals up over laundry duties with a cheerful black inmate, leaves jail, renounces racism, and becomes a liberal.

  This was everything Thom Robb was talking about. This was, for Thom Robb, the conspiracy in essence.

  I sat back in the deep leather seat and put my hands behind my head. This was the life. It was great in the limousine. These were my people. Frankly, I deserved a break from Klan compounds, from Jihad training camps, from people telling me that the world was nothing like I thought it was like – that everything was a brilliantly contrived lie.

  And the truth is, I fully intended to dispel Thom’s myth of a covert Jewish conspiracy. Of course it was nonsense! I poured myself some juice from the limousine’s decanter and enjoyed the ride.

  And then I saw where I was, in a limousine with the licence plate JEW1SH, me, a Jew in the media cruising through Hollywood with my people, out to deride Thom’s beliefs, and I wondered – are we the New World Order? Is this the secret room, this limousine’s interior, right now? Is it us?

  ♦

  “So how is the editing going?” I asked Tony Kaye.

  “Right now it’s good,” he said. “And good is the enemy of great. My singular vision is on the verge of being diluted. My film must make a difference. The power of film is more immense than people realize and vastly wasted on triviality. Hang on a minute.”

  Tony wound down his window.

  “Excuse me,” he yelled to the passenger of another limousine that had pulled up alongside him at the lights. She wound her window down.

  “What do you think about racism?” yelled Tony.

  “I don’t know,” she yelled back. “It’s bad.”

  “Thank you,” yelled Tony.

  Tony wound the window back up.

  “You see?” he said.

  The lights turned green. The two limousines cruised away.

  “These are the questions I’ve been grappling with,” said Tony. “What is racism? Are the Jews a race or a religion? Are we not all racists? These are the thought channels I’ve been led down since I started making American History X.”

  ♦

  During my negotiations to secure access to Tony Kaye and his JEW1SH limousine, I had no idea that American History X was in the midst of a crisis. But an ongoing dispute between Tony and his producers was spiralling out of control, and the limousine now was cruising towards the feud’s climax, a breakfast meeting at New Line films.

  The crisis was this: Tony had been editing American History X for a year and a half. His producers were demanding he give it up. They thought it was fine already. But Tony was refusing to hand it over.

  “We’re about to drive down Wilshire Boulevard to pick up Marty, my manager,” said Tony. “Marty is worried about my standing within the Hollywood community. But Hollywood should be more concerned about being in my good books than me being in theirs.”

  Tony paused for a moment. He drummed his fingers on his knee.

  “So that’s where we are,” he said. “Did you notice my licence plate?”

  “JEW1SH,” I said.

  “I used to call this the Jewish Car,” said Tony. “But now I’m thinking of calling it the Motherfucking Bigot Car.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “Because we are all racists,” said Tony. “Aren’t we? Do we not need to accept that before we can move on?”

  ♦

  Tony Kaye is very tall and very thin. He is blessed with messianic good looks: a striking facial bone structure and shaved hair, which makes his head look even more like a skull, a skull hard at work, resting on some shoulders.

  During the last few days, Tony had been thinking intense thoughts about his impending crisis meeting with Michael De Luca, the senior product president of New Line films. De Luca had thrown down the gauntlet. If Tony didn’t hand over the movie, he was going to let Edward Norton, the star of American History X, release his own cut of the film.

  This was to be the most important breakfast meeting of Tony Kaye’s career. How could he convince De Luca to let him have more time? How could he convey in a metaphysical and spiritual manner the significance of his vision of American History X?

  What could he do to make De Luca see it?

  And then, in the middle of the night, it had come to him in a flash. The meeting needed a spiritual dimension – an actual spiritual presence.

  At 3 a.m. Tony called up his personal assistant, Keeley. He told her to procure a Roman Catholic priest, a rabbi, a Tibetan monk, and, if available, a Muslim cleric. These spiritual people, Tony told Keeley, must attend the meeting also. Cost was not an issue. “Get them,” he told her.

