Ordinary Long Island people

>> >> Eric Mendelsohn's Judy Berlin is an indie gem with a stellar cast

by MATTHEW HAYS

First-time director Eric Mendelsohn is getting tired of the Woody Allen comparisons. His first feature, Judy Berlin, which won him the Best Director prize at Sundance last year, features an ensemble of characters, some of them Jewish, many of them anxious and/or neurotic.

But the comparisons stop there. "I worked as an assistant costume designer on a few of Woody's films, so it's a bit too easy for people to make those comparisons. Yes, my characters happen to be Jews, but that's about it. These aren't elegant Manhattan types. 'They don't know from the museum,' as my mother would say."

The character's the thing

Mendelsohn's quirky, highly unusual Berlin was done on a shoestring, but bucks the recent American indie let's-show-our-budget trend. Instead, the film is a lyrical, melancholic look at the lives of an ensemble of emotionally fragile people living in Babylon, Long Island, who can't quite seem to escape their small-town lives.

After a young man returns to his home suburb from L.A. after failing to make it in the film biz, he bumps into a childhood crush, Judy Berlin (played with gusto by The Sopranos' Edie Falco). The two spend the rest of the day together, as she makes plans to leave town to make it as an actress herself. While out together, the town is shadowed by an eclipse, lending a quiet surrealism to the dramatic proceedings.

Judy Berlin unfolds beautifully, a film full of small, intimate and occasionally hilarious moments, a film in which nothing seems to happen action-wise, but plenty does character-wise. "The characters are the plot. Seven characters have to be drawn in this ensemble. This is an actors' film. Really, it belongs to them." Mendelsohn beams with pride about his considerable cast. In addition to Falco, the director managed to land Anne Meara, Julie Kavner, Barbara Barrie and Madeline Kahn, notably in her final role (she died a few months after the film was completed).

"She's a national treasure," Mendelsohn says of Kahn. "There are things she does with her face in High Anxiety--I will rent that and watch it over and over again." And then, Mendelsohn passes the ultimate Kahn fan test, which I give him during the interview: I simply bring up What's Up, Doc?, her feature film debut. "Do you know the meaning of the word propriety?" he says, in an utterly perfect imitation of Kahn's delivery in the film.

No-budget blues

As satisfying as the critical response to Judy Berlin has been, Mendelsohn confesses that he doesn't know if he could do it all over again. The film's budget constraints meant the cast were lodging--literally--at Mendelsohn's parent's place. And though the film doesn't look like it at all, it was definitely, Mendelsohn reports, guerrilla-style filmmaking.

"My producer did much of the catering. It was my cinematographer's first film. Madeline was sitting in my parents' kitchen at one point, and my mother was making her vegetarian burgers in the microwave. Kahn wasn't vegetarian, but my mother thought she had to try one. She couldn't leave the house until she'd tried one. There were odd scenes like that constantly."

For Mendelsohn, who directed from his own script, filmmaking is best when it's a singular, non-diluted endeavour. "I feel like I'd rather see one interesting person's ambitious mistakes, or one interesting person's brilliant success, rather than a committee's idea of what makes a good movie. Orson Welles once said, 'A work of art is good inasmuch as it reflects the person who created it.' Really, I hate anything generic."

Mendelsohn says the most gratifying part of the film's release and life on the festival circuit has been the overwhelming response of audiences. "Someone came up to me after the film was over at one festival, and said, 'Thank-you for making a film about real people.' That was really great." :

Judy Berlin opens Friday, June 22, at Cinéma du Parc