[1] His first feature-length film, How I Spent My Summer Vacation (1997), documented one of his cross-country hitchhikes as well as the effects and aftershocks of Ginsberg's passing on his close friends.
In 1999, due to mounting stage fright, Israel ceased performing music, but continued creating films of various lengths, genres, and styles, often focusing on his own emotional troubles, presented with candor and humor.
The documentary La Hamburguesa Magica (2003) presents a plagued and near-fatal Mexico misadventure undertaken by Israel and then-girlfriend Elyse Allen.
It also explores the previous year's difficulties leading to this journey, including tendinitis, an invasion of ants into his house, an accidental wound to his penis, the aforementioned heartbreak, and a newly failed relationship.
His curiosity leads him first to the Museum of Ephemerata in Texas where the curators restore him to health with their life-affirming attitudes and endless supply of Kombucha tea,[4] then to Iowa City where he develops a strong kinship with an eccentric university scholar who lectures on the balancing contest, and eventually to Southeast Asia, hitchhiking through Thailand, Cambodia, and finally Vietnam, where the contest takes place.