Israel Horovitz and Kevin Kline discuss “My Old Lady” at Cohen Media Group in New York.
Kevin Kline and Israel Horovitz
Looking In On Their Old Lady
by Jay S. Jacobs
Kevin Kline has spent a lot of time in France in his long career as an actor. He has done everything from French Kiss to The Pink Panther there. He even made the film Queen to Play in which he did his role almost completely in French.
Therefore Kline jumped at the chance to go back to Paris and star in the film version of the play My Old Lady by famous playwright Israel Horovitz, co–starring Dame Maggie Smith and Kristin Scott Thomas. Beyond writing the screenplay for the film, Horovitz also took the artistic leap of becoming the film’s director.
Horovitz is not to be confused with famed classical pianist Israel Horowitz. “I met him once in my life,” Horovitz explained. “I got onto a plane and they put me in his seat…. He was staring at me like I did that on purpose.” Ironically Kline knew Horowitz as well. “He lived on my block,” Kline recalled. “He used to hang out with one of my doormen.”
Mr. Horovitz has had a long and impressive career in the theater, writing and directing such plays as Line, Park Your Car in Harvard Yard, The Primary English Class, The Widow’s Blind Date, What Strong Fences Make, and The Indian Wants the Bronx. He has also written several films, including James Dean, Sunshine and the Al Pacino hit Author! Author!
My Old Lady was another popular play from Horovitz. However, the stage somehow felt too small for the writer, he decided he wanted to bring it to the big screen. The film is the story of Mathias Gold (Kline), a man in his late 50s who is just about out of money and at the end of his rope. When he inherited an apartment in Paris from his estranged late father, Gold flew directly to the City of Lights, planning to quickly sell the place.
When he arrived, Gold found out that the apartment was a viager apartment, a French system where you have to pay the person who currently owns the place to live in the apartment, and eventually when they die, you get full ownership of the place. Living at the place was Mathilde Girard (Dame Maggie Smith), a 90-some Englishwoman who turns out to have been surprisingly close to Gold’s father. Her neurotic daughter Chloé also lives there.
Suddenly stuck in Paris with two unexpected roommates, Gold goes on a journey of self, coming to like his odd new acquaintances, and hopefully eventually learning to like himself.
A few weeks before the American premiere of My Old Lady, we were one of several media outlets who were allowed to sit down with Kline and Horovitz at the New York headquarters at the Cohen Media Group. We were able to discuss their experience in making the film, their careers and life in France.
Kevin Kline discusses “My Old Lady” at Cohen Media Group in New York.
Kevin, how familiar were you with Israel’s play before you got involved in the film?
Kevin Kline: Ooh! I read it in French.
Israel Horovitz: Oh, that’s right. I gave it to you in French. Or somebody did?
Kevin Kline: Somebody, some crazy French producer thought I could actually speak French well enough to play it when it was done in Paris.
Israel Horovitz: You didn’t see it in Europe, though? In French?
Kevin Kline: No, I didn’t.
Israel Horovitz: With Peter Friedman.
Kevin Kline: Peter Friedman. One of my favorite actors.
Israel Horovitz: Good actor.
Kevin Kline: Great actor.
In that version, was the character French?
Israel Horovitz: No, he was American.
Kevin Kline: They wanted me to play this American, but he spoke French. I obviously didn’t. It was no version with the idea that he couldn’t speak French. This was something new.
Israel Horovitz: The play has been done in – I don’t know – 15 or 20 languages around the world. It was most popular, very popular in France. It was done in a 1,200 seat theater and played a couple of years.
Kevin Kline: What year was that? Do you remember? The original production?
Israel Horovitz: Uhh… I should remember and I gave the New York Times lady my thing with [those facts…]. Five years ago? I would say… Six years ago?
Kevin Kline: I saw it. I thought it was longer. Okay.
Israel Horovitz: No, it was six years ago and it was played by Line Renaud.
Kevin Kline: That was the original? Line Renaud?
