Noah Baumbach - 'Jay Kelly'

28:47I wanted to be able to shoot for as long as we wanted to shoot. I felt like there could be opportunities if we almost just did it with like it was like a crew of seven people. And it was we just I said, let's just not tell anybody we're making this movie. And it was also based on the sort of notion of like if you or I were I mean, we are miked. But if we were if we were, you know, if we had a camera and we could just make this the movie. And why not? You know, technology is pretty good. I mean, even then it was sort of, and we shot it with a Canon 5D and I wanted to do some, I wanted to do it in black and white.

29:25And I had worked with Harris Savitas, the cinematographer who had shot Margot with me and Greenberg. And he, I mean, brilliantly came up with a sort of process of how we would do it. And so then it felt like, okay, well, this sort of reminds me of, it's almost like a first film I'd never made. And it took me to my love of the new wave and those sorts of movies. And I thought, well, it should have that kind of energy. But in a world I recognize, New York, and it brought me back a bit to Kicking and Screaming and also to the period that you alluded to, I think, between Mr. Jealousy and The Squid and the Whale when I was sort of finding myself again.

30:11And so then in some ways presenting these sort of general ideas to Greta, she came in with all this, you know, all that was her. And we wrote the script together and then made the movie. And again, I just feel like that performance is just wonderful. Absolutely. And it was a really joyful experience, that movie. I don't know if this is consistently the way you work when you've now done a bunch of things writing together. But you said in that case, I think it was largely over email. You're not sitting next to each other at a computer. Has that been the way you tend to work together or how is it just different?

30:53No, I mean tend to work as much as possible in the same room. And ultimately, Greta and I did get into the same room more. It's just that we didn't really – we were in different places. She was starting to work as an actor so she'd be on set. So it really was more just that we weren't like in the same place. And we'd also actually didn't really know each other that well. I mean, like we'd worked together and had this experience on Greenberg, but we didn't. So it really was sort of like, well, I'll take what I can get, you know, like, you know, send me some stuff. I'll write you back. And, you know, we get on the phone, we talk about it.

31:26And and then as we got closer to shooting, we we we got more into the same room. One kind of random thing I came across was that at one point you said that Greta had written a section of the film that was going to be about Francis going home to Sacramento. But that was obviously ultimately cut. But was that the seed that eventually grew into Lady Bird? Yeah. I mean it was. The sequence is in the movie but it's told more in a kind of almost sort of dreamy montage way. but she had written a whole thing with her and her mom, which I loved. And I, it actually was very, it was painful for me to cut, but then I, I really felt bad having to say to her, you know, I feel like, you know, as the script was starting to take shape, it's just too much.

32:14It's becoming another movie, you know, or another story. But yeah, lots of that certainly went into Lady Bird. Which is five years later, her directorial debut. But in the meantime, was it during or after that movie or just if I can ask like when did you guys become the couple it was during that movie it was towards the end of the making of that movie I think I mean that movie really does have this even though it actually is about a friendship and there's actually very little romance in the movie or for us it was a romantic experience very romantic experience and I think you feel it in the movie is two people who are falling in love I think even though one of them is not on camera.

32:55No, totally. And it's actually, I think there are several instances of that happening during the French New Wave, right? Where the collaborators, so it's just maybe it's something about rolling up your sleeves and having to do something. Anyway, who knows? It's the black and white. That too. Then there's a period in 2014, two years after that, when two of your movies come out within four months of each other, which was amazing. Amazing. And first, we should just remind people with Francis Haught, not only did you not make a big fuss that you were making the movie, but nobody knew. I remember being at Telluride Film Festival.

