Sharing Vision, Life, Work -- and Clothes: An Interview with Eytan Fox and Gal Uchovsky

Interview by David Horowitz

Professional collaborators and life partners for 18 years, director Eytan Fox and writer/producer/journalist Gal Uchovsky are the creative team behind some of Israel's most commercially successful and internationally acclaimed contemporary films.

In honor of the 10th Anniversary of the Washington DCJCC at 16th & Q, WJFF is thrilled to inaugurate the WJFF Decade Award; Eytan Fox is the first recipient of the award.

I spoke with Eytan and Gal at the DCJCC on Friday afternoon.


Combined Filmography

The Bubble, 2006 (Fox, Director; Uchovsky, Writer/Producer)

Walk on Water, 2004 (Fox, Director; Uchovsky, Writer/Producer)
(screening at WJFF 17 on Saturday, December 2, 2006 at 9:50 pm at the DCJCC)

Yossi & Jagger, 2002 (Fox, Director; Uchovsky, Producer)
(screening at WJFF 17 on Thursday, November 30, 2006 at 9:15 pm at the DCJCC and on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 1:00 pm at the DCJCC)

Gotta Have Heart, 1997 (Fox Director; Uchovsky, Writer)

Florentene, 1997 (Fox, Director; Uchovsky, Writer)
(screening at WJFF 17 on Sunday, December 3, 2006 at 7:00 pm at Busboys and Poets)

Song of the Siren, 1994 (Fox, Director)

Time Off, 1990 (Fox, Director)


On Saturday evening at WJFF, you are being honored with the inaugural WJFF Decade Award. This year’s Toronto catalog described you as “Israel’s most interesting, courageous, taboo-busting young filmmaker”. Would you agree with that assessment? Why do you think they are describing you that way?

Gal: Of course it’s their point of view; we’re very honored and appreciative about it.

Eytan: Because we’re dealing with different taboos and issues that are important to Israelis in ways that, maybe, are not like the ways these issues were dealt with in the past. For example, introducing a gay love story into the Israeli Army. A lot of Israeli films have soldiers as their heroes and main characters. To do this was kind of shattering the holy shrine of Israeli society, masculinity. Suddenly you’re saying maybe things aren’t exactly the way they look. Maybe there are different ways to exist within Israeli society and within the Israeli Army. With The Bubble, where you have these different relationships between Israelis and Palestinians, you have a love relationship between an Israeli guy and a Palestinian guy. The films have been successful with younger crowds in Israel. The films have left a mark outside of Israel.

One of the things I was getting at with this question was: did you set out to be the "taboo-buster", did you set out to challenge society, or perhaps did you decide that you just wanted to portray (and there aren’t just two options, I’m only saying this for illustration) a narrative, and characters and a story, and because you were portraying a group of people’s everyday lives, it was groundbreaking simply because these were countercultural people, and the characters were just being themselves, and it was groundbreaking because the mainstream wasn’t ready to see that in a film?

Gal: That's it exactly. Yet we feel very mainstream, we feel being gay, the way we are, we have never felt like big rebels. Although we didn’t think that we changed all the views in Israel, we did it from the point of view that we’re part of everything, and it’s so obvious that they will accept us. Most of our movies don’t come from the point of view of “let’s shock them”, but we’re trying to do the kinds of things we’re interested in, and we’re always standing with one leg inside the mainstream, and one leg trying to push the rope a little bit.

Do you think that because of that mainstream appeal that’s why your films have been so successful both in Israel and here? Because, of course there are filmmakers who are on the other side of that fence. John Waters comes to mind, his style is to always be pushing the envelope, doing outrageous things in his films, but using the real characters that he finds and writes. He has many followers because he does things as outrageously as possible, but there are also many people who won’t see his films.

Eytan: And that also is not because we’ve decided, "Hey, let’s be more commercial, and that we have all these issues we want to bring forward, but let’s do it, let’s manipulate the audience, we’ll wrap it in this kind of mainstream, easy-to-digest kind of coating." I could see that kind of approach. I have all these issues I want to bring to a larger audience, it’s not enough for me to “convince the convinced”. I want to reach all these people and take these issues, and bring them forth.

Gal: If we wanted to make money, we definitely wouldn’t be doing anything gay – we would just do a romantic comedy between a man and a woman, something with more commercial potential. The other thing is that we’re telling stories that are very important to us, close to us, stories of our lives. There’s always something in the movie that is about us. In The Bubble, it goes even to the places and details where the clothes are ours. Every character that we have is us in some way - something they said, something they wear. It’s a very artistic, personal thing, our films. That’s why they are our characters, and in portraying them you can somehow understand us more, as well.

