Yo…
It’s a strange moment meeting a Holocaust survivor.
I’d never met one before…I don’t have any personal connections to World War II.
The Boy in the Woods: A True Story of Survival During the Second World War is a 2022 non-fiction book by Maxwell Smart.
(Sigh, yes…the same name as the bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart aka Agent 86 played by Don Adams in the 1965 TV show. I was equally distracted by the Get Smart reference.)
Maxwell Smart’s book details his traumatic true-life survival story…a Jewish boy hiding and being hunted in the forests of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe during World War II.
His harrowing memoir has been adapted into a feature film directed by Rebecca Snow whose previous WWII work was Cheating Hitler: Surviving The Holocaust; a 2019 Canadian television documentary.
Working on that project about Holocaust survivors is where she discovered the heartbreaking story of The Boy in the Woods.
The Boy in the Woods (the movie) is about a child-fugitive forced to fend for himself in the forests of Poland.
Child actor Jett Klyne plays Max a Jewish boy aged 12 from Warsaw, trying to evade capture during the second World War. His selfless mother tells him to run away from the Nazi trucks which they are about to fatally board with his little sister.
He succeeds in running away but is unable to find peace.
And how, exactly is a boy supposed to survive in the woods? Alone?
Take comfort from knowing that Max grew up to write his memoir, he lives in Toronto and is a painter.
That also makes Max one of the fortunate ones. (Well, perhaps fortunate is a strong word…yes he survived but so many members of his family did not.)
And here, at the TIFF after party for The Boy In The Woods, I met the actual boy: Maxwell Smart.
Who, of course decades later was 92, 93 years old. His experiences are so mortifying it’s difficult to see him just as a sweet senior. Nazis claimed his parents and younger sister, leaving him completely alone. He lost more than 60 members of his family during that time. Damn.
Those weird and dark "fun facts" overwhelms the entire meeting.
It’s like meeting a person who spent decades in prison for a crime they did not commit and were now free. You’re automatically curious, you have questions and you struggle with being polite…and deploying company manners.
But it’s this massive awful elephant in the room.
It’s a bizarre tension: talking to Maxwell Smart there’s no casual way to bring up the time Nazis killed your whole family. “Hey…so remember…”
And yet I’m gonna say we—but I really mean me—I don’t get these opportunities to hear first hand about these awful experiences.
First hand accounts supply the historical record with much needed nuance.
You can read about a U2 tour: like history taught in school it’s got significant dates, significant numbers from the tally of tickets sold to number of shows and number of songs played etc. It’s history. It happened.
But when you hear directly from somebody who was at those U2 concerts then it’s no longer just history. It comes alive. The details they share, expressing the value of the experience; the use of their senses…not just what they heard or saw but smelled.
I often write about memory versus history in this weekly pop culture newsletter My Pal Sammy. Kinda like a Gen X Wonder Years perspective. Because even in pop culture the history we’ve lived through isn’t always reflected in our memories.
Memories are tricky because people will forget certain details or infuse certain moments with a deeper (personal) meaning.
Often the way history is taught to us; it does a poor job of answering the pivotal question: what was it like?
I’ll never know what it was like living during the French Revolution or being a slave in Ancient Egypt.
I didn’t ask Maxwell Smart what was it like?
This movie The Boy in the Woods directed by Rebecca Snow and staring Jett Klyne will hafta suffice.
There’s enormous value in being curious though being curious has its place and its time. Much like history.
Attached is the My Summer Lair conversation I had with Jett Klyne the boy in The Boy in the Woods.
Like meeting an actual Holocaust survivor, it’s strange talking to a youthful actor about the Holocaust, Nazis and World War II. That’s a hard position to be in, man.
Typically when you sit down with an actor or a director you can freely talk about the movie’s themes or their relationship to the material. I did that with Jett but I also kept it light. I had to: talking to a teenager about the Holocaust is way different than talking to an adult. (Once again people, it takes a long time to be well-read.)
Jett’s a creative actor; you’ll hear his youth in his voice but he delivers a strong performance with material that is difficult and dark. He was remarkable in The Boy in the Woods.
I asked about the challenging movie moment where he as Max is losing hope and yells at God…this is what Jett said in our conversation:
Yo, that’s fresh. Well-spoken, thoughtful and talented actor.
You’ve seen Jett Klyne before: he’s been in nerd TV shows like Supergirl, Deadly Class and WandaVision where he played Wanda’s son Tommy Maximoff. As Tommy Maximoff he shows up in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and The Marvels.
That was so cool too, my first MCU actor on the program. I dig that it’s a bit off-the-grid not like a Robert Downey Jr. or a Chris Hemsworth.
Before we unpacked The Boy in the Woods, I asked Jett about his sneaker philosophy. Dude was rocking some fresh Jordans when we sat down to talk at Ricarda’s Restaurant in downtown Toronto.
(During the interview the waitress brings his food. I left in the audio because it’s fun: you can hear us pause the interview for a French fry break. Which he gives two thumbs up. Ricarda’s has good French fries, pass it on…)
And as this conversation unfolds it turns out he has a onesie philosophy as well. Some needed levity as we revisit World War II and the personal connection he has with this challenging material. (Jett knows a Holocaust survivor. Her grim stories helped to colour his performance.)
The Boy in the Woods is releasing in cinemas across Canada on Friday June 21, 2024. Check your local listings for dates and times.
Bonus #PantsWorthy Fun: On Monday June 24 at Landmark Cinemas Penticton at the 7:00 pm show the screening includes a Q&A with Jett Klyne.
So if you find yourself in Penticton, BC be sure to drop by and check out the Jordans Jett is brandishing.
Collison Conference ran in downtown Toronto (out by the Ex) June 17 to June 20.
I’ll have more to say about all of that in an upcoming My Pal Sammy.
(Does that sound like a threat? I feel like the tone or the way I wrote that sounds like a threat. I meant it as a good thing: I wanna share cool stuff with cool people who are doing cool things. Ah, yes that was much better…)
The Boy In The Concrete Jungle…
Sammy Younan
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Sammy Younan is the affable host of My Summer Lair podcast: think NPR’s Fresh Air meets Kevin Smith: interviews & impressions on Pop Culture.
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