33:29It's like, wait a minute. These guys made a movie? There was no profile before that, right? Yeah, it was our preference that nobody know, but I didn't actually expect. I figured something would happen. It's going to leak, yeah. But it didn't, amazingly. And so, yeah, we could kind of, almost like I was saying when I was a kid, movies arrive fully formed. It was a way to have a movie just appear. That was cool, yeah. So then to the movies that came out in 2014, but obviously would have been probably both in the works, if not overlappingly then pretty close to each other in the 2013-2014 period there's While We're Young which you wrote and directed and I still laugh out loud when I think about so many of the scenes in this one where you've got a 40-something couple I think Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts growing close with a 20-something couple Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried this is the first time right that you had Adam Driver he's in Francis oh he's in Francis that's right So and he's now I guess does he hold the record of most appearances in a Baumbach film?

34:34I think so. Well, there's probably people in smaller parts who are in more. But probably or Greta maybe has more now. She may be up there. But certainly we had a run. Yeah. Well, so that's while we're young. And just a quick thing there is that you've remarked that people kind of reflexively assume that the guy who you personally connected to the most there is the Ben Stiller character. But you've said no, it's actually the driver character, right? Well, certainly aspects of the driver character. I mean I think it goes back a little bit to what I was saying about Kicking and Screaming that I was writing about people who were somewhat stunted in their development while I was actually charging forward.

35:19And so I think what I don't share with the Ben Stiller character in that movie is his sort of inability to finish a thing and being sort of stuck in this endless documentary. He was wanting to be Frederick Wiseman. Yes, exactly. And the driver character is something I think we see in Jay Kelly, too, now that I think of it. But it's the driver character's ambition and sort of feeling of, well, if it works for me, I'm going to take it. And chooses, I suppose, his own ambition over friendship in some ways, which the Stiller character can't understand. So that was one of two for 2014. Number two, co-written with Greta, directed by you, Mistress America, about the relationship between these two women.

36:10One about maybe like a decade. Is that roughly the older? Yeah, I guess so. Oh, yeah, yeah. Then the other play. And so Greta's the one who's the older of the two and then Lola Kirk as the other. And, you know, you mentioned, I think, in college studying screwball comedies. And I think Greta seems to love those, too. And I've seen I've read her talk about, you know, Carol Lombard being a hero and not only, you know, numerous examples of that. But was that sort of in a way – was the kernel of that movie, the thing that sparked it, just primarily a desire to do your version of that kind of a movie?

36:47I suppose. One thing I was just thinking though from the – when I was talking about the driver character and while we're young, which I just want to make – Yeah. Is I don't identify with choosing ambition over friendship. I just – I felt like it actually started to sound that way. For the record. Yes. For the record. I think they can coexist. It turned out to be something like that. I think when we were writing it, we were writing not quite knowing where it was going to go. And so when it kind of erupts into this screwball, more farcical aspect, I think a lot of that came from the location and being the fact that the movie kind of ends in this house and has all these different characters we'd kind of set up.

37:25And I think we kind of naturally took it that way. I mean, we were thinking of those movies for sure, but I don't know that I quite even knew how screwball-y it would feel until we actually were shooting it. Right. Okay, this brings us to 2017 and the Meyerowitz stories, New and Selected, which is perfectly deliberately, I guess, what would be building the pretentiousness into the title. And so about the children, played by Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, and Elizabeth Marvel, of a pretty self-absorbed artist played by Dustin Hoffman. Back around the time of Squid and the Whale, it had been reported that you were considering, quote, telling the story from the perspective of two brothers in their 30s looking back at their parents' divorce, close quote.

38:14Was that essentially the start of a connect the dots to Meyerowitz? I think it was. I didn't consciously say, oh, I'll table that and I'll come back to it later. But I think Meyerowitz did sort of fulfill some of that of what I couldn't quite. I felt I wasn't successfully getting at it when I was writing The Squid and the Whale and how that really benefited from going back to the source and starting it from the beginning in a way with the childhood. And I think, yeah, here I was, it felt like a way to revisit some of those themes, I suppose, and how these family mythologies and these strong figures in our lives who often are our parents, you know, how they continue to affect us no matter what age we're at.

