On March 18, eight days after the Academy Awards ceremony, Variety published an article with the following headline: ‘Over 450 Jewish Creatives and Professionals Denounce Jonathan Glazer’s ‘Zone of Interest’ Oscars Speech in Open Letter.’ In the days that followed, more than 500 would add their names, bringing the total to over 1,000. The article cited “high-profile co-signees” like Jennifer Jason Leigh, Debra Messing, Amy Pascal, Eli Roth (who played “The Bear Jew” in Inglorious Basterds) and Amy Sherman-Palladino.
Modern Family producer Ilana Wernick is quoted as saying that “Jew hatred won the day.” Rabbi Marvin Hier, who founded the Simon Wiesenthal Center, says, “If I didn’t know better, I would think this was a Hamas rally,” in response to the audience’s standing ovation for Glazer’s speech. If anyone reading the Variety article didn’t know better, they would think that Hollywood’s Jewish film community rose together in a groundswell of support to repudiate what must have been a horribly insensitive speech from Mr. Glazer.
But, as is true for much of the outrage-based ecosystem of the modern media landscape, Variety’s article and the open letter are not quite what they seem.
On March 10, Glazer, who is Jewish, won the Academy Award for Best International Film for The Zone of Interest, which observes the family life of Rudolf Höss, the commander of the Auschwitz concentration camp. With only a wall separating their house from the camp, the Höss family live out a kind of suburban life in full acceptance and disregard for the horrors playing out beside them. The film is a profound study of dehumanization, a theme that Glazer centralized in prepared remarks that he read onstage:
All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present. Not to say, look what they did then, but rather look what we do now. Our film shows where dehumanization leads, at its worst. It shaped all of our past and present. Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization. How do we resist?
I’m guessing that this is not the kind of thing you would hear at a Hamas rally.
Regardless, immediately following the speech, a number of commentators elected to misquote Glazer, blatantly taking the words “refute their Jewishness” out of context. John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary, said, “By saying he refutes his Jewishness…Jonathan Glazer has instantly made himself into one of Judaism’s historic villains.” Batya Ungar-Sargon, opinion editor at Newsweek, tweeted, “I simply cannot fathom the moral rot in someone’s soul that leads them to win an award for a movie about the Holocaust and…to accept that award by saying, ‘We stand here as men who refute their Jewishness…’”
Several others echoed this sentiment in an apparent effort to manufacture outrage over Glazer’s equanimous statement. One of the outlets that misquoted Glazer was Variety, in a summary piece on Oscar night. They wrote: “‘Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness. Whether the victims of October 7th in Israel…’” Notice the failure to add an ellipsis after “Jewishness.” Variety has since corrected that article, describing it as a “typographical error.” (It was documented on X in a screenshot by journalist Avi Asher-Schapiro).
.@Variety should really correct this this. This is not at all what Jonathan Glazer said. It's missing some key words. https://t.co/opSIBf8rSY pic.twitter.com/2VtV1ysjrV
— Avi Asher-Schapiro (@AASchapiro) March 11, 2024
Then, a week after Oscar night, came the open letter. A number of observers on X, reacting to the apparent campaign against Glazer, pointed out that the letter itself is a simple Google Form. Anyone could sign it under any name without verification. One had signed their name as “Riverto Thesea.” While that name has since been removed, you can still find a number of spurious signees, such as “Screenwriter, Self-Employed.”
Google searches of several signees — “Nate Doublemint Dean”, “Shahar Ben-Yosef, Industry”, “Stella Evans, Self”, “Soxi Melamdowitz” — revealed that none of them had an IMDB page or a documented film credit. One, Corey Bearak, is an attorney and political columnist whose website shows no work in any creative field. Another simply signed their name “C.”
It’s unclear by what parameters many on the list can be considered “Jewish Creatives and Professionals,” if at all. (Contrast this with another open letter by Jewish Americans denouncing AIPAC’s outsized spending on political campaigns. Each name is verifiable, and the majority are recognizable).
In its article reporting on the open letter, Variety linked to the Google Form without including this important context. They have since taken the link down, and the form is no longer accepting responses. The article still states, “It is unclear how the open letter came together.”
