Hester Street and the Cinema of the Pilpul

The new management regime at Fandor, in their wisdom (read: stupidity), zapped their online film magazine and blog Keyframe, and with that, their entire archive of articles. No record of any of the authors' work -- all gone. So I've republished here.


Last year, while producing and editing “kosher media” for a video production company in Brooklyn, I became friendly with an elder Yiddish theater actor who often worked with us on assorted commercials and music videos — a stout, pint-sized man with a stubbly but no less angelic “Yiddishe punim” (Jewish face) who could effortlessly affect a stereotypical East-Side-by-way-of-Flatbush “alter kocker” patois that put anyone in the vicinity in stitches. The right Jewish word to describe him is "heimishe" (exceedingly friendly, unassuming, welcoming, unpretentious). One night, he ventured into my editing room from the adjacent studio to visit me while I was hard at work, as the crew set up for his next shot.  After he recounted starring in a Yiddish-language production of Waiting for Godot, we proceeded to talk on the subject of “mama loshen” (mother tongue), and about the specific richness of Yiddish as it related to Hebrew.

A quick history lesson: The early Zionist movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century hotly debated what the official language would be, should the Jews eventually achieve statehood.  Religious Jews contested the Hebrew option because of its nature and background as “loshon kodesh” (holy tongue), a language only to be spoken in religious context rather than in everyday speech.  However, to progressive, secular Jews, the Yiddish language, a flavorful combination of Hebrew, German, Russian, and Slavic languages, signified the chains of a difficult past in “old world” Jewish Europe, with its perceived antiquated values, its stifling strictures, and its persecution.  In short, to secular progressives, it reaked of what they deemed backwards provincialism.

Ultimately, newspaper editor and lexicographer Eliezer Ben-Yehuda revived “loshon kodesh” by becoming the author of the first “modern Hebrew” dictionary.  Today, the Hebrew/Yiddish schism is no longer the issue it once was; Hebrew as a conversational language is accepted as a fact of life in Israel, even among the observant (though Yiddish still thrives in this significant segment of the demographic).  Although most of today’s American Chassidim are Yiddish monoglots, the language of Yiddish is rapidly dying off outside these Chassidic enclaves.  And it continues to die every day the Jewish elderly pass into eternity.


So, now back to the Yiddish theater actor, who then saw fit to extol the virtues of the Yiddish language, although I think he knew he was preaching to the choir.  My own heart pines and prances at the utterance of Yiddish, a language to which I listen fluently but speak haltingly (though my everyday speech is sprinkled with Yiddish-isms, some overt and foreign, and others commonly adopted into the English lexicon).  He then said something that I deemed rather profound: “Yiddish is a thing of beauty because it’s the language of the pilpul…it’s the language of compromise.”  According to him, modern Hebrew originally bred and continues to breed a fierce brand of Jewish nationalism and exceptionalism that worries him (I personally do not subscribe in any way to this view, but I can, in my own way, understand his basic logic – and this could indeed easily be the subject of another article, but I will of course stick to the topic at hand).

Let us rewind for a moment.  What is this strange word “pilpul”?  No, it’s not like kugel, and is not in any way edible, although it does originate from the Hebrew word for “pepper.”  However, it is one of the very few Talmudic vocabulary words to have been appropriated into the standard English dictionary, though the word still remains obscure relative to other Jewish-rooted crossover classics like “schlep,” “schtick” and “kvetch”.  Defined by Merrian-Webster, “pilpul” is “hairsplitting critical analysis.”  You could also call it “heavy-duty exegesis.”

As the old adage goes, “Two Jews: three opinions.”  In the course of rabbinic dialectic and Jewish learning, one is to accept the inherent complexity as it exists in everything under the sun.  And in order for our all-too-human hearts and minds to reconcile that which seems irreconcilable, a careful manner of compromise must be applied and weighed in accordance with all the conceivable factors. Thus, Yiddish as a conflagration of many languages, is a language of compromise, just as pilpul is based on putting compromise into action in an effort to make it meaningful.

So, all this extraneous info just to introduce a film?  I know, this stuff’s getting dense, but bear with me.  I guarantee that it all has a point, and I think a valuable one important to cinema as a whole.


