Movie Stars
Richard Gere and I starred in the 1985 movie King David.
I dreamt I was the star of a Hollywood movie and that really blew my mind. The fact that me, an overfed long-haired leaping gnome should be the star of a movie, well – you know. Ha!
Actually, I was an extra in that movie.
In the summer of 1980, a film crew came to Kibbutz Sede Nahum and asked if the volunteers wanted to make extra money. Extra money? We already made enough to go to the canteen and grab a couple of sodas or rotgut wine! What else was there in life?
We would start work at 6 am then work until noon before the sun got too hot.
We lived in small wooden cabins with windows that overlooked the cotton fields of the Bet Shan Valley in the West Bank. It was like living in Legoland although not as nice – the doors often fell off of the rusty hinges.
So we became movie stars for an afternoon.
I was the only individual that the Kibbutznicks trusted not to get into an accident, so I drove the bus that took us down to the Sea of Galilee. We all gleefully got on the bus, rotgut wine in tow, singing songs like children on a school bus.
The songs were not childlike and soon the English soccer-themed songs were belted out. One German volunteer was singled out and taunted with Two World Wars and One World Cup.
At the Sea of Galilee, we were taken to the shore.
In a field was a large table set up with all the food you could ever want or need. We ate lunch and then changed into what was thought of as Ancient Wear meaning sackcloths in different colors. I chose black, very Charleton Heston of me, and thought – they will have to take this from my cold, dead, hands, or something along those lines.
Ah, the silver screen! What stars we were, running back and forth at the right time at the director’s commands. No lines were spoken – that would have meant more money for us. We didn’t need much back then, we had our rotgut wine after all.
We were movie stars, huddled on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, waiting for the director to shout. “Its a wrap.”
I couldn’t see the future and little did I know, 40 years later, I would have written and published a book about that ancient super-hero – King David.
Hmmm, maybe I should get a young Richard Gere to play King David in my Netflix mini-series, scheduled to be in theaters nationwide on the twelve of never!
Robert
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