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According to Jewish legend, only the very wisest and very holiest rabbis had the power to make golems, animated servants of clay. Strictly speaking, the golem is not in the same class with Frankenstein's monster, because the golem is neither alive nor dead. He is, rather, the ancestor of all robots.

The Christian Armenian story was the Polish Jewish story. The efforts of the Armenians to stay alive in Musa Dagh chimed with those struggling to survive the ghetto.

You look at Superman, the story of an orphan coming to America, keeping his identity secret and even the names, Kal-El and Jor-El, you can trace lines to the background of the creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, both Jewish. Overall, there was a remarkable confluence of events that led to the medium and the Jewish participation.

Now, actors get so familiarized with Eastern Europe. I never imagined I'd get as familiar with Budapest and Prague and places like that in my life.

I made this Swedish movie called 'Snabba Cash,' or 'Easy Money,' and it was shown at the Berlin Film Festival. A lot of American studios, agents, and people like that saw it there and liked it.

There was a Russian director named Elem Klimov, who did his films during the communist days. They were constantly struggling with the authorities and to be allowed to express themselves. But he did one of the best war movies I've ever seen - it's called 'Come and See.'

We met with the poet Frank O'Hara, who was a link between Upper and Lower Bohemia, and who worked at the Museum of Modern Art, where we had hoped to do the readings.

If you go back all the way to the 1920s, filmmakers in Hollywood changed the identity of villains from German to Russian.