YNET article on The Last Poker Game (Translated from Hebrew) October 8, 2017
By Amir Bogen
IS THERE A DOCTOR ON THE SET? AN INTERVIEW WITH THE FAMOUS SCIENTIST WHO DECIDED TO DIRECT A FILM AT THE AGE OF 70
In the eighth decade of his life, the esteemed researcher and scientist Howard Weiner decided to realize a dream and direct a film. "I always had something creative about me," he says in an interview with YNET on the screening of his film "The Last Poker Game" at the Haifa Film Festival. He spoke about his ties to Israel, "I once considered settling in Israel, but it wasn’t feasible.” He then spoke about the late Martin Landau and the sex scenes in the movie, "Just because you are old, doesn’t mean that you don’t like sex.”
For most of his life, Howard Weiner looked at reality through the lens of a microscope. As a physician and a researcher, he closely examines human organs and tissues, bacteria and viruses. This is the career he chose 52 years ago when he was admitted to medical school. But now that he is in the eighth decade of his life with countless achievements and awards that have made him a world renowned expert in neurology and immunology, he pursued one of his dreams. He shifted his gaze from the microscope lens to that of the movie camera, and from there to the big screen. Thus, the doctor became a director, and his first feature film "The Last Poker Game" merges his areas of expertise.
Doctor and director. Howard (Photo: Len Rubinstein)
"Old age provides you with certain liberties,” admits the 72-year-old Prof. Weiner in an interview with YNET prior to the screening of his film at the Haifa Film Festival. “During the course of one’s life, there are many chapters, and I now had the opportunity to realize this chapter too, it's part of my philosophy. Whether there is or is not a God, there are some basic truths and one is that there is a time for everything in life; I had a passion and I was determined to make the movie.”
Howard Weiner was born in 1944 to a Viennese Jewish family in Denver, Colorado. In his youth, he was sucked into the world of music, in college he founded a rock band and was a disc jockey on his college radio station. This chapter of his life concluded at the age of 21, when he was admitted to medical school at the University of Colorado. After a year’s internship as a doctor at Tel Hashomer Hospital in Israel in 1970, the young doctor pursued a career in research. He joined the faculty of prestigious Harvard University in Boston. Over the years, his groundbreaking studies made him a world expert, and won him many prizes. Along with his impressive academic career, Dr. Weiner led various biotech ventures - including international collaborations, many of them with Israeli companies - but despite all this, he has always maintained creative activity.
"In medical school, I made music videos of Beatles songs,” Weiner said, “but I did not know if I would ever make a feature film. I did not plan it. " Weiner's first cinematic experience was a documentary he wrote, produced and directed in 2011 called “What Is Life: The Movie.” Much of it was filmed in Israel and it won four Los Angeles Film Awards. This personal film deals with philosophical thought and questions about human nature, life, and God. In many ways, the "Last Poker Game" is a narrative development of these ideas.
"The Last Poker Game" premiered to acclaim at the last Tribeca festival in New York and is a comedy drama that takes place mostly in a nursing home. The hero is an aging and somewhat cynical Jewish doctor named Abe Mandelbaum (played by the late Martin Landau). His beloved wife suffers from Alzheimer's disease and he therefore accompanies her to an institution for seniors - which marks the end for him. Meeting with Phil Nicoletti (Paul Sorvino), a charismatic Italian businessman with a fondness for cards and gambling, arouses in him a desire for social life, and when he meets a woman who volunteers in the institution, it stimulates the desire for a sex life. These two developments give Abe a new meaning at this late stage of his life, and infuse him with energy. Part of it is devoted to competition with Phil, his friend who becomes his rival, with the discovery that a nurse employed in the nursing home is an orphan looking for her father. Both fit the description, and they seek to prove themselves as her father.
The Last Poker Game. Long Road Films.
The subjects that the film deals with give expression to Weiner's expertise as a researcher (and he also appears for a moment on the screen as a doctor at the nursing home), but his science world was also part of the behind-the-scenes production process. During his many visits to Israel, Weiner met Prof. Michael Sela, President of the Weizmann Institute. His daughter Tamar is a film producer who lives in New York, and her husband is director Yaron Zilberman. The two helped him from the beginning of the project, contributing their expertise. "When the opportunity to make the film came up, I thought that at this point in my life it was time to do it, I was not afraid to try, and now I find myself planning for the next film,” he says.
Fate and free will are subjects that Weiner explored in his documentary, but with regard to his own life his path was clear even before he was born - to be a doctor. Cinema was not a practical possibility and his mother would never have agreed to it. "My Yiddisha-mama would not have been happy if I decided to be a filmmaker," he admits. In addition, he reveals that his professional choice is the realization of the wish of his grandfather who was murdered by the Nazis. "My parents fled Vienna just before Hitler’s Anschluss, but they did not succeed in getting my mother's father out. In the United States they obtained a special entry visa and he boarded a ship to the United States, but someone betrayed him and he was taken to Auschwitz. His luggage reached my parents' home in Denver. He wrote to my mother, if you have a child, make him a doctor, for me.”
Thus his grandfather, Samuel Wasserstrom dictated the future of his grandson, Howard, whom he had never known. And thanks to him, patients with MS and other neurologic diseases have benefitted from the discoveries Professor Weiner has made in his laboratory at Harvard University, that carries the name of his grandfather. "For as long as I can remember, all I heard from my mother was, 'You'll be a doctor.' I guess there was something inside me that couldn’t do anything else," he says. "I always asked myself if I became a doctor because my mother had committed me to fulfilling her father’s request. There was nothing wrong with it, I felt that it was my destiny. But there was part of me that was different and had to do with creativity. I never repressed it. I told myself I would be a doctor, but I would do other things at the same time."
