COMING OF AGE HONESTLY BY JONATHAN W. HICKMAN WWW.EINSIDERS.COM - APRIL 3, 2005 Early in "The Tollbooth" Sarabeth is told by an art gallery owner: "Remember in the art world cynicism never goes out of style; you just have to keep up with what it's hip to be cynical about." Sarabeth Cohen wants to be a professional artist. Her education only prepared her for the technical side of things. Unbeknownst to her, Sarabeth will need to rely on the lessons of her upbringing to successfully navigate the dangers of big city life. "The Tollbooth" is a wonderfully honest coming of age film that knows its material so well that it hardly missteps. I don't know the back-story of writer/director Debra Kirschner but it wouldn't surprise me if this film were semi-autobiographical. The story is so very genuine and sincere it couldn't be drawn solely from one's imagination. The Cohens are a very close family. It's the kind of family that knows everything about one another and doesn't hold back when expressing opinions. Sarabeth's father, Isaac (Ronald Guttman), loves his three beautiful daughters so much that even following a heated argument in which two of them are told to leave, he kindly tells them to drive carefully. Her mother, Ruthie (Tovah Feldshuh), wants her daughters to lead traditional lives and this involves finding a man. Ruthie proudly talks about her daughter who is in medical school and when that daughter reveals that she is gay, merely tells her that she has been working too hard and can make a "B" if wants. Ruthie doesn't realize that the teachings she imparted on her children are the main reasons why two of them will lead non-traditional independent lives. Kirschner's "Tollbooth" is a family story that feels a lot like a modern "Brighton Beach Memoirs." There is humor and sadness and even a slight profundity. At a bridal shower the out-of-place Sarabeth gives the bride a shower gift, a painting of the bride's imaginary dream house. The gift is received with such a surprising amount of sincere appreciation that it is remarkably moving--remarkable because the emotion comes in a scene that wasn't working until that point. Chalk it up to writer/director Kirschner who stays with the awkward pacing of the scene trusting that the pathos will pay off. And it does. I remember another film I reviewed sometime back called "A Fish Without A Bicycle." That film about young creative people in the big city suffered from a couple of scenes that while honest were exploitive and out of place in a generally good-natured film. One could also make that point about "The Tollbooth" mainly concerning a sub-plot involving one of the daughter's revelations that she is gay. But Kirschner doesn't choose to exploit this for laughs, sex appeal, or even really social commentary, rather, the subplot only enhances the texture of protagonist Sarabeth's life. Like I said about "Fish" things that make us giggle or wince happen all the time in real life, but not all of them should find their way to the screen. Luckily, Kirschner knows how to throttle back when necessary and focus on Sarabeth's angst in an interesting manner. "The Tollbooth" is buffered greatly by wonderful performances. Ronald Guttman and Tovah Feldshuh shine as the thoughtful mother and father who have over the years instilled fears and even prejudices in their children. Their characters are not parodies but living people honestly written. Because every character in the film is an equal to everyone else, such characters are able to play off one another smartly. Rarely do we see a film that takes its time to introduce us to so many people without making at least one of them into a two-dimensional caricature. This kind of story-telling is refreshing. "Cynical" is the word these days when I'm asked to review a coming of age drama. In this climate, it is exceedingly difficult to create a credible story that isn't some kind of exaggerated parody of real life featuring actors with perfect body parts playing characters much younger than they really are. And such films are junked up with farcical sex moments or artificially pumped with dank images of drug use or suicide. This becomes more complicated when narrative structure is often jumbled in an effort to put an edge on an otherwise dull story. "The Tollbooth" plays it straight and succeeds.

Sitting at a Chinese restaurant, 33-year-old Brooklynite filmmaker Debra Kirschner confides, "You know, it’s such an uphill battle to be ‘found’ as a filmmaker." So instead of waiting to be found, she decided to well ‘find’ herself. The result is her first independent feature film "The Tollbooth (2004)." With Marla Sokoloff ("Dude, Where’s My Car") and Tovah Feldshuh, it’s a modern-day spin on "Fiddler on the Roof." Set in Brooklyn and Manhattan, "Tollbooth" tells the coming-of-age story of three close sisters and the disapproval they face from their traditional Jewish parents (one dates a Catholic boy, one is a lesbian, one has a husband who’s a financial flop). While the storyline belies the common theme of breaking away from strict parentage, the film exudes the true warmth and pain of trials within the family, with a hilarious edge reminiscent of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and "Kissing Jessica Stein." Says Kirschner, "I feel like I’m part of an interesting zeitgeist of filmmakers producing movies illustrating young women who don’t want to reject their culture, yet feel a lot of their culture’s traditions are oppressive to women." Kirschner continues that, "In Jewish films, there is a lot of self-mocking, but also a lot of loving and embracing of culture too." This is true of the youngest daughter Sarabeth (Sokoloff), rejecting her parent’s dreams for her by dating a Catholic boy and becoming an artist in New York, yet painting the memories of Holocaust stories her father told her when she was a little girl. We also watch the middle daughter, devoutly religious, come out as a lesbian at the Rosh Ha Shana dinner, and the tenuous rift which opens as her mother initially rejects her identity. Decidedly upbeat in its poking fun at a harried mother who thirsts only for a gaggle of Jewish son-in-laws and grandchildren, "The Tollbooth" asks the more critical questions as well, that frame traditionalism versus feminism in a Jewish context. Asks Sarabeth poignantly, "What is the point of being chosen if you don’t have any choices?" Before earning her film certificate from New York University, Kirschner, a self-proclaimed liberal and feminist, was writing feminist plays and dark fairytales. Says Kirschner, "This is a very Jewish story, and each woman has a storyline where they have to reconcile traditional upbringing with modern life" Undoubtedly, it is a stellar first feature film. In the private screening I attended, the room reverberated with laughter and tears, suggesting that Kirschner is one filmmaker who can pull at the heartstrings and at the same time keep her Jewish feminist politics in balance.

