As Jan Harlan reveals, Kubrick had been trying to make a Holocaust-themed drama for more than 20 years.
And so, 30 years later, when my childhood friend Clay Frohman suggested we make a Holocaust-theme film based on Nechama Tec's book "Defiance," I groaned, "Not another movie about victims".
"I made a Holocaust survivor," he said.
In 2013, Joan Rivers, (TZ"L), caused an uproar when she made a Holocaust joke about Heidi Klum's Oscar dress.
Another man came over and he and Gore started talking, in great detail, about some schoolchildren in Whitwell, Tennessee, who had made a Holocaust memorial out of more than eleven million paper clips.
Christopher Biggins pulled out of an appearance on Monday's This Morning after being removed from the Celebrity Big Brother house for making a Holocaust "joke" aimed at a Jewish housemate.
Though historical events form the background of the movie, "I wasn't interested in making a Holocaust film," said the writer-director, Jeremy Davidson (whose wife, the actress Mary Stuart Masterson, was a co-producer of "Tickling Leo").
But Lanzmann didn't make a film about the Holocaust or an evocation of the Holocaust; he filmed the Holocaust itself, with the faith that the bearing of witness is itself the ultimate representation — and he conveys the sense of a supremely moral mission as he presses his subjects to speak despite their anguish, fear, or shame.
Mr. Rosenblatt began to research Hitler and his fellow tyrants for a film he jokingly took to calling, "Dictators Are People, Too!" Another filmmaker might have made a solemn Holocaust documentary of the kind that shows up on the History Channel.
