Car­ol Kane: ​’I feel very old and very young at the same time‘

There’s a 50-year span between Car­ol Kane’s debut cred­it in Car­nal Knowl­edge and her cur­rent role on Star Trek; in-between is an Oscar nom­i­na­tion for Hes­ter Street, star­ring with Andy Kauf­man on Taxi, the Broad­way run of Wicked, and roles for (nam­ing just a few) John Cas­savetes, Woody Allen, Gus Van Sant, Cindy Sher­man, Elaine May, Steve Busce­mi, and Jim Jar­musch — an oeu­vre so vast that no two peo­ple could pos­si­bly have the same sense of it. (I’ve not even men­tioned Scrooged, which you’ve like­ly watched with fam­i­ly on at least one hol­i­day vis­it.) But some vision coheres in Nathan Silver’s Between the Tem­ples, fea­tur­ing Kane as a late-in-life wid­ow­er who decides to receive the Bat Mitz­vah she missed 60-or-so years pri­or. A bril­liant­ly shaped script­ment (more on that below) from Sil­ver and C. Mason Wells makes ide­al scene part­ners of her and Jason Schwartz­man — togeth­er they’re one of cinema’s snuggest odd couples.

Kane is a live­ly, quick-wit­ted con­ver­sa­tion part­ner, and very much the one-woman repos­i­to­ry of his­to­ry her career sug­gests — the kind of sub­ject that essen­tial­ly does this job for you.

LWLies: You’re list­ed as an exec­u­tive pro­duc­er of Between the Tem­ples. What moti­vat­ed you com­ing aboard in that capac­i­ty, and what did its respon­si­bil­i­ties look like?

Kane: To tell you the truth: there wasn’t a lot of [Laughs] respon­si­bil­i­ty oth­er than the respon­si­bil­i­ty of col­lab­o­rat­ing from the begin­ning with Nathan and Chris. You know a bit about how Nathan works? It’s not a script as one is accus­tomed to read­ing. It’s sort of a chap­ter-book type of thing; it gives you a lit­tle sug­ges­tion of each scene. The night before you shoot a scene, we get pages. Even those pages do look more like a reg­u­lar script, that’s not how it’s going to end up. Even though there is dia­logue, that dia­logue is sug­ges­tion. So there’s a lot of respon­si­bil­i­ty to col­lab­o­rate and to give it your all over and over again, because you might shoot a scene from top to bot­tom and think, ​’Oh, we got it that time.’ And then [Laughs] Nathan will say, ​‘No, no, no. That’s not it. That didn’t work.’ You have to just dive back in the water. Aside from those lessons and, in the rehearsals, col­lab­o­rat­ing around the table before we start to shoot, those were the main respon­si­bil­i­ties. I didn’t have to raise mon­ey or hire the genius DP that we had, or any of those things.

It’s only your sec­ond pro­duc­ing cred­it of any sort; the oth­er is iMorde­cai, which was just two years ago. Giv­en some of the great film­mak­ers you worked with and who didn’t always get a fair shake – a Joan Mick­lin Sil­ver or Elaine May – I won­der if you’ve want­ed to mate­ri­al­ly sup­port films behind the scenes for a while, and if there’s some sat­is­fac­tion that comes from it.

Oh, I’ll tell you what: if some­thing works out, there would be a gigan­tic sat­is­fac­tion. I’ve been work­ing with Elaine on a play for a while and we’re just real­ly hop­ing it will come to pass because it’s so bril­liant. We’ll see what hap­pens. But yeah: there’s so many great film­mak­ers, as you said, where things didn’t sur­face the way they should have for their careers. Joan is a big, great exam­ple of that.

What’s this play you’ve been work­ing on?

You know, I don’t think I have per­mis­sion to say.

It’s just excit­ing to hear about some­thing new.

Right? She’s such a genius.

I’ve watched a lot of things you’re in, but much of it’s decades-old, stuff I saw as a kid. And there are ways actors get embalmed in your mind. But because we’re all human beings, we all age.

