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Was it tough to get the Yiddish word schmucks into the title of a movie?
Not as tough as you’d think, “Dinner For Schmucks” actor Paul Rudd and director Jay Roach recently told Naomi Pfefferman of the Los Angeles Journal Arts & Entertainment.
“For me, it’s kind of an ideal word for what the story is about, because it does in modern usage have two meanings of `Don’t be a schmuck,’ as in, `Don’t be a jerk,’ which is what Paul Rudd’s character is going through, and `Don’t be an idiot,’ which you can assume is what Steve Carell’s going through,” said Mr. Roach, who is married to ex-Bangle Susanna Hoffs. “And then in the end, it sort of switches, because you find out that Paul’s character is the one who’s living a deluded kind of reality and Steve’s character is actually much wiser than he is. So it’s a funny word to say, but it also resonates across what the two characters are about.”
Said Mr. Rudd: “I know there are some people who have taken offense that we called this `Dinner for Schmucks,’ because I’ve read [some blog items exploring this]. But it wouldn’t even have crossed my mind that somebody might find it offensive, because I just never associated it, being Jewish, with being offensive.”