Eytan: Some of the criticism that we get in Israel is that our films are too Americanized, because the movie-making style is “too nice”. But that’s us, that’s not something we’re doing consciously to reach a larger audience. We’ve been accused of portraying these assimilated characters, these sweet, nice, conventional gay people, without flamboyance, etc. That’s not our thinking. We’re thinking, let’s bring along the people that we really know. The people that are our close friends and family, bring them and whatever happens, happens. The realism and the story of what's being portrayed will make the audience identify with, sympathize with, and understand the issues and the characters.


EARLY INFLUENCES

You were born in the US and moved to Israel when you were 2, is that correct? What brought you/your family to Israel, and do you think that gave you a uniquely different perspective on Israel?

Eytan: Yes, I was 2. My parents moved to Israel because they were Zionists who wanted to make aliyah and my father got a good job offer at Hebrew University and their three sons were born in the States, and we all moved to Israel. That’s actually another film that we’re developing, about a Jewish-American couple, moving to Israel in 1967, before the war. A lot of American Jews moved to Israel after the war. My first childhood memories were from when I was, like, 3, and I remember scenes from the war, like being in a bomb shelter in Jerusalem in the 1967 War. And my parents coping with moving to such a different world – Israel in the 1960s was so different than Manhattan at the time.

And Gal, you were born in Israel?

Gal: Yes, I am Israeli born.

Eytan, you attended Tel Aviv University’s School of Film and Television? What did you focus on in film school? Which filmmakers/artists would you say influenced your vision and style the most?

Eytan: Well, when you get these questions, it’s always crazy. I have so many filmmakers and movies and influences that I like. Robert Altman was probably the biggest…when I saw Nashville and McCabe and Mrs. Miller as a teenager in The Jerusalem Cinematheque, I can remember coming out of the National Cinematheque and saying “I want to be able to make something as great and influential as that.”

Gal: Three weeks ago we were in Italy, and we were walking in a little street in Pisa and there was a DVD store, and the film McCabe and Mrs. Miller was on sale there, and we bought it. And two weeks later, on the evening Altman died, we had a tribute to him and watched all his old movies.

Eytan: And on the plane we saw A Prairie Home Companion, such a beautiful film, and there are so few films made that way today. The filmmaking that I grew up on, Coppola, Scorsese, Woody Allen films of the 70s. American auteurs of the 70s, they are really my favorites. So are the musicals, my parents loved American musicals, Singing in the Rain, all of those are things I loved as a kid.

Gal: And I grew up on The Sound of Music. The funny truth was that when I was little, my parents went to Austria for a couple of years, and my father studied there, so I spent, like, 5 years of my childhood there, and when I came back, I sounded very Austrian in Israel, and then The Sound of Music came along, and I thought it was about me! In high school, we did the play so many times.


PROFESSIONAL COLLABORATION AS A COUPLE

What would you say are the advantages of working together as both professional and personal partners? How about the challenges? How did you two meet? How long have you been a couple?

Gal: We have been together 18 years. It was a shiddukh (an “arranged match”).

Eytan: I was a film student at the time, and I was asked to direct the event for the first Israeli Academy Awards. It was a very big project. I hired a bunch of students and alumni, and we organized this big event. The producer was a graduate of the production department, and she was Gal’s best friend, and they were talking about me, and …

Gal: She was telling me she got this job, and she had met this very hot guy, and everybody says he’s so talented and so nice and everything, and then I saw her a week later and I asked her about him, "So?" And she said "Oh wonderful, we’ve been meeting and talking a lot." And I asked “Well, have you slept together yet?” And she said “No, why?” And I said “Well, because you said he’s handsome,” and she said “Yeah, well you know, that’s funny, it never came up in conversation!” And I said “Well, if it never came up, maybe that will be good news for me!” And the rest is history…

Eytan: So she got us together. Gal was already a very well-known writer for Ha-Ir (“The City”, a Village Voice-like newspaper in Tel Aviv), writing about culture, music, theater, film, and I was still a student. And then I started my career as a filmmaker and Gal was still very much in journalism. He became the Editor of Ha-Ir and he wrote for different newspapers as a music critic, and slowly he came into my world and I wanted to make use of his writing abilities, and he started working with me on the films. Our first collaboration was on Florentene, Gal wrote some of the episodes, and then we continued with Gotta Have Heart. And then we became collaborators when he co-produced Yossi & Jagger, and then for Walk on Water he was the producer and writer, and for The Bubble we co-wrote the film and he co-produced it.

Gal: It’s challenging working together as a couple, but it’s what we decided to do. These projects are our children, this is what our family produces. We have been a family for many years now, and I think, as a family, you need to produce something. For us, the good thing is we are producing art, it is something that connects to us, that belongs to both us. These products are made out of elements of both of us. Of course, there is a downside too. When you work somewhere, usually, when you have a hard day at work, if you have a fight at work, then you come home, and you put your head on your spouse’s shoulder and you feel better when you can complain about your coworkers. When you work together, of course, it's different. It’s about symbiosis. The thing about gay couples, I think, is that they are very similar to straight couples who do not have children. After many years without children, this symbiosis develops, and you become one entity, and it’s very hard for each person to find their own place as an individual. And if you work together, it’s ten times harder.

Eytan: It’s a journey, and we’re still here, so I guess it's working (laughs). We try to avoid spending 24/7 together. We have kind of a system, there are periods when we really work together – for example developing the script together -- but then when I go off to shoot the film, Gal is not around. Then when we promote the film, we work on that separately, Gal will go to his festivals and I’ll go to mine. It can become very difficult otherwise.

Gal: It comes from needing to have your own space, not so much a need to cover different festivals efficiently. He doesn’t like me on the set, because he likes to have his own space for that part of the work. He is entitled to have his daily anxieties and his artistic moments on his own. I operate more easily with the world, so daily routines like promotion, production sales, etc., I try to shield him from that because it would drive him crazy. But for me, it’s food. And we wear the same clothes – we’re the same size.


GLBT THEMES

GLBT film developed here in the US and elsewhere against a backdrop of increased production of independent films, in general, beginning in the late 80s, and the growth of film festivals. In the GLBT community, we were virtually starved for images of our lives until the explosion of GLBT filmmaking in the 90s.

Gay films with positive images were so rare when I came out in the mid-80s, that I can remember them all clearly, films like Parting Glances and My Beautiful Laundrette. There are so many more films and television series for the younger generations of gay men and lesbians who are coming out now – frankly, I’m jealous. The same can be said of Jewish films, and films that deal with minority experience of all kinds.

It was much harder for filmmakers 10, 20 years ago. What was your experience making gay-themed films in Israel? Did factors in Israeli society or the Israeli film industry cause you to continue to run into barriers, perhaps later than filmmakers in other countries did?

Eytan: Right, there was no Queer as Folk or Six Feet Under or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy or The L Word then, either. It’s complicated in Israel, you would think because it’s so small, and has religious sides to it, and it's a young macho culture, and it's very uptight about a lot of important issues to deal with like survival, that there would be no room or place to deal with minority issues or gay issues. And it’s also a fearful society about so many issues, "The Other" (whoever that is: Arab, Gay, etc.).

Gal: And being a small country means it’s easier for you as individuals to reach people. So if you’re integrated into the mainstream of Israeli society as we are, then the point that we are gay isn’t really the point. Israel is a little less conservative than America; the glass ceilings are different. In Israel, when they look at the two of us, and we wanted to do one of our first films, a straight romantic comedy (Song of the Siren), it was very successful, then we said we wanted to make a youth-oriented series for television (Florentene) and then they liked it of course. And then we said we wanted to do a gay character, and so, bit by bit, things got easier and barriers were broken. Florentene was a funny story. It was the first gay kiss on primetime Israeli TV, so when we were editing, everybody was standing behind Eytan in the room, all the executives, they were, you know, like making it cut at exactly a certain time. Then a year later, they loved it and were ready to take it a step further.

Eytan: When Florentene played Jewish film festivals in the States like in 1997, before HBO series and all these gay shows…people were so shocked that we had this show in Israel with an explicit gay male relationship. It’s this interesting thing about Israel. Gal used to say, Israel is so concerned with these terrible questions of life and death. "His son is gay? At least he’s alive!"

Gal: The concept of the young, dead soldier is central to the Israeli psyche: the most beautiful, handsome, talented in his generation. He is your father, your brother, your neighbor, your best friend. It’s so central to Israeli thinking that everything else is not that bad, in comparison. The thinking goes, as long as everybody is alive, being gay is not such an issue as it has been in the US. It’s an oxymoron, but it’s easier to be gay in Israel than in America.

Eytan: But of course when we started it was much more difficult. I made Time Out (my first film) as a student, so it was easier, I was free to do whatever I wanted to. But then when I came out into the world and I was working on my first feature film, maybe one of the reasons I made Song of the Siren not as a personal film with gay characters, was the fact that I was afraid I was dealing with the real industry, the real world. But then we made Florentene and I think we really were part of a big change in Israel.

