.png)
4 hours ago
4 ARTICLE AD
Carol Kane received her first awards nomination 50 years ago next year. It was a big one, too; after just five years in film, working with directors of the caliber of Mike Nichols and Hal Ashby, Kane was feted by the Academy for her starring role in Joan Micklin Silver’s period drama Hester Street, a film she made in 1975 alongside Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon. Primetime Emmy awards followed in the early ’80s, for James L. Brooks’ hit show Taxi, in which she played the wife of Andy Kaufman’s character Latka Gravas.
Awards-wise, Kane has simmered throughout her career while never quite boiling over. Instead, she focused on the work—as a young actress, she caught the tail end of the New Hollywood of the ’60s, and then quite effortlessly segued into the commercial studio mainstream of the ’80s, making Scrooged in 1988 with Bill Murray. In the ’90s, she hitched her wagon to the new wave of independents that were breaking out from the Sundance Film Festival, and it is this kind of risk-taking that has brought her, after all this time, back to the awards conversation: Last week she took the Best Supporting Actress Award at The New York Film Critics Circle Award, and next month—circumstances in California permitting, obviously— she will contend at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Fittingly, the film causing a stir debuted at Sundance last year and, like Hester Street, takes her back to her New York roots. Called Between the Temples and directed by Nathan Silver, it stars Jason Schwartzman as Ben, a depressed cantor at a suburban synagogue who is mourning the death of his wife after a freak accident. Kane plays Carla, his old music teacher, who comes back into his life after a chance meeting in a bar. The relationship that plays out is sweet, unexpected, and surprisingly grounded. A lot, in fact, like Carol Kane…
DEADLINE: Carol, looking at your credits, you’re obviously a very busy person; how did you get involved with Between the Temples?
CAROL KANE: Oh, I just got a call. My manager called me and said I’d been offered this movie, and that I was going to be playing opposite Jason Schwartzman. I was just beside myself with excitement, because I have always, always loved him. And then I got what’s called a “scriptment”, which is not a script, it’s between a treatment and a chapter book. It was about 39 pages. It told the story, and it had some lines to illustrate what a scene would be, but there were no full scenes, like you’d see in a normal script. But I loved the story, and then Nathan Silver and Jason and I, we had two rather long Zoom sessions together. It was Covid time, so we couldn’t meet in person. But we met on the Zoom and talked through what we all thought it could be, what we expected, and how it would be shot, which was very different than anything I’d ever done. It seemed like it might work out, so I said yes.
DEADLINE: So then did you work on the script together, or did Nathan just go away and develop what you’d all discussed?
KANE: A little of both. And then we just had one day of rehearsal when we got to the location. We would get the script pages the night before, or two nights before. Nathan had promised me a full script by the time we started shooting, and a couple of days before we started, he said that wasn’t going to happen. [Laughs.] Which, in hindsight, I’m grateful for, because that’s not his method. He doesn’t work like that. I guess I’ll toot my own horn now and tell you that I just got the New York Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress, and Mike Leigh was there, at the ceremony.
I think Nathan Silver took a lot from Mike Leigh’s technique of not writing a whole script. But we got some pages, we’d do the pages as written, and then he would go crazy and say, “No, that’s not it! That’s not it!” [Laughs.] Then we’d improvise over and over around the story of the scene, and he wouldn’t stop until he got what he thought would work. We would improvise around a written structure; you know what I mean? We could use some of the written lines, and we could also feel free to contribute what we were feeling at the moment, so I guess it was very, very collaborative.
DEADLINE: Was the character of Carla all there? Were you able to bring something personal to it?
KANE: Yes. My mother, Joy Kane, is a music teacher, and she moved to Paris when she was 55 and started her life all over again in the tiniest little room with no bathroom and no toilet—that was all down the hall. She was 55, and she went and started again. She became a master teacher in Dalcroze eurythmics, and she went all over France to teach, and even sometimes Germany and Italy. Nathan’s take from that was to make my character Ben’s music teacher. In the original script, we didn’t know each other. We had no background, but then suddenly we did have that big background, and that, I think, is a wonderful choice. So, there was a lot there, and I was able to take a lot also from myself and my mom.
And also—I will tell you this and then I’m going to shut up!—that I feel like so much of what I brought to the film was because of Jason, because when I looked at him, and I looked in his eyes and just talked to him honestly, it gave me more than I could ever explain. It gave me so many feelings and so many ideas. He’s so extraordinary. It’s a cliche word, but he’s so present, you know what I mean? And he also is probably one of the kindest human beings ever born, so it was a real honor.