Since November 2014, I’ve been working with Oxford University Press on the first biography on director Joan Micklin Silver, known for Crossing Delancey (1988), Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979), Between the Lines (1977), and her breakthrough feature Hester Street (1975), starring Carol Kane in one of the earliest independent film performances to be nominated for the Academy Award.  Most of Silver’s films find comic discomfort in juxtaposing the “old world” with the modern world.  Her skill as a director lies in orchestrating pathos and often unexpected humor that occur when these worlds collide.  That many of her films are Jewish-themed is certainly apropos to this, her most burgeoning theme, but even the ones that do not broker in outwardly Jewish subjects are steeped in this narrative conflict – of characters with a death-grip on their memories of a halcyon past, or a way of life, who find themselves at odds with moving forward in the status quo.  Their death-grip makes them pragmatically and emotionally vulnerable.

The prospect of this particular book project excited me at my deepest core.  As an observant Jew myself, one who once attended a Chabad-Lubavitch yeshiva with the intention of entering the rabbinate, I felt especially equipped and ready to tackle the Jewish subject matter in her films in a way that no other author would or could.

Usually, in examining films about observant Jews, I find myself yelling at the screen as a result of a filmmaker’s outright negligence, dumbfounding errors, and exotification.  Sidney Lumet’s A Stranger Among Us (1992) is a major bĂȘte noire for me.  Counter to pictures like Lumet’s disposable, embarrassing depiction of New York Jewish subculture, Hester Street and Crossing Delancey don’t soft-peddle their Yiddishkeit.  On the contrary, they get so much right, and render the subject matter with palpable respect and great love.

Beyond my great admiration for Joan’s corpus, the book is an opportunity for me to braid the threads of my unusual double life. And as it so happens, my dream film project is an epic adaptation of Abraham Cahan’s novel The Rise of David Levinsky, which you might say is a Jewish Horatio Alger tale, by way of Dostoevsky.


That much of the film Hester Street is performed in the Yiddish language is auspicious, but it engenders another kind of perfection, especially when one considers what the Yiddish theater actor expressed to me, about what the beauty of Yiddish really means to him.  The film is, in many ways, about compromise amid complexity, staged in a language with this heritage of compromise and complexity, and one that extends beyond just cultural or religious baggage.

Now consider this: Silver made her debut feature in direct defiance of the standard system of motion picture production -- a system that saw her simply as a wannabe filmmaker handicapped by shear virtue of her gender.  As I state in the opening line of the book, “A female first-time director wanted to make a black-and-white film about immigrant Jews coming to America in the early twentieth century.  This single statement, though seemingly harmless, was at that time fraught with at least five potential hazards.”

In choosing to adapt Yiddish Daily Forward founder Abraham Cahan’s novella Yekl, she automatically committed a form of commercial suicide.  The very first Hollywood studios, which had been famously founded and owned by Jews eager to chuck this aspect of their identity, were rooted in a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding questions of Jewishness in their product.

These studio heads, who “went from Poland to polo in less than one generation,” lived in a world where it paid to be covert – and where it was kosher, for instance, to bribe the lone non-Jewish studio head, Darryl Zanuck of Fox, to permanently shelve his drama Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), an exposĂ© of anti-Semitism.  The bribing party, Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, Carl Laemmle and Harry Cohn, set the stage for a persisting Jewish denial in Hollywood, which in turn cultivated the belief that outwardly Jewish content ran counter to commercialism.  The studio founders’ successors inherited this sentiment, so one can then understand how the Cahan property was not accepted as a pedigree for success.

Hester Street and its source Yekl, both set circa 1900, tell the story of an Americanized Jew who has “shpilkes” (anxiousness) to assimilate. He has shed the appellation “Yankel” for the more socially acceptable American name “Jake”.  He also manages to dress like a dandy on his meager earnings as a sewing machine operator in the garment district.  When he imports his wife Gitl and his five-year-old son Yossele, no sooner are they off the boat before he goes on a campaign to Americanize them.  Gitl, however, refuses to hear of it, as she stays steadfast to the old ways.  She keeps her sheitl (wig), sprinkles salt in her little boy’s pockets for luck, and tries to proposition a visiting peddler about obtaining a liebe trop’n (a love potion) so that her husband will love her anew. "I won’t look like a goy, even for Yankel,” she exclaims to Mrs. Kavarsky, their busy-body landlady.   All the while, however, she slowly finds herself going sweet on Jake’s Talmud scholar roommate Mr. Bernstein.


