SIDNEY TURTLEBAUM

Third Man Films
Presents

Directed by Tristram Shapeero
Produced by Daniel Jewel
Screenplay by Raphael Smith
Executive Produced by Mandy Belnick

STARRING

Derek Jacobi
Rupert Evans

The Story

Sidney Turtlebaum is a bitter sweet comedy and cautionary tale set in present day Golders Green, the heart of London's Jewish community.

Sidney Turtlebaum is an eccentric gay Jewish man in his eighties. To punish the world Sidney earns his living as a pickpocket and a conman. His chosen modus operandi is to read through the recent death notices in the London Jewish Post identifying Shiva houses of mourning in order to steal from the gathered crowd.

More than just a thief, Sidney is a performer and revels in the opportunity to take centre stage capturing the assembled mourners with his anecdotes and nostalgic songs.

When Sidney earns the respect and curiosity of 26 year old Gabriel he decides to take him to his next Shiva home thus opening up his strange world to the innocent eyes of his young new friend.

Background

Acclaimed BAFTA, EMMY and TONY award-winning actor, Sir Derek Jacobi (OTHELLO, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, I, CLAUDIUS) plays Sidney in Third Man Film’s SIDNEY TURTLEBAUM, which premieres at the UK Jewish Film Festival on November 3.

The bitter sweet comedy tells the story of Sidney, an eccentric gay Jewish man in his eighties. To punish the world Sidney earns his living as a pickpocket and a conman - his chosen modus operandi is to gatecrash Shiva houses of mourning to steal from the gathered crowd.

Set in the heart of London’s Jewish Community, Golders Green, the short film also features rising star Rupert Evans (HELLBOY, THE PALACE) and is directed by Tristram Shapeero, BAFTA nominated Director of the GREEN WING, PEEP SHOW and PULLING.

Festival Director Judy Ironside said: “The UKJFF is delighted to see respected actors such as Derek Jacobi supporting up and coming talent. We work to ensure that the UKJFF creates a plurality of voices, featuring films that explore the full diversity and experiences of Jewish life and identity, and similarly providing an outlet not just for the work of established directors and screenwriters, but to bring to the fore exceptional films from people at the start of their careers. This is why we are delighted that with our alliance with the Pears Foundation, our Short Film Fund is able to support new film makers such as Third Man Films.”

Sidney Turtlebaum is produced by Third Man Film’s Daniel Jewel (Producer of Edinburgh Festival hit play ALLEGIANCE) and is written by BAFTA nominated Writer, Raphael Smith.

Third Man Films is a London based production company, currently producing psychological thriller feature ANALOGUE, which was commissioned by Film London’s Microwave Scheme.

'The UKJFF was established 11 years ago in Brighton and moved to London in 2003 when it also launched an extensive UK tour. The festival exhibits films from around the world which engage with Jewish histories, cultures and areas of concern, and explores their relationship and place within a multi-cultural society. Last year the London based festival saw 10,000 tickets sold and UKJFF 2008 looks to be even bigger with more films, new venues and more special events. The UK Jewish Film Festival 2008 runs from November 8 – 20.

Director’s Statement

“After one read of this script I couldn’t get the character of Sidney out of my mind. He is an incredibly complex personality, someone so armored and vulnerable at the same time. I was intrigued with the story’s theme, the power of human relationships whether it’s the relationship between a family member, or a brief encounter with a stranger and how these exchanges can affect us and the people around us, for the whole of our lives.

Of course, to work with Derek Jacobi and Rupert Evans was an incredible opportunity not to be missed. I have learnt so much from both of them.

They had terrific chemistry together and I was tremendously inspired by them both.

It is so important to me, when choosing which projects to accept, that the script is good, funny and tries to be different, pushing the boundaries of what is considered acceptable. Raphael Smith’s script met all those criteria for me and I had no hesitation in joining the writer and the producer in attempting to make a powerful and thought provoking film. The film was shot in a conventional, but classic way to reflect Sidney’s traditional living space and the graceful and elegant way he dresses. The whole process of making this short film has been a wonderful experience and I hope that the audience find as much fascination and intrigue with Sidney as I and everybody connected with the film has done so far.”

The Cast

Derek Jacobi plays Sidney Turtlebaum

As one of our leading actors on both stage and screen, Sir Derek Jacobi must be inundated with scripts. So it's reasonable to suppose that Raphael Smith's screenplay, Sidney Turtlebaum, must have had something special about it to attract Jacobi's attention. What was the appeal of the project for him?

"I think it was the title. How could anyone resist a name like Sidney Turtlebaum?” laughs Jacobi. “And when I read it, I loved the story. It was well written with characters that were attractive and nice to play. It would only take four days to make and the whole package sounded lovely. I like to do the occasional short film. In fact, I made another recently with Joanna David playing my wife. It's called One of Those Days and the day in question is the Day of Judgement. My character is a blameless man: he and his wife have lived a life of delightful purity and have never committed any sin. Yet, because of a bureaucratic mix-up, we get confused with Vlad the Impaler and whereas he's allowed into heaven, we get packed off to Hell! It's a sweet story and, like Sidney Turtlebaum, it's so well written that it was impossible to resist."

Describing the character, Jacobi explains, “Sidney's an ageing homosexual who preys on the Jewish community. He makes a note of all the death notices published in the newspaper which often give details of the address of the dear departed. He goes to the Shiva, the mourning ceremony, pretending to by an old friend or a distant member of the family. The relatives of the deceased don't know him from Adam but Sidney is so charming and so plausible that the grieving family are cheered up by his company. While he is making them happy, he's also pilfering their money, their cutlery and their silverware. And we discover that underneath the charm and the quirky attractiveness, Sidney is a very embittered gentleman. He robs people out of a sense of vengeance. In fact, he's deeply unhappy behind this facade of beguiling charm and it is fascinating to play that contrast. And what interests me above all is the fact that it's all done in such a short space of time. You have to tell the story, establish the character and inhabit the situations, all in the space of little more than a quarter of an hour, which is great. From everybody's point of view - the writer, the actors, the director - we have to make every point a telling one in the time allowed. In a sense, it's a great learning experience for us all. Less is more, as the saying goes."

For Jacobi, making Sidney Turtlebaum meant a welcome reunion with actor Rupert Evans, who plays Gabriel in the film. The two actors had first met on Guantanamero which they shot in Spain a couple of years ago.

"We were working in the wonderful new studios in Alicante and we got on terribly well," says Jacobi. “That was another reason for my agreeing to do the film. We already knew and trusted each other and so we didn't have to spend time getting to know each other which was very nice."

Jacobi's future plans include hosting a documentary on Charles Dickens.

"It's something I've never done before and so I'm really looking forward to a new experience. I don't think that I play all the parts- who could? But I do get to read some of them in occasional extracts from the books. Then I'm going back on stage to play Malvolio in Twelfth Night at the Wyndhams Theatre. It will be interesting," he concludes with a laugh. "And I'm already shitting bricks at the mere thought of it!"

Rupert Evans plays Gabriel

Rupert Evans has packed a great deal into his relatively short career, including the cult film Hellboy, playing Romeo on stage for the Royal Shakespeare Company and taking the lead role of King Richard in the ITV drama The Palace. Presumably Evans is not short of offers. So what does it take to interest him in a project?

"I always start with the script," he says. “If the script is good and I think it's going to work then I'll say yes. I do read a lot of scripts and what impressed me so much about Sidney Turtlebaum was that it told the story so well; it told it economically and sensitively. The screenplay also left open its ideas about people and about life for me as the actor to explore. I don't see Sidney Turtlebaum as a short. For me, it just happens to last for fourteen or fifteen minutes, which is almost irrelevant really. It doesn't change how one approaches the job: at its most fundamental, my job is to tell the story."

Gabriel, the character played by Evans, is a male prostitute. Yet he seems quite comfortable about the choices he has made about his life.

"It just so happens that Gabriel earns a living through sex but he doesn't see that as a bad thing," explains Evans. "For him, it's a way of meeting people and of gaining new experiences. He gives a lot to people and he's good at what he does. I think that Gabriel is a young guy who is somehow slightly detached from the world; he's certainly detached from what society would recognise as morality. He's an inherent optimist with a love for life and a love of people. It's a bit of paradox that he should end up involved in Sidney's story. Gabriel is so open; he's such a happy-go-lucky kind of a guy and he sees nothing negative about being paid for sex. In his eyes, it is a very positive thing and that attitude is kind of interesting to play."

Renewing an old friendship with Derek Jacobi was another incentive, helping Evans to make up his mind about taking part in Sidney Turtlebaum.

"Derek is an actor whom I greatly admire and who is wonderful to work with”, says Evans with great enthusiasm. “When I heard that he was on board, I jumped at the chance of working with him again, especially since the relationship between Sidney and Gabriel is so great. And I was attracted by the concise way the story was told and consequently by the need to illustrate a great deal in a very short space of time."

Rupert has just spent four months in Malta, making Agora, a film set in the early Christian era of the Roman Empire.

