When Nathan Silver’s mother was in her mid-60s, she decided to have a bat mitzvah. As the indie filmmaker started telling people that his mother was embarking on a rite of passage usually reserved for teenagers, a friend urged him to turn her story into a movie. Now, “Between the Temples,” a screwball comedy inspired by mom’s coming-of-age ceremony, will premiere at Sundance, with Carol Kane and Jason Schwartzman playing an elderly bat mitzvah student and a depressed cantor who forge an unlikely bond.
“It’s one from the heart,” says Silver. “It’s a story that touches on many aspects of my life.”
It also gives Kane and Schwartzman, who so often steal scenes in supporting roles, a chance to shine as leads. Signing on required a leap of faith for Kane because Silver’s scripts, which he calls “scriptments” and likens to novellas, aren’t traditional.
“It was intimidating,” Kane says. “There are scenes and outlines, but it’s more of a blueprint. And then the actors get to add their own ideas and flesh it out.”
Schwartzman felt the looseness gave the film a greater sense of authenticity. “It became this wonderfully alive experience where you knew the music you were going to play, but there was this openness to improvising and adding things in the moment.”
The process reminded Kane of working with Elaine May and John Cassavetes on a project called “Singles.” The collaborators would workshop scenes and dialogue before polishing them. “It was brilliant. We worked on it for a while, but for whatever reason it didn’t get finished,” Kane recalls.
“Between the Temples” is the first collaboration between Kane and Schwartzman — a long-overdue pairing given how effortlessly their offbeat acting styles blend. “Everything that you love about Carol in all the movies and shows she’s been in, well, that’s really Carol,” says Schwartzman. “She’s an incredible spirit.”
For Kane, playing a late-in-life student with unrealized ambitions touched something in herself. “We all have unfulfilled dreams,” she says. In a career that’s seen her directed by the likes of Sidney Lumet, Hal Ashby and Mike Nichols, there are still lots of people she’s dying to work with (if you read this, Marty Scorsese, give Carol a call). When choosing roles, the best advice she received was from Madeline Kahn. “I had trouble making decisions about what to do, and Madeline told me, ‘Make sure that there’s one thing about any project that no matter what happens will remain true. Maybe the role is amazing or the money is good or you get to work with an actor. No matter how it turns out, you’ll still have that one thing to remember.’”
As for Silver’s mother, she never got around to having her bat mitzvah, but she did score a small part in “Between the Temples.”
“She’s seen it and gave it a good review,” Silver says. “She’s the only critic that counts.”