  Keeley made some calls. The rabbi and the priest she secured were local. Unfortunately she couldn’t find a Muslim cleric amenable to the cause. The Tibetan monk was being flown first-class all the way from Tibet.

  They were all due to meet Tony in the New Line reception at 9 a.m.

  “I’ve spoken to the spiritual people on the phone,” said Tony. “I told them, You’re not there to talk on my behalf. You’re there to listen. If you want to write somebody a letter afterwards, by all means do it. If you want to say a prayer, or whatever, do it. You’re there to make the meeting a more important, thoughtful and spiritual one.”

  “Is Michael De Luca aware that the spiritual people are coming to the meeting?” I asked Tony.

  “No,” he said.

  “What about Marty?” I asked. “Does he know?”

  “No,” said Tony.

  “How will Marty feel?” I asked.

  “Marty will be very concerned,” said Tony.

  ♦

  The limousine pulled up outside Marty’s office block. Tony’s chauffeur telephoned Marty’s personal assistant from one of the car’s seven phone lines to inform him that the limousine was downstairs. Tony sat in the back seat, repeatedly whispering the word ‘Goodwill’ to himself.

  Marty came out of his office. He climbed into the limousine. Tony got straight to the point with Marty.

  “This is a very important meeting,” he said.

  “That’s right,” said Marty.

  “And one of the ways I can make it even more important…”

  “Make a left and go up Santa Monica…” said Marty to the chauffeur.

  “Sir,” said the chauffeur.

  “…I’m not into religion right now,” said Tony. “It causes a lot of problems. Right?”

  “Right,” said Marty.

  “But when spiritual people are around, it makes the atmosphere more spiritual,” said Tony. “Right?”

  “Right,” said Marty, cautiously.

  “So,” said Tony, “I have a Roman Catholic priest. I have a, uh, rabbi, and a Tibetan monk. They’re coming to the meeting too, and I refuse to go into this meeting without the spiritual people.”

  There was a pause.

  “I think it’s inadvisable, but…uh…” said Marty. “This is not the way I’d do it, but if you choose to…”

  “Why do you think it’s inadvisable?” said Tony.

  “Michael wants a personal conversation with you,” said Marty. “I think the monks will make him feel uncomfortable.”

  Neither Tony nor Marty needed reminding that Michael De Luca had been having personal problems of his own lately
, and the last thing he needed was more stress. A few months previously, Michael De Luca had recklessly received oral sex in view of important celebrities at the William Morris Agency’s Oscar party. News of the oral sex quickly spread back to the New Line shareholders, and his position within the company was said to have become shaky for a while. Things were only just beginning to settle down.

  “Look,” said Marty, “I strongly recommend that you leave the monks and the rabbi downstairs. That would be my recommendation.”

  “I have to, I’m afraid, say that that’s not the way I work,” said Tony.

  “Do what you want to do,” said Marty, thinly. “I’ve given you my advice.”

  “I’ll make it very clear to Michael that you had no idea about the spiritual people and you advised me against it,” said Tony.

  “I’d appreciate that,” said Marty.

  Marty and Tony turned their shoulders away from each other and looked out of their windows, as the limousine sped down Wilshire Boulevard. The silence didn’t last long. Tony was unsettled.

  “What do you think about all of this?” he asked the chauffeur.

  “It’s a bold move,” said the chauffeur.

  “Yes,” said Tony. “It has never been done before. Nothing like this has ever been done before.”

  The limousine arrived at the offices of New Line Films.

  The chauffeur jumped out to open the door for Tony and Marty and me.

  “Good luck,” he said.

  “What do you think about all this?” asked Tony.

  “It’s a bold move,” said the chauffeur again.

  We wandered into the office block. We called the elevator. When we got in, Tony pressed the fifth-floor button. Just as the lift door closed, a young woman rushed in and joined us. The four of us stood in silence for a moment, inside the elevator.

