Spielberg's new project - a reality tv show set in Jerusalem
Show to document doctors at Shaare Zedek hospital, set to be directed by Everybody Loves Raymond creator.
By Haaretz Service Tags: Israel newsWorld-renowned American director Steven Spielberg plans to produce a reality television series set at Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek Medical Center, the Israeli financial newspaper Globes reported this week.
Dreamworks Studios, in which Spielberg is a partner, will produce the show, and according to the report, it will be directed by the Emmy Award winning producer Phil Rosenthal, who created and produced the popular television sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond.
"Spielberg asked me to consider doing television in Israel. I proposed making a docudrama about Shaare Zedek hospital, to which my family and I have made donations for decades," Rosenthal told Globes. "He loved the idea of a crowded hospital whose patients are secular Jews, haredim, Arabs, and some of whose doctors are Americans. We'll get the show on the road very soon."
The Jerusalem Post reported that Rosenthal was in Israel this week to check out Shaare Zedek and hold discussions with the Israeli producers of the show, which is scheduled to air on the Sundance Channel in 2011.
Spielberg has collaborated with Israelis several times in the past, particularly in his films Schindler's List in 1993, about German businessman Oskar Schindler who saved Jewish families during the Holocaust, and Munich in 2005, about the PLO massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games, and the subsequent killing of the terrorists by the Mossad. Many Israeli actors participated in both films.
Spielberg is also a sponsor of the Holocaust Survivor Project, which documents survivors' testimonies.
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But I believe it is a documentary series more than a reality show. There is no contest or elimination, that kind of thing.
The idea makes sense, Rosenthal will no doubt have the support of said hospital and its staff. Good luck.
I was there several times (visiting an elderly American attacked and severely beaten by illegal settlers) and was glad to see Muslims there. It will be a good thing for people to see that at this hospital residents appear to be treated regardless of religion. I do hope Mr Spielberg occasionally takes us outside the hospital so we can see the destruction and theft of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem.
Was in a bank in Israel once. The employees were taking turns in getting filmed. This meant the customers had to wait while the person behind the desk took off for his time in front of the camera. Most of the staff seemed more interested in the "shoot" than in serving the customers! Hope Spielberg's TV show will not affect the service the patients get!
I get it B'gallil, if the hospital is run by religious people it is obviously not as good as one run by so-called secular people. Spielberg has his connections with Shaarey Zedek and chooses to do the show there and you think he ought to go where you prefer, right, because it's . . . Get off your anti-religious high horse and join the rest of us. It's a matter of opinion and as soon as we learn to accept each other's opinions, we will all be better off.
A shallow response that shows absolutely no understanding of the issue here. Both producers are well-known leftists who vehemently disagree with the Likud government and support a two-state solution. The series is supposed to demonstrate that when you enter the realm of health and medicine, we all share a common bond that should IDEALLY transcend race, ethnicity and politics. This film shows capable Jewish and Arab doctors who put politics aside to do what is best for their patients. Hardly propaganda, the idea here is, "if these doctors can work together, why can't their leaders." If anything, these doctors put their leaders to shame.
No hospital in the Middle East does a better job of showing the World the highest qualities of Israeli Society as well as the highest medical levels.
Of course your post is not anti-Israeli propaganda, it is humanism.
Not propaganda, of course. Just a human interest series that shows how well Israel treats its "arabs"