Film Director Ernie Barbarash “Can’t Help Being Jewish”

What role does Judaism play in your creative process?

It has played a bigger role in theatre. The last play I directed was called American Maccabee which was about Jewish identity in this family whose son goes on a year-long trip to Israel, and becomes kind of a right-wing radical. The family is made up of left-wing liberals. They are dealing with this, asking themselves, “what is the Jewish identity?” It’s actually a play by a friend of mine who just passed away lately, Jim Henderson.

I directed plays with strong Jewish themes. With film, I think I can’t help being Jewish. I hate to analyze my own work, because I find that very pretentious. But, for instance, in Cube Zero, the guy pulled out to be questioned is asked, “does God exist?” I find the questioning of those things is very Jewish. I think Jewish faith and traditions are rooted in questioning things.

How did you move from theatre to film?

I never went to film school. My film school was by fluke being an in-house producer for Cinepix which was a Canadian company that opened an office in New York, and eventually became Lionsgate when it went public. I worked for them for eight years as an in-house producer. They were closing down their New York office, and they said, “you can either move to Los Angeles and we can guarantee you a certain number of years of work, or you can go freelance, and produce three movies in a row for us.” Since I really wanted to be more of a freelancer and start directing myself, I took the freelance option. 

I started filmmaking out of New York, but when I first got to direct, it was in Canada. The minute they find out that you have a Canadian passport, they want to go there for the tax credit… Even though the first movie I ever directed was shot in Toronto, by then I was already living in the U.S.