39:09And the father in Squid we've established was at least partly inspired by your father, but the father in Meyerowitz was actually more your grandfather? Yeah, my grandfather was a painter, my dad's dad. And I watched, and I think as I got older, I had more appreciation for his struggles with his father. I mean, I think, you know, when I was a kid, I didn't, obviously I wasn't, you don't think about your father having an issue with his dad. And so I was able, I think, to revisit that and have, you know, bring in aspects of my father, even in the older characters, the Ben and Adam characters, and think about what it was like for him with a father like he had.

39:55And he had a, it was, my grandfather was a painter who had sort of, when he sort of came up, he was, you know, had some sort of early acceptance and success and then was, as it's told, quite complicated and irascible and felt nobody quite appreciated him to the degree that he felt he should be appreciated and was self-destructive. and then had to live with the results of that self-destructiveness. Now, I guess one other thing, though, where it may have been a nod to your father in the Hoffman character is that he, I think, unfortunately, this was at a time when your father had been ill, right?

40:43Yeah. And so we see Dustin Hoffman's character in the hospital. And you brought up something once that I thought was pretty interesting, which is that pretty much always when you see somebody in the hospital in a movie, This is setting it up for the big goodbye and there's going to be a catharsis or whatever from that. In your case, the guy goes home and he's still the same guy. Right. Well, that was. Yeah, I think. I mean, definitely the the the experience that they go through in the movie and Dustin's character goes through was inspired by my dad had had a fall and ended up being in the hospital for quite some time.

41:21than having to get different sort of surgeries and our experience as a family being in the hospital and that sort of life that you end up creating within the hospital and the relationships you have with doctors and nurses and how you're so vulnerable and you so want help and you want knowledge and you want to be told it's all right. And so that you empower these people and so many of them are wonderful. And the way, as anyone who's had any experience with it knows, the hospital system doesn't work quite the way you would design it to work. And, you know, the people change, the nurses change, the doctors go on vacation.

42:07I mean, it's, you know, everyone has lives that don't have anything to do with your situation. And so that went in a lot into the experience that the Meyerowitzes go through. through, it was sort of using that and then thinking about my grandfather and about that, that, that I was able to sort of build it out. I also, I have two half siblings who also thinking about, you know, families that are, uh, how you describe it, but I mean, you sort of, it's like, you know, combined are people who are quite close in some ways, but also either by years or, you know, again, having a different parent, it's both familiar and also, you know, sometimes there are, you know, it can create sort of distances that you, you know, understand and don't understand.

42:58Yeah. Two years after that, I mean, you don't take too much of a break between these. Two years after that is writing and directing a marriage story about a young couple, Adam Driver again, and Scarlett Johansson with a kid who, you know, is caught in the middle of their divorce. This is 14 years after Squid and the Whale dealt with divorce, obviously with a very different couple and circumstances and era and all of that. People assumed to some degree correctly, I guess, that Squid was about your parents. And then they, I think, again, assumed that with Marriage Story, that this was about your own divorce from six years earlier because you also, I believe, had a son from that marriage and wound up on different coasts and certain other things.

43:42But is that people overly reading into things again? You know, having gone through the experience of getting a divorce as an adult and in some ways not unlike what I was saying about being in the hospital and seeing how that system works and it's this intersection between this, you know, something that for you is so personal and so, as I said, you're at your most vulnerable and you just want to get through it and want it to have a happy ending. and going through the system of divorce with lawyers and divorce law and all of that, it wasn't a dissimilar, I suppose, sort of concept of intersecting the personal with the impersonal.

44:40But again, totally unlike Squid, I used aspects that were familiar to me and then created a fiction within that. I just have to say that some of the moments, whether they just ring so true and hilarious, like, I mean, in the dark stuff, there are these hilarious moments. One that comes to mind immediately where Alan Alda's lawyer starts, he's always telling jokes. And at one point, Adam Driver says to whatever his name is, am I paying for this joke? That has to have happened, right? Well, I don't know that I ever actually quite confronted. I got confronted. My confrontation was in the movie, not in life, which often is the case.

