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‘Spinning Gold’ movie departs from Hollywood stereotypes about Jewish music producers
(JTA) — In the hit show “The Sopranos,” veteran actor Jerry Adler plays mob-adjacent Jewish businessman Hesh Rabkin, who made a fortune in the music business decades earlier. In a first season episode, Hesh is confronted by a rapper seeking “reparations” for a late Black musician who he says Rabkin didn’t pay fairly for a hit record.
When Hesh responds by bragging that he wrote the hit songs he worked on back in the day, Tony Soprano corrects him: “A couple of Black kids wrote that record, you gave yourself co-writing credit because you owned the label.”
The greedy Jewish music mogul has been a common trope, from the acclaimed work of Spike Lee to the rants of Kanye West. “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” a 2003 parody of music biopics, made fun of the trope itself by making the record executives into Hasidic Jews, led by Harold Ramis. (They were depicted as friendly and not so greedy, and the film’s writers, Judd Apatow and director Jake Kasdan, are both Jewish.)
The new movie “Spinning Gold,” which opened in theaters last week, tells the real-life story of Neil Bogart, the founder of Casablanca Records and a top music executive of the 1970s. It breaks from the mold of most other music biopics in a couple of key ways: The protagonist is a music executive, not an artist or a group, and the music mogul character — in this case, another Jewish one — is not treated as a villain.
The Jewish Brooklyn native whose given name was Neil Scott Bogatz helped promote bubblegum pop and early disco, signing artists such as Donna Summer, Gladys Knight, Cher and the Village People. A notable rock signing was Kiss. In one scene of “Spinning Gold,” the Bogart character (played by Jewish actor Jeremy Jordan, who starred in the Broadway hit “Rock of Ages”) implies to Kiss’ Gene Simmons that he signed the band, in part, because Simmons’ and guitarist Paul Stanley’s real names are Chaim Witz and Stanley Eisen. He relates to them, the film argues, as fellow Jewish guys who hailed from the outer boroughs of New York City. Bogart died of cancer in 1982.
The movie covers a long span in Bogart’s life and career, and it shows him struggling for many years before striking gold by shepherding Donna Summer’s single “Love to Love You Baby” to hit status. Timothy Scott Bogart, the mogul’s son and the film’s director, did not want to depict Bogart as an unambiguous hero. In the story, the elder Bogart is shown cheating on his first wife with the woman who would become his second, and the film also makes clear that his record label was heavily in debt for many years. It does sometimes show him at odds with the talent, such as when the members of Kiss complain to him that their career hasn’t taken under Bogart’s tutelage.
“I don’t know that I looked at it as protagonist or antagonist, I think he was a bit of both,” Timothy Scott Bogart told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“But I do think the character of the executive, in general, has been a much-maligned character… certainly in the music biopic world,” he added. “And that’s not who Neil Bogart was.”
He added that the personal relationships between his father and the label’s artists were always valued. He remembers his family going on vacation with Donna Summer, and Gladys Knight and members of Kiss being at his home.
The younger Bogart, who previously produced the 2019 Vietnam War drama “The Last Full Measure,” said that rather than relying on any book or article, he constructed the film based on interviews he did with his artists, executives and others involved in the story over several years.
Jews have been part of the business side of the American music industry for most of its existence, in part because of the way they were shut out of many professions in the first half of the 20th century. Music executive Seymour Stein, who passed away this week after a long career of working with the likes of Madonna and The Ramones, said in a 2013 interview that “music is something Jews were good at and they could do. All immigrants into America tried their hand at show-business.”
Some executives in the early days of the music industry — Jewish and non-Jewish — did exploit their artists, doing everything from underpaying Black artists to denying them songwriting credits or royalties. Moguls of the past with reputations for doing so included Herman Lubinsky of Savoy Records. Others, like the recently deceased Stein and Milt Gabler of Commodore Records, had better reputations. Historians have differing opinions on specific individuals.
