Anyway, more from this in future posts. My boss, Avi, told me and the screenwriter of The Syrian, Michele (the guy's way of spelling it), to attend the premier of an Israeli film called Lebanon. He gave us his tickets, and the two of us were entering a world of Israeli film in which neither of us were familiar with. (Lebanon is a film that takes place entirely inside an Israeli tank. I highly recommend seeking it out in a few months in America. Here's an article about it.)
Michele, a 40+ year-old French Moroccan who is struggling to keep his feet grounded with his new script, picked me up to attend the premier. I was wearing black pants with a nice polo, but he was dressed much finer. He had black slacks, polished black shoes, and a black button-down exposing an Israeli wilderness of chest hair. When we were younger and sent away to have trees planted in Israel, I didn’t realize they were being planted on his chest. He looked and acted like his screenplay had already hit it big.
“You’re not dressed well enough,” he said to me upon entering his silver convertible.
“What do you mean? I think I look nice.”
“You need button-down. None of these, howdoyousay, T-shirts.”
“Well, it’s too late now. It’s gonna have to do.”
“Ehhhh. I guess. People will just think you’re somebody’s son.”
If there’s anything I both appreciate and loathe about Israeli culture it’s that there’s never a standard for dress, yet people will always make a brutally honest comment about your wardrobe.
We were the first ones to arrive, despite being late. But that was OK because we had infinite access to the free food and drink offered. As we stuffed ourselves, more and more people began to arrive. Supposedly many of them were famous. But as I was looking for these famous people, I couldn’t tell any of them apart. Everyone was wearing house clothes. Even, as Michele pointed out, the famous ones. This was a premier, right??
“Am I still too underdressed?” I asked Michele somewhat rhetorically.
“No, no. Everyone here looks so shlubby. I hate it. I hate that about Israel. When I was younger and used to dress up for school because it made me feel good, my teachers used to ask me if I was getting married.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I think because of the army. The army makes us so disciplined that afterward nobody cares to dress up. It’s completely the opposite of America. Nobody, not even the janitor, would dare not dress up to a movie premier.”
At first, I couldn’t tell if this was something I liked or disliked about Israeli society. The only people that really dressed up were the main people of the film, and of course Michele. On one hand (the hand that Michele wanted to slap everyone with), Israeli’s don’t take much anything, aside from the army, seriously. They’re never on time, they rarely dress up, and their lunch breaks range as long as their workdays. However, they’re more relaxed. They stressed enough throughout their services that now they feel an obligation to relax. And being relaxed works for them in the long run as they have somehow created a first-world country in a third-world environment.
Furthermore, being underdressed isn’t a big deal because they don’t judge one another as critically as we do in America. Never once at this huge (yet small in comparison) premier did I hear any sort of Joan Rivers-type characters yell “Who are you wearing?!” The superficial society that has enveloped America doesn’t exist here.
We entered the theater and there I sat: In Israel, next to a French Moroccan, who wrote a script called The Syrian, watching a war movie called Lebanon.
And then I began to chuckle to myself as I realized how lucky I was to be in the situation I was in, as well as what I was going to wear to work tomorrow…
It was a good first day.
(Some pictures of the premier below)
The actors of "Lebanon" dressed somewhat nicely.
Some important studio executives dressed very nicely.
The other famous "shlubbs" of the Israeli entertainment industry.
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