INTERVIEW: Director John Goldschmidt tells story of unlikely friendship in ‘Dough’

Dough, the new comedy from director John Goldschmidt, stars theater legend Jonathan Pryce as a Jewish baker who befriends a young Muslim man (Jerome Holder) who eventually becomes his newest employee and apprentice. At first, the two are aware of their different backgrounds, ages and religions; however, after several comedic scenes, they learn to respect each other and find solace in their newfound relationship.

Goldschmidt directed the film based off a script by Jonathan Benson and the late Jez Freedman.

“I’m unusual because I’m a director and a producer, and I develop my own screenplays,” Goldschmidt said recently during a phone interview. “So it’s a very precarious thing to spend money developing scripts, but this is one of the scripts that I developed through my company, Viva Films, which took a couple of years to develop. And then I managed to raise the money to be able to make the film, and now it’s coming out.”

Freedman, a young, Jewish screenwriter, left university and visited Goldschmidt to help read screenplays. The director tasked him with developing an idea that was entertaining but had something to say about the state of the world. With Benson, the screenwriter came up with the idea for Dough, which is currently playing in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia and other cities around the United States.

“Of course, the film is about building bridges,” he said. “I mean, it’s the odd couple. It’s about an old white man, a young black man. It’s about a Jew and a Muslim. It’s about the most unlikely kind of friends. It’s a buddy movie, which is about the most unlikely friendship there could be, and I carefully chose the family background of the Muslim family to be from Darfur because I had seen a George Clooney documentary about these very beautiful black villagers who were being ethnically cleansed by Arab Muslims.”

When Goldschmidt started working on the film, the current crisis involving Syria and the thousands of refugees seeking asylum in Europe were not major issues. There have also been anti-Semitic attacks and comments that continue to provide evidence of a divided world.

“I wanted to make a film that was principally entertainment but with a light touch and with great warmth and humanity, so that people could leave the cinema with a smile on their face in these dark times,” the director said.

Goldschmidt said Pryce, known for Brazil and Pirates of the Caribbean, sets a standard for acting. The actor became involved with the project during the development of the script.

“It’s not really a heavy message film, but he [Pryce] liked the philosophy behind the film,” he said. “So what was really interesting during the making of the film is how the relationship between Jonathan Pryce and Jerome Holder developed because it was the story of a father without the right son and a son without a father, but as actors they developed a kind of father-son relationship. And that is the dynamic, the chemistry that really comes across on the screen.”

The film is based in comedy. For example, Nat Dayan (Pryce) sees his bakery sales go up in London’s East End because Ayyash (Holder) accidentally drops his marijuana into the challah bread. There’s a comedic absurdity that brings these two men together. There’s also underlying themes about the universality of food and “breaking bread.”

“I think the whole preparation of food, or let’s say dough and baking, has a sort of holistic quality,” Goldschmidt said. “Breaking bread is a kind of ancient ritual, which brings people together, and what Jez Freedman, the writer, wanted to do was to show the similarities in tradition and ritual between Jews and Muslims. I mean, I’m not at all religious … but he [Freedman] was very aware of those similarities. And, of course, ritual is very cinematic, and so when each of them is praying in their different way, that’s something I really wanted to show. And I think it’s pretty unique in this film because I’ve never seen it anywhere else.”

Both characters start off with prejudice and are suspicious of each other; however, economic necessity force them to work together. At their core, both men are fundamentally “decent guys,” as Goldschmidt said. They team up to take on their common enemies, and they become buddies. “It’s really a film about warmth and humanity,” he said. “And it’s a kind of fairly tale for grownups.”

He added: “Everybody once they get to know one another can be friends. … It’s really a story about overcoming prejudice, and the ending of the film, which I don’t want to give away immediately, shows a bakery set up in a way that really hasn’t existed yet.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Dough is currently playing in movie theaters. Click here for more information.