DEADLINE: Well, you can see that in the movie. I mean, going in, I was skeptical as to how it would work, but it absolutely does work.
KANE: Now, tell me, that’s interesting. May I ask you a question? I’d just like to know what you mean when you say you were skeptical.
DEADLINE: Well, because of the age difference, I thought the relationship might be forced or contrived. But after a while I didn’t notice the age difference at all.
KANE: What do you mean? I didn’t know there was an age difference! [Laughs.] No, it’s true. I mean, it’s just that, somehow, we felt very close to each other.
DEADLINE: Even I’m older than Jason Schwartzman!
KANE: Well, yes. He’s a young, beautiful man, and it was my honor. But you saw it working in Harold and Maude, right?
DEADLINE: Yes, exactly. Was that in your mind? Because you worked with Hal Ashby, didn’t you?
KANE: I did. I was so… I want to say a swear word, but I won’t. I was so effing lucky. I did The Last Detail with Jack Nicholson and Hal Ashby, and I love Harold and Maude. I mean, I didn’t copy it, but, obviously, that showed us that this story could work. Don’t you think? You see that it’s not about the age. I think they’re both love stories. I think this movie is a love story, but—even Jason and I, or Nathan—I don’t think any of us could define exactly what kind of love story it is.
DEADLINE: That’s a good point. That’s why it surprised me, because it was taking its own direction, and it wasn’t just a rerun of something I’d seen before.
KANE: Thank you. Nathan co-writes with Chris Wells, and I should mention his name too. And also, I should mention our cinematographer Sean Price Williams, because so much of what is captured is because of him. As I said, we were improvising around the structure but improvising so each take could be different. It was up to him to anticipate and watch and listen and be there where we were, which was not necessarily where we’d been in the last take.
DEADLINE: Is that what you meant when you said you’d worked in a way you hadn’t worked before? Or you talking about the way he used the script? Or both?
KANE: Well, more the way he used the script, but really also the cinematography was such a dance with us. It was unique. I have to say it was unique in almost every way. And as you probably know, I’ve now been in the union for 58 years.
DEADLINE: Geez!
KANE: Geez Louise. You want to lie down?
DEADLINE: Well, I wanted to lie down after reading your credits, because they go on forever. You’ve been working so frequently, it’s amazing.
KANE: You know what? I’m not working so frequently, but I’ve been working for so many years. For instance, I’m not working now, and I have no idea what’s next. I do have one job coming up. I don’t know if you know, but I’m on the new Star Trek show, Strange New Worlds. I’m not a regular, but this is my third season of being on it, even though I’m not a regular. Sometime, probably in March, I’ll shoot four of those or something. But that’s all I have. I don’t have any other movies or TV series right now. But the latest thing I did was so much fun. I got to work with Danny DeVito, who is my long-time friend, and he has this great little show called It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Have you ever seen it? Here’s the thing, Damon, which is so shocking and which I didn’t know: It’s been on for 16 seasons.
DEADLINE: I didn’t know that!
KANE: Are you going to do a spit take?
DEADLINE: I thought you were going to say six.
KANE: Sixteen! I wish I could do something like that, something that you can count on.
Showbiz is a lot of quicksand. But now that I’m saying that, I can’t really continue without saying it’s just so tragic what’s happening in California, in Los Angeles. I know several people who’ve completely lost everything
DEADLINE: Did you ever live in Hollywood yourself?
KANE: I lived in West Hollywood when I was doing TV stuff. Taxi or All Is Forgiven. Scrooged was shot at Paramount. I worked at Paramount almost exclusively, but it wasn’t my idea, it just so happened.
DEADLINE: We talked about Hal Ashby, but you also worked with Mike Nichols. Coming out of the gate, you worked with some of the most amazing people. Was that just happenstance? Or did you know what you were doing back in those days?
KANE: I just was incredibly blessed to have my first real director be Mike Nichols. I mean, I was just so blessed. It was such a gift that he believed in me, and that has a lot of power in your work. If there’s an artist that you admire and believe in, and who believes in you back, it’s an unbelievable feeling of strength and security, which I don’t have a lot. But Mike did that. He made me feel that way. I think that was one of his great, secret gifts.
And then, well, Hal… I must say there’s a little story behind me working with Hal. I was in love with his work, like Harold and Maude and The Landlord. Anyway, then I heard that he was shooting this movie, The Last Detail, in Toronto, and I was in Toronto promoting a Canadian movie that I got to star in with the fantastic Donald Pleasance. It was called Wedding in White, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it. It’s an extraordinary movie. And anyway, so it won Best Canadian Film [in 1972], and so they brought me up there to do some press. I was in the Sutton Place Hotel for a week, and then I heard that Hal was going to be coming to town to scout locations for The Last Detail. I slept on the couch of my dear friend Graham Beckel, who’s an actor who was shooting [James Bridges’ film] The Paper Chase up there. That’s another great movie! I slept on his couch for a week, and I wrote a little letter to Hal saying how much I admired him and how much I would love to work with him and meet him. I dropped it off at the little hotel he was going to stay in. I dropped it at the front desk for him.
