Roommates

A seamless blend of biography and autobiography, "Roommates" is a true story. At its centre is Max, a young boy who grows into a man under the wing of his pugnacious grandfather, Herman 'Rocky' Goodstein. Rocky seemed to have been looking out for his grandson Max all his life. A Jewish immigrant from Lithuania, the five-feet-tall, 110 pound Rocky worked hard to establish himself in a foreign country, forging a path for his family to follow. By the time Max is born he has already been forced into semi-retirement, but Rocky is not a man to take things lying down. A mini-dynamo of energy and endurance, Rocky screams daily at his fellow workers in the Michigan bakery, explodes with anger in his sleep, calling down curses in Yiddish on his enemies - everyone from the Bolsheviks to Richard Nixon - and clashes titanically with his wife, Gottie. But the bond he shares with Max forms a bed-rock in both their lives - shaping and guiding the young man's development, even stretching to an unlikely accommodation arrangement when Max goes to the University of Michigan and winds up sharing with Rocky, then a spry and fiery man of 96.
Then, when tragedy strikes and Max watches his world fall apart, Rocky steps in and takes over the running of the family at the ripe old age of 103. With the strength of character and wisdom that a century's joys and sorrows have taught him, Rocky touches and inspires us all, regardless of age in a tough, tender and painfully funny story of a true American family.