November 26, 2008
Contact: Susan Hoffman
Tel: 952-381-3360
Email: history@jhsum.org

Hollywood on the Prairie
 
JHSUM wants to record your brush with fame. Perhaps you've shared stories from your life in St. Louis Park during the 1960's. Maybe you live on Fourth Street in Bloomington where the film is being shot. Tell us about your fifteen minutes of fame if you have been involved in any way with the Coen Brother A Serious Man production. Please email us at history@jhsum.org.

Set in St. Louis Park in the 1960's, the latest film by academy award winners Joel and Ethan Coen is the story of an ordinary man trying to find his equilibrium.  In A Serious Man, the main character, Larry Gopnik, is a professor at a small Midwestern university. His wife is leaving him for one of his colleagues. His unemployed brother is sleeping on his living room couch. He is hassled by his children, his neighbor, and one of his students. Struggling to become a serious man, or at the very least to be taken seriously, he seeks advice from three rabbis.

In preparation for the film, staff from the production company approached the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest for help in recreating the look of Minnesota Jewish life in the 1960's. JHSUM collaborated with a legal research firm to verify the fictional status of characters in the film. Photos of St. Louis Park houses and businesses from JHSUM collections provided location scouts with the authentic look of a 1960's neighborhood. And JHSUM helped costume and set designers see the lives of Jewish teenagers through pictures of after-school activities.

About the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest

For nearly 25 years, JHSUM has been gathering and presenting the stories of the Jewish people of the Upper Midwest. Everyone is an important part of the story. The Society encourages individuals to donate personal stories, documents, photographs and artifacts to its collections.  JHSUM collections are housed in two prominent locations: the Eloise and Elliot Kaplan Family Jewish History Center on the Barry Family Campus in Minneapolis and the Nathan and Theresa Berman Upper Midwest Jewish Archives in the Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota. JHSUM is a partner agency of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation and the United Jewish Fund and Council of St. Paul.