Dear Hollywood

Though I’ve received my share of Hollywood rejection letters in the past (“Your script reads like a sitcom,” “The show’s been canceled,” “You expect me to produce this?”), this is my rejection letter to Hollywood. Or more specifically, Hollywood movies, my first love. And I’m making it public.

Dear Hollywood,

I think it’s about time we finally go our separate ways. It’s not me, it’s you. Okay, it’s also me. But after decades of meeting in the dark, even in crowds, it’s getting harder for me to justify spending another moment with you.

I’ve loved you for as long as I remember. Even as a child, what captivated me about you was the strange magic of your Golden Age, a mystical black-and-white world of fast-talking, wise cracking detectives with tinny voices who toss around anachronisms like “swell” and “grand” while destroying evil personified (played by George Raft). I was also enchanted by your stylishness, your fantastic Technicolor, cinemascopic escapes beyond space, time and logic (directed by Stanley Kubrick). The thrills and surprises of the magical rides you led me on were raw and fresh, leaving me wanting more.

But I wasn’t content with being a mere passenger. I wanted to drive.

So I wrote and directed a 16mm film in high school, created video segments for the campus TV station in college, wrote and directed local TV after graduation and soon after moved to Los Angeles to start my Hollywood career. And there I saw you from the inside: the brainstorming sessions with “powerful” producers. The cocaine-filled stars with the vacant eyes. The self-consumed ingénues with the plastic-coated identities. The brazen adultery. The atheism. The intense materialistic chase of beauty and glamor and honor and flashy cars and really large houses.

Like millions before and after me, I was just a young man with a dream of telling stories on the screen, both large and small. And after I started observing Shabbat, I walked away from my Hollywood career with its six-day movie production schedule (though I continued to write for cable network television). Yet even as a committed, Torah observant Jew, I still loved movies.

But it’s time to finally rethink this love.

Let’s face it. You and I don’t share the same values.

I don’t want to go into the painfully obvious — your twisted, disastrous idea of boy meets girl (and now boy meets boy) where love is something effortless to fall into … and out of. Or your soul-damaging gratuitous sex and nudity that builds neither plot nor character development. This goes without saying. And besides, I’ve been avoiding R-rated movies as a rule for a long time. But even PG-13 movies, the ones children routinely watch and use as their frame of reference, have become darker, meaner, bloodier, racier.

Still, your lure is powerful. And the desire to escape from life’s demands and be entertained is hard to overcome. Yet much about you is wrong. It seems my lifelong relationship with you is like an interfaith relationship. I’m Jewish and you’re not. And I don’t care how many Jews are involved in the entertainment industry (which was one of the only American industries open to Jews in the early 20^th century); your values aren’t Jewish values.

You are anti-emuna, anti-Torah, anti-modesty.

You make it impossible for a guy to guard his eyes while watching a movie, any movie, even G-rated movies with no nudity and sex scenes. There’s usually a beautiful woman filling the screen. And gazing at women other than one’s spouse or relative is prohibited by Jewish law, something your Hollywood values couldn’t even begin to understand.

And then there’s the atheism that insidiously seeps into many plots.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that atheist directors with an axe to grind will create atheistic movies. I once had a series of arguments with a movie director who tried to convince me that G-d doesn’t exist. He wanted me to agree with him that something can’t possibly exist if you can’t see, touch, hear or taste it. I finally told him our conversations were a waste of time. I told him we were living in two different worlds; his is just a physical world of cause and effect and mine is one of faith. I walked away from the conversations. What did he do? He produced a pro-atheist documentary at his own expense.

But enough about him; let’s get back to you.

Your anti-emuna messages are everywhere, penetrating even some Orthodox circles. I’ve sat at many Shabbat tables where children and teens suddenly came alive when they talked about their favorite actors and retold the movies they’ve just seen. This immersion in pop culture is so pervasive that I’ve even been the invited guest speaker at an Orthodox day school; I was asked to use some of my Hollywood experiences to persuade students that their actor-heroes are far from being real heroes.

And me? Maybe it’s time I really start thinking about what I’m doing before I sit down to watch one of your blockbusters, despite its PG rating, and especially as today’s rabbinic leaders are saying this is the generation before the complete redemption of the Jewish people. Maybe it’s time to ask: Are the seemingly harmless images and messages I’m ingesting really harmless? Are they getting me any closer to G-d and to my soul correction?

Maybe it’s time you and I really start going our separate ways, you to your envelope-pushing descent to unprecedented decadence and voyeurism, and me, G-d willing, to higher things.