Robert J. Avrech: Emmy Award winning screenwriter. Religious Zionist. Republican. Movie fanatic. Gun owner. Helplessly and hopelessly in love with my wife since age nine.

Quotes

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

February 15, 2019 by Robert J. Avrech 9 Comments

“Unlike writers or painters, we don’t sit down in front of a blank canvas and say, ‘How do I start? Where do I start?’ We’re given the springboard of the text, a plane ticket, told to report to Alabama, and there’s a group of people all ready to make a film and it’s a marvelous life.“
—Albert Finney R.I.P. 1936-2019

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

February 8, 2019 by Robert J. Avrech 10 Comments

“I was a million-to-one shot, the least likely to succeed. I wasn’t low man on the totem pole, I was under the totem pole, in a sewer, tied to a sack.”
—Tony Curtis, (b. Bernard Schwartz) on his chances of making it in Hollywood.

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

February 1, 2019 by Robert J. Avrech 16 Comments

Greta Garbo, 1931, photo by Clarence Sinclair Bull
“I don’t like to talk to people because I can’t express myself satisfactorily. I don’t say the things I mean.”
—Greta Garbo

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

January 25, 2019 by Robert J. Avrech 9 Comments

“Never treat your audience as customers, always as partners.”
—James Stewart

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

January 18, 2019 by Robert J. Avrech 9 Comments

“Flops are a part of life’s menu and I’ve never been a girl to miss out on any of the courses.”
—Rosalind Russell

I'm an Emmy Award winning screenwriter. I'm also an observant Jew, a religious Zionist, a conservative Republican, and a member of the NRA. I've been writing and producing in Hollywood for over twenty-five years. But the focus of my life is my family: my radiant wife, Karen—with whom I have been in love with since I was nine years-old—and my two daughters, who, thankfully, look like Karen. Not too long ago, we had three children. But our son, Ariel, died at the age of twenty-two from cancer. We miss him terribly. We think about him practically every minute of every day. People tell us that time heals, but Karen and I know this is not true. Time grinds away doing its terrible work. Ariel is gone. Yet absence becomes presence.

Ariel Chaim Avrech, ZT'L, May His Righteous Memory be a Blessing.

Annual Ariel Avrech
Memorial Lectures
Young Israel of Century City

NOTE: Click on video titles inside the thumbnail images, below, to open that video in YouTube

Fifteenth: June 10, 2018
Jackie Danicki: “Confessions of a Convert: A Humbling, Joyful Journey to Judaism.”

Blog Post | Audio: (94 MB)

Fourteenth: June 11, 2017
Daniel Greenfield: “Fighting Anti-Semitism and Defending Israel in the Age of BDS.”

Blog Post | Audio: (100 MB)

Thirteenth: May 22, 2016Ben Shapiro: “How You Can Save Israel”

Blog Post | Audio: (70 MB)

Twelfth: June 7, 2015
Larry Elder: “The New Black Anti-Semitism”

Blog Post | Audio: (100 MB)

Eleventh: June 8, 2014
Michael Medved: “Shifting Alliances: Why Liberals No Longer Reliably Support Israel — And Conservatives Do.”

Blog Post | Audio: (97MB)

Tenth: June 9, 2013
David Horowitz: “The War Against Judaism on the University Campus.”

Blog Post | Audio: (16MB)

Ninth: June 3, 2012
Joel B. Pollak: “The Mainstream Media’s Betrayal of Israel.”

Blog Post | Audio: (15MB)

Eighth: June 5, 2011
Yossi Klein Halevi: “What is Expected of a Survivor People: Lessons My Father Taught Me.”

Blog Post | Audio: (18MB)

Seventh: June 13, 2010
Dennis Prager: “Happiness is a Mitzvah, Not an Emotion.”

Blog Post | Audio: (80MB)

Sixth: June 21, 2009
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky: “Conformity in Jewish Life: Vice, Virtue or Affectation?”

Blog Post | Audio: (64MB)

Fifth: June 15, 2008
Rabbi Dr. Gil S. Perl: “What Was the Rosh Yeshiva Reading: Intellectual Openness in 19th Century Lithuania.”

Blog Post | Audio: (70MB)