Neil Bogart is shown with The Isley Brothers in June 1969. (Don Paulsen/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
“There is a scholarly controversy between those who look at the moguls and say that they exploited the [Black] musicians and those who say that they encouraged and made possible Black success in music,” said Jonathan Sarna, the professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University. “Both use the same data, but some point to the money Jews made and others point to the musicians that Jews discovered and promoted.”
Spike Lee drew fire for his depiction of fictional Jewish music executives Moe and Josh Flatbush (played by John and Nicholas Turturro) in his 1990 movie “Mo’ Better Blues.”
“In the history of American music, there have not been Jewish people exploiting black musicians?” Spike Lee said in his defense to New York Magazine in 2006. “In the history of music? How is that being stereotypical?”
Other “bad guy” examples include Paul Giamatti’s Jerry Heller in 2015’s “Straight Outta Compton” and David Krumholtz’s Milt Shaw in 2004’s “Ray.” “Cadillac Records,” from 2008, starred Adrien Brody as Leonard Chess, the Jewish founder of the legendary Chess Records who, the film implied, gave his mostly Black artists Cadillacs, but not always the money they were owed. “Get On Up,” the 2014 biopic of James Brown that starred the late Chadwick Boseman, cast Fred Melamed as famed Cincinnati mogul Syd Nathan (a mentor to Seymour Stein); journalist RJ Smith criticized the film for depicting Nathan as a “bumptious racist.”
Actor Seth Rogen discussed the trope in his 2021 memoir “Yearbook.” He tells the story of running into comedian Eddie Griffin, who at a late point in his career had been struggling to get movie roles. Griffin told Rogen to “tell your Jews to let other people make some movies!”
Rogen called this “insane because he’s really ignoring the fact that if there’s one thing that Jewish people are NOT above, it’s making money producing things that are fronted by Black people. Anyone who’s ever seen a biopic of any Black musician knows the character I’m talking about, and he’s usually very appropriately played by my dear friend David Krumholtz.” (Krumholtz played one of the Hasidic producers in “Walk Hard.”)
“It’s certainly true that, in the post-war U.S. music industry, Jews were more likely to be producers and impresarios than performers. And, given the importance of African-Americans in the post-war U.S. music industry, that inevitably created a particular kind of relationship with certain Jews in the music industry,” sociologist and music critic Keith Kahn-Harris told JTA.
“That relationship starts to be put under scrutiny and under strain from the late 1960s, as the civil rights coalition started to fall apart and people of color began to assert their agency,” he added. “It’s also true that the post-war music industry was an unregulated space with an almost-normative pattern of exploitation of performers. Put all that together and you have all the ingredients for significant African-American-Jewish tension. Plus, the rapacious Jewish impresario sits easily with ingrained antisemitic stereotypes.”
“Spinning Gold” isn’t the only counterexample to the trend in film. In last year’s Whitney Houston biopic “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” the Jewish label honcho character, Clive Davis (played by Stanley Tucci), is treated as a benevolent guiding light. In that case, Davis was among the producers of the movie.
“Jewish promoters, like all music promoters, were and are first and foremost business people selling a product. Their goal: promote a performer to reap income. The performers have obviously a different stake in the transaction, although both depend on the other,” said Hasia Diner, an American Jewish history professor at New York University.
“If the hero of the film is the performer then her/his perspective is the focus and almost by definition the promoter’s perspective has to reflect the antagonist encounter. Does that merit being called antisemitism? Not in my estimation. By doing so it undermines real antisemitism. It also ignores the inherent business transaction involved,” Diner said.
How can filmmakers navigate this?
“With great care,” Kahn-Harris said. “It does mean paying attention to how such a portrayal can be accurate and not feeding on deeper antisemitic stereotypes. There’s no one way of doing this. It requires care and attention to the historical record.”
