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Revenge and stoners

Brett Ratner, 42 (“Rush Hour”), the director of the “Tower Heist,” must be thanking his lucky stars that he stuck with this action-comedy film for six long years as plans to make it fell through. Now, the movie, which opens Friday, Nov. 4, seems “ripped from the headlines” — with echoes of the Bernie Madoff and other Wall Street scandals.

Ben Stiller, 45, stars as Jason Kovacs, a building manager. A Wall Street billionaire, Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), who lives in the penthouse of the building Kovacs manages, is under house arrest for stealing $2 billion from investors. The pension fund of the building’s employees has been wiped out by Shaw. Kovacs enlists his brother-in-law (Casey Affleck), a Wall Street investor whom Shaw bankrupted (Matthew Broderick, 49) and a small-time thief (Eddie Murphy) in a scheme to steal

$20 million in cash Shaw stashed in the penthouse. Judd Hirsch, 76, has a supporting role.

Opening the same day is “A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas.” Former college students Harold (John Cho) and Kumar Patel (Kal Penn) have grown apart in the six years since we last saw them. The movie opens with Kumar getting a package of marijuana that he re-directs to Harold’s house.  A series of mishaps results in the pot and Harold’s father-in-law’s prize Christmas tree going up in smoke. The duo then spend Christmas Eve searching all of New York City for a replacement tree. Neil Patrick Harris co-stars, with “Harold and Kumar” regulars David Krumholtz, 33, and Eddie Kaye Thomas, 31, reprising their roles as the stoners Goldstein and Rosenberg.

The director is Todd Schulson-Strauss, 31, who is making his feature film debut. Soon after graduating college, he began directing acclaimed music videos for top acts. In the last six years, he has directed a slew of short films and TV shows starring big names such as Stephen Colbert, Lewis Black, Jackie Mason and Richard Belzer. While it’s often difficult to confirm that a first-time feature director is Jewish, Schulson-Strauss is an exception: The first line of his bio page on his website says, “Ever since his grandfather gave him a video camera for his bar mitzvah (after years of relentless pestering), Todd has been a one-man movie-making machine — directing, writing, shooting and editing all of his own work.”

 

Marlo’s memoir

Speaking of Ben Stiller — he is one of 20 prominent comedians who is interviewed by actress Marlo Thomas in her 2010 book, “Growing Up Laughing.” Now available in paperback, this book is an inventive combination of personal memoir and interviews, and it is a delightful gem, chock-full of funny and interesting anecdotes.

Thomas, 73, is, of course, the daughter of the late comedian-singer-actor Danny Thomas. As Marlo notes, her father, who was the child of Catholic Lebanese parents, was often taken to be Jewish for his stereotypically Semitic looks. Also, in 1952, he played the lead in a remake of “The Jazz Singer,” about a Jew torn between his faith and his career.

Marlo notes that the vast majority of Danny’s friends and business associates were Jewish. Many of them, such as George Burns and Jack Benny, belonged to the Hillcrest Country Club, a Los Angeles club founded in the early 1930s by show-biz Jews who were barred from the area’s no-Jews-allowed clubs. I was surprised to learn that the Hillcrest, in turn, barred non-Jews from membership, so Danny Thomas was not allowed to join — although he was a constant guest.

Eventually, the club board voted to make Thomas “an honorary member.” Groucho Marx, Marlo notes, had the most memorable comment at the meeting to approve Danny’s membership. Tongue-in-cheek, Groucho said, “I don’t mind making a non-Jew an honorary member. But couldn’t we at least pick a guy who doesn’t look so Jewish?”

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