If we’re lucky.

Well, yes. Very true. But when you show up and look and sound your own age, I found some­thing very mov­ing: we’ve been able to see you grow onscreen. I won­der if there’s some­thing to embrace about get­ting old­er as an actor: new ways to use your face, your voice, kinds of roles you can now play.

To be hon­est with you: it’s not easy. I, like you, have watched me age onscreen. But the thing is: in your mind’s eye you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly realise how old you’ve got­ten. [Laughs] You know, visu­al­ly. Well, I feel very old and very young at the same time. But then, if you sort of see your face on film, there’s no… it’s like a smack. There’s no deny­ing what you look like. I’m try­ing to embrace it. I’m try­ing to show it like it is, tell it like it is. The much-overquot­ed —because it’s bril­liant — quote from Bette Davis: ​“Old age ain’t for sissies.” That’s a pow­er­ful fact. You have to embrace a lot of change. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s some­thing that you strug­gle with. [Sound of piano in back­ground] Hold on. One sec­ond. That’s my mom­ma play­ing the piano. Could you hear that?

Yeah.

My momma’s 97.

And she plays the piano?

Every day.

She sounds good.

Oh, she’s bril­liant. She’s a com­pos­er. She’s an impro­vis­er, also, and she has a piano part­ner, and she impro­vis­es with him. One time Elaine and her daugh­ter, Jean­nie Berlin, they came over for din­ner, and my mom and her part­ner played for them. It’s all com­plete­ly impro­vised. Elaine just went crazy. She said, ​“I’m an impro­vis­er. I know about impro­vis­ing.” That was just bril­liant. She was so bowled-over. How lucky. But as I said: I want to embrace it. I think some­times I may look pret­ty and some­times not so pret­ty, but that’s how it is in life, right? Do I wish that I had the jaw­line that I had when I did Car­nal Knowl­edge? Yeah. [Laughs] I sure do, and I nev­er will again – unless I get my face cut up.

This is a per­for­mance you couldn’t cred­i­bly give 20, 30 years ago, and I’m hear­ing your 97-year-old moth­er bril­liant­ly play piano in the back­ground. I imag­ine that’s encour­ag­ing. But I don’t know.

It’s, I would say, encour­ag­ing, inspi­ra­tional, and daunt­ing all at the same time. Because how do I live up to the cre­ative force that keeps her going to the piano and cre­at­ing at this age? It’s real­ly some­thing extra­or­di­nary. Like I say: inspi­ra­tional and daunt­ing. [Laughs] Because I don’t know. Because I said: young and old. The old part of me feels a lit­tle tired some­times, and I don’t know if I’ll have that same life force that she has. You don’t know ​‘til you get there, I think. Def­i­nite­ly I could not have played this part in the way I played it at a dif­fer­ent age. It’s my age; it’s being my age.

Jason said he spent about a year between get­ting the script­ment and production’s start — the word he used for that time was ​“fer­til­iza­tion.” Was there any­thing you zeroed-in on with the prep time you had? Her way of dress­ing, speak­ing, moving?

Huh. [Pause] Well, he said ​“fer­til­i­sa­tion.” I would say ​“ges­ta­tion.” But isn’t that inter­est­ing — because fer­til­i­sa­tion is the male ver­sion of ges­ta­tion. [Laughs] You know, it’s so spe­cif­ic and pri­vate, every­thing about how a per­son gets put togeth­er — the images of peo­ple I had in my head — and a big thing, which is going to sound a lit­tle bor­ing: I real­ly want­ed to sound authen­tic with the Hebrew, and that was quite a chal­lenge for me. I spoke Yid­dish in Hes­ter Street. I don’t speak Yid­dish, but it’s much more acces­si­ble to me than Hebrew. So that was some­thing I worked very hard on, with a lot of help, and I was quite fright­ened for the cer­e­mo­ny – the Bat Mitz­vah – which I sup­pose is appro­pri­ate, because I imag­ine that was true for Car­la, too: the thing about get­ting it right, hav­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do it, and then the oblig­a­tion and the aspi­ra­tion to get it right. I just have to say, in terms of who I became, ulti­mate­ly, in the movie: a lot of that had to do with Jason. I mean, he was just… I would say, ​“No act­ing required,” for me.

