Here’s one of my favorite things about this scene from Addams Family Values: no one has ever asked why the kids at a summer camp are performing a Thanksgiving Day pageant. I also love this scene because it includes so many of my very favorite actors, including Christine Baranski, Peter MacNicol, Christina Ricci, David Krumholtz, and, among the parents in the bleachers, Harriet Harris, Julie Halston and the movie’s director, Barry Sonnenfeld. I’m also proud that this movie somehow made the Addams family at least a little Jewish; when Joan Cusack’s black widow character marries Uncle Fester, Lurch can be heard playing a snippet of Sunrise, Sunset on the organ.
When the movie first opened, I was interviewed by a writer from the Jewish Daily Forward, who asked me if, in fact, I thought that the Addamses were Jewish, and I replied, “Do you want them to be?”
I also deeply enjoyed working with the brilliant Marc Shaiman on the song “Eat Me.” It was one thing to write the lyrics sitting in my apartment, but watching the song being performed by actual children remains both thrilling and unnerving.
