30 years ago, Brendan Fraser and Matt Damon starred in ‘School Ties’ — one of Hollywood’s few movies about antisemitism at school

(JTA) — After a protracted profession pause introduced on by an assault-induced melancholy and accidents, actor Brendan Fraser is again in headlines, incomes early Oscar buzz for his efficiency within the upcoming film “The Whale.” 

What a few of even his most ardent followers may not notice is that one among Fraser’s earliest roles — alongside Matt Damon in what was his first main onscreen position — got here in a single the few mainstream Hollywood movies to deal with antisemitism at non-Jewish faculties.

In “Faculty Ties,” which hit theaters 30 years in the past this month and was set within the Fifties, Fraser performs David Greene, a working-class Jewish child from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who enrolls at an elite New England prep faculty for his senior yr of highschool, to play quarterback for the vaunted soccer crew. 

David is urged to maintain his Jewishness a secret, and he proves an on the spot success on the soccer subject. Confronted within the early fall with a Sandy Koufax-esque selection — whether or not or to not miss an enormous sport that falls on Rosh Hashanah — David sneaks to the campus chapel by himself late at night time to say excessive vacation prayers. Confronted by a dean, he’s requested, “Was it price it, breaking a practice simply to win a soccer sport?”

“Your custom or mine, sir?” he replies. 

As soon as a drunken postgame celebration visitor lets the key slip, David finds himself an outcast. What begins with a couple of jokes about “Jews and communists” at Harvard and the way a classmate “Jewed” somebody down for a deal for a stereo provides technique to antisemitic slurs throughout a bathe room brawl (with Damon’s villain character Charlie Dillon), a swastika on his dorm room wall and a dishonest scandal meant to border David.

All of his classmates, not like him, are from the upper-crust WASP class and underneath stress to be the fifth or sixth technology of their household to attend an Ivy League faculty. It’s additionally clear that a lot of them had by no means met a Jew of their life. 

“Faculty Ties” was directed by Jewish filmmaker Robert Mandel and written by, of all individuals, “Legislation & Order” creator Dick Wolf. Wolf’s father was Jewish, however he had a Catholic mom and was an altar boy; Wolf additionally attended the distinguished Philips Academy in Massachusetts. (Fraser is just not Jewish, and Randall Batinkoff, who has a minor position, seems to be the one Jewish actor within the solid, though Cole Hauser, on his mom’s facet, was descended from Warner Brothers’ Jewish co-founder Harry Warner.) Mandel has mentioned in interviews that he skilled antisemitism throughout his school years at Bucknell College within the Nineteen Sixties. 

“Faculty Ties” was an excessively didactic field workplace bust, however it has develop into recognized for serving to to kickstart the careers of Fraser (recognized for starring in blockbusters like “The Mummy” and “George of the Jungle”), Damon and two of Damon’s future “Good Will Searching” co-stars: Hauser and Ben Affleck. It additionally options Anthony Rapp, who would go on to originate the position of Mark Cohen within the Broadway musical “Hire.”

From left: Brendan Fraser, Randall Batinkoff, Matt Damon and Andrew Lowery on the Los Angeles premiere of the movie, Sept. 11, 1992. (Ron Galella Assortment by way of Getty Photos)

For Jewish followers and sports activities figures, the film stays a novel cultural touchstone.

Brent Novoselsky, a Jewish native of Skokie, Illinois, who performed seven seasons within the NFL as a decent finish, largely for the Minnesota Vikings, advised the Jewish Telegraphic Company that the movie tackled an actual slice of historical past that affected Jewish athletes. 

“I used to be impacted by the film because the 40s, 50s and 60s have been a tough time to be Jewish within the US,” mentioned Novoselsky in an interview throughout the week of his induction into the Philadelphia Jewish Sports activities Corridor of Fame, on Sept. 21. “I do know this due to my involvement within the B’nai B’rith Sports activities Lodge of Chicago. The principle motive it existed was to present Jewish individuals in Chicago an outlet for bowling and different sports activities that they weren’t allowed to take part in.”

In 2020, Michael Neuman, an Orthodox psychologist who had competed on and received a Lebron James-hosted impediment course present in a yarmulke in 2019, hosted a Zoom name of present and former Jewish NFL gamers. The group mentioned their experiences within the league, tied to the then-controversy involving an antisemitic social media put up by former star participant DeSean Jackson.

Neuman, who’s in his late 20s and was subsequently born earlier than “Faculty Ties” got here out, had not seen the movie when first requested about it. However he had some ideas after watching it lately.

“One of many foremost issues we see within the film is to be happy with who you’re, although the environment could strip us away from that actuality,” Neuman mentioned. “Sadly, many people determine to not get up for who we’re and let individuals stroll throughout our identification. 

“David needed a life he thought he’d be joyful in, and when the hate was focused at him to deliver him down, he reacted and believed it. As he mentioned, he lied to himself however he allowed these individuals to make him really feel otherwise than he’s. If he is aware of he’s a proud Jew and never totally different then any of the opposite college students, then he wouldn’t have reacted with rage like in the beginning and dealt with the state of affairs as he did on the finish.”

A part of what makes the plot work is that David Greene is such a standard identify, one which’s comparatively ethnically ambiguous. The exhibitions curator and historian at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum is known as David Greene, whereas David Inexperienced can also be the identify of the non-Jewish founding father of Passion Foyer. The College of Georgia, from 2001 to 2005, even had a quarterback named David Greene, though he doesn’t seem to have been Jewish.