And then I waited, because I was so young that I still believed that things like that could happen. I was 19 or 20, and then I got a call one day from Hal to come and meet him at the hotel. I met him, and I got that incredible part from him. And when I tell this story… I know it’s my story, but when I tell it, I just can hardly believe how lucky I was to get to work with such great artists in the very, very start of my peculiar career.
DEADLINE: Well, it’s interesting, because you caught the tail end of the new Hollywood in the ’70, then you segued into the ‘80s, and then you caught the independent wave of the ‘90s, so you rode three decades…
KANE: Thank you.
DEADLINE: You mentioned Paramount. Were you under contract?
KANE: No, it was just coincidence that Taxi shot there. And then I did another series that was brilliant, but only went on for a short time, called All Is Forgiven [1986]. That shot there. I guess Cheers shot there. And then I got the part in the movie Scrooged (1988), and that shot there. I got to rehearse there on my ballet dance for Scrooged, which is the introduction to my character. I do a little ballet dance in that film.
I don’t know if you remember that, but it was quite an experience. I was supposed to have a double who was a ballet dancer, but I had to learn the moves anyway because [the director], Dick Donner, had to be able to cut back and forth from the real ballet dancer to me. I worked so hard on this dance, and I worked with a teacher named Jillian Hessel, and I got en pointe. I worked so hard and I wanted it to be great. And then Dick Donner sent our genius production designer, who since has sadly passed away, his name was J. Michael Riva. He was the grandson of Marlene Dietrich. Anyway, so Michael came into the rehearsal room that they had given me and Jillian and I did the dance for him. I did it so seriously and tried so hard. And from the beginning, he just started laughing and didn’t stop. I was trying to be so good, and he thought it was hysterically funny because it was so bad!
So, I owe him the whole performance, really, because he then went to Dick Donner and said, “Dick, we have to have her do the whole thing. We can’t use a dancer. We have to have her do the whole thing, because it’s so funny.” So that’s what happened. They let me do the thing and try as hard as I could to do a good job. And at one point I shake my head and say,” I’m a little muddled.” [Laughs] It always was funny, but that was not my intent.
DEADLINE: You’ve worked with some of the comedy greats, people like Bill Murray and Gene Wilder. Did you learn from them, or does comedy come naturally to you?
KANE: I had no idea that I would ever do a comedy. I had been on the stage in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. [In movies] I did Carnal Knowledge, The Last Detail, Wedding in White… I was so dramatic. [Laughs.] And then I did Hester Street with Joan Micklin Silver. I was very young. I was, I guess, 23 when it came out, and I was 22 when we shot it, and I got nominated [for Best Actress at the Oscars], which was a miracle. And then I did not work for a solid year. The phone did not ring. I mean, I didn’t turn anything down—I didn’t get any calls. And then, finally, a year later, the phone rang, and it was Gene Wilder offering me the lead opposite him in The World’s Greatest Lover, which was so crazy.
And that was my first comedy. I don’t know why he gave it to me. I asked him, and I think he said there was something about the character of Gitl in Hester Street that he wanted to put into the character of Annie, his wife, in The World’s Greatest Lover. He saw it in me, and he wanted that, and that’s how I accidentally got into comedy. And then Jim Brooks called. I guess must have watched Hester Street and a couple other things I did, maybe something called The Mafu Cage [1978], and offered me a role in Taxi.
This was back in the day, Damon, when stage and film actors poo-pooed television. We all looked down on it and thought, ‘You mustn’t do it if you’re a real serious actor.’ And then I saw that the actor Jack Gilford had done Taxi, playing Judd Hirsch’s father. I loved Jack Gilford; he was so great. And I thought, ‘If Jack can do it, I can do it.’ And so I did. I accepted the first Taxi. With the terrible attitude of ‘Leave me alone, I’m a serious actress.’ I even kicked Jim Brooks out of my dressing room! In the theater, the half hour before you go onstage is sacred. Nobody is allowed to come into your dressing room, because you’re preparing, right? I brought that attitude with me, because that was my background. Jim knocked on the door of my dressing room in the half hour [before filming], and I was just outraged. [Laughs.] And also, I thought that the producers… This is how stupid I was! I thought that the producers of TV shows were like [people from] Kellogg’s Corn Flakes or, I don’t know, peanut butter. I thought that the producer meant the advertisers.