Near the end of Hester Street, Carol Kane’s Gitl has stayed true to herself, but has learned, and quite fast, these new American ways.  The moment when she admonishes the character of Mrs. Kavarsky for referring to her son “Yossele” rather than the now-accepted “Joey” defines the cinema of the pilpul.  There is a gentle awareness that this moment of Americanization is something for which a delicate balance must be struck. She must now tend to the tall order of conforming the present reality with her earlier expectation – one now shrivelled into a simple but no less impassioned dream – of being able to keep the identity-defining traditions of her rooted past alive.

Hester Street is cinema that is both of and about compromise – the pilpul, as it can exist on celluloid at its most lively.

When one also considers the lengths to which Silver had to go, to finance, shoot and then distribute Hester Street, it only enriches the point.  With only $500,000 raised, Silver had to evoke the early twentieth century on the precious, dangerously limited funds allotted to undertake such an endeavor.  When no distributor evinced an interest in picking up the film, and in the face of the suggestion that it could “play the synagogue circuit,” she and her husband Raphael “Ray” Silver self-distributed (with the help and advice of John Cassavetes and Jeff Lipsky).  It was a pure go-for-broke endeavor – what indendent cinema is really about, or at least should be about.  At least it is what I, and my filmmaking friends, think it is about.


Independent cinema of this variety is so often about finding the art and beauty in compromise, while at the same time being uncompromising.  It is an appropriation of the pilpul.  Am I saying making a film is Talmudic?  Yes, in a way, I am.  As Orson Welles once said, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.”  All of this makes Hester Street an absolute must-see picture in my book, for Jews, Gentiles, and especially filmmakers (which I deem as much a religious group as any of them).

At this point in my own personal spiritual journey, I’m comfortable with attending my local shul (synogogue) regularly here in San Francisco’s Noe Valley, and then, as a filmmaker, attempting to make emotionally honest pictures that wouldn’t really qualify as kosher in any traditional sense of the term. But the act of storytelling is ingrained in Jewish culture, and stories told leave an indelible mark that Judaism acknowledges. I search for my own beautiful compromise.

Fandor now premieres Hester Street, one of my favorite films, brought to you by the great Joan Micklin Silver, a director sorely in need of further consideration and discussion.

Next Book Project Announced: Nothing Too Personal: The Life and Films of Henry Jaglom


PRESS RELEASE [November 19, 2017]: While Daniel Kremer edits both his seventh feature-length film, Overwhelm the Sky (due in summer 2018), and his second book Joan Micklin Silver: From Hester Street to Hollywood (due in early 2019 from Oxford University Press), he has started researching Nothing Too Personal: The Life and Films of Henry Jaglom, the first book on the American independent cinema icon behind such art-house hits as Eating (1990), Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? (1983), Tracks (1976), Always But Not Forever (1985), Someone to Love (1987), and many others. Kremer and Jaglom (pictured above) just completed their first round of taping sessions in Los Angeles, and accumulated over 20 hours of recorded material. The two have known each other close to fourteen years, and both are very excited about the project.

The book will feature never-before-reported stories involving legends like Judy Garland, Ingrid Bergman, Marilyn Monroe, Lee Strasberg, Groucho Marx, Jerry Lewis, Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, James Mason, Abbie Hoffman, Huey Newton, and countless others.

Kremer's film Ezer Kenegdo (co-directed with Deniz Demirer) went into release earlier in November after its world premiere at the prestigious Joseph Conrad Festival in Krakow, Poland. The River's Edge International Film Festival hosted its U.S. premiere. It is now touring international film festivals.

Shooting will soon re-commence on Kremer's biographical documentary Sidney J. Furie: Fire Up the Carousel! (due in 2019) after a year-long hiatus; Furie is now gearing up for the production of his next (and final) film, Hannah Cohen, a Holocaust story set throughout Israel. Kremer will be there to capture the making of Furie's swan song (perhaps the most important film of a 60+-year career), which will hopefully enhance his in-depth cinematic portrait of one of his favorite directors.