45:25Yeah, I think there was actually even another thing which I cut where Scarlett's character was on the phone with Laura Dern's character and says, like, I noticed that I sent you a happy birthday email on, you know, with the date and saying, and I think I was charged$150 for a quarter of your hour of time reading it or something. Another thing that I think in a way people assume are inspirations for things. So they look at Marriage Story and I think the ones that just immediately bubble to everyone's mind would be Kramer vs. Kramer or Scenes from a Marriage or even to some extent with the coastal stuff and all of that, Annie Hall.

46:05But you've talked about more – that it was more Ernst Lubitsch's camera movements and persona rather than scenes from a marriage or even grand illusion. I wonder if you can talk about those influences and also whatever might have gone into what I think for a lot of people was the most or certainly as much as any just a memorable scene in that where I think it's 11 pages of the script where Adam and Scarlett's characters basically blow up at each other in the apartment that he's renting after being in court and all of that without being able to talk. Well, I suppose to the Ernst Lubitsch of it all, I do think it's something that you touched on with Mistress America, the screwball nature of that movie.

46:55I think – and it starts in Francis too probably, but this notion of people in spaces and I think – which the screwball comedies do brilliantly. I mean we think about all the dialogue, but actually the blocking of them is so beautiful. And Ernst Lubitsch was known, of course, of having just a very – it was the Lubitsch touch. You know, like things with people going in and out of doors and in and out of rooms. And I think because I write heavy dialogue movies and I am really interested in how people talk and the sort of music of talk, I'm equally interested in how they're positioned, you know, with one another in the space.

47:37And whether they're looking at each other and talking, whether they're in the other ones in the other room, the others, you know, whether they mean what they say and whether they even know what they mean, you know. and so and I think it's interesting how those that can work in a kind of expressly comic way and it can also like as in you know His Girl Friday or To Be or Not To Be or I love the work of Max Opefels or you know who does sort of these you know really beautiful camera movements and things but often tells very sad very dramatic stories but they don't feel that different to me in a way And I think my movies have always lived in this sort of space between comedy and drama, I suppose.

48:27And it's, you know, I'm asked about tone and whether I try to control the tone or I think, oh, I need a joke here or, you know, to balance and things. And I really don't. I really, these things live side by side as far as I, you know, for me and my work. And I think things can be both. often people say to me, oh, I laughed in this part. I hope that was okay. And I think it's, yeah, it's more than okay. It's sort of, I mean, I think it's great. And so going back to Marriage Story, there were, there are sequences in that movie, the scene that you mentioned, of course, with this long scene that sort of turns and erupts really into this fight.

49:09There's also the scene where Scarlett and her mom and sister are serving, they're trying to organize serving him papers and they're all actors. So they also have this notion of playing parts and things, which I think also intersects with Jay Kelly a bit. And there's a lot of going in and out of rooms and this sort of notion of for them, I think, of being onstage and offstage. But meanwhile, this is real life. But the fight sequence also, I mean, because it was a long sequence too, it had its own narrative. I mean, it's like something that it's like two people who are scratching at something. They're like trying to find common ground.

49:51They've been pushed further and further away from each other during this whole process. And, you know, I felt like it's like as you watch it, you almost want it to feel like, you know, oh, if you just don't say that. No, no, no. Just wait, wait. You know, maybe you guys can actually figure this out and get out of this alive in a way. And they, but we see it get away from them. But within that, there's a lot of movement and the apartment that it takes place in, which is sort of has like, it's almost like a split screen because it has like a kitchen that's like a half divided. So we could shoot it where you could actually see them in different rooms talking to each other.