I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know Jim was the writer, with Ed Weinberger and Stan Daniels, so I just couldn’t figure out how he could have the nerve to knock on my door. I learned better very quickly, but back then I said, “No, you can’t come in, I’m preparing.” So, I did one episode, and then, later on, I ran into Jim at a party of Penny Marshall and Carrie Fisher, who used to have a giant birthday party every year, which was magnificent. I ran into Jim. I had just come back from Australia, making a movie. By that time, I knew who he was, and he asked me if I’d like to do another Taxi. This was I think two years later or something. And I said, “Yes, I would love to.”
[Pause.] Well, you asked me about learning! I’m sorry, I sort of didn’t answer you, but, obviously, I learned so much from each of these comedic, gifted geniuses that I got to work with. And one of the many things I learned on Taxi was from Jim, because when I came back the second time I had a whole different attitude about what I was doing. I wasn’t taking myself so seriously. I wanted to do a great job, and so I was trying to be funny. And Jim just let me have it. He said, “No! Don’t try and be funny. If the writing is funny, it’ll work. It’ll be funny. If it’s not, then we have to fix it. The writers have to fix it. Don’t try and be funny.”
Oh my God, what a lesson. It’s a hard one. It’s a very hard one to learn, because it’s a natural instinct to want to amuse people. You want everybody to start smiling and laughing. He said, “That’s not it,” and he was right. You just have to do it, and if it’s written funny, it’ll be funny. So anyway, I’m going on a little, but that was such a gift that Jim gave me.
DEADLINE: Talking about Taxi, I asked Judd Hirsch this same question: What are your memories of Andy Kaufman on that show?
KANE: Oh, you asked Judd. I’d be curious to know what he said.
DEADLINE: He only had good memories, but he was very diplomatic. He said he could be difficult.
KANE: Well, I don’t have to be diplomatic because I think he was an extraordinary artist, and so I don’t have to be diplomatic. We had huge differences in our techniques, and that was a very interesting thing for the process of working together. I don’t know if Judd told you, but Andy only came in two days a week out of the five days that we had to rehearse and shoot, and we had to work with a fake Andy, a lovely young man named Jeff, who had a cardboard sign around his neck that said “Andy”. We would have to do our scenes with this lovely young man who was not, even in any possible way, anything like Andy.
At the end of the week, Andy would come in for a shoot day, because we shot Friday night. So, we rehearsed all day Friday and shot Friday night, I would be mad at Andy. I would go to his dressing room, or I would have him come to my dressing room, and we would have a talk, and I would tell him that I was upset that he wasn’t there, and that I needed to rehearse. He would tell me in the softest, kindest voice that he understood and he was sorry, but that he couldn’t do that because it was not something that was OK for the way he worked, the way he developed his characters. We had this talk, and we had it every single time we worked together. And by the end of the talk, we were together. We understood each other, we sort of forgave each other, and then we were in love when we got on the stage. But we had to have that talk.
DEADLINE: I’m racing through my questions now, but when it came to the ’90s, a certain type of directors started coming to you. Steve Buscemi, Alexandre Rockwell, Gus Van Sant, all those kinds of people. Were you aware that that was a thing that was happening from the ’90s onwards, that there was a new wave of filmmaking?
KANE: Well, I was aware that these were artists that I wanted to—like they say—“play with.” I love Steve Buscemi. I mean, he is just so brilliant. And so, I was beyond thrilled to get offered the part in Trees Lounge [1996]. A dear friend of mine, Sheila Jaffe, who cast The Sopranos with Georgianne Walken, she cast that movie and I love it so much. I wish it would’ve gotten more attention.
And then I did a movie called In the Soup that Alex Rockwell directed. Actually, that came first [in 1991]. I did a scene where me and Jim Jarmusch had a talk show called The Naked Truth, and we interviewed our guests in the nude. My name was Bubbles and Jim was called Monty. We still call each other that. Poor Steve had to sit on a stool with a cone over his privates for the interview. It was a great movie. And it also starred Seymour Cassel. Steve and Seymour were this incredible duo. Jennifer Beals from Flashdance. Yeah, it was great.
DEADLINE: And you still find time for the stage. It seems to be very important to you.
