Author Topic: Q-Tip Starring As A Drug Dealer In 'Holy Rollers' + international tour news (Read 287 times)

Elano · « **on:** February 04, 2009, 01:42:02 AM »

Rapper Q-Tip has been tapped to star in a new upcoming film opposite Jesse Eisenberg and Danny A. Abeckaser in the new flick Holy Rollers.

The independent movie, which is inspired by true events, centers around a young man from the Hasidic community who was caught importing and trafficking ecstasy into the United States.

Q-Tip will play an Ethiopian drug dealer in Holy Rollers, which is being directed by Kevin Tyler Asch and written by Antonio Macia.

This Wednesday (February 4), Q-Tip will make a high profile appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres show, where he will promote his various projects, followed by an interview with PBS's Tavis Smiley on Thursday (February 5).

The next week, on February 10, Q-Tip will kick off an international tour in support of his album The Renaissance, with his band and the legendary DJ Scratch.

The tour kicks off in Tokyo, before heading to Australia as part of the Good Vibrations Festival.

In March, Q-Tip will tour Europe, making stops in Switzerland, France, Holland, Belgium and London, where the tour will come to a conclusion, on March 14th.

Q-Tip tour dates are listed below:

February
10- O-East- Tokyo, Japan
11- Yokohama Bay Hall- Yokohama, Japan
14- Centennial Park- Sydney, Australia *
15- The Nursery- Melbourne, Australia *
21- Parklands- Southport Queensland, Australia *
22- Heirisson Island- East Perth, Australia *

March
7- Aktionshalle- Zurich, Switzerland
9- Elysee Montmartre- Paris, France
10- Melkweg- Amsterdam, Holland
11- Ancienne Belgique- Brussels, Belgium
13- Button Factory- Dublin, Ireland
14- The Roundhouse- London, England

Elano · « **Reply #1 on:** February 04, 2009, 01:58:43 AM »

3:30 Monday afternoon at Marquee nightclub isn't exactly the setting you'd expect to see two Hasidic Jews, clad in kippahs and tzitzit (tassels), discussing how they'll import thousands of pills of Ecstasy to New York City with the help of a Russian drug kingpin.

It's a scene being filmed for "Holy Rollers," a movie that tells the tale of two Hasidic Jews from Brooklyn who get ensnared in, and eventually enraptured with, a global Ecstasy smuggling ring in the late 1990s.

Based on true events, the film is the brainchild of actor and nightlife figure Danny A. Abeckaser.

The Israeli-born, NYC-raised Abeckaser, who has had bit parts in "Alpha Dog" and "Don't Mess With the Zohan," was watching a documentary on the Discovery channel at 3 in the morning.

"It was about Interpol's fight on drugs, and this story about the Hasidic Jews smuggling drugs jumped out at me," he says. "I've always wanted to make a movie my whole life, and this seemed perfect."

Realizing that "drug movies are largely boring," Abeckaser set out five years ago to make a character-driven film, through the eyes of a young Hasid smuggler.

On this day of filming, as Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Bartha - cast in the respective main roles of Sam Gold and Yosef Zimmerman - move about Marquee, Abeckaser eyes the set with pride.

"The story we ended up with is incredible because it's told through Sam's eyes. His struggles are against his beliefs and his values, religiously," says Abeckaser. "He's so virgin because the sect is so closed off in real life. They don't even look at women, they have arranged marriages; there's never even dates, so when Sam has a love interest in the film, it's out of the norm for him."

Gold's love interest is played by Ari Graynor ("Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist," "Mystic River"), and hip-hopper Q-Tip is an Ethiopian Jew named Ephraim.

Abeckaser himself took on the role of Jackie Solomon, an Israeli drug lord who hires the smugglers.

The events which inspired the story weren't incredible to the actors donning yarmulkes. "After I read about it more, it seemed to make sense because it's such a clever cover," Eisenberg says. "But, at the same time, I guess they got a little reckless."

"The mysterious world that is the Hasidic community," says Bartha, "has a lot of fascinating characters."

Still, though many in the cast and crew are Jewish, elements of Hasidic culture were unfamiliar to the actors. "Being the Jew I am, it was important to me that people don't think this is a movie that projects Jews in a bad way," Abeckaser explains.

Says Graynor, "While I'm Jewish, the Hasidic world is still foreign to me. But I do understand some of the ideas of tradition and family and faith of our shared culture. I found the juxtaposition of this world with the club world interesting to work with."

"I had my own personal connections to this story, being a reformed Jew from Great Neck, N.Y.," says director Kevin Asch. "This world was so different to me, but the film is about faith versus blind faith. If you're born into something you blindly believe in, are you allowed to question it? It's a great debate."

Writer Antonio Macia wanted to pen a script about "how people slowly compromise their faith and upbringings. I wanted to take a character and follow this trajectory and see how people get to certain breaking points in their lives. That really interested me to see how a young Hasidic Jew got to the point of drug dealing.

"Whatever religion you are, whatever home, the tenets are the same," Macia, a converted Mormon, says. "It's at the heart of the story, in the relationships, that really make every believer different."

Story line aside, the small indie set has led to a great sense of family, which Q-Tip is quick to point out. "The best part of shooting a film like this is the camaraderie that everyone has. It's everyone's project instead of some big producer's project, and it really seeps through."

So while Bartha tugs absentmindedly at a huge, unkempt beard he grew for the role and "can't wait to shave off," a burly crew member dispenses the "Ecstasy" (Smarties candy) to extras, shouting,:"Remember, you're all rolling on E, so make it look good!" and everyone laughs. u

The real Hasidic drug smugglers took advantage of age-old diamond-smuggling methods in the late '90s.

A few of the infamous:

Queens-based Internet programmer Yaish Malka, living with his pregnant wife and child, was dealing in hundreds of thousands of pills in 2000 when he was arrested by the NYPD on a February night as he fed his infant.

Father-and-son team Gabriel and Amos Elimelech manned one of the largest smuggling rings ever exposed, according to police. With his father's encouragement, Amos brought in 100,000 pills to Israel in a false-bottomed suitcase, before taking them to NYC for distribution. In April 1999, Amos' second trip ended in arrest, and he now rots in an Israeli jail. Gabriel was later busted in NYC and extradited to Israel for his own sentence.

Shimon Levita and Simcha Roth were two Hasidic 18-year-olds instrumental in an international plot, which brought more than a half million pills into JFK Airport. The young criminals were responsible for recruiting other Hasids to fly to Paris to pick up 80,000-plus pills from Amsterdam. The duo was brought to justice in 2000.'The film is about faith versus blind faith.'