Alison Stewart: A new comedy star, actor Jason Schwartzman is a cantor named Ben Gottlieb. He faces a crisis of faith after the sudden death of his wife. Unable to use his voice or find a sense of purpose, Ben wallows in the sadness, unable to move forward, listening to his wife's old voicemails, drinking alone as his moms push him to go out on dates. However, something unique happens. Ben's old grade school music teacher, Carla, played by Carol Kane, re-enters his life and she wants a bat mitzvah.

In between lessons, the two of them form an unconventional relationship with allows Ben to re-examine his life while focusing more on the present and for Carla to reconnect with her faith and her Jewish identity. An AP News review says, "In this winningly chaotic comedy, you can almost feel the characters and filmmakers as one, resisting order and pushing back against convention." The film is titled Between the Temples and it opens in theaters Friday, August 23rd. With us now is writer and director, Nathan Silver. Hi, Nathan.

Nathan Silver: Hello.

Alison Stewart: Hello, and actor Jason Schwartzman joins us. Hi, Jason.

Jason Schwartzman: Hello. How are you?

Alison Stewart: I'm well, thank you, and Carol Kane, who stars as Carla, also joins us. Hi.

Carol Kane: Howdy. Nice to talk to you.

Alison Stewart: Nathan, in the press, you've mentioned this film was inspired in part by your mother. Your mother, she's done press on it with you.

Nathan Silver: Yes, she has.

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] What aspect of her life inspired the film?

Nathan Silver: Well, I was making a documentary about my mom. My mom grew up in a socialist household and religion wasn't really a part of her life. She was culturally Jewish, but she joined this temple in Upstate New York. My parents had just moved from the Boston area to Upstate New York, and they were looking for some kind of community. They sought it at the temple, went back to their roots. While shooting this documentary, I found out she was going to get her bat mitzvah. She was 68 years old, and I was kind of in shock.

Not only that she had joined a temple, but also that she was in this B'nai mitzvah class. I relayed this to my friend and former publicist, Adam Kirsch at a party a few weeks later. He's like, "There's a movie there. We need to do a Harold and Maude riff, where, like a latent life bat mitzvah student falls for her younger, like, aunt or rabbi as she goes through the lessons." Now, we have a movie somehow all these years later.

Alison Stewart: Jason--

Jason Schwartzman: Thank you to your mother.

Carol Kane: Yes, thank your mom.

Alison Stewart: Thanks, mom. [chuckles]

Nathan Silver: Thanks, Cindy Silver.

Carol Kane: Thank you, Cindy Silver.

Alison Stewart: Jason, you're a musician, you're an actor obviously, you've co written scripts. What was unique to you about this script?

Jason Schwartzman: Well, initially, one of the-- I guess, just right out the bat, the way that it was written, in the way that Nathan conveyed this sense of loss, but it was funny. It had a kind of-- I don't know, I can't describe it, but it was simultaneously, I was with this character and felt so much for this character who was, as you say, grieving. He's a widower, and he's really lost his sense of purpose. He does not know what to do anymore, and the things that he loved don't bring him any pleasure.

Yet, reading it, I couldn't wait to find out what happens next. There was a real sense of hope, I suppose, that Nathan wove through it with the comedy and with his unexpected sense of storytelling. Then, of course, once Carol's character enters, all bets are off. It was like being with a friend who's maybe down on their luck, but you're listening to what they're saying and you're grinning. Does that make sense? Because you know everything's maybe going to be okay or that this is a necessary part of their lives.

Alison Stewart: Where is Carla when we first meet her, Carol?

Carol Kane: Well, I've made a decision to do this thing that I've been wanting to do since I was little, and I have encountered no's everywhere from my parents then when I got married from my husband, they just didn't want me to get my bat mitzvah. They didn't want to embrace their religion. My husband has died now. I have a grown son who you meet in the movie. My husband has died and, of course, my parents are gone, and I decide I'm going to do it now. I'm going to just do it for myself now.

I aggressively go after Cantor Ben to teach me that, my Torah portion, and he is having none of it, but I'm having none of his having none of it. It doesn't really force him to do it. Our relationship is unexpected for both of us, and it changes both of us profoundly, I think. My son, by the way, I mentioned we all go out to dinner. Canter Ben, my son, my son's wife and two kids, and I say what I'm going to do, or you say what I'm going to do. You say what I'm going to do, the bat mitzvah, and my son just starts howling with laughter at how stupid and ridiculous an idea that is.

That's another person that won't support me. By that time, I have Ben supporting me. He gives me the hope and the strength to follow through.