"Rachel Weisz is in it and I play a philosophy student who ends up as a bishop!” explains Evans. "It's directed by Alejandro Amenabar who made The Others with Nicole Kidman and who won an Oscar for The Sea Inside.”

The Film Makers

Tristram Shapeero (Director)

Until Sidney Turtlebaum, director Tristram Shapeero had worked mainly in comedy with credits including Channel 4's zany Green Wing and the daring Peep Show. But this film represents a definite change of direction.

"There are some humorous moments in the film but it's not a comedy, that's certain." says Shapeero. "By the time producer Daniel Jewel approached me about working on the film, Derek Jacobi and Rupert Evans had already signed up and so it was much too good an opportunity to turn down, especially since it was very different from anything I'd done previously."

Shapeero feels that there is something almost tragic about the life of Sidney Turtlebaum.

"It's so sad because Sidney has this extraordinary quality that enables him to go into houses that are heavy with the atmosphere of death and mourning and, using his wonderful gift, he can turn this mood of depression into something that is incredibly celebratory. Yet Sidney has chosen to live his life in this miserable solitude. He could have had a terrific life, old Sidney, but he has opted to mourn the loss of his sister. As he makes clear in the film, he feels betrayed by her. Leaving him in order to do something else with her life is criticised by Sidney as an act of pure selfishness. But it is Sidney who is really selfish: he looks inward into himself and not outward towards other people. "

Shapeero shakes his head over what might have been, had not Sidney taken a wrong turning in his life.

"In what is a tiny film, lasting little more than a quarter of an hour, we have hopefully given the audience an intense flavour of the lost opportunities in Sidney's life. He could have given so much joy, so much pleasure and so much happiness to people and yet he has chosen to live in this miserable little world as this bitter, bitter man. Without a partner or a sibling and with no friends or any stabilising relationship, Sidney is undoubtedly very lonely. He has such a lot to offer but no idea of how he can deliver it to other people. I don't believe that he's even aware of the fact that he has this talent. I think that he simply sees the process of brightening up these shivas as a kind of fee or remuneration. He steals because he wants to be nasty and he wants to get back at people."

Shapeero argues that Gabriel, in stark contrast to Sidney, is one of life's enhancers.

"One of the nice things about this film is that Gabriel is a wonderfully embracing sort of person. He just loves people. He finds them interesting and full of potential. People have a lot to offer, he believes. They will entertain him, educate him and take him to places which otherwise he would never have visited himself. Then he meets Sidney, who manages to crush his spirit of optimism."

Shapeero has of course worked with some fine actors in the Channel 4 comedies. But until Sidney Turtlebaum, he had never before witnessed how great actors can stir the heart as well as tickle the funny-bone.

"I don't want to sound like a terrible luvvie but both of the leading actors were wonderful to work with and it was absolutely incredible and enormously enjoyable to find myself giving notes to actors of such calibre. I can't praise Rupert highly enough. The film, of course is about Sidney, Derek's character, but the film would not have worked without Rupert reaching the same level of performance. Rupert really holds his own, and I was really impressed with what he brought to the film."

Shapeero describes the making of Sidney Turtlebaum as "a huge learning experience."

"I've never before been in a room with actors who are capable of moving you to tears." says Shapeero feelingly. "You can feel the performance going straight through you. We were simply doing some blocking in a rehearsal and it was the first time I'd heard Derek do the big speech at the end of the film. It's the moment when he pours out his pent-up feelings to Gabriel- everything that he's blocked up during forty years of misery. Derek simply let rip and the rest of us stood there, open-mouthed and terribly moved by what he'd just done. We really didn't know what to say when he came to the end of his speech. It was such a powerful and amazing moment."

Shapeero is next scheduled to do something very different, directing Martin Clunes in Perrin, the BBC's revival of cult 1970s sitcom The Rise and Fall Of Reginald Perrin with the scripts written by the show's creator David Nobbs and Men Behaving Badly's Simon Nye. It sounds a fantastic idea but it's unlikely to have the same emotional resonance for Shapeero as Sidney Turtlebaum. He has a clear vision of where he wants to go with this film.

"I hope that it will prove to the feature film world that Tristram can do it and that they'll give me lots of feature films, please " laughs Shapeero. "It is very hard to move genres because people do like to pigeon-hole you and I very much hope that Sidney Turtlebaum will prove to drama producers that I can do things other than comedy. Whether it makes audiences laugh or cry at the end is down to the story you are telling. I make no distinction between being able to do comedy or drama because if, at the end of the day, the audience isn't entertained or engaged then we haven't done our job properly as storytellers."

