Bomb aftermath filmed

TEL AVIV, Israel -- A trio of filmmakers set out this month to show a slice of normalcy by making a film about their favorite Tel Aviv pub and its jam sessions.\nEarly Wednesday, as they filmed at Mike's Place, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance, killing two musicians and a waitress who was to be the film's central character.\nThe bomber had a British passport, the first time in 89 such bombings that a foreigner has carried out a suicide attack. The bar, near the U.S. Embassy, caters to foreigners.\nOne of the filmmakers, Jack Baxter, 49, from New York, suffered burns to his arms and remains in the intensive care unit of a Tel Aviv hospital. The other two documentary makers were left shocked, trying to figure out how to complete their project.\n"It isn't safe. It isn't safe," said the film's American-born director, Joshua Faudem, 27, about life in Israel. "We'd like to believe that it is safe, and that's what we wanted to show."\nBaxter had recruited Faudem, who was born in Detroit and immigrated to Israel, and his girlfriend Pavla Fleischer, 27, from Prague, Czech Republic, to make a film about the pub and its mix of travelers and locals seeking some escape from the region's troubles.\nSeveral other bombings close to both of the bar's Tel Aviv and Jerusalem locations haven't stopped the music and the flowing beer.\nAfter a car bomb exploded in a lot next to the Jerusalem bar earlier this year, police asked patrons either to leave or stay inside. The band played on and most customers stayed.\n"What you see in the news, it gives you the idea that it's hell here in Israel," said Fleischer. "We wanted to show there's life outside that. People are going out, playing music."\nThe waitress, Dominique Hess, 29, said in an interview for the film that she studied philosophy in Paris before coming to Israel five years ago at the suggestion of a friend. She wound up moving here.\nShe talked about the violence -- recalling how on June 1, 2001, a suicide bomber killed 21 young people outside of a seaside disco just a two-and-a-half minute walk from her house. She was close enough to hear another bomb at a coffee shop.\nJust after midnight Wednesday, Fleischer was filming at the pub when the suicide bomber blew himself up after arguing with a security guard, who blocked his entrance, preventing a far greater tragedy.\nThe guard, Avi Taviv, also one of the film's characters, was severely wounded. The waitress died later at the hospital.\nFleischer saw an orange light flash in the corner of her eyes and dropped to the floor. "There was no sound, no shouting," she recalled.\nMike's Place is to reopen next week, between the somber Israeli Memorial Day and joyous Independence Day celebrations. The bar plans a memorial, and then a party. That sort of contrast between grief and rebirth is now the kernel of the film, Faudem said.\n"That's the Israeli approach," he said. "You fall down and you get back up"