Gal: The thing about Israeli society, somehow, is it’s not very traditional. For example, if you were to ask somebody "What do you think about transgender people?" In 1997, they would say, "That is different, that is odd, I don't understand that." But then they got to know Dana International, who became a very big celebrity in Israel after winning the Eurovision Song Contest, and suddenly, everyone was saying, "Yes, it's great, transgender people should be celebrated and appreciated." And with Yossi and Jagger, when we made it, this thing about the Israeli Army, the center of Israeli society, this film has these two commanders of the Israeli army and they are both gay, everyone was saying, "Oy Vey". Now, five years later, when they did their withdrawal from Gaza, that’s become our favorite story of the moment, our biggest accomplishment.

When they did the withdrawal from Gaza a year ago, there were two guys in charge of it. One was the head of the Army in the area, and one was the head of the Police in the area. And they were in charge of this operation. And they became these big local heroes in Israel, and they became Men of the Year because the operation went so well, and nobody was killed on the Jewish side. And at the end of the year they had this big interview for one of the big daily newspapers. And one of them was asked to describe their most intimate moments during the exercise, what were their emotions, what were they feeling. And they said there was this one day after they finished work in this village, and everybody was gone, the protesters, the soldiers, and everything had been demolished, there were fires everywhere, and they were standing there next to the synagogue at sundown, and it was very sad, and they were standing very close to each other and they reported that "It had felt like Yossi & Jagger".

In the same way that Brokeback Mountain’s success in the US has become a popular cultural metaphor here for closeness between men?

Eytan: Exactly, it’s this measure of Yossi & Jagger's cultural success in Israel – it’s the only reference the culture has for intimacy between soldiers.

Have you ever felt stereotyped as the “gay” director, has it impacted your ability to do some of the projects you have wanted to do?

Eytan: No, not really. I am considered "the Israeli gay director", but that's OK with me. I'm happy with that. Usually it's the opposite, people are trying to get me to make films that don't have gay characters or gay stories.

Gal: The thing is, when talking about the Israeli filmmaking community, it's really small and you don't have that many good directors. So when you have somebody like Eytan, people are going to ask him why he can't do a romantic heterosexual comedy and sell more tickets. So, the pressure is the other way around.


MILITARY THEMES

Compulsory military service is a universal social experience in Israel, and several of your films have looked at homosexuality in the IDF [Israel Defence Forces]. In the US, of course, we have the hypocritical “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and a mostly volunteer military service.

Yossi & Jagger, which shattered the taboo of a gay relationship between two men in the IDF, was a landmark film in Israel. In the US, very few films have been made about GLBT soldiers’ experience. Two films that come to mind – both were made-for-TV dramatizations and had limited audiences -- are 1995’s Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story (with Glenn Close, about a lesbian officer, a 20-year decorated veteran, who was involuntarily discharged) and 2003’s Soldier’s Girl (about the brutal murder on an Army base of Barry Winchell, a 21-year-old soldier who was romantically involved with a transgender performer).

Winchell’s 1999 murder was classified as a hate crime, yet one of his assailants was released from prison in October 2006 after serving only a portion of his sentence. A Pentagon survey conducted shortly after the murder revealed that 80% of nearly 72,000 soldiers reported that they had witnessed derogatory remarks against gays. Obviously, we still have a long way to go in the US on this issue. There seems to be little consciousness of these issues, nor efforts to eliminate the abuse and improve the working conditions for GLBT soldiers and officers.

In what ways did Yossi & Jagger have an impact in Israel, and how are things different both in the IDF and Israeli culture at large, now that the issue of homosexuality in the military is out in the open?

Gal: Perhaps we should sell the rights to Yossi & Jagger in the United States?

Only if we can get Yehuda Levi ("Jagger") to play the same part again!

Gal: (Laughs.) He lived in South Africa, so his English accent is good! Seriously, in Israel, because it's mandatory, the Army is viewed universally as almost the most important thing in the Israeli society. So the whole attitude towards the Army is not that it's a "Thing". It's Us. So everything that is Us has to be in the Army as well. So if gays are not discriminated against in society by law, then they should not be discriminated against in the Army, either. The whole attitude is different. Most of the changes that have occurred in the Israeli Army have been regular, individual people causing incremental changes in policies.

For example, there was this guy who was boyfriends with the head of the medical department in the Army, and the guy died, and he sued the Army to become his official widow, and he won his case. And so, all the rules of the Army were ultimately changed, and the Knesset enacted the legislation because of the efforts of the first openly gay MP, Uzi Even. The laws in Israel have been very good for a while now. There is no discrimination legally.