50:31I mean, those are the things, those are the scenes that I feel like I love doing because it's so much, it's using all of the form in a way. I'm working with actors who are, you get to see them play these things out in almost real time in certain ways. But you're also using space. You're using, you know, the framing is important, you know, whether you're far away from them, whether you're close up. And you see it all in that sequence. I mean, there's stuff that's shot quite at a distance. And you just see their full bodies sitting there in that bleak room, you know, spare room. And then there's stuff that's like right up in there in their faces.

51:08And the editing in some cases is there's not a lot of edits and then there can be quite a bit of edits right in a row. And when I can write something like that and it can fall at the right time in a movie and, you know, you've got the right actors and you've got everything going. It is sort of a way to use the – like I said, use the form in all of its glory. Absolutely. And we'll just note for people, you know, whether or not this or what this means to you, we'll set aside. You don't have to respond. But Marriage Story was one of the few films that's ever won the best screenplay prize of all four major critics groups, LA Film Critics Association, New York Film Critics Circle, National Board of View and National Society of Film Critics.

51:53And then also Marriage Story and Greta's movie, Little Women, that same year, both get nominated for the Best Picture Oscar the first time ever that a still current couple, as opposed to Cameron and Bigelow after their divorce, were in that situation. So that's pretty cool. This brings us to White Noise in 2022, which you've said, after Marriage Story for the first time in my career, I didn't know what I wanted to do next, close quote. this somehow leads you back to the Don DeLillo book of that name, which you had, I know, been aware of for decades and then maybe rediscovered around the time of Marriage Story.

52:29The question here, I guess, really is you clearly went into that movie with a certain idea of what the experience would be like, all of that. And you came away from it, as we talked about yesterday, just a little, I guess maybe disillusioned is the word, or less sure about your own desire to keep making films. So what was it that led to that space of feeling a bit, or place of feeling a bit down about things? And then what was it about both Barbie, which you co-wrote, of course, with Greta and she directed, and then Jay Kelly, where those came on the scene that kind of made you decide, I'm going to stick with this?

53:11Right. Well, White Noise, I really never would have anticipated that I would have done that. And I do think, well, I know it's so intertwined with the pandemic. I mean, I was rereading it, well, I suppose, towards the second half of Press for Marriage Story And that then, of course, went right into the lockdown and everything. And there was something in the book that just so felt like it captured this irreality and vulnerability again of that moment, the strangeness of things and how life can feel strange. I mean, Jay Kelly actually has a line of, you know, my life doesn't feel real to me. And I think that notion of how familiarity and unfamiliarity and somehow, I mean, for a thing to feel unfamiliar, it had to feel familiar to begin with.

54:15So I really started writing it almost as a way to occupy myself during the early days of the pandemic. I mean, it was like almost an exercise, like, could this be a movie? And then because I was also struck by what's in the novel and was going on all around was how we personally, but also as a culture, how we process tragedy and death and how we're quite drawn to it in entertainment. I mean, the opening of the movie is a montage of car crashes and, you know, the lecture that Don Cheadle's character gives about why we love these things. I was feeling that, too. And I saw it all around me of like, how do we process something that we have no, you know, except for reading about 1918?

54:56How do we like we have we have no experience that supports how how we're feeling right now. So often we thought, oh, of movies that we – oh, this was – Soderbergh saw this in Contagion or whatever it was. And I felt like, well, maybe in the making of the movie, the movie could feel like it draws on the entertainments and the tropes of those entertainments that we're familiar with in a way while we tell the story of something, again, that's totally unfamiliar. So that was sort of really a lot of what I think was exciting to me about making it. That said, the actual doing of it, which again was during COVID, was really difficult.

55:41And it was a difficult movie anyway. and in retrospect too it's just not even you know we're talking about marriage story i it puts a smile on my face even just to think about being in a room with actors shooting you know a scene like that but there's so many things in white noise that to do them properly took time and you know with a lot of action a lot of action a lot of night scenes a lot of rain you know it just it was it was difficult i finished it feeling quite sort of unhappy about the process i should say i was i am very proud of that movie i i think but again it was sort of like was it worth it having to make it like this you know make a movie like this and do i want to keep doing this and and it was kind of just checking back with myself of like oh i always wanted to have the job i have And I'm doing it and I'm privileged in this way of getting to do it and getting to do it the way I want to do it.

