Word: birthday
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Dressing well is something intrinsically important to Asians," he says. "I remember for my grandfather's 80th birthday, my mother sent me out to buy something nice to wear, and I came back with a pair of Matsuda shorts and a Yohji Yamamoto jacket, and she told me to get a suit instead. 'It's not about you,' she would say. She always said dressing well is about being polite in society. It's about respecting others...
...they recall schoolboy crushes, ice cream trucks and stickball, their reminiscences also conjure up a safer, simpler world. Maybe that's why what began as a video scrapbook of their joint 70th birthday celebration wound up an award-winning film, The Bronx Boys, which has appeared on Cinemax, played at a few film festivals and begun appearing on PBS stations this fall. Carl Reiner is the host of the film, which was edited and directed by Benjamin Hershleder, a filmmaker in his 30s. "They have something special, these 15 guys," Hershleder says...
What West calls "a splintering" occurred as they grew up, got driver's licenses, married and moved away. Then in 1991 West was the host of a 60th birthday party at his house in Los Angeles for one of the boys, New York City--based brick salesman Elliott Liss. Half a dozen local Bronx Boys showed up, and, says West, they had such a good time, "it was the trigger to reunite and get close once again. We said let's do a bigger one in five years, and that became the first East-West reunion...
That celebration in turn served as a dress rehearsal for their 70th birthday party, which was filmed for the documentary. Shapiro and West organized both weekend reunions, which featured gatherings at their homes and assorted childhood games re-created at a Los Angeles schoolyard rented for that purpose. Wives joined their husbands for meals and mingling but moved to the sidelines as the men played stickball, basketball and touch football. In their navy Bronx Boys T shirts and with their once dark hair gray or nearly gone, the men remained competitive, disagreeing loudly over fouls. Here, though, a player scoring...
...film shows, these men have put together what amounts to an informal extended family, available in good times and bad. When Shapiro and West were in New York City last spring for Seinfeld's 50th birthday, they hired a car and driver, loaded up on deli goodies and went to visit the ailing Liss in the Bronx's Riverdale section. Liss died in May, and the PBS telecast is dedicated to "the life and laughter of Elliott Liss." Much as the boys came up with some of the money a few years ago for Los Angeles--based actor and screenwriter...