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The post ‘Spinning Gold’ movie departs from Hollywood stereotypes about Jewish music producers appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Netanyahu Coalition Pushes Contentious Oct. 7 Attack Probe, Families Call for Justice
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participates in the state memorial ceremony for the fallen of the Iron Swords War on Mount Herzl, Jerusalem on Oct. 16, 2025. Photo: Alex Kolomoisky/POOL/Pool via REUTERS
Israel‘s parliament gave the initial go-ahead on Wednesday for a government-empowered inquiry into the surprise October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas terrorists on southern Israel rather than the expected independent investigation demanded by families of the victims.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has resisted calls to establish a state commission to investigate Israel‘s failures in the run-up to its deadliest day and has taken no responsibility for the attack that sparked the two-year Gaza war.
His ruling coalition voted on Wednesday to advance a bill which grants parliament members the authority to pick panel members for an inquiry and gives Netanyahu’s cabinet the power to set its mandate.
Critics say the move circumvents Israel‘s 1968 Commissions of Inquiry Law, under which the president of the Supreme Court appoints an independent panel to investigate major state failures such as those which preceded the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
Survivors and relatives of those hurt in the Hamas attack have launched a campaign against the proposed probe, saying only a state commission can bring those accountable to justice.
“This is a day of disaster for us all,” said Eyal Eshel, who lost his daughter when Hamas militants overran the army base where she served. “Justice must be done and justice will be done,” he said at the Knesset, before the vote.
Surveys have shown wide public support for the establishment of a state commission into the country’s biggest security lapse in decades.
Netanyahu said on Monday that a panel appointed in line with the new bill, by elected officials from both the opposition and the coalition, would be independent and win broad public trust.
But Israel‘s opposition has already said it will not cooperate with what it describes as an attempt by Netanyahu’s coalition to cover up the truth rather than reveal it, arguing that the investigation would ultimately be controlled by Netanyahu and his coalition.
The new bill says that if the politicians fail to agree on the panel, its make-up will be decided by the head of parliament, who is allied with Netanyahu and is a member of his Likud party.
Jon Polin, whose son Hersh Goldberg-Polin was taken hostage and found slain by his captors with five other hostages in a Hamas tunnel in August 2024, said only a trusted commission could restore security and unite a nation still traumatized.
“I support a state commission, not to see anyone punished and not because it will bring back my only son, no. I support a state commission so that nothing like what happened to my son, can ever happen to your son, or your daughter, or your parents,” Polin said on Sunday at a news conference with other families.
Hersh Goldberg-Polin was among dozens of hostages taken in the 2023 attack from the site of the Nova music festival.
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Christmas Celebrations Muted at Bondi as Australians Grieve After Deadly Shooting
People attend the ‘Light Over Darkness’ vigil honoring victims and survivors of a deadly mass shooting during a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Dec. 14, in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hollie Adams
Christmas celebrations were muted at Sydney’s famed Bondi Beach on Thursday in the aftermath of a terror attack that killed 15 people there more than a week ago, as the community continued to grapple with the country’s deadliest mass shooting in nearly three decades.
Police patrolled across the beachfront in Bondi, a traditional Christmas destination, as hundreds of people, many wearing Santa hats, gathered on the sands.
“I think it’s tragic, and I think everybody respects and is very sad for what happened, and I think people here are out on the beach, because it’s like a celebration but everybody has got it in their memories and everybody is respectful of what happened,” British tourist Mark Conroy told Reuters.
“Everyone is feeling for the family and friends who are going through the worst possible thing you could imagine.”
The gun attack on December 14 at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration has prompted calls for stricter gun laws and tougher action against antisemitism, while public gathering rules in Sydney have been tightened under new laws passed on Wednesday.
Beachgoers were seen taking photos next to a Christmas tree while some posed with lifeguards, although windy weather conditions appeared to thin crowds.
“It’s not the best conditions for Christmas Day today, it’s a bit choppy. … so not ideal, but people are still here,” Surf Life Saving Patrol Captain Thomas Hough said.
Flags flew at half mast outside the heritage-listed Bondi Pavilion building near the site of the attack, which police say was allegedly carried out by a father and son, inspired by the militant group Islamic State.
