Blog special: Rex Bloomstein - the classiest guy in showbiz.
This is Rex Bloomstein.
He'll be coming up in this story later but right now, as you can see, he's a little busy holding back a pile of wood for a friend, so I'll do the talking.
When I was a kid, my dad showed me a documentary. It was about the history of Jewish humour and it had all of these amazing clips of old vaudeville guys plus a bunch of bits of classic SNL and loads of interviews with Jewish comedians and writers. See my dad has this idea that he's Jewish because his mother was and while my father would be the first to argue that culture is an illusion, if it's a culture that allows him to work hokey-schtick at the dinner table when he's had a drink then he's all for it. With this in mind, he sought to instruct me in the same line and so showed me this film.
I loved it. It showed me a world of wise-ass New Yorkers and entrenched self-defence mechanisms. Of familial foibles bleeding into mainstream understanding. It showed me old hands with cigars screwed into faces that looked like Holloween pumpkins on November 1st and it showed me them defy and parry their interviewers but all done with that smile in the eye that says 'come on you schmuck, try and hit me again'.
It taught me a hell of a lot about the particular brand of masochism required to be a comedian.
Years later, when I was starting out in comedy, James Ward and I would sit and watch this documentary - picking out the finer points of these old masters and their magic. I left the tape at his house and there it languished as we got on with the tedious business of our adult lives.
A few weeks ago, James came round with a box containing all the VHS I had ever left at his house. I was delighted because this surely meant that I would get back the documentary after all this time and, perhaps, transfer it onto some less degradable medium. However, after emptying the box , no tape. It was simply gone.
I couldn't accept it. So I started, in earnest, to try and find this film for the first time. I mean, sure, I'd Googled it a bunch of times, hoping there'd be some clips on YouTube or something but to no avail. It didn't seem to come up on IMDB but, having said that, I didn't even know what it was called, I'd always just called it 'The Jewish Documentary'. However, now, I was faced with the prospect that I might never see it again so I worked harder.
I searched for everyone I could remember having been interviewed in it - Billy Crystal, Milton Bearle, Jackie Mason, Joan Rivers, Gilbert Gottfried etc. - and, from the confluence of data, found a review for it from 1990 along with the title:
"Next Time, Dear God, Please Choose Someone Else"
Names are powerful things on the internet and, armed with that knowledge, I found battered VHS archival copies of it littered all over, albeit in university libraries in the states. The BFI claimed to have a copy of it in their archives but it hadn't been checked and I wouldn't be allowed a copy of my own. I also checked in with the BBC, as they had originally broadcast it as part of Arena, but you're not allowed to get things from the archives unless you're using them for production purposes and, even then, the price tag is big.
So, at my wits end, I emailed the producer of the film - Rex Bloomstein. I explained what the film had meant to me, how much it had taught me, and asked how I might go about getting access to a copy. I heard nothing back from that email so just assumed that it had been buried under a pile of inbox traffic or straightforwardly ignored.
However, this morning I received this in the post:
I was gobsmacked. To have heard nothing and then to just be suddenly holding it was so unreal. I looked inside the envelope and the only other thing in there was this:
'I'm touched that you should remember the film and that it played a part in your comedic universe. Enjoy!
Rex Bloomstein'
Sheer class. Rex, you're a gentleman - L'Chaim!
