Hollywood is still a mecca - but a tough one - for Israeli filmmakers. In 1969, a hotshot Israeli film director named Uri Zohar breezed into Hollywood. Zohar had just made a film called "Every Bastard a King," Israelis were still popular for having won the Six-Day War and producers and agents galore were eager to buy him lunch. But after three days on the circuit, Zohar booked out of his hotel room and hopped the first plane back to Tel Aviv. Hollywood, he apparently felt, was no place for a sabra. Zohar may have realized he could never become sufficiently steeped in the culture to make movies Americans would want to watch. Other Israelis, however, were less daunted. In 1979, cousins Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus set up shop on Wilshire Boulevard, importing dozens of Israeli moviemakers willing to work cheap, comprising the first wave of Israeli film people in Hollywood. By the mid-80s Golan and Globus's Cannon Group had become one of the most active companies in Hollywood, producing dozens of movies (including prestige projects like Franco Zefferelli's "Othello" and Norman Mailer's "Tough Guys Don't Dance"), buying a chain of theaters throughout Europe - and buiding up a mountain of debt. It's been more than a decade since Zohar renounced showbiz and became an ultra-Orthodox rabbi, and three years since the Cannon Group collapsed, sending those not able to adjust to the freelance nature of the American film industry scurrying back to Israel. Today, there is a small but fragmented Israeli presence in Hollywood - perhaps 100 filmmakers at the high and low ends of the business.
In a town that found the "Go-Go Boys" uncouth, unprincipled and threatening, Cannon exists only as a faintly unpleasant memory. There is probably some bitterness at the major studios over Cannon's decision to award Sylvester Stallone a $ 12-million contract in 1987 for "Over the Top" - at the time the biggest such deal ever concluded. Few credit them with having forced some much-needed changes in Directors Guild regulations pertaining to low-budget movies, or with pioneering the exploitation of lucrative foreign markets. "G&G tried to change Hollywood," observed an industry insider, "which no one has ever been able to do. That kind of arrogance is hard to forgive." The now-bitterly estranged cousins are still around, but no longer as major players. Golan runs a small outfit called 21st Century, and maintains a modest presence with such films as the soon-to-be-released "Humanoids from the Deep, Part 2" and "The Finest Hour," a Gulf War movie starring Rob Lowe. Globus enjoyed a brief spell last year as president of MGM after his patron, shadowy Italian financier Giancarlo Parretti, acquired temporary control of the company. But when the MGM board wrested control of the company back from Parretti, Globus was forced to leave the job. He has since tried to rebound by launching a small film distributorship called Melrose Productions. Also marginal, and less prominent: Moshe Diament, who co-founded Transworld Entertainment (now Epic Pictures) nearly a decade ago, continues to churn out low-budget, mainly unprofitable B-movies like last year's "Stone Cold." Boaz Davidson, who directed the 1978 hit Israeli film "Lemon Popsicle," moved to Los Angeles in 1980 and tried to repeat his success by remaking that teenage sex comedy for an American audience with the backing of Golan. But "The Last American Virgin" bombed and Davidson has been unable to achieve real distinction. Next month, he takes a crew to Israel to shoot a low-budget "after-the-Bomb" sci-fi flick, "Lords of the Future." Hollywood has embraced a number of Israelis who have demonstrated a knack for functioning in an American milieu. These lucky few tend to have cosmopolitan backgrounds, education or work experience. The most prominent is producer Arnon Milchan, who was born in Israel, was educated in London and Geneva, and is a citizen of both Israel and Monaco. A mysterious figure with reputed ties to Israeli arms merchants, he moved to Hollywood in the late 70s and provided the financing for such films as "Yentl" and "Once upon a Time in America." He catapulted himself to the front ranks of the film industry two years ago by producing the blockbuster "Pretty Woman" which grossed $ 350 million world-wide. This year he produced Oliver Stone's controversial hit about the Kennedy assasination, "JFK." Adam Greenberg, the cinematograher who shot the box-office bonanza "Ghost" and was nominated for an Oscar this year for "Terminator II: Judgment Day," has become one of the most sought-after cameramen in Hollywood. Born in Cracow, he arrived in Israel at age 13 and cut his teeth on such fims as Golan's "Operation Thunderbolt," about the Entebbe rescue. Avi Nesher, who last year directed the sci-fi thriller "Timebomb," grew up in the United States, studied film at Columbia, and directed the popular 1978 Israeli film "Halahakah" (The Troupe), about the army entertainment unit. He has just begun shooting a new sci-fi movie, "Doppelganger." Yet Israelis do not seem to comprise a viable Hollywood community similar, say, to the German emigre community of the 40s. "To be Israeli in the movie business works against you" says Adam Greenberg. "Israel is not known in the industry as a movie country like England or Italy or Australia or France. Israelis were known as soldiers, not filmmakers." There also seems to be a reluctance among the Hollywood Israelis to lend each other a helping hand. Itzik Sehayek, who had been a highly successful film editor in Israel, recounts having called a Los Angeles-based Israeli producer asking for work, who replied that he already had "too many Israelis working for me." Elana Golden, an Israeli-born New York University film school graduate who works as a script supervisor, says she has rarely received help from other Israelis. "You stand a better chance of getting a hand from an NYU alumnus," she says, "than you do from a fellow Israeli. There's a solidarity that's lacking among Israelis." Explains Avi Nesher: "Israelis are very competitive with each other. Israel's a small country, and every time someone's successful people think it's at their own expense." And even in Hollywood, where chutzpah rules, Israelis are notorious. "There's a rudeness, an uncouthness and rawness that simply isn't acceptable," says an industry observer who asked not to be named. Moshe Diament recalls arriving in Houston to make a movie in 1984 shortly after a Cannon crew had departed. "We had to pay everything up front or present letters of credit to local companies because Cannon had left a mess," he says. "Their reaction was, you Israelis are all the same." Not everyone, however, regards their Israeli identity, or even their past association with Cannon, as the kiss of death. Gideon Amir came to Hollywood in 1984 after working as the line (on-set) producer for Cannon's Chuck Norris action film "Missing in Action." Although he has not been able to break into the major studios, Amir does not believe he has been unfairly stigmatized. "I think this whole town works like the construction industry," he explains. "If you have a piece of property located in the right place and the permits to build, you are going to get a building up."