Israel Horovitz: She was the original French star. Maybe it’s six years ago? (ed. note: The French production started performances in January 2009.) She was a huge, huge singing star in France. When she was a kid she was on The Ed Sullivan Show. She sang with Dean Martin. She had a little thing with Dean Martin. She was 87 when she did the play. Smoked cigarettes and drank champagne. She was great.
Israel Horovitz and Kevin Kline discuss “My Old Lady” at Cohen Media Group in New York.
How did you encounter the concept of viager purchasing? What was your reaction to it?
Israel Horovitz: I’ve had 50–something of my plays translated and performed in French. I’ve spent tons and tons of my life there. And I couldn’t believe it when I first heard of it. Then I started to research it. I saw these real estate agents that specialized only in viager apartments. It’s much more complicated than I made it in the movie. You can buy a viager apartment that has – they say deux têtes, two heads – and you’re buying a husband and wife. So you have to outlive both of them. At first I thought, man, this is the most barbaric thing I’ve ever found. Then I realized, you know, it’s not so bad.
Kevin Kline: You’re giving them an annuity.
Israel Horovitz: If somebody is old and they have no money and they don’t have kids to leave their apartment to, somebody gives them a bunch of money and pays them to stay in the apartment. Pays them a little something. They know they’ve got a roof over their heads for the rest of their lives. It’s fine. It’s not so much a gamble for that person as it is a real security.
Why did you decide to expand your play to a film?
Israel Horovitz: I should say this, to start with, the play is a three character play. Three actors in one room. I’ve seen the play all over the place. I’ve seen it in Moscow. It was at the Moscow Art Theater. I don’t speak a word of Russian. The old actress who played it must have been a great star sixty years ago, but I missed the whole career…
Kevin Kline: A friend of Chekhov’s. (ed. note: He is joking, Anton Chekhov died in 1904.)
Israel Horovitz: … so I was just looking at somebody who looked vaguely like Elvis Presley at the end of his life. I started to daydream. It really hit me that Paris was the missing character in the play. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get Paris. It was always just three actors in a room. Really, wouldn’t it be beautiful, this story, if you really saw this? I started to see the movie. At the same time, I knew I was heading towards my 75th birthday. I thought: I want to really do something in my life that scares the living shit out of me. For me to do another play… it’s important to me. It’s exciting to me. But moving from one to two is a lot more exciting than moving from 73 to 74, let’s say. So I thought directing this movie – writing and directing this movie – would really be a buzz. It would really be important in my life.
So I talked to my daughter Rachael, who is a film producer. She did Moneyball and About Schmidt. My five kids, we all live in the same neighborhood. We’re like a little team against the world. She thought it was a good idea. I wrote the script. Won a prize, and part of the prize was going to Paris for six weeks in an abbey, a 16th century abbey. The prize was given by Île de France Film Commission and Writers’ Guild of America, looking for screenplays that had French and American cultural exchange. It won the prize. The French part of the prize, the Île de France Film Commission sent a car every day and took me location scouting for my movie. It quickly became clear to me that this was a great idea. Once I started looking at Paris as what will be in the movie, and also realizing that if I don’t have the apartment, how the hell would you make the movie without the apartment? (chuckles)
Ultimately, they found that apartment for me. It was this derelict old place. It was really ramshackle. Nobody had lived in it forever. Our deal was we’ll fix it up. When we leave it, you’ll have a beautiful apartment again. It was in a complex that allowed us to park our trucks. It was a place that employed 6,800 people 300 years ago for the manufacture of tapestries for the great castles of Europe, including Versailles. Now it’s empty, really. They give some government people cheap apartments. But that apartment was absolutely empty. We created… just about everything you see in the movie was in this complex. If you know Paris, it’s in Les Gobelins. It’s near the market. It’s not a distinguished neighborhood at all. There is a museum that shows the tapestries. School kids are dragged there and they just hate it. That’s everybody in Paris’ relationship with that place. Behind that museum is all of this unused space. The park was actually the park that they own for their workers.
Kevin Kline: It became our back yard.
Kevin Kline stars in “My Old Lady.”
How did the casting come together?
