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    'Hunters' Creator Stands by Controversial Holocaust Scenes

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    Amazon/Christopher Saunders

    Officials at the Auschwitz Memorial have criticized the Amazon Prime drama for its fictional deadly game of human chess, but creator David Weil explains the importance of the scenes to the series.
    Feb 25, 2020
    AceShowbiz – The creator of Al Pacino’s new TV show “Hunters (2020)” has defended the show over controversial scenes that fictionalised atrocities committed during the Holocaust.
    The Amazon Prime Video drama, which follows a team of Nazi Hunters in New York in the 1970s, led by Pacino’s Holocaust survivor Meyer Offerman, features flashbacks to scenes in Nazi death camps – including one that features a fictional deadly game of human chess.
    Officials at the Auschwitz Memorial have criticised the show, tweeting, “Auschwitz was full of horrible pain & suffering documented in the accounts of survivors. Inventing a fake game of human chess for @huntersonprime is not only a dangerous foolishness & caricature. It also welcomes future deniers. We honor the victims by preserving factual accuracy.”

    Creator David Weil, whose mother survived Auschwitz, has hit back at the idea scenes from the Holocaust should never be fictionalised for dramatic effect in a statement to Variety magazine.
    After citing his personal connection to the horrors of the Holocaust, and explaining how his team had deliberately chosen to avoid characters’ camp numbers corresponding to real victims, Weil addressed the controversy over the chess scene.
    “In speaking to the ‘chess match’ scene specifically… this is a fictionalized event,” he wrote. “Why did I feel this scene was important to script and place in series? To most powerfully counteract the revisionist narrative that whitewashes Nazi perpetration, by showcasing the most extreme – and representationally truthful – sadism and violence that the Nazis perpetrated against the Jews and other victims.”
    He went on to claim that he wanted to show a fictional atrocity, rather than a specific act that was perpetrated against real victims.
    Weil concluded by writing that he is “forever grateful to the Auschwitz Memorial for all of the important and vital work that they do” and added, “I believe we are very much on the same side and working toward the same goals.”

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      in Television

      Al Pacino Stands by His Casting as Jewish Nazi Hunter for New Amazon Series

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      Amazon/Christopher Saunders

      ‘The Godfather’ star shares his belief that actors should not be limited to their ethnicity as his co-star Logan Lerman calls criticism over the veteran actor’s casting ‘bulls**t.’
      Feb 15, 2020
      AceShowbiz – Al Pacino has defended his casting as a Jewish person in his new Amazon Prime Video series “Hunters (2020)”.
      “The Godfather” star, who is of American-Sicilian descent, plays Meyer Offerman, the Jewish head of a group hunting Nazis in New York in the 1970s in the series, but is unconcerned over criticism of playing a character from a different background to his own.
      Pacino tells British newspaper that if actors are “limited to your ethnicity” he would only be able to play New York Italians.
      He went on to say that he believes that he has “no problem” with such roles – as long as he fulfils the writers’ vision.
      “Maybe more in films because it’s more literal or more naturalistic, but if you play the oboe, you play the oboe,” he adds. “It doesn’t matter what you are, you’re in the orchestra, you’re doing the thing, you’re playing the music. (Here) you’re playing the playwright.”
      His co-star Logan Lerman, who is Jewish, objected to the idea Pacino should have been passed over for a Jewish actor, adding: “That’s bulls**t. As a Jewish person I can say that. Come on, anybody can play the role.”
      The 79-year-old has played a famous Jewish character on screen before, taking on the role of William Shakespeare’s infamous moneylender Shylock in a 2004 movie adaptation of “The Merchant of Venice”.
      Now, he has another of the playwright’s characters in his sights – ageing monarch King Lear.
      “My hope is that I’ll get through this next phase of my life with all the stuff that’s going on and look at Lear again – seriously thinking about making a film of it,” he reveals. I wouldn’t do it on stage. It’s not what I want to go on stage with, Lear, but in a film…”.
      “Hunters” debuts on February 21.

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