  “Who are you?” said Tony to the woman.

  There was a pause.

  “I work here,” she said, cautiously.

  “I’ve got a meeting with Michael De Luca,” said Tony, “about my movie, American History X. And upstairs I’ve got a rabbi and a Tibetan monk and a Catholic priest, and they’re all going to be attending the meeting also, so as to make the meeting a more spiritual one. What do you think about that?”

  The woman stared ahead at the lift door. She didn’t respond.

  “Which floor do you want?” said Tony.

  “Which floor are you getting out at?” she asked.

  “Fifth,” said Tony.

  “Then I’m getting out at any floor except for the fifth,” she said.

  There was a silence. The lift door opened at the fifth floor. Tony and Marty and I got out of the elevator.

  ♦

  The rabbi had already arrived. He was sitting alone on a leather sofa. He was a nice-looking, elderly man. Tony rushed over to him. They shook hands.

  Marty walked slowly over to the sofa. He took his seat at the far end, as far from the rabbi as the sofa would allow. He folded his arms and stared out into the middle distance.

  “Marty?” said Tony, sternly.

  Marty leant over and shook the rabbi’s hand.

  “Good to meet you,” he announced. “I’m just going to…um…”

  Marty stood up and walked away.

  “I apologize for Marty’s rudeness,” said Tony to the rabbi. “He’s a little worried about me. You know how this town works.”

  “Well,” said the rabbi, “I’m thinking of getting into film production myself, so really I’m here to learn the rules.”

  “OK,” replied Tony. “Let me tell you a bit about my film. It’s a film about racism. That is a tremendously important responsibility for the director of the film, which is me.”

  The rabbi nodded.

  Keeley, Tony’s PA, arrived. She was here to drop off the Tibetan monk, who had just arrived from Tibet. Keeley made the introductions.

  “This is Lama Lana,” said Keeley. “This is Tony, and this is rabbi…uh…”

  “I’m really sorry,” said Tony. “You’re going to have to excuse me.”

  Tony rushed off to find Marty. Keeley followed. The rabbi and the Tibetan monk were left alone on the sofa.

  “I’m pleased to meet you,” said the rabbi. “Where do you come from?”

  “Tibet,” said the monk. “Very nice,” said the rabbi.

  ♦

  Out in the corridor, which was decorated with posters of recent New Line hits, such as The Wedding Singer, Keeley told me that she had been profoundly moved by the short time she had spent with the Tibetan monk riding in the limousine from Los Angeles airport to here.

  “He’s the most incredibly spiritual person I’ve ever met,” said Keeley. “Honestly. He’s the most amazing, amazing Tibetan monk. He’s an oasis of calm.”

  The Catholic priest arrived. Introductions were made. Tony returned with the latest news from Marty, which was that Michael De Luca was prepared to allow the spiritual people into the meeting. The journalist from London, however, was to remain in the reception area.

  The group stood up and walked into Michael De Luca’s office. The door was closed.

  ♦

  I passed the time by pacing the reception area and thinking about Hollywood Jews. Far from actively advancing the interests of the Jews, as Thom Robb believes, the Hollywood moguls have often done the opposite. When Hitler raged, when reports of the Kristallnacht made it back to LA – ‘The Night of the Broken Glass’, when almost one hundred Jews were killed at random, and countless Jewish businesses were destroyed – the moguls hurriedly convened a meeting amongst themselves. What could be done about it? Should the movie industry wield its power to condemn the Nazis?

  Their conclusion – do nothing. Don’t rock the boat. Anti-Nazi movies might only give rise to more anti-Semitism. It would do the Jews no favours to advertise just who did, in fact, run this town.