Israel Horovitz: Kevin was the first… I didn’t want to do a movie that had, I won’t say unknown actors, but less than great actors. Because, some years ago, the Pope came to Paris. There was a big to do with French writers saying, “You must have a division between church and state.” They went out to the airport with signs, protesting. The Pope was this little old man about to die and the first thing he said, he got off the plane and there were microphones. He said, “It’s a pleasure to arrive somewhere in this life as an unambitious guest.” I directed this movie as an unambitious guest. I wasn’t trying to build a big film career. That’s not in any way, by any stretch of the imagination – even mine – [going to happen]. I just want to make a beautiful movie. I settled on that story, because I thought that the story could be funny and it could be serious at the same time. It could be possibly the same kind of movie that I would love to see if I didn’t know. If I didn’t do the movie. And we shoot in Paris. What’s wrong with that? My daughter would be the producer. What’s wrong with that? My friend would be the star. I asked Kevin, who is famously Kevin de–Kline (laughs). And he said yes.
Kevin Kline: (laughs) I did it for the money, which I haven’t seen yet. But I’m waiting.
Israel Horovitz: I wrote him in and we did readings at my house. And really… (he knocks on the table) he really knew who he was playing and helped me refine it.
Had you worked with Kevin before?
Israel Horovitz: I don’t think so. We certainly knew each other for a hundred years.
Kevin Kline: I was in Juilliard, and my class was doing The Indian Wants the Bronx. I wasn’t in it.
Israel Horovitz: That was kind of the dark ages, a long time ago!
What happened after Kevin signed on?
Israel Horovitz: Then Dame Maggie [Smith] said yes. I flew to London and had a lunch with her and she said, “I’ve had 25 scripts offered to me and I’ve chosen yours. Do you want to know why?” I go, oh my God… I said, okay, why? She said, “Because I don’t have to die at the end of your movie.” (They both laugh.) I hope I’m not ruining it for your readers.
Kevin Kline and Dame Maggie Smith star in “My Old Lady.”
What was Dame Maggie like to work with?
Kevin Kline: Oh, she’s lovely. She’s magnificent.
Israel Horovitz: I knew I wanted to get great actors. I was too old to do a movie that might come and go without anybody seeing it. I wanted it to be really significant. So Kevin was my only choice, and Maggie was my only choice, and by God, they said yes.
Had you ever worked with her before?
Kevin Kline: No. No, no, no. She’s probably the first Dame [I’ve worked with]… no, I worked with Dame… actually Lady… Lady Olivier, Joan Plowright, who is maybe her best friend.
Israel Horovitz: Actually, Judi Dench is Maggie Smith’s best friend.
Kevin Kline: Ahh…
Israel Horovitz: They’re both 79, turning 80, and they’re both terrified to turn 80. They talk to each other on the phone every day of their lives.
Kevin Kline: She was great, when I stopped finally boring her, pleading for more theater stories. I wanted to hear about all of her experiences in the theater. She’s the ultimate, consummate professional. (to Horovitz) Remember the day when she faints in the movie? Even if a 30 year old faints…
Israel Horovitz: … there’s a mattress by you…
Kevin Kline: … you’ll fall out of frame onto a nice, soft mattress. We were like the first take and she just fell on the floor.
Israel Horovitz: She scared the hell out of us.
Kevin Kline: All of us.
Israel Horovitz: I did three takes and she would have gone on. I thought, I can’t be the man who killed Maggie Smith. And I said, “I’m very impressed that you can do that.” She looked at me with this kind of sexy voice and said, “You’d be amazed at what I can do.”
Kristin Scott Thomas and Kevin Kline star in “My Old Lady.”
Kevin, you’d worked with Kristin before on Life As a House. What is she like to work with?
Kevin Kline: I remember on the first day on Life as a House… her first day, we’d been shooting for a week or two. I love it when the director doesn’t say “Cut!” The scene’s over, but let’s see what happens after the scene. Maybe there’s some little bit of improvisation that could end up being usable. Kristin was over, and I’m still talking. She’s looking at me, and she looks at the camera and goes, “Aren’t we finished?” (whispers) I said: “We’re still shooting; just see what happens.” Then she adapted to that and she said, “Oh, I see.” But she hadn’t worked that way before, apparently. Maggie, also, slightly different generation.