56:42And yet, do I like it? And of course, there are versions of that with so many things that go on and, you know, certainly in my life and I imagine in other people's lives of like, I've been doing it this way, but do I really like doing it this way? I mean, divorce is a version of that, you know. any long relationship, you need to check back in. Like, do I actually like this person? This friend of mine for 20 years? That went into Jay Kelly and this notion of somebody who is at a point in their life where because of events outside their control and also I think there's a piece of it that's in his control, he goes on a search to kind of, to sort of look at himself, to re-meet himself, to sort of redefine himself in some way.

57:36And because he's a famous person and a movie star, he's very defined. He's defined in the culture and he's internalized that, we would imagine. That's that J. Kelly, Cary Grant, J. Kelly, right? Yes, exactly. Where he's questioning in the mirror or having to reassure himself, right? Right, right. And that you could see it as like a reassuring that he exists in this context of these guys. And it's funny, I've heard George talk about it, and I hadn't even thought of it this way, that he was saying he felt that Jay Kelly probably felt that he fell short of those guys. And I thought, well, that's interesting that you were playing the insecurity and the vulnerability in a way.

58:15Because I think it is that thing about movie stars that they feel, again, going to this notion again, that they pre-exist in some way, that they don't actually come from real life, that they only exist on the screen. I mean, that is what we want for them to only exist on the screen, really. And well, then who is that guy, really? And who is that guy to himself? just before uh you know the the final things about j kelly i can't gloss over like the biggest one of the biggest hit movies of all time with with you guys with barbie right which was in between these two but i guess writing wise maybe even to some extent overlapping or concurrent with white noise yeah because we were in uh we were also we were in lockdown when we wrote that as well.

59:00Barbie. So apparently Margot Robbie goes to, who's the producer, as well as the star, goes to Greta about writing this. And Greta volunteered, both of you, without your knowledge? Yeah, certainly without my assent. We actually found the text chain. We went back and found it because there are many funny things in it. But one of them is me texting a variety announcement that we're both writing Barbie back to her. I mean, we're also in lockdown, so I'm like sending it within the same house. And to her with a question mark underneath it and her writing like, you know, like a shrugging emoji or something like that.

59:42And then I should mention with Barbie, too, that which I think you were asking about before. But it was actually because the experience of shooting that came after White Noise that was being part of that experience and seeing Greta's joy in making it. and the spirit that really went into making that movie. And it was the spirit that went into writing it for the two of us because we had so much fun writing it. And we wrote it with real abandon. I mean, people sort of asked me, like, what about, like, oh, what did it feel like to have a movie that was so successful in that way? But I think the most gratifying thing really is that we didn't do it any differently than we did anything else.

1:00:21We weren't trying to have a hit. We were actually trying to write something that maybe wouldn't ever get made. Because it would be so daunting to a Mattel or somebody that was involved with it? Yeah, I mean, part of it was to both honor it and kind of run against it at the same time. I mean, I think to take the piss out of it while we were also celebrating it. And I think Greta captured that so wonderfully in the movie. And I think for me, just being part of that, it did remind me why I wanted to make movies again and also brought back so much of the pleasure of it. And the joy we had on a movie like Francis Ha or something was there again.

1:01:08And so that also is in J. Kelly in ways that I'm aware of and probably not aware of. And one of the positive things that came out of White Noise was the relationship with Emily Mortimer, whose kids were in White Noise. Now one of them is very known from The White Lotus, Sam Mabola. But anyway, you guys – the fact that you had been around her leads you to, hey, do you want to do Jay Kelly with me? But at that point, are you saying like, hey, I want to do this – a movie about a movie star or I want to do something about – Because there's a part of me that wonders if it could have been done, it would have been a different movie, but a famous filmmaker who also gets career recognition and montages and things like that.