On the set. Long Road Films
Weiner is married to Mira Avinery, a native of Ramat Gan, Israel and has two sons, Dan and Ron. Ron Weiner is an Emmy award winning writer who has worked on 30 Rock, Silicon Valley, Futurama and other series. "My creative genes went directly to him and is fully reflected in his career. I am very proud of him, he can be seen as the reincarnation of my creative self. We share a strong connection professionally. When you have a son and you talk to him, in a way you are talking to yourself. And so when I consult with him about my screenplay, in a way I am actually giving myself advice. " His son Ron also helped his father prepare for the production. He suggested that his father hire a film crew and actors in Los Angeles and shoot some scenes to get experience on a movie set. His son found TV producers he had worked with and connected them to his father.
"As a director of the film I was in charge of everything, but I was not afraid. When we started filming the feature film, I immediately connected with Landau and Sorvino and they felt great in my company. They enjoyed coming to work every day. "
Did you bring something from your work as a scientist to the filming? "As a scientist, you take in very complex information, and you have to do a lot of things at the same time, paying close attention to detail - and that is something I implemented in my work as a director. Furthermore, as both a scientist and a director you have your ideas, but if you think someone else understands a situation better, you have to listen to it. That's my attitude, and the actors very much appreciated it. "
The Last Poker Game. Long Road Films.
Weiner says that during the filming, he formed a close relationship with Martin Landau, the main actor who passed away last July at the age of 89. Landau became known as the star of the successful television series Mission Impossible and participated in dozens of films, including films by Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Ford Coppola and Woody Allen. In the film Ed Wood by Tim Burton, he won an Oscar as best supporting actor. Now he has ended his long career in a leading role in the film of the emerging director Weiner. "I feel lucky that I directed his last film, as they say in Yiddish, it was 'Beshert' – meant to be. It was fate that I would preserve his screen image until the last minute. I will miss him, and I'm sorry I didn’t manage to show him my new script. To hear his opinion," he says.
"When I heard he died, as a doctor, I wanted to know all the details. Even though it was sudden, I am not sure anything could have been done. We all have a limited amount of time. Landau’s character dies in the film, but his character says in the film that he is at peace and he is glad he got to be old. What I am struck most by Martin’s performance are his eyes, which are the most amazing eyes I have ever seen, so alive. They express the nuances of life - tragedy, joy, longing - I have watched the movie many times and I will watch it many more times. When I watch it, I watch in amazement when I see Martin Landau’s eyes. "
Weiner and Landau at Tribeca Festival (Photo: Getty images)
As much as it will be difficult to forget Landau's eyes in The Last Poker Game, it will be impossible to erase from memory his sex scenes - helping his wife achieve an orgasm, masturbating or trying to make love to a woman thirty years younger. "The fact that you're old does not mean you do not feel young," Weiner explains. "There's a reason why I chose to include graphic sex scenes - some never before seen on the screen, like the one between Landau and his wife who has Alzheimer's disease. In biologic terms, although the hippocampus which serves memory function in the brain does not function normally, it doesn’t mean that the impulses of love for her husband do not continue.”
It must be a complicated task to film these scenes. "There are four sex scenes, and two death scenes. They are difficult to film, because like a symphony, if it is off, everyone will notice." I had to guide actress Anne-Marie Shea through her portrayal of an orgasm. I had to slow it down, it's a very daring scene and I tried to be sensitive. I was cautious during these scenes, it was challenging, but I took a chance and saw that I could do it.
The Last Poker Game. Long Road Films.
Martin Landau's latest film "The Last Poker Game" will be screened as part of the Haifa Film Festival which will open on Tuesday, and Weiner will appear as a guest in the city. Weiner has a strong personal connection to Israel - family, professional, business, and from now on he is also an artist. "I have been to Israel many times, and I have come to Haifa in the past to meet with medical colleagues, where I visited the hospital and research laboratories. So it is a special pleasure for me to visit this time as a guest of the festival. I once considered settling in Israel, but I couldn’t do so because I had to take care of my parents. My way of supporting Israel was to invite Israeli scientists to train in my lab.”
Where is it better to grow old, in Israel or in the United States? "I know Israel well, and also older populations in the United States, and I do not think that one place is better than the other." In general, society favors younger people during their lifetime, and then towards the end they tend to house them in institutions.”
The Last Poker Game. Long Road Films.
And where is it better to create art and film, in Israel or in the United States? "If the state does not support art and does not create a supportive environment for creativity, it weakens society. The reason why the Jews are" people of the book "stems from the tradition of Talmudic studies, which provides observation from several points of view, always asking questions, and adopting an attitude of disrespect towards authority - it frees the brain to wander in new directions.
It is hard to ignore the fact that the main character in the film - Dr. Abe Mandelbaum - is both a doctor and a Jew, and even in old age, and Weiner admits that this is his own reflection: "You can only write about who you are, and so my main character is a doctor. It is possible to examine any person's life, but it was important to me that the hero be a Jew because I know and understand it and he was a part of me. "
So basically after so many years you got to express yourself on the screen. "It gave my life a new meaning - there is no doubt about it - the slogan of the film is 'It's never too late for life,' and that applies to me, too, I lived my life and gave it expression."