Guy’s favorite
America My Love
Guy Miller plays it from his phone several times a day. The timing can be touching, or very funny.
Listen to America My LoveA feature movie musical · Screenplay in development
JEWISH
Songs That Rescued a Memory
JEWISH is the film. Jewish The Musical is the show its students create.
At a private Manhattan arts school, Joseph Shapiro hopes to honor his late mother through a concert drawn from her songbook. His students want to sing the songs in their own English voices. Their work grows into a stage show that carries them toward Times Square.
The story
A concert becomes their show
The film opens with the students singing and dancing to “Broadway” in their West 48th Street school corridor. Later, a dream prompts Joseph to bring Rebecca’s songbook to class and propose a concert in her memory.
The students ask to make English versions they can mean and sing. Joseph resists; the class walks out. The Martini twins return with an idea that draws everyone into the work. Only later do the students propose giving the concert a story and a title: Jewish The Musical.
Follow the storyThe people
Every voice has a story
Mr. Shapiro
A teacher learning to let go
Meet Joseph →
Aviva Safra
The roots of a song matter
Meet Aviva Safra →
Yuki Tanaka
Ready to try something new
Meet Yuki Tanaka →Character concept illustrations
The show inside the film
Jewish The Musical is their creation
The students bring their forty-five-minute show to the school auditorium. That performance opens the door to a national competition, with its final in Times Square.
The feature film follows the people who make the show, the choices behind the songs, and the changes their work brings to Joseph and one another.
Explore the film
The songs
Hear the world of JEWISH
Three recordings. Three sides of JEWISH. Choose one to listen here.
An unexpected listener
Hold On
At OyPizza, the Sharpies sing Aviva and Ethan’s song for a visiting star. A friendship begins.
Listen to Hold On
A playful OyPizza number
Aloha or Shalom
Hadley O’Hara and Yuki Tanaka take the OyPizza stage in this comic, hula-inspired song concept.
Listen to Aloha or ShalomThe project
The film is in development
Songwriter and dramatist Walter J. Kin (RIGLI), a member of The Dramatists Guild of America, is revising the feature screenplay himself. A proof-of-concept short is the proposed first production step; it has not been made. His development page explains the path from script to screen.