Fine-tuned

New comedy stars Jason Schwartzman as cantor, Carol Kane as his student

US Jewish actors take center stage in ‘Between the Temples,’ which has been self described as an ‘anxious comedy’

Jason Schwartzman poses at the the FX portion of the Television Critics Association Winter press tour on January 9, 2020, in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
Jason Schwartzman poses at the the FX portion of the Television Critics Association Winter press tour on January 9, 2020, in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

(JTA) — Jason Schwartzman is starring as a cantor who takes on an adult bat mitzvah student played by veteran actress Carol Kane in an upcoming US comedy film.

Shooting for “Between the Temples,” a self-described “anxious comedy,” has already wrapped, Variety reported on Wednesday, but no release date was given.

The film was written and directed by Jewish filmmaker Nathan Silver, whose past films include the well-received indie comedies “Thirst Street” and “The Great Pretender.”

“It’s the story of a cantor who is locked in a crisis of faith and finds his world turned upside down when his grade school music teacher reenters his life as his new adult bat mitzvah student,” Variety reported.

The news comes two weeks after Netflix announced that another Jewish actor, Adam Brody, would play a “charming rabbi” in a comedy series that co-stars Kristen Bell. Netflix also debuted its “Jewish Matchmaking” dating series earlier this month to acclaim.

Schwartzman — the son of Jewish film producer Jack Schwartzman and actress Talia Shire, and nephew of famed director Francis Ford Coppola — is well known as a recurring face in Wes Anderson films and other indie movies and shows. He has played Jewish characters before, including one loosely inspired by Philip Roth in the 2014 comedy-drama “Listen Up Philip.”

Carol Kane, a cast member in the Amazon Prime Video series “Hunters,” poses at the premiere of the show at the Directors Guild of America, February 19, 2020, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Kane, who is also Jewish, has had a long career on stage and screen that ranges from 1975’s “Hester Street,” about Jewish immigrants in New York City’s Lower East Side — for which she was nominated for an Academy Award — to “Hunters,” the Amazon series about post-war Nazi hunters that debuted in 2020.

Other “Between the Temples” cast members include Caroline Aaron, a Jewish actress who has played the protagonist’s mother-in-law on “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”; Jewish former “Saturday Night Live” writer and Adam Sandler collaborator Robert Smigel; and Dolly de Leon, who is gaining late-career acclaim for her recent performance in the Oscar-nominated film “Triangle of Sadness.”

Variety noted that the film is produced and financed by Ley Line Entertainment, which co-produced this year’s Oscar winner “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and a few other acclaimed indie films since its founding in 2018.

Most Popular
read more: