Jason Schwartzman on new film Between the Temples and "really powerful" Megalopolis experience

"I’m always looking for advice myself, but my one thing is just that I try to never give up," he continues, when we meet for a chat during the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. "My only advice, I suppose, is whenever I work, I try to kind of convince myself that it’s my first movie. I don’t want to hang on to a way that something was done before."

Still, it’s been a banner period for the 44-year-old actor and musician (he’s released three albums under the name Coconut Records over the years, and previously played drums for Phantom Planet).

Last year, he completed his seventh Anderson movie, Asteroid City, voiced the villainous Spot in brilliantly animated feature Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and played the oily games host in prequel The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.

"It was definitely the most work I’ve ever done, for sure, in a year," he says, more surprised than pleased by this sudden avalanche of action.

Moreover, this rush-more of work has not abated. Now, he’s starring in the lead role for comedy Between the Temples, alongside veteran actress Carol Kane, before joining the illustrious ensemble of Megalopolis, the long-awaited return to directing from his own legendary uncle, Francis Ford Coppola.

If that wasn’t enough, in early September, he will be popping over to the Venice Film Festival, where Queer, the new film from Challengers director Luca Guadagnino, will premiere. An adaptation of the novel by William Burroughs, Schwartzman takes a main role alongside Daniel Craig and Lesley Manville.

First up, though, is Between the Temples, a wry Jewish comedy from writer-director Nathan Silver (2017’s Thirst Street) in which Schwartzman gets to play a rare lead.

He stars as Ben Gottlieb, a cantor for an upstate New York synagogue who is going through a spiritual crisis. "I think that, really, at the end of the day, it’s just about... faith," he says. "This is a person whose job it is to help kids prepare for an event in their life, Bar or Bat Mitzvahs, and teach them and prepare them. And he’s in a place where he’s totally lost the ability to endorse that and how confusing that must feel."

As bright and breezy as Between the Temples is, the actor admits it was tough-going. "It wasn’t like a fun... it was hard, actually, because Nathan, one of the main things that he emphasised to me was that my character speaks really slowly, even if he didn’t use it all in the movie. That was, like, a huge thing.

"And it’s very odd to have a director say 'slower'. You don’t hear that very much. And I think just, over time, we’d get into this slow head space... it’s a downer. I didn’t think we were making a comedy, really. I just wanted to take everything really seriously.

"I’d just always ask the director, 'Does my character think he’s funny? Is he a funny person or not?' I always like to ask: the way you see this movie, if the person was in a room, would he make you laugh?"

At least Schwartzman had the guidance of some fine female co-stars, including Caroline Aaron, who plays Ben’s mother Meira, and Triangle of Sadness's breakout star Dolly De Leon, who is Meira’s partner.

Then there was Kane, a well-known figure from 1970s American cinema who received an Oscar nomination for her role in Jewish immigrant story Hester Street. Just as Ben bonds with Carla, Schwartzman felt the same with his co-star. "I do have a connection with Carol. I felt a connection with her," he says, simply.

While Schwartzman is happily married himself to art and design director Brady Cunningham, he clearly derives as much pleasure from his acting as he does from his home life.

"I’m so happy to go to work. Just on a deep level, there’s no place I’d rather be. At home, I see my daily life to be quite lethargic, but something happens on a movie set... I feel so excited to be there. I think it’s just working in general. It doesn’t have to be a movie set, but I love it. I love the work."

That’s no shock, given that Schwartzman enjoyed the pure privilege of watching his uncle direct Megalopolis, a film that’s been a passion project for Coppola since he was making Apocalypse Now in the late 1970s. "It was a really powerful thing." Then he relays an anecdote "too weird to explain" fully about Coppola shooting a particular scene, coming up with a solution off-the-cuff that left a lot of the crew scratching their heads.

"It was generated in that moment. And it was nuts. People were like, 'That can’t work. I don’t understand.' And he just kept saying, 'Please just let me try this thing.' He did. And it worked. And later I said, 'Is that something you do?' And he said, 'I’ve never done it before in my life.'"

The near-future story of an architect who dreams of building a utopia, it split critics when it premiered in Cannes earlier this year. But Schwartzman, who plays one of the residents of Megalopolis, was still bowled over by his uncle’s free-spirited nature.

"I was like, 'That’s amazing... at your age... you’re trying things that are completely new and in the moment.' With his reputation, and as a man with experience, to still be divisive, to still have people [say], 'That can’t work,' it was inspiring to see anyone not stuck in a formula.

"And what I witnessed every day, by the way, was constantly putting himself in these situations that were totally nuts. And I was like, 'I hope I can be this way.' I’m not even talking about as a filmmaker, just as a person."

Of course, Schwartzman was born into the movie industry. His uncle aside, his cousins include director Sofia Coppola and actor Nicolas Cage, while his own mother is Talia Shire, who famously played Adrian Balboa in the Rocky series opposite Sylvester Stallone.

Still, Schwartzman wasn’t immediately drawn to going before the camera. "I didn’t know I could want to be an actor, really. It’s part of my upbringing, in a way... [but] I never saw movies and thought, 'I could be up there,' because, especially to me, the kind of movies I was seeing in the ’80s… I didn’t see Lethal Weapon and think, 'This movie is missing one thing! Me!' Who would think like that?"

First and foremost, Schwartzman was a fan, he says. "As a kid, I just loved movies. I loved going to movies. Comedies, I loved." Then, in his early teens, he got into "campy" movies "like Phantom of the Paradise, Bugsy Malone, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band."

But still, music was the thing he loved best. As a youngster, he had a portable boom box. "You could just take it into a room with you. It just felt like you could do it yourself. And I think that that was what appealed to me about music... you didn’t need anybody to start making noise."

Then it all changed when he came across the script for Rushmore. "I had never read a script before I read it." His mother also gave it the once over, leaving her suitably impressed. "And then I got sick, I got the flu, and she went to the video store and rented me three movies [and said:] 'You should watch these for your [audition].' And they were Dog Day Afternoon, Harold and Maude, and The Graduate. And I’d never seen these movies.

"I just remember seeing it, and I was watching The Graduate, and there’s this moment in the very beginning of the movie when Dustin Hoffman is in his bedroom and Mrs Robinson comes to the bedroom... and he knocks on a table. And I remember seeing that movement and going, like... it made me feel like [it was] a record. How do you do that on a record? That feeling... I get it."

Talking of records, Schwartzman promises he’s "gonna make a new album" imminently. "I’ve been sitting on a bunch of songs for a long time, and I don’t know, I was kind of in a rut. I was like, I don’t know if I should ever make these again. I’m not going to do this."

But after recently reconnecting with Ben Kweller, an American-born musician he’s known since he was 18, they’re now looking to work together. "It was just like Carol in the movie. So he’s going to make a record with me, but that’s an example of a person coming into your life.

"I don’t think I would have made another album, maybe, if I hadn’t connected with Ben right now. Like, it awakened something."

Between the Temples opens in cinemas on August 23rd. Megalopolis is released on September 27th.

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