Israel Horovitz: Yeah, just a different training.
Kevin Kline: Yeah. But the British school of acting, I find be they stage actors, or working on film – very professional. No nonsense like: “Let’s talk about inner monologues and subtext.” Just: “Let’s get on with it. Put the show on. Let’s go.” I like that. I had British teachers growing up, so maybe that English work ethic.
Israel Horovitz: Kevin was really an American in the film, and so he could be quite different from Maggie and Kristin, who played mother and daughter three times now, actually.
Israel Horovitz and Kevin Kline discuss “My Old Lady” at Cohen Media Group in New York.
Did having theater in common make things easier for you?
Kevin Kline: I remember when I was working with [director] Irwin Winkler when we did De–lovely [ed. note: a bio film about songwriter Cole Porter] in London – all theater actors, all British theater actors, almost entirely. He was saying, “You know, it’s great working with theater actors because you know they’re either trained for the stage or at least housebroken.” I don’t know, it’s such a cliché to say, “Well, there’s a shorthand with stage actors.” There isn’t. You have a day in between takes, whereas we have ten seconds between takes. “Let’s do it again!” and we only have time for two or three and then we got to move on.
So it’s tricky.
Israel Horovitz: The thing I noticed is: we all knew each other’s work from theater for so many years. Establishing intimacy took about 12 seconds. We all had stories to share, and friends and all. Then this trust that everybody knew what they were doing…. There was no movie star who happened to have had a role that matched them so perfectly and then they couldn’t do anything else. Everybody could do it.
Kevin Kline: Though Maggie wouldn’t come out of her trailer that one day. She didn’t like the dessert that the caterer had. (laughs at his joke, shaking his head) [No], there were no movie star tantrums of that nature.
So it was quite an experience with that cast.
Israel Horovitz: I can say simply, directing Kevin and Maggie and Kristin Scott Thomas and Dominique Pinon, it’s like telling the sun to give light. It kind of knows already that it’s supposed to give light.
Was the expectation of making the film different than the reality?
Israel Horovitz: The thing that shocked me more than anything was, besides being an artistic venture, it was also like being the foreman on a construction site for a 70–story building. Every single person involved has a problem and you are the person they bring it to. You spend the whole day filtering out “Will you just deal with it?” (chuckles) and you smile and you give answers. And there are personalities that are…. But, it’s very different from directing a play. You direct a play, you sit in a rehearsal hall for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks. Then maybe the actor sticks his finger in his nose on opening night, but that’s rare. Usually you know exactly where it’s all heading. It was just very different. I loved every second of it. It was just a thrilling… unfortunately 23 days. It should have [been much longer].
Kevin Kline stars in “My Old Lady.”
Your character was very world weary. Was it difficult to get into the mindset of someone who was pretty broken?
Israel Horovitz: (looks at Kline) Look at him!
Kevin Kline: (mock dramatic) I can’t believe you’re asking this same tired question. World weary? I do world weary very readily. I’m sick of that question. I’m weary of this nonsense. (stops joking around and answers seriously) Umm, world weary. Well, he’s just a mess. Part of me, I didn’t know. Supposedly I knew the character, and part of me must have known him, but to me he was a revelation every day, because I never quite understood him, nor did I wish to. I think it’s a good thing for an actor not to… I’m always wary of actors and directors who say, “I’ve got an idea about Hamlet. Here’s the deal, this is what his problem is.” Or “here’s an idea I’ve got for Lear.” Or if an actor says, “I’m playing this, you know what my subtext is?” I don’t want to know! There’s a certain point to a degree of ignorance, which I’ve maintained satisfactorily….
Israel Horovitz: I just talked to an actor who played in Doubt [ed. note: John Patrick Shanley’s controversial play about a possibly pedophile priest] in Florida. On the first day of rehearsal, the director told him he did do it. (They both laugh.) Can you imagine?
Do you think the characters in this film would be averse to therapy? What kind of therapy would you recommend?
