He belongs to the Film Society of the Lincoln Center and to Jewish Voice for Peace. He graduated from the University of Chicago, and also studied classics in Hebrew at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he won a prize as the top graduate student of the department. However, he left without getting his Master’s. He also took adult classes in drawing and painting at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, and studied Greek and Latin at UC Berkeley for three years, where he maintained an A average as a concurrently enrolled graduate student. He lives in New York City.