Boaz Yakin describes himself as a "hang out in your room and stare out of the window" type of guy. "I'm not really on intimate terms with the street," he says.
You've got to wonder then, about the view from this 29-year-old director's New York City loft. His first feature film, the low-budget, independently produced "Fresh," has garnered critical praise as a gritty, realistic depiction of black inner-city life. And although it features a largely unknown African-American cast and not a single note of rap music, the $ 3.5-million movie, which Yakin also wrote, has grossed more than double that since opening a few months ago. Not a bad first debut for a nice Jewish boy whose parents hail from Israel, and who says he doesn't even like directing.
Yakin's parents, who moved to the United States three decades ago, are mimes who both studied under Marcel Marceau in Paris and the legendary acting guru Stella Adler in New York. Yakin says his father Moni, a Jerusalemite
of Syrian Jewish stock, left Israel because it could not provide him with sufficient venues for his artistic impulses. "Also, he was burned dead on the army," adds Yakin. "He just hated it, and wanted to get the hell out of the place." Moni Yakin, who went on to direct the Broadway production of "Jacques Brel is Alive and Living in Paris," now works as a movement teacher for the prestigious Juilliard Drama School.
Yakin says his mother Mina - a European-born Holocaust survivor who today instructs students at the Circle in the Square acting school - had her own reasons for wishing to leave Israel, deeply personal reasons he will not discuss. But the Yakins did not become permanently estranged from the country, and their Hebrew-speaking son spent many pleasurable childhood summers in Jerusalem.
Yakin grew up on the West Side of Manhattan, attending the Orthodox Manhattan Day School. His parents weren't religiously observant themselves, he says, but they thought yeshivah attendance might imbue him with a sense of cultural affiliation. Not surprisingly, it had the opposite effect. Yakin became increasingly disdainful of any kind of religion. "It was a bad scene," he recalls, "120 pimply boys, no girls - I couldn't stand it."
After the eighth grade, he transferred to Bronx High School of Science, and in his spare time studied acting at the Stella Adler Theater Studio with his parents' mentor. After a year at New York City College, he transferred to New York University to study film. At NYU, he was told by one professor that writing seemed to be a good route to directing. Yakin took his advice, and soon discovered he preferred writing to anything else. Indeed, he managed to option his first screenplay in his sophomore year, and quit NYU to take up an offer to come to Hollywood for more money than he had ever dreamed of making.
His first writing effort to make it in front of the cameras was "The Punisher," a 1989 action-adventure B-movie based on the comic-book hero of the same name. "The producer rewrote every line," Yakin complains. A year later, he had a second script filmed: "The Rookie," a major studio production starring Clint Eastwood (who also directed) and Charlie Sheen. This assured Yakin, with his forte for action-adventure films, an easy entree into the Hollywood fast track.
But two years living and working in Los Angeles put him off both the city and the film industry. The city, he complains, "is like a giant Taco Bell… a boring, empty place, completely unnourishing, especially for a young person. Living there, I stopped liking movies… or anything else I was doing."
At 25, Yakin left for Paris, where he spent a year writing a novel he describes as "an autobiographical view of my childhood as written by Hans Christian Andersen." Yakin calls "Billy and the Snow Queen," which he believes the new publishing house of the Miramax film company may publish, "the most important thing I have ever done." The book, he says, deals with growing up as a yeshivah student in New York. "But it's like a dark fairy tale, a Jungian fable about a 10-year-old boy written for adults."
Two years ago, producer Lawrence Bender, a friend of Yakin's for many years, fresh from making Quentin Tarantino's highly successful "Reservoir Dogs," suggested he write something the two could make together. Yakin came up with "Fresh," the story of a heroin- and crack-pushing 12-year-old black kid, who is considerate to adults, shows up for school on time, and plays a nasty game of speed chess. The problem is, he also uses the street as a board and his friends and relatives as pieces.
Yakin says the character of "Fresh" had been developing in his mind for years. "I wanted to do a story about a character who is normally powerless,"
says Yakin, "and to show how even someone with power would have great difficulty
dealing with him. In this case, the kid is a gangster who starts turning all his bosses against one another. But the story is also about a character who will do anything to block off his emotions. The more it becomes impossible for him to do this, the more intense his behavior becomes."
Yakin began shooting "Fresh" in Brooklyn during the summer of 1993. His crew, he says, performed magnificently, and the production ran smoothly. But Yakin found that he hated directing.
"It was the worst," he says, "just an awful job. I don't like giving orders, I don't like being responsible for everybody all the time, always being asked questions, being the center of attention, having to battle the clock, having to be at the mercy of a schedule that isn't your own, being in charge, being in authority. And I don't like the atmosphere of the set. I guess I'm a more private person."
Yet the success of "Fresh" opened new doors in Hollywood and Yakin, even with the hassles of directing still fresh in his mind, is contemplating his second outing as a director. His next project, which he is still writing, is conceptually even less commercial than his last film.
"It's about a group of young homeless people in New York, and is an exploration of love and religion in America through them," he says. "It also deals a lot with Judaism and Christianity. The lead role is the son of a Pentecostal street preacher. One character is a mad-scientist kabbalistic scholar; another, an ex-hasidic woman who's now a hooker."
Though clearly interested in his Jewish roots, Yakin - who once seriously considered serving in the Israeli army - admits to mixed feelings about his parents' homeland. "I love visiting my family there," he says, "but it's not somewhere I want to be very often. It's just too small for me. I wouldn't know what to do there artistically. I would be totally lost."