Minyan was adapted from an award-winning short story by filmmaker David Bezmozgis. It was directed by Eric Steel and this marks his first narrative feature, which takes place in the 1980s in New York’s gay scene in the era of the emerging AIDS crisis and Brighton Beach’s bustling Jewish community. “Working on Minyan felt like I was on working on the film I’ve always wanted to work on,” he said. “Eric Steel is profound and very intelligent, brilliant maybe. Eric has such depth of intelligence and information. What he has come up with defies entertainment. His work is real, unmediated, and transparent.”
“It was a very sensitive set, and it’s a slow burn. There is a lot of Yiddish in the film and it is very well done,” Hurt said. “The reason that the film is called Minyan is because you need 10 Jewish men to practice any religious right. Our movie opened at the Berlin Film Festival.”
The movie deals with a young man named David (Samuel H. Levine), who is the son of Russian immigrant parents. David’s coming-of-age is inspired by his budding relationship with a handsome East Village bartender, as well as his friendship with an older gay Jewish couple in his building that might find themselves on the wrong end of the Jewish community’s strict rules.
“Minyan takes place in 1987 and the young man is a Russian immigrant that is living in a very Orthodox Jewish community, and he is coming to terms with the fact that he is homosexual. If he were to ever come out he would be an outcast,” he said. “Samuel H. Levine is going to be a star after this movie. I am also a huge fan of Brooke Bloom, who plays his mom. They are two of my favorites.”
“The acting performances in Minyan are just out of this world,” he exclaimed. “Christopher McCann is a superstar to me, and Mark Margolis from Breaking Bad is fantastic in this film, his dialect work alone should get him an Oscar nomination. Ron Rifkin is also terrific.”
For more information on Minyan, visit the Outfest website, and its IMDb page.
Hurt also opened up about his 2020 Daytime Emmy nomination for “Outstanding Lead Actor in a Digital Drama Series” for his work in The Rehearsal. “That was really special, and hopefully, we will be shooting the second season of The Rehearsal really soon. That’s the hope,” he said. “Jaclyn Bethany is so awesome, she’s so badass.”