EXCERPT FROM EAST HAMPTON STAR - FILM FEST: STORIES WITHOUT THE GLITZ BY BAYLIS GREENE; OCTOBER 21, 2004 Watching the entries in the Golden Starfish features category at the Hamptons International Film Festival amounts to more than watching movies. You witness, between the cuts, during the silences, in what is being said and not said, movies being made. One of the joys of the festival is the filmmakers´ concentration on storytelling, without pretensions to big-budget bombast and polish.... Handsome shots of New York City, by Stefan Forbes [also] highlight "The Tollbooth", which was written, directed, and produced by Debra Kirschner. But there’s no obsession with death here, rather a young woman’s fight for a life of her own. Marla Sokoloff’s porcelain, moon face as Sarabeth Cohen dominates "The Tollbooth". Fair enough, it’s her bildungsroman. And something about seeing her and her sister meander down a sidewalk with loads of laundry, sharing their dreams, recalls another striving city kid, Francie Nolan of "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." But the Cohens live in a handsome brownstone in that borough, not a tenement, and more important, a maudlin, piano-playing father is here a traditionally observant Jew, one who fills his daughter’s head with tales of victimhood and too many quotations from Schopenhauer and Mel Brooks. Sarabeth needs to get the hell out of there. And she does, taking up residence, in a hilarious visual pun on Manhattan’s scandalous crush for space, in her sister’s closet, with a hanging, unadorned light-bulb for ambience. Slipping her parents’ octopus arms is only half the battle, of course. Sarabeth also has to face down her dead-end job, figure out how in the (art) world to mount a show of her paintings, and work things out one way or another with her boyfriend Simon, a rabbity goy from Pennsylvania. The tollbooth, a gateway to that state’s suburban no-man’s-land, acts as the bridge in "Saturday Night Fever": a border between worlds. These movies [the five in narrative competition including Tollbooth], small-scale pleasures, have the pull of good short stories. Hollywood was once adept at this kind of thing… https://static.wixstatic.com/media/undefined

EXCERPT FROM: "WHAT WE SAW AT THE HAMPTONS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL" DAN’S PAPERS, EASTHAMPTON, NY OCTOBER 20, 2004 THE TOLLBOOTH This film is a touchingly realistic depiction of a young woman who, fresh out of college, has one dream - to make it as an artist. Sarabeth (Marla Sokoloff) is the youngest of three girls raised by loving, albeit overbearing, Jewish parents in Brooklyn. Sarabeth moves in with her sister, the "perfect" middle child, a student at Columbia Medical School. She takes a job as a waitress and paints the emotions, both rebellious and accepting, of her first year after the umbilical cord is truly cut. The ties that bind the family are tested as all three sisters follow their paths to self-discovery, even if it’s not the path their parents so lovingly (and blindingly) paved for them.

EXCERPT FROM "HAMPTONS FILM FESTIVAL: INTERNATIONAL OFFERINGS INCLUDE SEVERAL NEW RELEASES WITH JEWISH THEMES," BY PETER ROTHHOLZ, WHICH APPEARED IN MANHATTAN JEWISH SENTINEL AND LONG ISLAND JEWISH WORLD The Tollbooth is a lighthearted comedy that touches on a number of serious issues confronting many contemporary Jewish families. It was written, produced and directed by Debra Kirschner and tells the story of Sarabeth, a recent college graduate whose parents are children of Holocaust survivors. Sarabeth was brought up in a traditional Jewish home in Brooklyn and leaves to seek fame and fortune as a painter in Manhattan. The film is highly entertaining and provides plenty of laughs at the same time as it exposes some of the problems resulting from interfaith dating, social anti-semitism, parental ambition and homosexuality as well as the everyday hassles and frustrations of life in the city. This is Kirschner’s first feature film and she admits to it being "loosely autobiographical." Kirschner grew up in Flushing and Levittown and graduated from Rutgers University in 1994. The Tollbooth was financed by private investors, friends and family and is "a labor of love." It was shot in and around New York with a cast including Marla Sokoloff as Sarabeth; Tovah Feldshuh as her mother; Idina Menzel, who won a Tony for Best Actress in Wicked as the sister; and an ensemble of talented young actors.