Alison Stewart: Nathan, each of your characters has very distinct behaviors, like Ben loves mudslides. When you are deciding on characters, how do you decide what behaviors they're going to have that are going to tell us more about their character?

Nathan Silver: Well, Chris and I, my co-writer, Chris Wells and I, we think through each character as best we can throughout the whole writing process. We don't send a finished script, like your standard 120-page screenplay to the actors. We send something that reads like a novella, and then it allows the actors to imagine more of what their characters could be. There are not so many impositions on them. They come to us with ideas, the holes in their story and their characters, and we discuss it lengthen, who these people are and how to make it actually work with the people who are going to embody these characters.

Like the mudslides, for instance, it became clear that Jason's character, would a milkshake drink. He's like childish, childlike. He'd want a sweet drink. Also, we thought it's funny because it's a difficult drink for a bartender to make, so it's a pain in the behind. It just seemed like it's a lovely joke, but it also fits his character. Those kinds of things really tickle me, and my co-writer, Chris.

Alison Stewart: We're talking Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane, alongside Nathan Silver about their new film, Between the Temples, that opens in theaters on Friday the 23rd. Let's play a clip. In this scene, Ben is facilitating a class for students planning their bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs. He receives a surprise visit from Carla, his old music teacher.

Ben: Okay, so to be a good Jew, you've got to really respite him. Is he asleep? Would someone nudge him? Wake him up? Is he asleep? Let him sleep. I don't care.

Carla: Hi.

Ben: Mrs. O'Connor, hi.

Carla: Carla.

Ben: Please, Carla. Everyone, this is Carla. Say shalom, Carla.

Kids: Shalom, Carla.

Carla: Shalom, everybody.

Ben: Carla was my music teacher when I was younger, so if not for her, I might not even be standing here in front of you.

Carla: Here you are. [chuckles]

Ben: Are you picking someone up?

Carla: No, just-- I'm here for me.

Ben: Okay.

Carla: This is bat mitzvah class, right? I saw it on the website.

Ben: B'nai mitzvah.

Carla: Hmm?

Ben: Bar and bat mitzvah, boys and girls.

Carla: That is very modern.

Alison Stewart: In the beginning, Jason, Ben is apprehensive about taking Carla on as a student. He actually flees her. He thinks he flees her. He can try. Why is he so apprehensive about this?

Jason Schwartzman: Well, I think that because he's having crisis of his own in terms of she's at a place where she's wanting to find something new, and whatever is in her life has come to some, not an end, but it's come to a place where it needs a change. I think that my character is sort of in a similar spot, but in kind of an opposite feeling spot. My character, honestly, I think, is not sure that he wants to teach this stuff and wants to help. I don't think that he want-- He's not sure he wants to help at all with anybody.

I think that he doesn't understand-- It's hard almost for him to endorse it when he's sort of having such a crisis himself and he's feeling such a sense of loss and confusion about his own life. That's he's in no place, really, just to be the person he thinks to be helping someone. He doesn't really feel like he can help himself.

Carol Kane: Exactly, which is just a classic, classic major depression.

Jason Schwartzman: Yes.

Carol Kane: Which is, I guess, sparked by grief but then it just overwhelms every aspect, I think, of Ben's life so that you don't want to do nothing, especially not this.

Jason Schwartzman: Yes, you don't want to really be in service of anything.

Alison Stewart: Nathan, when you're describing that scene as a writer, what was your--? [crosstalk] I'm sorry.

Carol Kane: I'm just wanting to point out that our director, as we're talking about major depression and grief, our director is chuckling.

Nathan Silver: I think that I love that Carol's character goes in there and tries to loosen up this extraordinarily depressed person. It's like that classic screwball setup. That's what I thought they would play so well off each other, and it was immediately apparent from the first Zoom with them together that they were this great madcap pair.

Alison Stewart: What was that like for you as a writer and a director? Because the writer finishes, and then the director steps in.

Nathan Silver: I work with my co-writer, one of my primary collaborators, Chris Wells, and we talked everything through, and then we bring on more people, the actors, the crew, and it just starts to take on a life of its own. The directing is just overseeing that I do justice to the initial ideas. Here, it was about how to have hope in this hopeless world, to have faith in the absurd, to somehow how do you shake someone out of their despair? I think that Carla offers that kind of spirit. Also, we shot this on film.

We wanted that to reflect the kind of analog quality that Carla's character brings to Ben because HD is so flat and cold. We wanted it to have this warm, inviting sense to it, even if it is about something kind of despairing.

Alison Stewart: Carol, Carla will not take no for an answer from Ben. Why won't she? Do you know?

