‘Bad Shabbos’ Creators Talk Influences Behind Jewish Comedy Film

“Good Shabbos!”

The commonly cordial greeting you’re likely to hear every Friday night and Saturday as Jewish people around the globe observe the Sabbath goes comically wrong in director Daniel Robbins’ Bad Shabbos (now playing in select theaters nationwide).

One of the funniest Jewish-themed comedies ever made, the movie centers around an engaged interfaith couple, David (Jon Bass) and Meg (Meghan Leathers), whose parents are about to meet for the very first time over a traditional Friday night Shabbos dinner on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. As if tensions weren’t running high enough, the evening affair becomes even more hectic with the unexpected arrival of a dead body, turning the weekly day of rest into one of side-splitting tsuris and sparking a mad scramble to figure out what to do with the corpse before Meg’s straight-laced Catholic parents (Catherine Curtin and John Bedford Lloyd) arrive from Wisconsin.

The end result is a hilarious and heartfelt exploration of faith, family, and foreskin. Yes, really. “There’s a whole tier of comedies I love like Meet the Parents, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, The Birdcage. And this movie pulled a lot from those,” Robbins says over a joint Zoom call with co-screenwriter, Zack Weiner.

“The impetus,” the filmmaker explains, “was to make an amalgam of the comedies we loved [as kids]. We’ve grown frustrated that the comedies recently just have such an air of fake-ness. I like SNL, but a lot of them just feel like an SNL sketch. The movies we grew up watching have a real grounded-ness to them and more of an edge. They also have more visual jokes, they don’t just rely on improv-ing dialogue.”

Weiner also cites Death at a Funeral, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, a pre-problematic Woody Allen, and his own family mealtimes as inspiration. In fact, the idea for the project began to take shape after Bad Shabbos producer Adam Mitchell heard about Weiner’s mother playing a harmless prank on an unsuspecting dinner guest.

“We had a friend and his girlfriend come over,” Weiner recalls. “My mom was serving my friend’s girlfriend with progressively smaller plates and cups, while everyone else was eating off normal cutlery. Our producer heard about it and thought it was pretty funny. He called and said, ‘That’s an interesting [setup] for a movie. What if the prank went wrong and there was a accidental murder instead of a slightly offended girlfriend?’”

“When you find writers [to work on] something that’s personal and so in their world, it always comes across on the screen,” adds Mitchell on a separate call. “It was just the perfect match of writers and material.”

Weiner continues: “Daniel and I had been talking about an accidental murder movie in an apartment before that, but we couldn’t figure it out. And when it was [decided that it would be]

a specifically Jewish setting, it allowed us to key into that from personal experience. It also gave us a lot more of a structure. You have to say the blessings and you’ve got to pick up the challah. There are a lot of natural built-in checkpoints that we could write around.”

Mitchell proved instrumental in getting the acting ensemble together through New York-based casting directors Seth White, Cody Beke, and Daniel Frankel. “It was just a process of getting people to read the script,” states the producer. “Jon Bass came on board early. We got it to him, and he really liked it. Once that happened, other pieces started to fall into place.”

From there, Bad Shabbos was able to enlist the talents of David Paymer (Ocean’s Thirteen) and Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer) as David’s parents, Ellen and Richard; Milana Vayntrub (This is Us) as David’s sister, Abby; Ashley Zukerman (The Lost Symbol) as Abby’s jerk of a boyfriend, Benjamin; Theo Taplitz (Little Men) as David and Abby’s younger brother, Adam; and a scene-stealing Cliff “Method Man” Smith (Power Book II: Ghost) as quick-thinking doorman Jordan.

“The agents liked it and then shared it with [their clients],” Robbins says. “Kyra said it was one of the only times she laughed out loud reading a script. It was really that simple. None of us had an in and thankfully, these actors had faith in us, because we haven’t made anything at a big scale. So it was nice that they trusted the material and their gut. They all deserve so much credit for signing on.”

“There was something for each character to do, and that was really the strength in it — of each character being really funny and quirky in their own way, [while] bringing something different to the Shabbat table,” adds Mitchell. “There’s no weak roles, really, because everybody was funny in their own way.”

The producer adds that casting as many Jewish actors as possible was of the utmost importance because the entire goal was “to paint a picture of a dysfunctional, but authentic, Jewish family in Manhattan, with characters that people can relate to. People have been coming up to us and [saying how they relate] to every one of the characters in some way; seeing their mother in the mother or their father in the father.”

That commitment to authenticity is what imbues Bad Shabbos with a universality that appeals to everyone, not just Jews — much in the same way My Big Fat Greek Wedding tackled Greek Orthodox traditions. “The goal was to do that in a Jewish setting,” says Robbins, who also wanted to present a different viewpoint on everyday Judaism beyond the usual “Hasids doing crimes or treating it as a light joke. Seeing authentic portrayals, where religion does add warmth and meaning to life was nice. Christians love the movie, because they’re really relating to that aspect of it.”

“Whether you’re Jewish or not, you can relate to having these family dynamics,” agrees Mitchell, “[from] sibling arguments to parents bickering … It’s not trying to say too much. It’s just an old school, chaotic hijinks, family comedy that we don’t see as much of anymore.”

Bad Shabbos debuted to rave reviews at the Tribeca Film Festival last fall and even went on to nab the event’s coveted Audience Award. “It was only supposed to be three screenings, and then we sold out all three. It was such a hit, that they gave us two extra screenings,” Mitchell says. “That kickstarted [the whole thing] and gave us the belief that it’s a film that should be seen in the theaters … If we could hit the targeted market, then we could do enough business. So far, it’s coming to fruition.”

After Tribeca, the title began a limited theatrical release in southern Florida last winter (in order to take advantage of “the snowbird season,” notes the producer) before landing a nationwide rollout deal from Jewish-focused distributor Menemsha Films.

As of this writing, Bad Shabbos is closing in on $1 million at the domestic box office — a seriously impressive feat for any small-scale indie production, especially one made by filmmakers in their early 30s who don’t have access to a multi-million dollar marketing budget. “We’re don’t have Super Bowl ads or any major advertising in that way,” Mitchell says. “So it’s been inspiring to see people in cities across the country coming and selling out shows, just [through] old school word of mouth.”

Seeing the film in a theater setting isn’t just financially advantageous to the makers, it also enhances the experience for the viewer. “Some movies are twice as good if you see them in a crowd,” says Robbins. “This one is like five times [better] because it was [rigorously] tested in the crowd … We probably did over 10 test screenings and then a lot more smaller ones. We’d have Google Sheets, getting responses, having a lot of non-Jewish audience members to figure out what’s clicking, what’s not, where they might get lost. And we got to a place where play is equal in both crowds.”

Should the film up doing gangbusters — or “supernova,” as Robbins puts it — the team isn’t opposed to making a sequel, which would most likely revolve around “everyone traveling to Wisconsin for the wedding and what goes on there,” muses the director. “We’d have to change the genre. So while this one was a dead body thriller, the next one might be more of a mystery-type film. But we’ll see…”

“There have also been calls about … remakes in certain ways or stage adaptations; people who are interested in buying the rights in other areas,” Mitchell concludes. “So you might see some sort of spinoff, or adaptations in other countries or other formats coming as well. There are conversations being had right now. I think because of how strong the concept is, it will live on through this movie, and potentially through a couple other formats or languages or remakes — and maybe a sequel as well. But yeah, I think there will be more to come.”

Bad Shabbos is now playing in select theaters. Click here for tickets!