With film historian Howard S. Berger, Kremer recently provided a full-length commentary track for the Kino Lorber Studio Classics DVD/Blu-Ray release of Furie's The Taking of Beverly Hills (1991). More details here. It is a rather curious but fun-fun-fun track that covers a misbegotten entry from Furie's later-career tenure as an action director.


Kremer will also be starting production on his eighth feature film Even Just in December. The film (possibly a musical, wink wink) will star Joseph Badra (making his film debut), Penny Werner, and Carol Carbone.

Overwhelm the Sky now has a teaser. Raise Your Kids on Seltzer (2015), which Kremer and ConFluence-Film released in 2015, now has a post-release trailer.

Decorative Letterboxing, Squeezeplay, and Pan-and-Scan

A note on "decorative letterboxing" and early border-boxing in old studio film transfers, from a salty, seasoned analog format hound:

There were many ways of coping with anamorphic (panoramic widescreen) screen-size in the VHS and pre-VHS era. Paramount was quite gone of "decorative letterboxing" (see the upper left-hand screen capture from an old broadcast of Sid Furie's Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York; in this example, they clearly didn't measure top and bottom frame evenly).  I have an old VHS of Chinatown back in Pittsburgh that uses a similar Paramount decorative letterboxing, except green with "Oriental" design.

It was rare for a video presentation to be fully letterboxed in those days -- Woody Allen's Manhattan was the first, I believe (the letterbox bars were a shade of light gray vs. the usual black). It was, however, often only deployed during opening and closing credits sequences that used the entire screen width.

Universal seemed to prefer colored, gently bordered letterboxing, as seen in the upper center screen capture from Ron Winston's soapy golf-club epic Banning (1967), starring Robert Wagner, Anjanette Comer, Jill St. John, and a pre-fame Gene Hackman. Some foreign-language titles, like Claude Fournier's Deux femmes en or (1970), bottom left, used something similar.

MGM didn't much care for letterboxing then. As seen in the old transfer of Jerry Schatzberg's Sweet Revenge (1976), bottom center, they seem to have no compunction about cropping to cut off names in the credits. In this particular bizarre example, they pan across the width of the text. MGM's pan-and-scanning was often the weirdest; their scanning moves feel nervous and very odd. I remember two old MGM VHS transfers of Soylent Green, Westworld, and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (all 1973) where this holds true.

Both Fox (then Magnetic Video, CBS/Fox, Key Video, or Playhouse) and Disney preferred the "squeeze method," as seen in the upper right screen capture of The Swiss Family Robinson (1960). My old tapes of The Robe (1953) and The Big Fisherman (1959), both big CinemaScope Biblical epics, feature some fantastic "squeezeplay," but Swiss Family Robinson is the only one I had handy. My Robe is a two-tape set (for a 135-minute picture -- anything over two hours was put on two cassettes in those early days).
I remember some Columbia/Tristar transfers in the 90's in which the scanning moves were in serious need of "Video Dramamine"; they would blur the motion with impunity, giving the feeling of motion sickness. Ghostbusters (1984) and Multiplicity (1996) leap to mind in this case.

Then, there is border-boxing for non-anamorphic titles, as seen in the screen capture from Ivan Nagy's Deadly Hero (1975), distributed on Embassy Home Video. Who knows why they opted for this? Did they just think it looked cool?

Charles B. Pierce: Portrait of an Arkansas Maverick

On April 17, Filmmaker Magazine ran my lengthy piece on Arkansas regional filmmaker Charles B. Pierce (1938-2010), director of The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972), Winterhawk (1975), The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976), Grayeagle (1977), and many others.  Placing Pierce's films within a larger context of American regional filmmaking old and new, I consider the potential impact of such endeavors and how Pierce realized the "art of the possible" with his films.

Raise Your Kids on Seltzer (2015) and Sophisticated Acquintance (2007) Now Available on Fandor!

Daniel Kremer's films Raise Your Kids on Seltzer (2015) and Sophisticated Acquaintance (2007) premiered on Fandor on Friday, March 24, 2017.  They are now available to stream and view.  The films premiered on the site the same day as Richard Linklater's Slacker (1991).

The films will also be available to stream on Amazon.com in one week's time.  Kremer's other Fandor titles (The Idiotmaker's Gravity Tour, A Simple Game of Catch, A Trip to Swadades) are currently available to view on Amazon Streaming.