Carol Kane: Because I've waited so long to fulfill this hope and dream. It's way too late to start, but this is the only time that I can start, and it's now or never, and I have to do it. There's something in me that needs this dream to come true. I can't take no. A little later is going to be even more too late. It's already too late so I can't take no.

Alison Stewart: We just got a text, and someone wants to know, "Is the title also a statement, a pun on the power of the mind?"

Nathan Silver: Yes, it was a title that Chris had kicking around between his temples for a while, where he thought this would be the perfect fit for it. A movie about Judaism, you have the synagogues, the temples, and then also the temples on the head and someone, for a character who's too much in his own head, Ben, we thought it was perfectly that it was very fitting.

Alison Stewart: We're having a conversation about the film, Between the Temples. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It. This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. I'm talking to Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane, alongside co-writer and director Nathan Silver about their new film. It's called Between the Temples. It opens in theaters this Friday, August 23rd. Jason, your character Ben, he's grieving the loss of his wife. How does that grief show up and how--? First of all, Ben's role is a cantor. We see some problems.

Jason Schwartzman: Yes, it's stopped him from singing. He's had some type of a-- something has happened with his mind, his body, and his heart. I think since when the movie opens, he's just returning from a sabbatical, which I guess is another way of just saying he's been on leave, grief leave. He's been on grieve. Still, he can't sing when the movie begins. He just cannot do it. He's sort of stuck in-- he's in the past and he's not really in the past or really in the present or really in the future.

For instance, his wife, she was a novelist, she's left him, I think it's 700 and something voicemails, which he's kept all of. He listens to them often. I think that even just that little detail is just he can't really be in the present moment without somehow incorporating her into it. He really has had a hard time finding a life without her.

Alison Stewart: How does Carla show up for Ben in his grief? What do you think, Carol?

Carol Kane: Oh, what do I think?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Carol Kane: I think that I am just trying to live my life in the present. I think that I can't afford to hold on to my past because it hasn't been what I jumped of. I think when I see Ben and his grief, I can't take that for him. I remember him when he was little, little Benny, and I remember his smile and I remember his joy. I just can't stand for him to be so changed and so melancholy when I know that there's more of his life to live and that all our days are numbered. He better snap out of it is what I think, and get involved in today, and today involves me.

You could say that's a selfish wish. Also, I just don't want to see that melancholy pull a curtain over the face of little Benny, who had so much joy.

Alison Stewart: You have a memory of him of being happy. You have a memory of him being a joyful kid.

Carol Kane: Very joyful. Little Benny, that smile. Yes.

Jason Schwartzman: Also, like your inner child, your character has more like-- as I'm just thinking about it now, it's little Benny and little Carla beating in a way, just kind of thinking about it now.

Carol Kane: It's like, because I'm not acting in a way that some people would consider properly grown. I'm just more acting like a kid in that I'm living in the press.

Jason Schwartzman: Exactly.

Carol Kane: Yes, and so it's like little Benny and little Carla. It's true.

Jason Schwartzman: It's like in movies and they say, someone calls up to the house, "Can he come out to play?"

Carol Kane: She came to him. [crosstalk] That's what I'm saying to you. Somehow, little by little, you are unable to resist the call.

Jason Schwartzman: Right. Who could?

Alison Stewart: Who could, really? Except your parents, except your moms. Your moms have a different story. They really want to see him get together with a girl, one particular girl. Let's play the scene from early in the movie. He's having dinner with his mom, and they're encouraging to see a doctor sort of. Let's take a listen.

Judith: Benjamin, your mother and I have been talking, and we know that things have been difficult, but it's been some time, and we really think that you need to start seeing a doctor.

Ben: Okay. I mean, I'm definitely open to the idea.

?Meria: You are?

Ben: No, it's something I've been thinking about, too.

Judith: Benjamin, I'm so pleased to hear this.

Ben: Yes. I mean, I'm definitely open--

Judith: And there she is. Okay.

[doorbell rings]

Ben: Who?

Alison Stewart: Why is Ben responding the way he is? He's like, "Yes, sure, sure," and then this date shows up.

Jason Schwartzman: I know. One thing, too, is as I'm hearing this stuff, it's funny because this is the first time I ever worked. Carol, I don't know if you can-- but typically, a note from a director is faster. Like, say it faster. Nate, this is the first time in my life someone's ever said slower. Nathan was constantly saying slower. He's much slower. He walks more slowly. He talks much more slowly. Way slower. Way slower. Even just listening to it now is painfully long. It's hard to listen to how slow it is but it was just so funny because just so not used to that, that tempo, you know what I mean? It's really unusual.

Carol Kane: So vivid, though.

Jason Schwartzman: It's so vivid. Oh my gosh.

