Crafting Short Screenplays That Connect, 2nd Edition

11

Kosher

By Aimee Barth

Introduction

Aimee Barth wrote Kosher in my Screenwriting II class for the final assignment—a five-page script she would direct for her B.F.A. Filmmaking III project. Like so many terrific short films, Kosher was conceived close to home.

The idea surfaced out of my little brother’s desire to be Jewish so that he could have a Bar Mitzvah. When my mother denied his request to convert (we were raised Lutheran), he exclaimed, “You refuse to accept the fact that my soul is entering my body!” Always a precocious kid, (he became a vegetarian at age six citing he would NOT eat the ‘flesh of the dead’), he became the model for the main character, Charles, and thus the idea for Kosher was born. Of course, like every idea, it changed ...