Kevin Kline: My character went to a therapist. (to Horovitz) Is that scene still in, where I say I went to a therapist and he tried to put the damaged child on his knee and all that? It’s interesting, because therapy is now at a state where, because of pills, therapists are going to be out there as psychopharmacologists, basically. So it’s interesting. I think that would be a swing in the other direction.
Israel Horovitz: Whereas Kristin [Scott Thomas]’s character would never have gone to a therapist.
How did you work out the dynamic with Kristin’s character? Before the paternity tests come in, it’s dealing with a weird taboo in the middle.
Kevin Kline: It’s funny, we didn’t work on it. We played it… we didn’t talk about it. One of the advantages of having a 23–day shooting schedule is there’s not a lot of time to “Let’s just sit down, can we just talk about this scene? You know, we could also…” Let’s just shoot it. You see what evolves. You let things happen. You discover it. That’s part of the joy of it. So we didn’t work on that dynamic. It’s there in the writing. We just play it.
Israel Horovitz: That’s a really good question, though. It was important to me to keep them separate. Kevin’s on his track. To really keep them hating each other, until they discover what they share. It’s just this thing: nobody will ever know his pain the way she knows his pain. No one will ever know her pain. So I do think it’s kind of thrilling when they…
Kevin Kline: But everyone is damaged. The nice thing about having people that age falling in love – aside from the fact that it’s taboo in Hollywood to fall in love with somebody over the age of 25 – but these are people who have battled demons all their lives. Who are damaged. As we all are. But they are damaged and they can love through that.
You once said in an interview, “I write because I don’t know how to answer my questions any other way.” What question were you asking?
Israel Horovitz: Oh, wow. I don’t remember saying that, but I’m glad I said it. You know, I started out writing a love letter to Paris. Not surprisingly, midway through, I had to say to myself, “Isn’t it interesting where this is taking me?” and go with it. I think the question in this film is really: why do people do that to their children? In our lives we hear people are 50, 60 years old talking about their parents. A piece of your brain is saying, “Oh, get over it!” But another piece of your brain is saying: “But you can’t get over it. You know that you can’t get over it.” There’s such serious damage done. I think it’s thrilling. In this film, I always knew that his character knew her pain like nobody else would ever know her pain. And her character knew his pain like nobody else would ever know his pain. I think it’s a relief, and thrilling, when these two people get together. It’s more than just a love story or a romance: it’s really profound when they together and they can lighten up a little bit.
If you could have had someone from the golden age of Hollywood to play your parts, who would you get?
Israel Horovitz: Our cast from the golden age. (laughs) I can’t imagine casting anybody else in these roles.
Kevin Kline: Steve McQueen. Bogart. I was channeling Humphrey Bogart the whole time. Humphrey Bogart and Wallace Beery. (to Horovitz) Did you get that Wallace Beery thing I was doing?
Israel Horovitz: Don’t you think… It’s of our time, this movie. I think.
Kevin Kline: Yeah.
Israel Horovitz: This kind of recognition of damage as opposed to just somebody who jumps off a cliff or murders somebody. I just lived for the moment when they finally talked to each other, those two characters. I knew it was going to be great.
Israel Horovitz and Kevin Kline discuss “My Old Lady” at Cohen Media Group in New York.
As first–time film director, how involved were you in the editing process?
Israel Horovitz: I was there every day, all day. It was endless. I was very involved. I can tell you that Kevin Kline in particular as an actor gives you what you want as a director with the first take, and then shows you five other things that come into his mind. So when you’re editing we could’ve done a straight–out comedy based on it; we could’ve done a very dark drama. He really understood the kind of thing that I love, which is comic and tragic – like life – in the same work.
Kevin Kline: The great thing about having a first–time director. I suppose there are in broad strokes, two types of first–time directors. Those who’ve just come out of film school and want to direct the actors. And those who know how to let actors do their work and not interfere. Just interfere when it’s appropriate, when they’ve gone astray or whatever, and you think you can say something that will…
Israel Horovitz: … put it back on track.
