RE: [Cz-L]Twenty Two Thousand Saints - From the horse's mouth...

Andy...

As increasingly I have to explain to Jewish friends from Romania the (unrealistic) background for the press campaign in Romania related to this item, I don't agree at all to "keep disinformation going", as in my opinion at the end of the day our own credibilty will be damaged. I'm sorry to say, but I don't think either, that your initial press release was unambiguous. However thank you for your clarification!

Best wishes!

Edgar Hauster
Lent - The Netherlands

http://hauster.blogspot.com/

----------------------------------------
> Subject: [Cz-L]Twenty Two Thousand Saints - From the horse's mouth...
> From: andy_venivici_at_yahoo.com
> To: czernowitz-l_at_list.cornell.edu
> CC: andy_venivici_at_yahoo.com
> Date: Sun, 6 Mar 2011 21:02:12 -0800
>
> Meine Lieben Czernowitzer:
>
> Regarding the storm in the teacup in the Romanian press announcing that
> Dustin Hoffman is Jewish and that his parents are from Romania and that
> he has signed up to play Popovici in our film, Romanian journalists are
> highly imaginative.
>
> I will copy here the press release that I had sent out in January which
> snowballed into this mountain of misinformation. One doesn’t send out
> such releases so early in the game but I was hoping to find another
> co-producer and that part of the release, as well as other meaningful
> parts, may have got lost in translation.
>
> If any of you lived in America between 1957 and 1962 you may remember
> Jack Parr on the Tonight Show and a little routine they frequently
> played in which they would bring out Jose Melis, Jack’s musical
> director, who had a thick Latin accent. Jack would tell Jose a joke
> which Jose would retell in Spanish to a Berlitz teacher who would in
> turn tell it in German or Czech to another teacher who would tell it to
> another fellow in yet another language who then would retell it to Jack
> in English and, of course, there was nothing left in the joke that
> related to the original.
>
> I note in the Romanian text of the Hoffman-Popovici story that Reuters
> is credited as the source. That’s very interesting since I didn’t send
> it to Reuters. But Reuters may have a stringer in Romania who received
> it from me or from one of the sources to which I’d sent the release.
> Reuters, as most of you doubtlessly know, is a famous, independent, 150
> year old news service which surprised many in journalism back in 2007 by
> selling 53% of itself to the Thompson publishers which provide financial
> information to banks and financial institutions. Thompson, a Canadian
> company, had a chain of ma & pa newspapers as well as some big ones but
> sold them and got into financial info which I hope sticks more to facts
> than their folks in Romania just did or their subscriber banks and
> financial institutions will be led down a garden path.
>
> Yes, Dustin is Jewish and his parents may be from Romania. For all I
> know, they may be from Cz. I had no intention of approaching Dustin or
> his agents before I had a completed screenplay to show him and nothing
> in my press release stated that he had committed to play Popovici.
>
> No one, in fact, will play Popovici because the film’s story takes place
> in the present - we will hear stories about him from a Romanian
> historian and from Holocaust survivors who survived because of Popovici.
> Hardy, in his own confusion, showed great concern about Dustin shaving
> his head in an impersonation of Popovici. But this is an interesting
> idea and, if we do get Dustin, I’ll try to persuade him to shave his
> head for the role since he is in reality ten years too young for the
> role I have in mind and a bald head would help age him and give him an
> entirely new look.
>
> If you go to Google and type in “Hoffman, Romania, Popovici,” you will
> find basically the same story in Romanian and English and German in
> countless publications and websites with the same misinformation – a
> mother lode of free press which is of no help to the project at this
> point. My own projection of getting into production before the end of
> the year is unrealistically optimistic so we might all relax and go back
> to nice exchanges of Czernowitzer recipes, genealogy and travel tips.
>
> Here is the original release:
>
> -----
> “Twenty Two Thousand Saints”
> In Development by Veni Vici Entertainment
> to Film in Romania, the Ukraine & Israel
>
> Toronto- based Veni Vici Entertainment Inc is developing a feature
> length docudrama focused on Traian Popovici, the man known as Romania’s
> Schindler, who saved sixteen times as many lives as Schindler did.
>
> In the film a number of Holocaust survivors who survived thanks to
> Popovici are united when they come to Romania for the unveiling of
> Popovici's statue. While there, they share their personal stories of
> survival made possible by Popovici's courage. A cast of international
> actors may be headed by Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman.
>
> Popovici, son of a Romanian Orthodox priest, was mayor of Cernauti in
> Romania, now Chernivtsi in the Ukraine. Shortly after his appointment in
> 1941, German troops entered Romania. On orders from Prime Minister
> Antonescu, the governor of Bucovina created a ghetto in that city and
> began deportation of town's Jews to an area in the Ukraine which became
> a type of concentration camp from which few survived.
>
> Disregarding risk to himself, Popovici protested to the governor and to
> the Prime Minister that the Jews were vital to the city’s well-being.
> His ruse succeeded and he was allowed to issue permits to up to 5,000
> Jews in essential services. Popovici, however, continued issuing permits
> totaling over 19,000 thus saving as many lives.
>
> It cost him his job. More than twenty years after his death in 1946,
> Popovici was honored by Israel’s Yad Vashem as a Righteous Among the
> Nations, the first Romanian to be awarded this distinction.
>
> Yad Vashem has documented and honored over 22,000 heroic non-Jews in 44
> countries who risked their own lives to help save the lives of Holocaust
> victims during the war.
>
> Andy Halmay, head of Veni Vici Entertainment, states, “The film pays
> tribute to the heroic good guys of history who could not stand by when
> gross injustice was perpetrated by evil forces during dark periods in
> history.”
>
> Veni Vici is in co-production talks with Vienna based British producer
> Philip Moran. An Eastern European producer may be added to make up a
> tripartite under the official co-production treaty between Canada and
> fifty other countries.
>
> A book of the same title, “Twenty Two Thousand Saints,” will be
> published by Virtue World Press in advance of the film release.
>
> The film is slated to get into production late this year and to be
> released in 2012
> -----
>
> Andy
>
>
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Received on 2011-03-10 05:14:19