Tristram Shapeero was born in 1966 in Somerset and grew up in the City of Bath. In 1988 he moved to London to pursue his dream of becoming a photographer, instead, he ended up working at a fledgling TV comedy company, Hat Trick Productions, makers of WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY?,
DROP THE DEAD DONKEY, HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU, NORBERT SMITH - A LIFE. He spent 4 years immersing himself in the comedy world.

In 1992, Tristram left Hat Trick to work as an Assistant Director, on some of the most popular comedy programs of the decade including, Men Behaving Badly, Vicar of Dibley, Thin Blue Line, Smack The Pony, the latter giving him his directing break in 2000. Since then he has directed some of the most innovative television comedies of recent years, including PEEP SHOW, GREEN WING,PULLING, I’M ALAN PARTRIDGE, ABSOLUTE POWER, BRASS EYE SPECIAL, resulting in 8 BAFTA nominations, 3 Royal Television Society nominations and a Rose D’Or nomination.

Tristram thrives on the collaborative process between writer, director and producer and currently has several feature film projects in development. He has been married to Erica for 14 years; they have 2 boys, Spencer, 12 and Tate, 10 and live in Battersea, London.

Daniel Jewel (Producer)

To be producing Sidney Turtlebaum is the realisation of an ambition that for Daniel Jewel began at the age of 13 with the idea of working in the film industry coming to him by an unusual route.

"My parents are classical musicians and they used to play in the orchestras that provided the music to the screening of such silent classics as Napoleon, Intolerance and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse." explains Jewel.

"These films really caught my imagination and from that moment, I knew that all I wanted to do was to make movies."

Jewel was developing a few feature ideas with screenwriter Raphael Smith when Smith suggested a film about a man who pretends to be a mourner in order to rob from the bereaved families. Then they heard that the UK Jewish Film Festival had a funding award.

"We applied to the Festival and, having gone through the interview process; we pitched the idea to a panel and won one of the two awards that were available. Since the script was already in place, we thought we could now afford to be a bit more ambitious about the casting and so we offered the role of Sidney to Derek Jacobi. Within two days, he'd agreed to play the part - which was fantastic."

It was Jacobi's suggestion that they approach Rupert Evans about playing Gabriel. Jacobi and Evans had worked together on Guantanamero and Jewel had seen the young actor on Hellboy. His next task was to find a director and so he put in a call to the Casarotto Agency who proposed Tristram Shapeero.

" Apparently Tristram was about to make the leap from high end television comedy to direct a feature film with Stephen Fry but to our delight he agreed to come on board with us,” Tristram continues. “The history of Sidney Turtlebaum has been a bit like that. It's been one of those nice and all too rare occasions when everything has come together in a very positive way. Having somebody of the stature of Derek Jacobi headlining the film gives the whole project a seal of approval, and a sense of gravitas. It makes people realise that this is a quality project."

Jewel echoes his colleagues in stressing that they treated Sidney Turtlebaum not as a short but as a feature, agreeing with Raphael Smith that “a short story can be as meaningful as a great novel, if it is done properly."

"The film has a lot of humour and a lot of soul to it and we hope that it will strike a chord with audiences," continues Jewel. “In some ways, Sidney is rather an unattractive character but when his mask slips at the end of the film, you see beneath the shell of this unpleasant person. You realise that here is a damaged man and you really feel a certain level of sympathy for him."

For the immediate future, Jewel is looking forward to premiering Sidney Turtlebaum at the UK Jewish Film Festival on November 3rd. He is hopeful that other festivals at home and abroad will pick up the film and that a television deal will be forthcoming. He will then start work on a feature that is already fully financed. What is his long-term game plan?

"My aim is to create a company that really gets high quality projects into production at a lower budget level but with great casts and great people behind them," declares Jewel. “I want to create such an atmosphere of trust that people will believe that we are going to be true to the material and we'll not sell them out in any way. This is how you can attract the best people. I am going to aim high and I am ambitious but I think that there are ways in which you can realise your visual ambitions without spending too much money. Sidney Turtlebaum is a character film which we have shot in a very unflashy way. It's about performance and character and about asking audiences to buy into the relationship between Sidney and Gabriel. That's what will make this film."

Jewel pays tribute to a number of experienced industry figures including Marc Samuelson and to Paramount's Mandy Belnick, his long-standing mentor.

"I've come to realise that it's not just about production." says Jewel. "It's about having your marketing plan and your post-production plan and your distribution plan. There are so many phases to film-making. A lot of people assume that all you need to do is get it in the can and everything will all be great. I think you have to suspend your disbelief and really go for it!"

