[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. The nominees for next year's Independent Spirit Awards are out, and it's a good reminder of what a strong year it's been for independent film featuring lots of up-and-coming creative people on both sides of the camera, many of whom we've heard right here on All Of It. I Saw the TV Glow, a coming-of-age psychological horror drama, has been nominated in five categories, including a best director nomination for Jane Schoenbrun, who came on All Of It to talk about it back in May.

We also had Director Sean Wang join us to discuss his film, Didi, which is nominated in four categories, including Best First Feature and Best Screenplay, both credited to Wang. Comedian Julio Torres joined us to talk about his surreal immigrant comedy Problemista, which is nominated for Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay. You can head to our show page at wnyc.org or subscribe to our podcast if you want to revisit some of those conversations ahead of the 2025 Independent Spirit Awards. By the way, tomorrow, we'll be talking with RaMell Ross, who wrote and directed an adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Nickel Boys, which is nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Feature.

Right now, we're going to hear about a dramatic comedy about a Jewish faith leader going through a crisis of faith, plus an actress nominated for her role.

[MUSIC]

Alison Stewart: Between the Temples falls a cantor named Ben Gottlieb, played by Jason Schwartzman, who faces a crisis of faith after the sudden death of his wife. The cantor loses both his ability to sing and a broader sense of purpose. That is until Ben's old grade school music teacher Carla re-enters his life looking to be bat mitzvah. Carla is played by Carol Kane, who is up for best-supporting performance at this year's Independent Spirit Awards.

In between lessons, Ben and Carla form an unconventional relationship, which allows Ben to reexamine his life while focusing more on the present, and it allows Carla to reconnect with her faith and Jewish identity. We talked about Between the Temples here on All Of It with actors Jason Schwartzman and nominee Carol Kane, along with filmmaker Nathan Silver. I had read that the film was partially inspired by Nathan's own mother, so I started by asking him what aspect of his mom's life he hoped to spotlight.

Nathan Silver: 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 community, so 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 in shock, not only that she had joined the temple, but also that she was in this B'nai mitzvah class. I relayed this to my friend and a former publicist, Adam Kirsch, at a party a few weeks later, and he's like, "There's a movie there. We need to do a Harold and Maude riff, where a late-in-life bat mitzvah student falls for her younger cantor or rabbi as she goes through the lessons, and now we have a movie somehow all these years later."

Jason Schwartzman: Thank you to your mother.

Carol Kane: Yes, thank you, Nathan Silver's mom.

Alison Stewart: Thanks, Mom. [laughs]

Nathan Silver: Thanks, Cindy Silver.

Carol Kane: 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: Initially, one of the-- I guess just right out the bat, the way that it was written and the way that Nathan conveyed this sort of sense of loss, but it was funny. It had a-- I don't know. I can't describe it, but 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 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 if that makes 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: I've made a decision to do this thing that I've been wanting to do since I was little, and I have encountered nos 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 my Torah portion and he is having none of it, but I'm having none of his having none of it.

[laughter]

Carol Kane: 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, Cantor 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, the bat mitzvah. My son just starts howling with laughter and 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: My co-writer Chris Wells and I, we think through each character as best we can throughout the whole writing process. Then, we don't send a finished script like your standard 120-page screenplay to the actors. We send something that reads like a novela. It allows the actors to imagine more of what their characters could be, and there are not so many impositions on them. They come to us with ideas, the holes in the story, and their characters, and we discuss at length who these people are and how to make it actually work with the people who are going to embody these characters.

The mudslides, for instance, it became clear that Jason's character would like a milkshake-like drink. He's 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. 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 with Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane alongside Nathan Silver about their new film Between the Temples. Let's play a clip. In this scene, Ben is facilitating a class for students planning their bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs, and he receives a surprise visit from Carla, his old music teacher.

Ben: Okay. To be a good Jew, you've got really-- [unintelligible 00:09:30] is he asleep? Would someone nudge him and wake him up? Is he asleep? Let him sleep. I don't care.

Carla: Hi.

Ben: Mrs, O'Connor, hi.

Carla: Carla, please.

Ben: Carla. Everyone, this is Carla. Say, "Shalom, Carla."

Students: Shalom, Carla.

Carla: Shalom, everybody.

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

Carla: Here you are. [laughs]

Ben: Are you picking someone up?

Carla: No. I'm here for me.

Ben: Okay.

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

Ben: B'nai mitzvah, bar and bat mitzvah, boys and girls.

Carla: That is very modern.

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

Jason Schwartzman: I think that because he's having a 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 in a similar spot but in an opposite feeling spot. My character, honestly, I think is not sure that he wants to teach this stuff and wants to help. 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 having such a crisis himself and he is feeling such a sense of loss and confusion about his own life that he's in no place really to be the person he thinks to be helping someone. He doesn't really feel like he can help himself.

Carol Kane: Exactly. It's just a classic major depression 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: 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 goal? [crosstalk] I'm sorry?

Carol Kane: I'm just wanting to point out that as we are talking about major depression and grief, our director is chuckling to himself. There's a big grin on his face.