The only discrimination that you get is on a personal basis. And this is what has changed in recent years because of films like Florentene and Yossi & Jagger, because Israeli society is very tolerant and is changing. There are even Army units that are known as very "gay" units, like the intelligence units. A lot of gay people go to those units because of the reputation of them being good units to be in. Yossi & Jagger was a more symbolic thing. We had a screening for soldiers one day. The unit called us and said they wanted to see the film.

Eytan: But we don't want to portray this as a world that is too good to be true. When we started working on Yossi & Jagger, we met with the Army officials whom we had to work with to secure permits and funding arrangements. This was a very low budget film, so we needed their help to secure uniforms, equipment, locations, etc. And when we went to them they said "No". And we asked "Why?" And already they are more sophisticated, they know that they cannot say "The reason we said 'no' is because you are gay." Instead, they said "Because you are breaking the Army rule that forbids a relationship between a soldier and a commanding officer."

Gal: But then later, when we were making The Bubble, we could have done the film without the Army's assistance, but it was going to be easier if we had their "buy-in" and support. So we called the new Army spokeswoman, and we explained how we had told everyone that the Army didn't support our last film, and look at how successful it was, etc., and don't you want to portray a modern, evolved Army? And she decided that the Army would support the film and supply the needed permits, etc.

Eytan: And we succeeded because we had been making these films, and so many people and their families had been affected by these films and other films in the world. And with The Bubble it was harder for them also because it wasn't so much the gay issue as it was the issue of the relationship between a Jew and a Palestinian.


THE BUBBLE

Press coverage of The Bubble during the Toronto International Film Festival in September noted that the film faced boycotts abroad, related to this past summer’s conflict between Israel and Lebanon. Now that things have simmered down in Lebanon, are you experiencing continued difficulties? Are you anticipating any issues with US distribution?

Eytan: No, we're negotiating the distribution right now. I was talking about this in Toronto; before the Toronto film festival, and after what we call the second Lebanese war, you had these film festivals, throughout Europe especially, who were cancelling the participation of Israeli films. I think The Bubble is a film that they would appreciate a little more because it deals with and confronts the issues of Israelis and Palestinians in a very direct way. It will probably be a film that people will argue about.

Gal: The Bubble is not an easy film. I think between the gay aspect and the Jewish aspect, it is something people can relate to a lot. It contains all the things that we always have in our films: interesting topics, new angles.

For example, the fact that most people here in the US probably don't know that Palestinians can't cross the border and enter Tel Aviv. That was eye-opening for me in the film, I didn't realize that.

Gal: Exactly. And I don't think most people are aware that Tel Aviv is such a cosmopolitan place, with a young culture like big cities in the West. And yet, it is still part of the country Israel and has all the political connections and context of that situation.

What is the release schedule for The Bubble in the US?

Gal: That's not finalized yet, but it's going to open in the US sometime in 2007. Either spring or early summer.

Boycotts aside, how was the audience reaction to The Bubble in Toronto?

Eytan: Toronto was wonderful. The screenings were sold out. It was the first screening outside Israel and one of the first screenings, period. You know, as a filmmaker you're very excited, and even though you are full of fear and anxiety, you sit in a screening and it's very rewarding to feel the audience relating to the film, laughing and being moved in certain places, being very emotional. The Q&A was very interesting.

Gal: It was strange, though, Walk on Water was very well-received in both Toronto and in Berlin but somehow with Walk on Water it took everyone a while to admit they liked the movie, especially the festivalgoers. But with The Bubble it was much more emotional. People were crying and saying it was the best film they'd seen, and more emotional sorts of reactions than we got with Walk on Water. The Bubble was more demanding somehow, and I think people were either going to love it or hate it, but have a strong reaction either way.

How did you develop the idea for the story in The Bubble?

Eytan: It started with the fact that when we were shooting Walk on Water, at the end of the shoot, my mother passed away. That was very difficult for me. Her whole life was devoted to community service and building relationships between Israelis and Palestinians. After she moved to Israel, she became a city planner, and she served as head of the Jerusalem City Council, and she put a lot of effort into improving living conditions in Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Much of the film involves real stories that were part of my life. When she died, I wanted to tackle the issue of Israeli-Palestinian relations for her sake, for my sake, for Israel's sake, and to confront that issue in a more direct way than we did in Walk on Water. So that's where it came from, but then I had to decide how to make it about our life. We live in Tel Aviv, in this bubble, we live this urban life that is detached somewhat from the national scene. But of course we are connected to what is going on. We write articles, we make films, we write books, we do Reserve duty. It is this crazy survival technique that we need to have in the context of the country we live in.


Interview by David Horowitz