The article frames the letter as an outpouring of outrage from Hollywood’s high-profile Jewish professionals. (In fact, several other influential Jewish creatives have defended Glazer’s statement, including Tony-award-winning playwright Tony Kushner, who described it as an “unimpeachable, irrefutable statement.”) But under scrutiny, it is revealed to reflect the views of just a handful of elite creatives backed by a large number of random people, many of whom are not even film professionals and some of whom may not even be who they say they are.
Why would Variety ignore such important context? Why did they frame the narrative in this way?
To answer this question, it helps to step back and look at the magazine’s parent company: Penske Media Corporation (PMC). Since its founder and CEO, Jay Penske, purchased the industry outlet Deadline in 2009, he has become a media company shopaholic. In 2012, he bought Variety with $26 million in debt and equity provided by hedge fund investor David S. Loeb. Two years later came Fairchild Fashion Media, owner of Women’s Wear Daily. Then he bought half of Rolling Stone and, two years later, the other half. In 2020, PMC became an 80% shareholder in The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, and Vibe.
Along the way, he also acquired Gold Derby, Indiewire, and TVLine, as well as the art and lifestyle outlets ARTnews, Art in America, Dirt and Beauty Inc. In 2021, he bought an ownership stake in the South x Southwest festival, which now features concerts hosted by Rolling Stone and live podcasts from The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline. Last year, he added on a majority shareholder position at Vox Media (which includes New York Magazine, Thrillist, NowThis, Vox, and Eater, among others) and ownership of the Golden Globes.
There has been little to no coverage examining Penske and PMC as their media empire has expanded. (PMC did not respond to a request for comment). The exception is a 2022 New York Times profile, for which he declined to be interviewed. The opening line of that piece is revealing: “For the media executive Jay Penske, awards season is money season.” As awards season campaigns get underway, all of the major studios — Netflix, Disney, WarnerMedia, Amazon — spend millions on For Your Consideration ads in The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, Indiewire, and, of course, Variety — all PMC properties. It’s understandable that the company would want to stow away as much as it can during its most profitable period of the year and that it would take any opportunity it can to maximize those profits before the season ends.
For PMC and Variety, Glazer’s speech and the open letter presented such an opportunity. By framing their coverage as a “backlash” and a “controversy,” a collective outcry rather than the scattered whimper that it was, the company was able to fan the flames of a hot-button issue, dragging it out for as long as possible in an attempt to draw more eyeballs to their publications. The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline, where the name “Riverto Thesea” remains listed, have also reprinted the letter.
Jonathan Glazer makes the kind of films that transcend fleeting media moments like this. His Under the Skin from 2013 is still considered by many to be a masterpiece, including by historian Mark Cousins. Years from now, the letter will be in the past and whatever money was made from it will have been spent. But The Zone of Interest will remain a harrowing testament to what is always possible — not then, but now — when people neglect to listen to one another to focus on the human qualities that we all share. The choices that Variety and PMC made in their coverage of this situation have only strengthened the impulses toward dehumanization. The company has been shameless in its disregard for Glazer’s dignity and reputation as it encourages misinformation around his humanistic statement.
I, too, have failed to share with you the whole of Glazer’s words.
He concluded his speech by dedicating the award to the memory and resistance of Aleksandra Bystroń-Kołodziejczyk, a real-life woman depicted in the film. By the age of 14, she was an active member of the Polish resistance, joining the group ZWZ-AK (“Union of Armed Struggle”), a group that arranged prisoner escapes and face-to-face meetings with loved ones. Many times, Aleksandra snuck into the camp late at night to leave food for prisoners. When the war was over, Aleksandra graduated from technical college and attempted to pursue further studies. But Poland’s Soviet authorities, who frowned upon her resistance activities, denied her this opportunity.
When Glazer began production on The Zone of Interest, he met with Aleksandra, who permitted him to use her story. She even allowed him to film in the home where she lived at the time. In 2016, not long after they met, Alexsandra died at the age of 89. In his acceptance speech, Glazer called her “the girl who glows in the film as she did in life.” Sadly, this dedication — and, by extension, Aleksandra’s life and memory — has been muddled by the slander that followed it.
So perhaps the letter got something right. There are indeed many people who would willingly dishonor the memory of the Holocaust and its survivors. According to Variety, there are about 1,000 of them.