Screenwriter Alison Peck, whose script for the Netflix late summer release, “You Are Not So Invited to My Bat Mitzvah,” helped to make the film one of the most popular releases of the year for the streaming service.
Peck was a recent Sunday morning guest at Temple Sinai in Sandy Springs where she graciously answered questions by the temple’s two senior rabbis and then stayed on for another half hour for questions from the audience.
In the 90-minute Q&A session, Peck generously treated the crowd to some of the highlights from the long journey she has made from undergraduate in the University of Southern California’s screen writing program to years of laboring on the production side of the business. There is a lot of work, she reminded her audience, in becoming the proverbial overnight success in Hollywood and not a little bit of luck.
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Interestingly, the story she has penned is not one she ever personally experienced. It is about how the central character, Stacy Friedman, played by Adam Sandler’s daughter, Sunny, contends with all the problems created by her impending, over-the-top Bat Mitzvah and along the way learns some lessons about life and has a few laughs as well. Although for Peck, growing up Jewish meant attending plenty of friends’ celebrations, she didn’t have a Bat Mitzvah.
Sandler’s daughter, Sunny, plays his daughter in the film.
Still, for the film, she did her homework for this script and as a portrait of the life of teens precariously balanced between childhood and rapidly approaching adolescence it has a certain charm.
In fact, as she pointed out to her listeners at Temple Sinai, the middle schoolers she writes about had little interest in how life was developing, they were more interested in what was facing them only on each given day.
“I found it really fascinating that this period is the most confusing time when you are growing up. You’re…
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