Carol Kane: Like in the silence.

Jason Schwartzman: Absolutely.

Nathan Silver: What's cool, though, is that Jason resisted that. Each take had a different tempo. Thank God he did that because John McGarry, our editor utilized the variations on his state of depression and made it much more complex than I had initially imagined and turned it into-- Jason brought life to it in this way, and John pulled that out in the cut. Because the movie, for all its like, for all the depressing subject matter, whatever, it's filled with an exuberant air. Like, the camera work and the editing. It's jagged. Like I said, it has this warmth to it.

I feel like that's I wanted that to contrast the state that Ben's in, that there is some sense that there's another side to life than what he's feeling at the moment.

Jason Schwartzman: The movie moves fast.

Carol Kane: Yes, very fast.

Alison Stewart: Family gets in the way of Ben and Carla's relationship. Her son thinks it's weird. He's not a nice guy, in my opinion. He thinks his mom's being manipulated. Then there's this big dinner. I don't want to give too much away, but everything kind of gets aired out, or at least brought to the surface. Nathan, how long did it take you to get that scene right?

Nathan Silver: Well, we shot it over the course of two nights with two cameras. We shot basically three versions of the scene. No one had any idea which version we were going to use. Each actor was fighting for their character, and there were certain contradictions as to what people thought the scene should go. John, our editor, had his work cut out for him, but what he realized is that he just needed to embrace the three scenes we shot and give it three act structure. That's when it all clicked into place.

There's a sequence in there that Jason actually came up with on the spot, which I'm not going to give away, but it works so beautifully and speaks so much to Ben's character into what's happening in front of him. I have no idea how he came up with that, but that's like working with Jason and Carol. They were just always like-- they bounce ideas off each other and off of just the whole film set, and it creates this energy that you can't simply write. It comes out of the pages, sure, then it's in front of you, and it's much greater than you could ever have imagined.

Alison Stewart: Carol, there's so much of the movie. It sounds like it's very serious, but it's very, very funny, and it has real heart to it. How did you think about the balance between the humor and the awkwardness?

Carol Kane: Oh, I didn't think about that. I couldn't think about that. I just had to try and be me. Me, Carla. I can't think about that's more of a directorial, probably notion of the balance. Let's just say I couldn't think about it. My brains, between my temples, is nothing that big. What I want to say briefly is so unusual as a director in a million different ways. One way that you just heard is that he's so generous and he does not need to take full credit for everything, which sometimes built into the director's psyche, I would say. My movie, I did this. Nathan is always in the best possible way, passing the buck.

Alison Stewart: That's a lovely compliment.

Carol Kane: In the best possible way.

Alison Stewart: Let me ask you about the balancing between the humor and the awkwardness or the discomfort.

Nathan Silver: I think that's just inherent in the subject matter. Chris and I, when we were working through the treatment, we wanted to cram in every Jewish joke we could think of and try and flip them on. Take these jokes and figure out what we could do with them, how we could pervert them, shift them, change them. Also, at the same time, we were being very mindful of grounding these characters and figuring out who they were. It's basically, how can we ground the comedy in the characters? That was the ideal scenario for us and we just tried to always look-- That was our goal.

Alison Stewart: Jason, this Friday night, people go see the film, they go out, they have coffee, they have a drink. What do you hope they talk about?

Jason Schwartzman: Great question. I hope that they talk about that this is a silly thing, maybe to say. My choice of words is, I don't love the words that I'm using, too late. There's always time to try new things, and that your life is yours to get it how you want it, and that you should just try to do that at all times. Do you know what I mean? In whatever little way you can. That's what I took from the movie, just myself was just like, "No, you can walk there how you'd like to walk there. You can eat what you would like to eat. You can try something new."

That's my takeaway. I think that what I really take away from it is just that the most important thing is it's okay to ask questions, and it's okay to be satisfied with the answer being another question.

Alison Stewart: I have to share this with Carol before we end. Someone called us, one of our listeners called us and said, "If you were just tuning into this segment, you hear Carol Kane talk about her character in the first person, so you think she's talking about herself, which shows you what kind of actor she is and what a delight it's going to be to see this film."

Carol Kane: Oh my God. Well, thank you.

Jason Schwartzman: That's very cool.

Carol Kane: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: Between the Temples opens in theaters this Friday. I've been speaking with Jason Schwartzman, Carol Kane, and Nathan Silver. Thanks a lot. We really appreciate your time.

Carol Kane: Thank you.

Jason Schwartzman: Thank you.

Nathan Silver: Thank you.

Carol Kane: Thank you. So lovely. Thank you.

 

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