Kevin Kline: … put it back on track, or inspire a variety of things. We were on the Quai de Seine; the opera singer’s singing and Israel says, “Why don’t you sing back to her?” “Yeah! Fine, I don’t have the lyrics!” So I start madly Googling the lyrics to the aria. Whereas a filmmaker who’s just out of film school, in my experience … sometime’s they’re, “No, no, we have to stick just to what’s there, what we’ve got here.” They’re keen on telling the actors what the motivation is, and nonsense like that …
Israel Horovitz: I’d agree.
Kevin Kline: … but someone who’s experienced with actors knows how. Also how to trust the cinematographer, who was brilliant.
Israel Horovitz: We had a great, great DP, a guy named Michel Amathieu. I told him 18 months before we shot the movie, “You’re the guy.” It was all about fitting the schedules of the three main actors and this guy. I knew his work. I knew him intimately, and he knew that he was heading for this. I mean, I’m glad that I can’t tell you the number of the lens, because I could tell him what I wanted, the look that I wanted, and he could translate it.
Kevin Kline: [Horovitz] saw every frame. His reel was right there on the set, but he saw what the camera was seeing. They have these little monitors now. But not like many directors, who are in another room counting, watching on a monitor, he was there with the actors and Amathieu. So he knew how everything was being framed [and] could make his comments.
Israel Horovitz: This might interest you. I don’t generally film adaptations of plays. They seem not to be plays, and they seem not to be movies. They’re some weird thing in between. I knew that I had to make a movie that was a movie. I knew that when I was writing the movie, and certainly when I was directing the movie: that Paris was a missing character in the play, and that’s why I saw the movie as I saw it.
Dominique Pinon and Kevin Kline star in “My Old Lady.”
Israel just mentioned how Paris is basically a character in the story. You’ve made several films in Paris and other parts of France in your career. How is filmmaking in France?
Kevin Kline: This is a good lesson, because one tends to after you make your first film in France, you say: Oh this is totally different. The culture is so different. Everybody is so quiet on the set. No one ever has to say, (in French accent) “Silence!” Because they are all very respectful of the actors. Everybody shakes hands and kisses everybody.
Israel Horovitz: A lot of kissing.
Kevin Kline: You get an hour to an hour and a half for lunch. Everything’s different. It’s different! So cultured. Then this film was… Hey, hey, hey, let’s go! Fuck. We came in and we had to really go. So there was not a lot of… Yeah we did have hour lunches and food was delicious and there was a little wine served…
Israel Horovitz: Kristin said something interesting. She said French DPs can shoot actresses like nobody else on Earth.
Kevin Kline: Really.
Israel Horovitz: That they can really make an actress look good.
Kevin Kline: Yep. That’s right. I like that.
Israel Horovitz: She really believes that. And I can tell you, no question in my mind, the food – craft services – is amazing. The hour and a half for lunch doesn’t start until the last crew person sits down. Boy, are the French serious about their eating. The food was amazing. I gained about eight pounds on the shoot.
Kevin Kline: But, especially when somebody says, “Action!” Action! It’s the same. There’s no difference. Except, it’s Paris. (smiles) And they’re all speaking some stupid language.
What surprised either of you the most after seeing the final cut of this movie for the first time?
Israel Horovitz: Well, I saw every infinitesimal moment of it every day of my damn life for months and months and months, so there were no surprises in the final cut unless it was a mistake, a technical mistake. But Kevin saw it pieced together pretty close to…
Kevin Kline: I saw… it wasn’t the final cut, but it was a pretty final cut. I still haven’t seen it with the music, which to me is like a ballet without the music. I mean, there’s temporary music, but the music is very important, at least to me, anyway. When I first saw it, I think I told you, I said, “If I see this four or five more times, I can begin to see the film.” It’s not what I expected. I don’t think it’s what anyone can expect, because there are so many loops and surprises and iterations and textural colorations of comedy and drama and romance that are all intertwined in a very unexpected way. I was just surprised and delighted, but I have to see it again. Hopefully, others will have the same feeling; we’ll have a lot of repeat audiences.
Copyright ©2014 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: September 11, 2014.
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