‘Hunters’: David Weil On The Jewsploitation Label & Unique Tone Of His New Series [Interview]

David Weil certainly isn’t a recognizable name even in Hollywood circles but based on what he’s got in the pipeline that may soon change. Before today Weil had never seen a project hit the big or small screen (credited at least*) but he’s been beyond prolific. He has “The Untitled Kinberg/Weil Project” at Apple TV+. His pilot “Consent” is being packaged by Anonymous Content with Susanne Bier attached to direct. He’s adapted the Teddy Roosevelt adventure epic “The River of Doubt” as a feature and has a seven (yes, seven) chapter franchise based on “Arabian Nights” set up at Warner Bros. He has a “secret” untitled feature he’s co-written with Darren Aronofsky and his first feature script, “Half Heard in The Stillness,” landed on the 2013 Blacklist. In fact, he’s so in demand that Amazon Studios made an exclusive deal with him before his first real baby, “Hunters,” even launched on their service. In fact, we might be missing a few projects here and there.

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“Hunters,” which is now live on Amazon Prime, turns out to be a personal labor of love for Weil. You wouldn’t necessarily expect that about a series that features Al Pacino and Logan Lerman leading an unexpected group of Nazi Hunters in 1977 New York City. But, as you’ll learn after reading this interview, Weil is full of surprises.

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The Playlist: Where did the idea for “Hunters” even come from?

David Weil: It really came from my grandmother. It all really started with her. Her name was Sara Weil. She was born in Lutsk, Poland. And when I was a young kid, she started to tell me the stories about her experiences during the war. She was a Holocaust survivor. She survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and at such a young age. She saw that her story was incredibility important, I think in the ’90s, as seeing another rise to antisemitism and Holocaust denial. So she began to tell the story of her life to myself and my three older brothers. And at such a young age, her stories of heroism and depravity felt like the stuff … To me, the only way I could really understand it was through comic books and superheroes. Those were the things that I knew and the things that I loved and the mode of storytelling that I could grasp. She felt like a superhero. She really did. And it was these stories that she would tell of great good and great evil. The stories where hope was possible if you willed it to be. So growing up, that’s how I saw her. And as I got older, of course, those very saturated, poppy colors that I imagined began to desaturate, right? Fade. And I saw it all, the degrees of depravity that she really experienced. Then as I got even older, I struggled with that notion of birthright, with that notion of legacy and responsibility. With the survivor community getting smaller each year, I felt a real responsibility, a real birthright, to continue that story, to continue telling those truths, to continue talking about her in some way. “Hunters” became that answer. It became, certainly, a love letter to her, to my grandmother. But it also became an ability to shed light on hidden crimes and hidden truths, like Operation Paperclip, to try and indict individuals like Wernher von Braun and Hubertus Strughold, known Nazis who came to the States after the war and were celebrated and became famous and wealthy, and whatnot. I think it became a way to kind of honor by birthright and my legacy in some small way.

What made you want to set it in the ’70s, though? You could have done it in the ’90s. You could have set it in the ’60s. You could have had it take place right after the war.

I think there were two factors. The first was that I wanted it early enough so that Al Pacino’s not running around hunting a-hundred-year-old Nazis who are in nursing homes. You know what I mean?

Sure.

But to have Nazi characters who could still pose a threat in a really active way. So it wasn’t just hunting for the past, but also they’re cooking up something for the future, these Nazi characters. But the ’70s in particular, and ’77 specifically, really felt like it mirrored so much of 2020. It felt, in ’77, in “Fear City,” in New York City, Son of Sam is out there. This claustrophobia. It almost felt like society was hanging on by just a threat. And I think, in many ways, it’s an allegorical tale of today. We’re living in a society where there is so much antisemitism, so much racism and xenophobia, where it feels like we are living in a climate hate, in a society that, too, is hanging on just by a thread.

The show has a tone that’s quite specific that you’d think it might need to be dictated by the direction. But when you were pitching the series and writing the pilot, how did you make it clear that was the tone you specifically wanted?

It’s all textual. I mean, it really is in the script. I wrote the pilot. And then I wrote sort of an 80-page bible that detailed, very heavily, the entire first season, the tone, all the characters and their backstories, the world, set design, things that I was really looking for visually and tonally. It is an incredibly difficult and high-wire act. I think, in the series, you’ll see it really come into its own, and I think gain confidence by the end of the series, for sure. I never started like, “Oh, I want to show five different tones.” It really came from a more organic place, and I think it was partly that, for me, the experience of being Jewish is an experience of both horror and humor. And I think that humor is an antidote and a medicine — sometimes the great horror, certainly, that Holocaust survivors and Holocaust victims experience. But, also, I think just in the Jewish condition, humor has been such a mode and stalwart of our storytelling and of our existence because of the generations and centuries of persecution and otherization. And I think that’s true of many groups who feel otherized and are discriminated against. So I certainly wanted to highlight both comedic elements and also sort of more horrific, dramatic elements. These moments, to me, were a way to create and further satire, to further indictments. I hate shows that feel important with a capital I. It’s like, “Look at us. Look at how important we are.” I was trying to find more subversive ways to, for example, indict the U.S. government for bringing over thousands of German scientists, many of whom were Nazis, to the States, right? Or in episode eight, you’ll see an indictment of the casual antisemitism in our society. Those were just ambitions, and I think that is what makes the show bold and different and sets it apart.

Can you talk about the vignettes that come close to breaking the fourth wall? Were those meant to be consistently not consistent? They don’t appear in all the episodes.

Yeah. Absolutely, man. It’s a great question. They come throughout. In episode two, there are two form breaks. In episode three, there are two form breaks. In episode four, there isn’t one. In episode five, there’s a commercial. In episodes six and seven, there aren’t, but in eight and nine, there are. So it became less about, I think, consistency, less about a pattern and more about, “Let’s utilize them as tools when we need to further something when we want to talk about something in a certain kind of way.” But there were none that we really left on the cutting room floor and were like, “Ooh, that didn’t fit,” or, “That didn’t work.” We really executed and kept in all of the ones that we did shoot.

Well, I would like to thank you for the musical number. That was fun.

Yeah, of course.

Some critical friends of mine who are Jewish, one of the things they wrote about this show was that it may be part of a genre known as Jewploitation. How do you feel about that word being associated with your show?

Well, I would say this because I think different people interpret that word in different ways. You know what I mean? And I love Dan Fienberg a lot. I think he’s amazing. I know I saw it in the Hollywood Reporter, and he’s just so thoughtful and so brilliant. But my goal was always to honor the Jewish experience, to shed light on hidden crimes, to honor my grandmother’s story.

Look, growing up, I had two superheroes as a Jewish kid on Long Island. There was Judas Maccabee and there was Jeff Goldblum. So I wanted to create a series that had a Jewish superhero at its center, and that’s a Jewish superhero with might and strength and power. And I think, sometimes, when characters who are so often otherized, characters who are so rarely seen as the superhero, reclaim power in some way, I think they’re often given that moniker of exploitation, Jewsploitation or Blaxploitation, whatever that may be. I almost wear it with a badge of honor. If it’s used in that respect, I am really proud of that. But I think so, too, do you see, in the scenes of the past, there is a real reverence and that was the biggest responsibility that I had. It was the thing I thought about every night before I went to bed and woke up every morning thinking about was how to show the scenes of the past. And it was important to do, A, to keep those stories alive, B, to also help explain and justify of why our hunters in the present are doing what they’re doing. So, you’ll see different modes of violence. So in the past, yes, they are very stark and horrific, but a lot of that violence is suggested. Where in the ’70s, there is that more poppy kind of Grindhouse use of violence, for example. So, to your question, if it’s used in the way that I hope and I think it is used, I’m excited that I’m showing a character kind of reclaiming a power that we don’t often see.

I want to segue to another topic. I saw an interview with Al Pacino this past awards season, he was asked what made him do “Hunters” and he said that you had come to meet with him and convinced him to do the show. What magical thing did you say that got Al Pacino to do his first TV series since the beginning of his career?

Oh, my God. That is very kind of him. It was [actually] four meetings within to be fair, but I think it was really, from day one a collaboration. I think we really were just “yes-anding” each other. I think we were really trying to co-create the character of Meyer Offerman. I think there was a seed in this character that excited him a great deal. I mean, what was amazing was sitting in those meetings and seeing his mind at work, seeing him build the pieces and the layers of this character while we would sit there. I mean, he would say, “Oh, maybe he had this memory, or maybe in his past his mother [had] this job or…” We really just kind of had this beautiful think tank in fleshing out who this person was, and then he went off and did his own work. But I don’t know if there was a magic word. There’s no kind of incantation or spell that I could share. But I think it was really a sense of being open and him seeing a partner, which I think excited him and allowed him to really do his work and dig in.

“Hunters” is now available on Amazon Prime Video