Who else is like that?

Of course I’ve worked with Gena Row­lands. I don’t know if you know that I got to be in a play with Gena Row­lands that John Cas­savetes direct­ed. It’s the last thing he direct­ed, and he wrote it. It’s called A Woman of Mys­tery. Gosh. Oh, God. And I got to be there.

Didn’t you two know each oth­er a bit?

Well, I worked with John on a cou­ple of plays. I had worked with him on anoth­er play before that that a friend of his, Meade Roberts, had wrote, that was about Eugene O’Neill, and Ben Gaz­zara was O’Neill. I was his first wife and Pat­ti LuPone was his sec­ond wife. It’s so thrilling. John and I worked on a piece for a long time that nev­er got born — it was quite bril­liant and we rehearsed togeth­er for a long time — and then this play did get born.

And it’s a sacred memory.

Well, that’s the right word, isn’t it? What it was like was wild­ly chal­leng­ing and excit­ing and ter­ri­fy­ing. Specif­i­cal­ly on this play — the third thing that I worked with him on, with Gena, A Woman of Mys­tery — when we start­ed rehears­ing I hat­ed my char­ac­ter. [Laughs] And I was beg­ging John to let me out. Beg­ging him, like cry­ing. Here’s what John said — this’ll give you a taste of what it was like — ​“Oh, okay. Okay. Here’s the deal: if you still hate your char­ac­ter on open­ing night, you can leave.” And he meant it. He meant it, fuck­ing, a zil­lion per­cent. One day, we were already in pre­views, I went to vis­it a lit­tle girl I knew named Susie De Luna — who was an extra­or­di­nary char­ac­ter, and she’s since passed away; she was an amaz­ing young per­son, a lit­tle girl — and I went over to John and Gena’s house after I saw Susie. I start­ed to talk about Susie to John. He said, ​‘Oh. Oh. Okay. Let’s sit down. Let’s start writ­ing.’ And he wrote a scene based on the spir­it of Susie. I don’t mean ​‘spir­it’ as in ​‘booga-booga.’ I mean her guts and her unique­ness. She was a fuck­ing brave per­son, against all odds.

How did the writ­ing go?

We sat down and wrote a scene, like, with yel­low pads at the card table, and start­ed writ­ing. I mean, he start­ed writ­ing – I just wrote things down — and then he wrote a whole scene. He said to Gena and me, ​‘What do you think? Should we try it tonight? You want to put it in tonight?’ I’m talk­ing about a pre­view with an audi­ence. We did it. From then on, I was in love with my char­ac­ter. What he wrote that day changed every­thing for me. He did know that he could do it, and he did it. Gena knew that she could do it and she did it. It was very… God, it was so stim­u­lat­ing. John made every­body much bet­ter than they were. And Gena was right in there with him. They were very chal­leng­ing to each oth­er as artists; they were bru­tal­ly hon­est with each oth­er. But that was the basis of John’s work — a sort of bru­tal hon­esty. Don’t you think?

Oh, absolute­ly. Those movies still knock your teeth out.

Knock your fuck­ing teeth out. Have you seen Open­ing Night lately?

It’s been a lit­tle while.

Oh, my God! Time to see it again. Well, maybe because I’m an actor it means more to me because [Laughs] Gena’s play­ing an actress. But it’s also great to see John play­ing an actor in a scene with Gena and Gena is clear­ly the star and John is clear­ly the sup­port­ing actor. Just to watch that dynam­ic know­ing that he was in charge of every­thing but he… boy, to see them togeth­er, just act­ing onstage and her being bet­ter than him and him know­ing it. In their char­ac­ters. I mean. It’s just, like, wild. Any­way, I bet­ter shut up. I get excit­ed about some of these peo­ple. Why not, right?