In Melbourne, a car with a “Happy Chanukah!” sign was set alight on Christmas Day in the city’s southeast, with no injuries reported, Australian media reported.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, facing mounting criticism from opponents who argue his government has not done enough to curb a rise in antisemitism, called the firebombing of the car “just beyond comprehension.”
“What sort of evil ideology and thoughts at a time like this would motivate someone?,” Albanese told reporters on Thursday.
Since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza in October 2023, there have been attacks against synagogues, Jewish buildings and cars in Australia.
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‘Poles Watching Can Be Proud’: Director Defends Holocaust Film 10-Years in the Making Sparking Backlash in Poland
Pelagia Radecka, featured in “Among Neighbors.” Photo: Courtesy of 8 Above
A documentary that addresses the historic and well-documented murder of hundreds of Holocaust survivors by local Poles in the aftermath of World War II has stirred political controversy within the Eastern European country, but its director told The Algemeiner the film mentions a lot that Poles can be proud of.
“There are stories within the film that Poles can look at and be proud of how those individuals acted during and since World War II,” said Yoav Potash, the Jewish award-winning writer, producer and director of “Among Neighbors.”
“And there are also stories that may make people feel like it’s a shame, that some Poles behaved the way they did,” he added. “And that’s an appropriate and mature response. To look at the history of your own nation and say, ‘Wow, some of us really failed in our decency and humanity.’”
Potash’s documentary “Among Neighbors” focuses on a handful of particular stories in the small town of Gniewoszów, in north-central Poland, where Jews were murdered by their Polish Catholic neighbors months after the war ended – neighbors whom they once lived peacefully with for centuries before World War II. The film uses hand-drawn animation as well as first-hand testimonies and interviews with Holocaust survivors, locals and World War II experts in Poland to tell the stories of Jews who were liberated at the end of the Holocaust only to be then murdered by local Poles when returning home.
At the heart of the film is Yaacov Goldstein, one of the last living Holocaust survivors from Gniewoszów, and Pelagia Radecka, a local Polish eyewitness who saw Jews murdered in Gniewoszów by her Polish neighbors, six months after the Nazis were defeated. Radecka has fond memories of her Jewish neighbors and at the age of 85, she remains scarred by their murders, and efforts by the murderers and politicians to silence her. She holds on to the hope that she will find the Jewish boy who is the surviving child of two of the victims murdered by local Poles. Goldstein talks in the film about his wartime experiences and the brutal conditions he was forced to endure to survive the Holocaust, which include hiding for two years in a storage compartment so small he could not straighten his legs and escaping execution by a Nazi firing squad because of “a miracle.”
Several elders from Gniewoszów were interviewed for “Among Neighbors” and all but two have since died. The film features their final testimony.
It took Potash 10 years to make “Among Neighbors,” the filmmaker from California told The Algemeiner. He said he was basically “flying under the radar” filming the project in Poland when the country passed a law in 2018 criminalizing any claims that the Polish nation or state was complicit in the Holocaust. The controversial legislation, making it illegal to accuse Poland of colluding with the Nazis, was championed by the ruling nationalist Law and Justice party. The country has a long-standing history of promoting the narrative that Poles were only victims in Nazi-occupied Poland. In November, Polish Member of Parliament Grzegorz Braun declared “Poland is for the Poles” and that Jews “have their own countries” during a speech outside the site of the former Auschwitz concentration camp.
“Among Neighbors” made its world premiere at the Warsaw Jewish Film Festival last year, where it won the festival’s Special Award. Poland’s national public broadcaster TVP aired the film in November and its television premiere garnered well over 100,000 viewers, according to Potash. “Among Neighbors” is still available for viewers in Poland on TVP’s streaming platform.
But on Nov. 16, six days after “Among Neighbors” aired and began streaming in Poland, senior Polish officials and right-wing media outlets condemned both the film and TVP. Agnieszka Jędrzak, undersecretary to Polish President Karol Nawrocki, called the film “anti-Polish historical manipulation” in a post on X. The National Broadcasting Council of Poland (KRRiT) has since launched an investigation into TVP, which is ongoing. So far TVP is standing by its broadcast of the film and has not removed “Among Neighbors” from its streaming platform.