KANE: It’s very important to me. I must be honest and say I haven’t been on stage in several years now. But I was in Wicked on and off for four years. Everywhere—Broadway, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago. That was a very demanding but fantastic experience. I loved the theater. Right now, my life is not really conducive to the demands of the theater, which are huge, as you know. Eight shows a week. I am lucky enough to have my beautiful mother still, Joy Kane, who’s a pianist, who I told you was the inspiration for my character [in Between the Temples]and so I want to spend time with her. And I had a beautiful little doggie named Johnny who was sick and passed away. My life has taken a little bit of a different turn. Well, I never have said this in an article, and maybe it’s not the right thing to say. Maybe, it’s too honest, but if I’m going to go away, I need to make some money. But that’s the truth of a certain point in life. We shot Between the Temples in a town called Kingston, New York, and it was literally an hour and a half away from where I live, so I got to come home on the weekends.
DEADLINE: Whereabouts do you live in New York?
KANE: We live on the Upper West side of Manhattan. Are you familiar with New York?
DEADLINE: I go there very, very rarely. I know Lower East Side, and that’s about it.
KANE: Oh, so we’re on the Upper West Side. So, in a certain sense we’re way, way across town and uptown, yeah. The Lower East Side is where we shot Hester Street. We shot in a little studio on East Fifth Street.
DEADLINE: Do you feel that that film’s due a revival? Because the director’s being rediscovered a bit lately, isn’t she?
KANE: Thank goodness. She’s so great. Joan Micklin Silver is who you’re talking about, isn’t it?
DEADLINE: Yes.
KANE: Actually, there’s a dedication to her at the end of our movie, Between the Temples: “JMS”. I didn’t know who it was. And then Nathan told me it was for Joan Micklin Silver and that she was one of his heroes. I’m glad to hear you say you feel people are rediscovering her work.
DEADLINE: Yes. And that film in particular, which is obviously a big deal for you.
KANE: She was such a gifted writer. It’s interesting, because when I read that script, I had the sensation that I was watching the movie. It was so beautifully written that I thought I saw the movie. That’s an experience you have very rarely. I saw Kieran Culkin get an award the other day, for the movie he did with Jesse Eisenberg [A Real Pain], which is also a wonderful movie. He said he had that experience of feeling that he was watching the movie when he read the script, but I’ve never really heard that from anybody else.
But that’s how good the writing was. I think that she executed it beautifully with four cents in the budget. I mean, literally, I think the budget at the very most was $375,000. Joan always liked to tell this story of when we were shooting outside on what was supposed to be Hester Street at the turn of the century. They could only afford to hire one horse, and she painted that horse three different colors so that it could pass by three different times and not be recognized. I’m an animal lover—I knew it was a water-based paint and everything—but it’s true, and she loved to tell that story. Isn’t that the greatest thing? A huge example of necessity being the mother of invention, right?
DEADLINE: Is there anyone you’d like to work with that you haven’t worked with? Am I right to think that you’re working with Darren Aronofsky at the moment? Or are you done with that?
KANE: Oh gosh. Yes, I’m so lucky. I only got to work with him for one day [on Caught Stealing], but it was an extraordinary day. I was offered the part of the mother of two of the main characters, played by Vincent D’Onofrio and Liev Schreiber. And also in the scene was, oh gosh, that genius young actor that did Elvis. Austin Butler. So, the scene was with the three of these unbelievable guys, directed by Darren, and it was all in Yiddish. I learned to do my lines in Yiddish for Hester Street, and it was a breeze. I mean, I worked hard, but… [Laughs] Let me just say that it was a whole different story at the age of 72 than it was at the age of 22. It was hard to learn those lines. I think he was OK with it. But the other question? I’ve all my life hoped to work with Marty Scorsese one day. And Robert De Niro. Well, I guess that must be who almost everybody says, but that’s who I want to work with.
DEADLINE: Is there anything that you’d like to do in your career that you still haven’t done?
KANE: Yes, there’s somebody I want to play, but I don’t think I should say the name because…
DEADLINE: You might jinx it?
KANE: Exactly. Isn’t that silly? When I read, I mostly read biographies and autobiographies. I’m very drawn to the notion of trying to bring to life someone who has lived already. I haven’t really gotten much of an opportunity to do that yet, but I hope to do that. Oh, and the other thing that I got to work on recently, which was just the hugest gift, was this TV series called Hunters [2020]. It was written by a man who I think is a genius. His name is David Weil. It was with Al Pacino, who was so great in it. When I was young, I did a lot of theater with Al. We did The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui down at the Public [Theater], and then we did Dog Day Afternoon. And then there was this huge gap of years, and then we got to do Hunters together. I personally think that that series is brilliant and should have gone on. And then it was so fun to work on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt with Tina Fey.
I mean, I’m a lucky girl, don’t you think?
