Max Simkin (Adam Sandler) is a fourth generation shoe repairman on New York’s Lower East Side. A middle-aged man who lives at home with his mother (Lynn Cohen), Max has little going on besides running the shop his father (Dustin Hoffman) left behind when he mysteriously disappeared years earlier. He spends his days tirelessly repairing the shoes of the folks in his neighborhood, all of them going places he’d rather be. He counts his neighbor, Jimmy the Barber (Steve Buscemi) as one of his only friends. When Max’s shoe-stitching machine breaks down just as he’s finishing an important job for a local gangster (Cliff “Method Man” Smith), he’s forced to use an old family heirloom from the basement. Soon, he discovers this is no ordinary stitcher — and he is no ordinary cobbler. As Max’s life is transformed, it begins to spiral out of control. Only his new friendship with civic activist, Carmen (Melonie Diaz), allows him to redeem his name and live up to his full potential. Embracing his role as local hero, Max takes on real estate mogul Elaine Greenawalt (Ellen Barkin) and attempts to set right the wrongs of his beloved community. The Cobbler, written and directed by Tom McCarthy, also features Dan Stevens, Joey Slotnick, and Fritz Weaver. I so enjoyed talking to the wonderful Tony Award-winning actress Ellen Barkin about this film.
Danny Miller: This movie had me right from the opening sequence performed completely in Yiddish. Not since Hester Street in 1975 have I seen young American actors speak Yiddish so well!
Ellen Barkin: I know, right? They had real Yiddish speakers there on set. That sequence was so much fun to read in the script.
I hope this doesn’t come out the wrong way, but you are so damn good at playing evil!
(Laughs.) I have a pretty good history of that, it’s true! And I have to admit that it’s usually a lot more fun than playing the good girl. I did a few of those characters with Walter Hill who used to call me Lee Marvin in a leather skirt! I always took that as a great compliment. You know, if you deconstruct it, it’s nice to play a character that is so different from who you are and has such a different way of looking at the world. It’s so fascinating to walk around in someone else’s shoes like that.
With Elaine Greenawalt in The Cobbler, did you have any real-life people in mind? I kind of got a Leona Helmsley vibe from her.
Oh, wow, that’s interesting, I wasn’t thinking about her at all! But the truth is that I’m completely enraged with the gentrification of my city — just enraged! After living here for 60 years, the biggest and the worse example of that is happening right on my block with St. Vincent’s Hospital coming down. It’s something I’ve been quite active about for years. So I just flip that rage. And you don’t act ideology, you act emotion so it’s not that big of a jump!
I have to say that you always play the most well dressed evil women! Did you have a hand in creating Elaine’s look?
I wore all my own clothes (Laughs.) It’s a low-budget film and she was supposed to be very well dressed. The costume designer and I spoke and I said, “Look, why don’t you come over and go through my closet and see if you can costume me with my own clothes!” The jewelry wasn’t mine but pretty much everything else was. She probably worked harder going through my closets than if she looking for my costumes in the traditional way!
This is probably very obnoxious to say, but I like Adam Sandler so much more when he’s not in an “Adam Sandler film.” He’s such a good actor!
I loved the casting of Adam, I think there’s a lot to be mined with him. He is a wonderful actor — a very honest actor. He’s a trained actor, too, not just a sketch comic. I think you see the difference when you watch his more dramatic performances. Our whole cast was just great.
Speaking of women you played that are your complete opposite, I was so bummed when your TV series The New Normal was cancelled after one season. I really wanted to see how your character would have evolved and what it would be like for those guys to have a baby.
I know, it would have been great to do that longer. But it wasn’t a big jump with Jane Forrest, either. I have very extreme politics. That woman had very extreme politics even though they were the exact opposite of mine. But that extremism is the same — you just flip it!
How do you go about choosing what to work on these days?
There’s not a whole lot out there, to be honest. I put my focus much more in television and going back on the stage. Today I respond to material and directors — I think when I was younger I responded more to who was in the cast. There are certain directors I know I would never say no to, like Tom McCarthy. But I think we’re all drawn to this revolution in television.
Do you think the movie industry has changed a whole lot since you started?
Absolutely. I think now for a 25-year-old actor, the best thing that can happen to you is to get cast in a superhero movie. And while I do like some of those movies, I don’t like the fact that they tend to come at the expense of everything else. When I think of the movies I admired when I was starting out, like The English Patient and Tootsie — these were studio movies! This Boy’s Life that I was in was a studio movie. Those movies just wouldn’t get made in that way today which is why we all look to other areas. But I have to say I found this year’s Oscars kind of heartening with films being honored like Birdman and Boyhood and Whiplash. What would be nice is if such movies had the power of the big studios behind them. To me, Boyhood is a movie that could have easily made $100 million with a studio behind it. There are great movies being made today but the dynamic has changed.