Speaking to The Algemeiner, Potash insisted that “Among Neighbors” is “not an anti-Polish film.”
“I think there is plenty in the film for Poles to look at and be proud of,” he explained. “And that would include the story of the man who forged papers for Jews in Gniewoszów and saved the lives of at least nine people by giving them false papers that could make them appear to be not Jewish, so they can flee Poland and get to safety. In addition to including this story in the film, we contacted Yad Vashem and told them we had someone to add to the Righteous Among the Nations. And we made that happen. In 2018, he was inducted posthumously. We felt like this individual deserves that special honor.”
Potash added that Polish viewers can also be proud of Radecka “because she showed a lot of courage overcoming overwhelming pressure from the murderers, and later the politicians, who tried to silence her.” He criticized “extreme nationalists” in Poland who are “only concerned with the fact that this film also pokes some very large holes in a narrow and oversimplified view that some in Poland have of themselves and their national identity, especially how it relates to World War II.”
The filmmaker said he was not the least bit surprised about the political backlash that the film has received in Poland, considering the “very divided and politically charged atmosphere in Poland, especially around their World War II history.”
“There is a popular national myth in Poland that during World War II, Poles were only heroes or victims. Nothing else,” he said. “I think for many years, children and adults in Poland have largely been taught and fed this myth … Even today, roughly half the country is still clinging to a fantasy version of history that denies the extent to which Poles were complicit in either pointing out to Nazis where Jews were hiding or doing much worse, such as is revealed in my film, which is that some Poles continued to kill Jews even after the war was over, the Nazis were defeated and gone.”
“The reality is that when World War II was over, Holocaust survivors came back to their shtetls [a small Jewish town or village] seeking out others who may have survived, wondering, ‘Can we regroup here? Is it even possible to restart our lives in the towns that we loved and where we’ve lived our entire lives?’ And these murders that took place across Poland told them, ‘Absolutely not. You are not welcome. You cannot restart, you cannot continue life in the shtetl.’”
“Among Neighbors” is currently playing in select US theaters and film festivals. It won the Audience Award at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival, three awards from the Teaneck International Film Festival, and the Jewish Film Institute’s Envision Award. Still, Potash told The Algemeiner that the film has received negative reactions from some streaming platforms and major film festivals. He shared a story of a major streamer that told him the documentary was not “broad enough” for their platform.
“To be not ‘broad enough’ sounds like a nicer way of saying ‘too Jewish,’” Potash said. “I worked really hard to try to make this film as universal as possible. And I think the themes of can we confront out history honestly, even the parts that are difficult, that applies across the board to just about every country and society in the world. Unfortunately, releasing this film during this post-Oct. 7 [2023] environment that been really, really challenging. A lot of major festivals and streamers don’t want to get near content that’s seen as ‘too Jewish.’”
While TVP remains under investigation by the National Broadcasting Council of Poland for airing “Among Neighbors,” Potash encourages Poles to see the documentary for themselves and make their own judgements about the film.
“Don’t believe all the out of context ranting about the film that’s coming from political extremists and historical revisionists in Poland,” he explained. “I think it’s important for people to see this film because it gets into the real complexities of how history actually unfolded. It resists the simple narrative of: ‘We were heroes, and these were the villains, and these were the victims.’ It wasn’t always so black and white; so simple. The real stories that came out of this situation were quite complex. And those simplistic narratives don’t always fit.”
The USC Shoah Foundation — founded in 1994 by Steven Spielberg with the goal of recording, preserving, and sharing testimonies related to the Holocaust — has partnered with the JFCS Holocaust Center to create an educational curriculum so “Among Neighbors” can be used in classrooms as part of Holocaust education. A portion of revenue generated by the film benefits the JFCS Holocaust Center.
Watch the trailer for “Among Neighbors” below.