Raphael Smith (Screenplay)

Writers are seldom, if ever, off duty. Their ears are always cocked for ideas, whatever the source, and their hunger for material is insatiable. So it was that writer Raphael Smith first conceived the idea for Sidney Turtlebaum, while relaxing at home, listening to what sounds like BBC Radio Four's A World in Your Ear.

"It was a programme which broadcast extracts from other radio shows around the world." explains Smith. "I was fascinated by a programme from Senegal that gave details on the air of people who had just died and where they had lived. Apparently it's traditional in Senegal for the relatives of people who have just passed away to keep open house and to welcome anybody who calls in to pay their respects. One of the interviewees talked about a man in his neighbourhood who was famous for turning up at the house, singing and dancing and claiming to have known the deceased. Everybody took him for a bit of a character, a bit of an eccentric, a confidence trickster who was only there for the booze and anything else he could lay his hands on."

Smith was especially intrigued by the feature because it had close parallels with the Jewish culture in which he had been raised.

"When a Jewish person dies, the house is opened up in what we call a Shiva House when everybody is welcome to join in the mourning. The setting may be in the middle of suburbia rather than in a Senegalese village but there is plenty opportunity for a similar scam to be carried out. When I was growing up, the names of the people who'd recently died would be published in the newspaper, along with the address and when the prayers would be held.

So it was quite natural for old friends to appear on the door-step, even if they hadn't seen the late lamented for fifty years or had never met the family."

Once that initial seed had begun to germinate, other themes began to gather in Smith's imagination.
“I started to ask myself - what happens if you're getting old and you're gay and you live alone? What kind of a person would that man be? As we developed that idea, the film became slightly longer than we'd intended. Some of the early drafts had Sidney at social evenings with other elderly gay men and trying to deal with Sidney's difficult relationship with his sister. But we soon realised that when you're making a short film, you have a relatively small canvas on which to work and we scaled back the film accordingly."

Smith settles on a gastronomic analogy in order to explain what can happen during the process of script development.

"I'd compare the difference between a short and a feature to the difference between eating a lovely little pastry and a three-course meal. Both have their appropriate time and place but if all you have on your plate is a pastry, you can't treat it as if it's a five-course banquet. Therefore you have to be extremely economical. With luck, you'll manage to entertain the audience and give them a great deal of pleasure for those ten or fifteen minutes.

But you can't stuff a short's screenplay so full of content that it sinks under the weight and is effectively ruined."

Eventually the screenplay was honed down to a fifteen page script with a very simple premise-a-day in the life of Sidney Turtlebaum.

"We're looking at a microcosm of Sidney's life”, Smith argues. “It’s a day when he meets a young man and proceeds to ruin that relationship. Remembering the contrast between the pastry and the banquet, I think that it's still possible to encapsulate all of life's pleasures and joys in one moment of Sidney's existence without resorting to sweeping themes and epic methods. In that brief moment, you can uncover enough information to an audience to make them sit up and take notice and say to themselves - that's really interesting."

Although it begins purely on a business footing, the relationship between Sidney and Gabriel soon develops into something warmer and more human.

"Sidney meets the boy in the morning and shows him his world. Yet the bond between them breaks down because Sidney can't deal with people getting too close in his life. Inside him there is anger and there is hostility. Gabriel's remark that Sidney steals in order to get attention hits home, and Sidney explodes with anger. This is not the worst thing that will ever happen to them in their lives; what we're depicting is the one day when their paths cross. Hopefully, we have revealed enough about them for the audience to relate to the characters, especially to Sidney, and feel entertained while doing so."
Smith concludes with a telling observation about his own development.

"To be philosophical for a moment, I think that you become less idealistic about people and about how the world works as you get older. It's not that you dream less: it's that your dream gets downscaled.

Your ambitions contract from owning a mansion to living in a maisonette and thanking God that the roof doesn't leak!"

Raphael has been living in the UK since 1998. He was born and raised in Cape Town where he studied Jewish History and law. In 2003 he completed the MA program in screenwriting at the National Film and Television School. In 2004 Raphael was nominated for a BAFTA for his work on the short film Sea Monsters and since then, he has worked on several projects including the South African feature, A Boy Called Twist (a retelling of the Oliver Twist story set on the streets of modern day Cape Town). Raphael is currently developing a feature film project, a sitcom and a short musical. Outside of creating and writing, Raphael has a keen interest in comedy (he is a retired stand-up comic), politics, history, and writing songs. Raphael has also been known to go jogging from time to time.

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