Says independent cinema icon Rob Nilsson, "Sophisticated Acquaintance is my favorite Daniel Kremer film. Considering his young but already distinguished career, that is really saying something. It's smart, well-performed and innovative, and lets you know that, as a filmmaker, he is for real. He makes films right now and out of thin air. While others try to raise money for a film and complain, Kremer raises a few dollars, makes two films, writes a book and gives thanks. He's unstoppable...and on his way up!"

This is the first time Sophisticated Acquaintance (2007) has been publicly shown in its ten-year history. The lo-fi feature, shot on consumer-grade mini-DV, is a hybrid of essay-film, pseudo-documentary, avant-garde, and melodrama, inspired by Ken Russell's early BBC biopics, as well as Peter Watkins' masterpiece Edvard Munch (1973). Kremer began shooting it as his first feature-length film in 2006. In 2007, he shelved an early cut of it, only to finally finish it ten years later in May 2016.

It is the Internet debut for Raise Your Kids on Seltzer.

A Sudden Burst of Activity and Publicity

A still from Daniel Kremer's untitled seventh feature film, currently shooting.

Daniel Kremer was recently profiled in a piece for CineSource Magazine.  He discusses his various endeavors in filmmaking and film writing.  Subjects of conversation include: the approaching spring festival release of Ezer Kenegdo (2017), the ten years it took to finally complete Sophisticated Acquaintance (2007), and the renewed efforts to promote Raise Your Kids on Seltzer (2015).

Bricolage Films, the seven-person San Francisco Bay Area filmmaking collective that Kremer helped spearhead, now has a website.  Doniphan Blair is writing a piece for CineSource covering the group's efforts; it is to run in February.

Kremer was also interviewed about his book Sidney J. Furie: Life and Films for Paul Rowlands's cinema blog Money Into Light.  Read part one and part two.

This past month, critic/essayist Julie Kirgo and Oscar nominated documentarian Nick Redman conscripted Kremer -- as Joan Micklin Silver's biographer -- to provide an essay for the upcoming Twilight Time Blu Ray release of Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979). The piece is comprised largely extracts from the book-in-progress Joan Micklin Silver: From Hester Street to Hollywood.  You can read part one, part two, and part three online.  Kremer plans to finish the first draft of his manuscript in the summer of 2017.

Kremer was also interviewed on Microbudget Film Lab.  You can watch that video interview here.

He also continues to work on the Susan Sontag on Cinema collection with Tom Luddy and David Thomson.

On April 17, Filmmaker Magazine ran my lengthy piece on Arkansas regional filmmaker Charles B. Pierce (1938-2010), director of The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972), Winterhawk (1975), The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976), Grayeagle (1977), and many others.  Placing Pierce's films within a larger context of American regional filmmaking old and new, I consider the potential impact of such endeavors and how Pierce realized the "art of the possible" with his films.

On February 7, Kremer guest-hosts a Projection Booth podcast on Jerry Schatzberg's masterpiece Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1970).  The show features new interviews with Schatzberg and the film's male lead, Barry Primus.  The following week, on February 14, he guest-hosts an episode on Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979).  Interviewees include Joan Micklin Silver, John Heard, Griffin Dunne, and producer Amy Robinson.  These shows will mark Kremer's third and fourth guest appearances on the show, following episodes on Sidney J. Furie's Hit! (1973) and The Entity (1982).

Kremer and cinematographer Aaron Hollander are hard at work shooting a new microbudget feature film throughout San Francisco, lensed in black-and-white and based on an obscure American novel from 1799.  The film stars Alexander Hero, Ravi Valleti, Raul Delarosa, Randall Zielinski, Catherine Lerza, Tiziana Perinotti, Penny Werner, Lionel Desai, Lindsay Fishkin, and Kris Calagirone.  Kremer also appears in a supporting role in indie film icon Rob Nilsson's latest feature drama The Fourth Movement, currently shooting.

The Toronto Film Review approached Kremer to provide a list of his Top 100 Canadian Films. The Toronto International Film Festival director Piers Handling, Cinematheque Quebecois director Marcel Jean, leading Canadian film scholar Yves Lever, and other key figures provided their own lists for this review.

Kremer also published pieces in Filmmaker Magazine and Keyframe on the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of Sidney J. Furie's A Cool Sound from Hell (1959) and his efforts to "evangelize" Sidney J. Furie's tragically underrated and often forgotten body of work.



