|
September
/ october 2006:
The
Six Who Matter: Danny Kaufman
A director takes his life in a new direction.
Words by Benyamin Cohen | Photograph by Erik S. Lesser
Danny Kaufman spent so little time last year at home in Los Angeles, that he sold his house in favor of smaller digs. The filmmaker, who has built a name for himself directing television commercials, flies wherever the ads need to be shot: From far flung places like Eastern Europe to the burbs of Morrow, GA.
And that’s where I find Kaufman early this summer morning — at the Joy Lake Food Mart, a convenience store about 10 miles south of the Atlanta airport, filming a commercial for the Georgia Lottery. A day’s worth of stubble and lines under his bulging eyes belie a guy who didn’t get much sleep the night before, preparing for the full day shoot.
At the moment, about 30 crew members are milling about the makeshift set, powering up laptops, moving lighting equipment, and applying makeup to the actors. Kaufman, dressed in a black t-shirt and khaki cargo shorts, looks like he just strolled in from the beach. While everyone around him seems to be harried and rushed, Kaufman remains cool, calm, and collected — a veritable beacon of surfer dude mentality. But Kaufman wasn’t always this at peace with his life.
“I always had a strong Jewish identity,” he tells me during one of the many breaks between shots. “But somehow, during my life, I got further and further away from that.” Kaufman tells me that, at one point, he was so far removed from the religion of his ancestors that he found himself meditating at a Buddhist Temple each morning.
But about five years ago a confluence of circumstances all came together that led him to take a spiritual inventory of his life: At the time his career was in the dumps, his girlfriend had just broken up with him, and (as if that wasn’t already enough) he got hit by a car while riding his bike. “If my life were a wheel,” Kaufman recalls, “all the spokes in that wheel were just taken away.”
Lying in the hospital, he says he had a realization. “There has to be more to my life than this.”
A friend suggested he go to Israel, where he spent two months studying Torah and reconnecting with his faith. “I didn’t drink the Kool-Aid and suddenly become religious,” he says, laughing. “But what I came away with is that my life is a miracle and it’s a crime to take those miracles for granted.”
When he returned to America, Kaufman started saying the one-line Modeh Ani prayer each morning. That led to more and longer prayers and now he attends synagogue services on a regular basis. In addition, he’s keeping kosher for the first time in his life.
And his career? Well, it’s come back in a big way despite the fact that he’s now turning down jobs that conflict with his newfound observance of Shabbat. He says he’s lost more than a million dollars in billables because of his new religious stricture to not work on Saturdays. “I can’t let those decisions be effected by what’s important to me in my life. What’s clearly more important is my spiritual commitment to Judaism.”
Our conversation gets interrupted briefly by the costume designer who’s asking Kaufman which outfit he prefers an actor wears. “It’s a difficult position to juggle,” he says after the fashion crisis. “As a director, nothing gets done without you being there.” Nonetheless, Kaufman is steadfast in his no-working-on-Saturday clause. “There’s more to life than work,” he says. “When you realize that, your decisions become a lot clearer.”
When asked where he sees himself in five years, the single 40-year-old says he hopes to find a wife and start a family. “I’m having a pretty good time now, but I think it’s only going to get better.”
It seems for this director, a happy ending may indeed be in his future.
If you'd like to comment on this article, email
us a Letter to the Editor.
|
