By Nate Bloom
Contributing Columnist
Brie and Franco in a good flick, Marc Maron Special, Happy Gilmore 2, & much more
“Together” is a comedy/horror film that opens in theaters on July 30. The stars are ALISON BRIE, 42, and DAVE FRANCO, 38. They are married in real-life and play a married couple in this movie. Both are the children of Jewish mothers and non-Jewish fathers, and both identify as Jewish.
Here’s a short summary of the premise: A couple move to the countryside but find themselves encountering a mysterious force that horrifically causes changes in their bodies.
Sounds weird, huh? Well, the good news is that this film got really superlative reviews (from critics and the public) at the 2025 Sundance Festival. Film studios vied for the right to show it in theaters.
MARK MARON, 61, a veteran comedic commentator and stand-up comic, hosts an HBO special entitled “Mark Maron Panicked.” It premieres on August 1.
Okay, somehow, I missed telling you in advance that “Happy Gilmore 2,” a sequel to “Happy Gilmore” (1996), would premiere on July 25 (on Netflix).
The original film was surprisingly charming and pretty funny. ADAM SANDLER, now 58, played Happy Gilmore in the original, and plays him in the sequel.
In the first film, we get to know Gilmore. He is a working-class guy who doesn’t fit the stereotype of a pro golf player. But he has the talent and grit to win a major pro tournament and this qualifies him to play in any PGA tournament.
Here’s the official premise of the sequel: “29 years after winning his first Tour Championship, retired golfer Gilmore returns to the sport to pay for his daughter Vienna’s ballet school.”
Here’s the Jews on-board in Gilmore 2: Adam Sandler, of course; his real-life daughter, SUNNY SANDLER, 16, plays Vienna Gilmore, the aspiring dancer; BEN STILLER, 59, plays Hal L., a former retirement home orderly and asylum orderly who now runs a support group; and then there’s MAXWELL TYLER FRIEDMAN, 29. He plays one of Gilmore’s four sons. (The sons are “small role” characters). Friedman is really a (Jewish) star pro wrestler and not an actor. Google this really huge and muscular Hebrew.
Follow up on last week: Here’s ANDY MARX’s story about GUS KAHN and George Harrison and more. Kahn, a great lyricist, died in 1941, and George Harrison was born in 1943, so he could not have met Kahn. But Harrison’s favorite song was “I See You in My Dreams,” a Gus Kahn tune.
Marx told PHIL ROSENTHAL that he attended a concert in England (around 1966) with his grandmother, GRACE LEBOY KAHN (1890-1963). Andy was then about 15 years old. Harrison came up the aisles and he told Andy that he should be proud to be Gus Kahn’s grandson. He told Andy that “I See You in My Dreams” was his favorite song, and he hoped he could write a song that good. (See Rosenthal’s YouTube channel.)
The song is about a man whose romantic female partner has left him for another man. But, in his dreams, they are still together. The music and the lyrics give almost any listener a hard-to-describe dream-like feeling.
In November, 2001, Harrison died, age 58. A few months later, many top musicians came together to perform what they called, “A Concert for George.” The last performer was Joe Brown, a top U.K. guitarist who knew the Beatles forever.
Like Harrison, he liked to play the ukulele. He sang “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” accompanied only by his ukulele. He obviously knew that this song was special to George. (Bonus: Brown enunciated the song lyrics very clearly.)
Two YouTube channels have the complete “Concert for George.” Enter the title and you’ll find it.
Sidebar: Andy Marx said he had a belated bar mitzvah in Israel in 2019. That got me curious about Andy’s Jewish family’s background. As I noted last week, Groucho and Gus Kahn were Jewish and were Andy’s grandfathers. I knew that Groucho’s first wife and the mother of his son ARTHUR MARX, wasn’t Jewish.
Arthur Marx, a writer, was Andy’s father. I knew that IRENE KAHN married Arthur and she was Andy’s mother. Irene was the daughter of Gus Kahn and Grace Leboy Kahn.
I thought: could someone named Grace Leboy be Jewish? It was easy to find out that Grace was a talented pianist. She helped Kahn write some songs, she plugged his songs, and, like her husband, she was a close friend of Groucho.
I checked censuses. She was born Grace Libovitch and she was Jewish. Her father, SAMUEL, was a Russian Jewish immigrant. Her mother, CELIA, was Jewish, too.
Later, I found a source that said when Samuel moved to Illinois, from Brooklyn, his older children said he should change his last name. He did. After the name change, he even told census takers that he was born in France.