Kremer's Raise Your Kids on Seltzer (2015) has scored excellent reviews at Unsung Films, IndyRed, Rogue Cinema, and other review sites.  Some key excerpts:

"From the beginning, the viewer finds himself piecing everything together slowly but with great eagerness. The director, Daniel Kremer, feeds in small doses of coherence until the picture is wholly clear. The stunning naturalness of the dialogue, the actors, the quiet poignancy of each scene, allows us to approach the film as though it were a dense novel. What is wholly clear from the beginning, however, is that the story unraveling is one that deals with an array of profound issues – Daniel Kremer opens his film on a Borges quote, 'To fall in love is to start a religion that has a fallible god' and an interview of an attorney being questioned on the cult of his defendant. Scenes shift with perfect fluidity. There are moments of extraordinary storytelling in this film, and the talent of the actors to make us believe them is abundant."
   -Theo Alexander, Unsung Films

"[It] gives any larger budgeted counterparts a run for their money. Let the odd name make you stop and look, but let the quality keep you in your seat. Technically, there really isn't much to complain about here. Raise Your Kids On Seltzer generally offers up some nice visual candy. As far as indie productions go, I reiterate, some more budget heavy productions I've seen simply don't stack up to what's presented here. This is all pieced together with a very slick edit that keeps the narrative flowing nicely, while showcasing the best aspects. What are they? For me it was a no brainer...the cast of course! Never did I feel like I was watching a scripted film. Would I recommend it? Yes. I would even go as far as to say I would buy myself a DVD."
   -IndyRed
"The heart of the film exists in the naturalistic dialogue and domestic details painted by Penny Werner and Jeff Kao. They make amazing choices with their characters and the collaborative writing process yields very specific moments. The scenes between them crackle with authentic intimacy. They play the married couple as complex individuals who are genuinely curious about each other and their dreams. While Raise Your Kids on Seltzer is an ambitious and sometimes unwieldy effort, it is grounded by strong editing, solid 2.35:1 cinematography, and most importantly by the profoundly moving performances."
   -Paul Busetti, Rogue Cinema 

"There is self-assurance to the direction. The relationship between Terry and Tessa is strained and feels it, sometimes almost too well; one feels that awkward moment at a party when a couple snipe just a little too personally at one another. While that may make the viewer feel a little bit put off, that’s as it should be; if you’re going to make a movie about a relationship that is strained, the viewer should feel that strain as well. Penny Werner is mainly at the front and center as the emotional focus of the film. Werner is outgoing and an open book in many ways. Her Tessa is the kind of Jewish woman that makes the world a better place; she’s funny, pretty and pragmatic."
   -Carlos deVillalvilla, Cinema365



Daniel Kremer's films Raise Your Kids on Seltzer (2015) and Sophisticated Acquaintance (2007) premiered on Fandor on Friday, March 24, 2017.  They are now available to stream and view.  The films premiered on the site the same day as Richard Linklater's Slacker (1991).

The films will also soon be available to stream on Amazon.com.  Kremer's other Fandor titles (The Idiotmaker's Gravity Tour, A Simple Game of Catch, A Trip to Swadades) are currently available to view on Amazon Streaming. 

Says independent cinema icon Rob Nilsson, "Sophisticated Acquaintance is my favorite Daniel Kremer film. Considering his young but already distinguished career, that is really saying something. It's smart, well-performed and innovative, and lets you know that, as a filmmaker, he is for real. He makes films right now and out of thin air. While others try to raise money for a film and complain, Kremer raises a few dollars, makes two films, writes a book and gives thanks. He's unstoppable...and on his way up!"

This is the first time Sophisticated Acquaintance (2007) has been publicly shown in its ten-year history. The lo-fi feature, shot on consumer-grade mini-DV, is a hybrid of essay-film, pseudo-documentary, avant-garde, and melodrama, inspired by Ken Russell's early BBC biopics, as well as Peter Watkins' masterpiece Edvard Munch (1973). Kremer began shooting it as his first feature-length film in 2006. In 2007, he shelved an early cut of it, only to finally finish it ten years later in May 2016.

It is the Internet debut for Raise Your Kids on Seltzer