Oliver A. Horovitz ’08, a Visual and Environmental Studies concentrator, is finishing up production on his newest film, tentatively titled “Atonement.” The film is a comedy about a bar mitzvah gone horribly wrong, and was inspired by a Yom Kippur synagogue visit.



I was in a synagogue for Yom Kippur services a couple of weeks ago, and I was trying to get an idea for the next film I was going to make. There was a Torah that was almost dropped in the synagogue. According to Jewish tradition, if you drop the Torah during a service, the entire congregation has to fast. So that was the idea for my film right there.



Horovitz got started on the screenplay right away, and again drew from his own Jewish experience.



The story is about a boy at his bar mitzvah, and his whole family and everyone is there, and he drops the Torah. It begins there and takes place during the 24-hour period right after that. I wrote the screenplay during the night when I was fasting, so I was weak and kind of in a crazy mode, and I wrote the whole screenplay that night. The 85-year old grandmother who’s hypoglycemic has to fast, his whole family who has flown in for his bar mitzvah has to fast, it’s basically the worst period in this kid’s life.



Horovitz drew on the talents of both local actors and family and friends to assemble his cast.



I knew going in that I really wanted to get as many good actors as possible. I had Mary Klug, who played Leonardo DiCaprio’s aunt in “The Departed”; she played the boy’s grandmother. There’s a really well known actor around here named Ted Kazanoff who’s about 80-years-old and he played the grandfather. I also had Dossy Peabody, who’s really well known around here as well. She was really great. I called up my rabbi and he told me to call Rabbi Moshe Waldoks, who was a stand-up comedian for nine years before being a rabbi, and he was perfect.



The film was shot in one weekend, which made for long days and a hectic schedule. The days leading up to the shoot were also busy ones for Horovitz due to the many administrative tasks for which he was responsible.



It was crazy. We had two days to shoot the whole thing. On Sunday, I shot for about 11 hours, and on Saturday we had a six- or seven-hour shoot. After you expand that for production times and getting everything ready, you’ve got 12-hour days. I had four SAG [Screen Actors Guild] actors in this, which was pretty crazy because the week before we shot I had to go to SAG and get all their paperwork done, as well as building the fake Torah at night and going to the synagogue to make sure everything was there. It was a crazy endeavour.



In addition to editing this film, Horovitz is also working on a documentary he shot this past summer.



I did a gap year before Harvard at the University of St. Andrews, and I’ve been back every summer to caddy on the golf course. Last summer I shot a documentary about caddying. I shot about 32 hours; sometimes I was following caddies all day, caddying myself and filming, and I’m editing that into an hour-long film now.



Horovitz plans to screen “Atonement” at Harvard and at the synagogue where it was filmed, as well as submitting it to film festivals. He says that he hopes to continue studying film and working on new projects.



This spring I’m going to Paris for a semester abroad, and I’ll be shooting a film while I’m there. It’s going to be crazy because I have to direct a film in French. I’m working on my French right now, it’s definitely in need of improvement for next semester.



—R. Derek Wetzel