Is this film anti-Semitic?

I received the following email earlier this week.

To Arnon Shorr:

We have seen your movie “A Modest Suggestion”. You asked us to comment on the movie. Our comments are as follows:
• I ordered the DVD because we believed in you and we wanted you to be honored with work that you created.
• The title of the movie is very deceiving.
• Had we known what it was about, we would have never purchased the movie.
• Now that we have seen the movie, we need to let you know our feelings about it.
o We believe the movie is very disturbing and anti Semitic.
o It gives very unsafe ideas to the world.
o How could any Jew possibly be associated with degrading the Jews as shown in the movie?
o How could any Jew make a movie about killing Jews?
o It appears in the movie that killing Jews was OK.
o This is very dangerous for Jews all over the world.
o As a holocaust survivor watching this movie, it was extremely upsetting.
o It has only been about 70 years since Hitler got the very same idea, Kill the Jews.
o We are very upset and concerned that all of the anti Semitics who watch this film will be encouraged to do what was shown in the film.
o The killer did not show remorse and the other three morons went along with him, making it appear that it was OK to kill Jews.
• Are these the ideas that you wanted to give to the world?
• What kind of lesson were you teaching the world?

On behalf of all of the Jews in the world, we strongly urge you to withdraw the film from circulation immediately.

In view of our comments above, we chose not to comment on the quality of the director’s and the producer’s work.

We hope you seriously consider the comments above and remove the film from circulation.

Regretfully,

A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR and HER HUSBAND



In my response, I explained the film's intended purpose. It is a satire, meant to lampoon anti-Semites by exposing the ridiculous illogic at the foundation of anti-Semitism. It's not an uplifting story of redemption and peace. It's a dark exposee: anti-Semitism often triumphs, even though it has no basis in truth. We are not removing the film from circulation. I thanked them for their candid letter, and invited further feedback.

That said, I've lost a lot of sleep these past few nights, bothered by this email. Ultimately, the meaning of a film has nothing to do with the director's intentions. It's the audience that must decide. Is "A Modest Suggestion" an anti-Semitic manifesto, or a satire on anti-Semitism? I know what I intended, but I don't think that matters nearly as much as what you see, and as such, I'm eager to read your comments here.

-Arnon Z. Shorr
Director, "A Modest Suggestion"

SketchUp and Storyboarding

I've been using SketchUp as a tool for storyboarding on this project. It's my first attempt at storyboarding anything without actually drawing each frame by hand. Initially, I considered keeping the entire process digital, exporting individual images from my 3D model of the set for each shot in the film, creating a digital sequence that would serve as a sort of animatic. That process was a bit of a flop. If there was a button I could press that would basically snap a photo of my view in SketchUp and save it as a sequentially-numbered image file (perhaps with the option of adding some notes?) that might have worked out better, but as things go, it's such a tedious process to align each shot, and to save each individual file.

Instead of this, I devised a hybrid method that combines my tried-and-true pencil-and-paper method with the promise of digital previsualization.

First, I sat down with the script and devised a general visual approach to each act of the narrative. This "lens plot" (inspired by Sidney Lumet's approach, described in his wonderful book, "Making Movies") served as a guideline for what shots I would or would not include in a given scene.

Second, I took that "lens plot" and used SketchUp to create most of the shots that I would use -- in this instance, medium shots, wide shots, shots with very few angles. I made about ten or twelve image files, and printed them all, nine images to a page. I cut these out and arranged them in stacks.

Third, I storyboarded. Instead of drawing a shot by hand, I grabbed a picture from a pile and taped it on to my storyboarding page. I wrote in notes, drew in arrows for camera movements, and folded the little papers to form tighter shots.

Aside from the obvious benefit to my writing hand, this process had an aesthetic impact, and will have a logistical impact as well.

By having before me a limited array of shots, I was 'forced' to tell the story from a limited number of vantage points. Rather than confining me, this limitation allowed me to approach the scene more fluidly -- every available shot is part of a broader scheme, so, in a way, any shot I choose would be "correct". I didn't have to worry so much about whether a shot would fit in the scene's context. I only had to focus on the way each shot related to its immediate context, and to the character and the moment.

The logistical impact may be obvious -- by limiting my choices of camera angles, I'm also limiting the number of setups that will be necessary on the set. This will give us more time to focus on performances, and the nuances of camera position, lighting, sound, etc.

Now that the first act is storyboarded, I've got to think about how to approach the 2nd and 3rd acts. They involve more movement, both in terms of the characters and in terms of the camera. Will this approach work for these more fluid scenes? I'm not entirely sure yet, but I'll find out soon...

-Arnon Shorr

Director, "A Modest Suggestion"