Elon Dershowitz, a film and podcast producer and the son of attorney and longtime Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz, died on Sunday. He was 64 years old.
The cause of death was a stroke, according to his family.
“We were very close,” Dershowitz told JNS. Elon was the producer of his podcast “The Dershow.”
He explained that at the age of 10, Elon was diagnosed with a brain tumor and told that he wouldn’t live to see his bar mitzvah.
“He’s had 52 years since that time, and he’s lived a full life and made these great movies,” his father said. “He struggled because he had that situation, which left him not being able to read or see, but he made up for it with his hard work.”
Elon’s mother, Sue Barlach, died in 1983.
Elon graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and subsequently worked in the audiovisual department at Harvard Business School, according to his family. He later moved to Hollywood, Calif., and then to New York City.
He was the co-producer of the 1990 Oscar-winning film “Reversal of Fortune,” starring Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons, who won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his performance in the film. It was the film he was most proud of, according to Dershowitz.
“He brought it to Hollywood,” Dershowitz said. “He went around shopping it. He persuaded the company to do it. He helped pick the stars. He was a very important part of that film.”
Other movies Elon produced included Oliver Stone’s 1987 film “Wall Street,” starring Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen; the 1988 film “Talk Radio”; the 1998 film “Fallen,” starring Denzel Washington; and the 1997 TV movie “The Advocate’s Devil.” Elon also co-produced the ESPN television series “Break Up the Bombers,” “Whose Curse is Worse?” and “Pete Rose on Trial.”
His favorite filmmakers included Woody Allen and Mel Brooks, according to his father.
“He loved comedy. He himself did a little stand-up comedy, and he loved good comedians, and he hated bad comedians, which there are many on television,” Dershowitz said.
At a younger age, Elon performed as an amateur magician under the name “Elon the Pretty Good.” He performed for the Boston Celtics; the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and his staff; and gave nightly shows at a Legal Sea Foods restaurant bar, said his family.
Dershowitz explained that Elon started performing magic while undergoing radiation treatment for his brain tumor as a means of entertaining children who were also undergoing the same treatment.
“That’s how he really started his career as a magician: entertaining other kids,” he said.
Another one of Elon’s passions was sports. He was a season ticket-holder for the Los Angeles Lakers and a co-season ticket-holder with Dershowitz for the Celtics, according to Dershowitz. The two got to go into the locker rooms for various championships won by the Celtics and the Boston Red Sox.
‘He was with me all the time’
“He loved Israel,” Dershowitz told JNS, recalling that his last trip with Elon was to Israel after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, where they visited sites of the massacre.
“He was very much a part of my Jewish life,” Dershowitz said. “He went with me to the Soviet Union to help represent dissidents, he went with me to Egypt when I was negotiating with the Egyptians, he went with me to China—he was with me all the time.”
Elon would send his father TikTok videos about Israel regularly and ask him for sound responses to defend the State of Israel, Dershowitz said.
Dershowitz described his son as being “brave” and “determined.”
“Despite the fact that he really couldn’t read because he had an eye deficit, he knew more things than most people,” he said. “People thought he had read 100 books because he just had this instinctive ability to get information.”
He noted that Elon was an early user of the Internet and artificial intelligence, “because he needed it. He would always be online getting information that he could get without reading a book. He figured it out. He figured out how to use his talents in a creative way.”
He added that Elon “was the kindest person you have ever met. That’s all he cared about, being kind to people.”
Indeed, said Dershowitz: “He was an amazing person. We’ll miss him every day.”