  Another meeting was hastily organized, in 1946, when the film Gentleman’s Agreement was due for release. Some empathetic gentile movie makers, aghast that the Jewish moguls were doing nothing to combat anti-Semitism, elected to do the job themselves. Gentleman’s Agreement – a film about a gentile who pretends to be a Jew and encounters anti-Semitism – was directed by a gentile. The moguls, fearing an anti-Semitic backlash, offered him one million dollars to suppress it.

  So it seems that Jewish moguls do not meet in darkened rooms except for when they are planning ways to suppress pro-Jewish movies. We are notoriously prickly when it comes to identifying with our own. Imagine Harry Cohn, who founded Columbia Pictures in 1924, meeting in a darkened room – Harry Cohn, who was once asked to donate money to a Jewish relief fund, and roared: “Relief for the Jews? How about relief from the Jews. All the trouble in this world has been caused by Jews and Irishmen.”

  Or Louis B. Mayer – who changed his birthday to the fourth of July, who attended Catholic church (the very same church, in fact, that Harry Cohn attended), who wept with sentimentality every Christmas, who funded the distribution costs of Birth of a Nation.

  And Irving Berlin, dreaming of a White Christmas and an Easter Parade. How about that for cleaning up some touchy dates in the Christian calendar? As Philip Roth said: “After Moses, the next great Jewish genius was Irving Berlin. He took Easter, took the blood out of it, and made it about fashion. He took Christmas, took Christ out of it, and made it about the weather.”

  I have a childhood memory of my parents taking me to our local cinema in Cardiff to spot the Jews amongst the movie stars. Some were easy, of course. Mel Brooks. Woody Allen. The Marx Brothers, possibly: Groucho and Harpo, no question. Chico, presumably Roman Catholic.

  “Ernest Borgnine. He’s a Jew.”

  “Yes. Well. That’s obvious.”

  “He’s a Jew. The one by the door in the hat.”

  “Look at the face!”

  “Paul Newman. He’s a Jew.”

  “Paul Newman is not a Jew.”

  “He is. Never played a Jewish character in
his life. In Hollywood! And nobody would guess.”

  “Butch Cassidy. Does anyone know?”

  And we’d whistle in admiration. Paul Newman (who is actually half Jewish but we’ll take him), Lauren Bacall, these were credits to our religion: romantic leads and nobody knew.

  Unfortunately, in our sunshiny attempts at mingling with the gentiles we have unintentionally helped to create the myth of a shadowy cabal: we Jews who camouflage ourselves. The camouflage is mistaken for scheming, as if we’re concealing something sinister, when in fact we are just hopelessly in love with the camouflage.

  Tony Kaye – his JEW1SH limo parked outside – seemed to be breaking the unspoken golden rule, that Hollywood can be about Jewish values just so long as you keep the Jewishness out of it.

  ♦

  Forty-five minutes passed. Then Tony and the spiritual people emerged – Tony, lofty and thin, floating through the foyer, his head bobbing above the spiritual people who clustered around him and stared upwards, awed by whatever it was he had done in there. This vision resembled a bizarre reworking of some early Renaissance painting – Christ Exits Michael De Luca’s Office, On The Road To Oblivion.

  “You put your point across wonderfully,” said the rabbi, outside in the corridor. “This is your vision. Remember that.”

  “Right,” nodded Tony.

  “I feel that if you can develop your vision better with more time, by all means do,” said the priest. “Visions take time to develop.”

  “Right,” said Tony. “Right.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” said the rabbi. “I’d very much like to talk with you at some point about my screenplay.”

  “Right,” said Tony.

  “You told the truth from your heart,” said the Tibetan monk. “And that’s beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” said Tony, clearly moved by the monk’s words.

  “Thank you,” said the rabbi. “You’re welcome,” said Tony.

  ♦

  Keeley took the Tibetan monk off to a coffee shop because there was a little time to kill before his plane journey back to Tibet. The rabbi and the priest caught taxis back to their congregations. I asked Tony how the spiritual people had contributed to the meeting.