[laughter]

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. 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 talk 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 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 despairing.

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

Carol Kane: Yes, [chuckles] because I've waited so long to fulfill this hope and dream, and it's way too late to start. This is the only time that I can start, and it's now or never. 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 that 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. For a character who's too much in his own head, Ben, we thought that it was very fitting.

Alison Stewart: We'll have more of my conversation about the film Between the Temples with actor Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane, as well as co-writer and director Nathan Silver. We'll have more in just a minute. This is All Of It.

[MUSIC]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart. Let's get back into my conversation about the new film Between the Temples. It's about a cantor who loses his wife and then finds the grief has made him lose his voice until he connects with a former teacher named Carla, who asked him to help her get bat mitzvah. We were hearing from actors Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane, who played Cantor Ben Gottlieb and Carla respectively, as well as director and co-screenwriter Nathan Silver. To start off this portion of the conversation, I asked Jason about his character, Ben, and how his grief shows up in his professional role as a cantor.

Jason Schwartzman: It's stopped him from singing. He's had some type of a-- Something has happened with his mind and his body and his heart. When the movie opens, he's just returning from a sabbatical which I guess is another way of just saying he's been on grief leave and still he can't sing when the movie begins. He just cannot do it. He's not really in the past or really in the present or really in the future. For instance, his wife who's a-- She was a novelist. She's left him I think it's 700 and something voicemails, which he's kept all of, and he listens to them often. I think that even just that little detail is just like, he can't really be in the present moment without somehow incorporating her into it. Yes, 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 onto my past because it hasn't been what I jumped off. I think when I see Ben and his grief, I can't take that for him. I remember him when he was Little Benny, and I remember his smile, and I remember his joy and 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 but 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, your character has more-- As I'm just thinking about it now, it's Little Benny and Little Carla beating [crosstalk] in a way, just thinking about it now, but it's--

Carol Kane: That's really well put. I'm not acting in a way that some people would consider properly grown. I'm more acting like a kid in that I'm living in the present. It's like Little Benny and Little Carla. It's true. I

love it.

Jason Schwartzman: Yes. You know in movies when they say-- someone calls up to the house, "Can he come out to play?"

[laughter]

Carol Kane: That's what I'm saying to him.

Jason Schwartzman: Exactly. I guess-

Carol Kane: "Come out and play." 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 one particular girl. Let's play the scene from early in the movie. He's having dinner with his moms and they're encouraging to see a doctor, sort of. Let's take a listen.

Actor 1: 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'm definitely open to the idea.

Actor 2: You are?

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

Actor 1: Benjamin, I'm so pleased to hear this.

Ben: Yes. I'm definitely open to it.

Actor 1: There she is.

[doorbell rings]

Ben: Who?

Alison Stewart: Oh, why is Ben responding the way he is? He's like, "Yes, sure." Then, this date shows up.

Jason Schwartzman: I know.

[laughter]

Jason Schwartzman: Excuse me. 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-- Typically, a note from a director is, "Say it faster."

Carol Kane: Make it funnier.

Jason Schwartzman: 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." Even just listening to it now, it's 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 tempo. It is like really unusual. [laughs]

Carol Kane: So vivid though.

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

Carol Kane: [crosstalk] and the silence. [laughs]

Jason Schwartzman: Absolutely.

Nathan Silver: What's cool though is that Jason resisted that, and so 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. Jason brought life to it in this way, and John pulled that out in the cut. I was just like-- Because the movie for all the depressing subject matter or whatever, it's filled with an exuberant air. The camera work and the editing, it's jagged. Like I said, it has this warmth to it. I feel like 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 gets aired out, or at least brought to the surface. Nathan, how long did it take you to get that scene right?

Nathan Silver: 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 you 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 a 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 working with Jason and Carol. They bounce ideas off each other and off of just the whole film set. It creates this energy that you can't simply write. It comes out of the pages, sure, but 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 funny and it has a 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, Carla. That's more of a directorial, probably notion of the balance and the-- Let's just say I couldn't think about it. My brain, between my temples, is not that big.

[laughter]

Carol Kane: What I want to say briefly is Nathan is so unusual as a director in a million different ways, but one way that you just heard is that he's so generous and he does not need to take full credit for everything, which is sometimes built into the director's psyche, I would say, "My movie. I did this, blah, blah, blah." Nathan is always in the best possible way, passing the buck.

Nathan Silver: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: That's a lovely compliment. Nathan, 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 take these jokes and figure out what we could do with them, how we could pervert them, shift them, change them.

Then, 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. We just tried to always look-- That was our goal.

Alison Stewart: 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, but that 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 in whatever little way you can. That's what I took from the movie, just myself.

I was just like, "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. 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: That was my conversation with actors Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane, alongside co-writer and director Nathan Silver. The film is called Between the Temples and Carol Kane has been nominated for Best Supporting Performance for her role as Carla at Next Year's Independent Spirit Awards.

[00:30:14] [END OF AUDIO]