1:01:55Like there's a version of that. But you guys chose to do it on about a movie star, but also a specific movie star, at least at some point in the drafting process that it would be specifically George Clooney, who I know you then would layer in elements of things from his own life. But just structurally, how did you arrive at that? It was something I had before I brought it to Emily was this idea of an actor who's going through some kind of crisis and an identity crisis, but also a crisis of conscience. And this question of am I a good person, which is another version of who am I? It was somebody who is then celebrated and told they're a good person sort of pretty much on a daily basis by the culture.

1:02:41It makes it that much more difficult, I would think, to then question that because you have so much support to back it up. But that's just sort of another way of representing how what I feel like we all have is our own justifications for things and our own – there are aspects of ourselves or questions about ourselves that we are scared or embarrassed or apprehensive on for whatever reason and to even acknowledge to ourselves too much. I mean it's that dark night of the soul kind of thing. And I had that. I had going on this journey. I thought being on a train. I had the last line of the movie.

1:03:20I had lots of things, but they were pretty all over the place. And they're really, because the movie, and this was something even Emily and I both had fun with and also was a challenge, was that there's no one way like, oh, we probably should go this way. It really was kind of totally up to us to where it was going to go. And having Emily come in and bring all that she brought, and it was a gift. And it was a real pleasure. I mean, I just look forward to working on it because I got to hang out with her and sort of just talk. And we would talk about everything. And some of it would go into the script and some of it would just, you know, whatever, just be, you know, just a fun day at work.

1:04:09And so, you know, this was your first time with Clooney, but back with Sandler, back with Laura Dern, kind of the stock company to some degree. And the thing just as a filmmaking side of this one that we've talked about before, but I really think when people hear it that don't know about it, they're blown away by how this works and just the skill and team effort that goes into this with all your crew. This is a movie partly at least about a guy going back into his memories and past and reconsidering things and reimagining things. That was achieved by literally having him walk from a present moment into the past at numerous points in this film.

1:04:53And that could have been done with any number of ways. But you guys did it the most old school, I think more impressive way, which is all with practical effects. So I wonder if you wouldn't mind just giving listeners just that kind of brief overview of how something like that works. Sure. Yeah. Well, these are his memories. And as Emily and I wrote them, they come to him at points that he's not prepared for in some ways, or at least he's certainly not anticipating them. The same way memory happens for all of us. I mean, there's sometimes you're searching for a memory, but a lot of times memory is triggered by something that seems totally unrelated.

1:05:36And you start to think of something from, you know, your past or something you haven't thought of for quite some time. Or somebody else brings something up because they've shared the memory with you or you have different memories of the same event. And we know memories are constructs, too. So there is a kind of there's definitely a cinematic aspect to memory. There are our own little movies. And so when we were conceiving of them, Lena Sangren, the cinematographer, and Mark Tildesley, the production designer, and I, we knew we wanted to do it practically. There was never any question that we would do it any other way.

1:06:09But really was sort of how to do it and how to light it, how to build these sets. You know, as often the most sophisticated, complex thinking comes up with the simplest answer. And Mark built these amazing sets that are literally connected to each other. So when he's on an airplane in the present and he goes to the back of the plane and opens the curtain, he's going into his past. And his younger self is out on a stage in an acting class in Los Angeles from 30, 35 years ago. And we would shoot them all in one. So George and Adam and Laura and Emily would be in the present. and we'd shoot that scene and then George would walk back and we would just track with him back there and he would go into his memory and the other people would all be waiting and they would all, you know, on their queue, would start into it.

1:07:01And I think it was really nice for the actors too because, and for George in particular, because he got to sort of play the transition in a way. And you see it in his face. I mean, he looks, in that particular memory, in the present, you know, he looks every bit the movie star on that plane And then he walks into his past and you see him now up against his younger self. And, you know, and he looks older. He looks, I mean, it's George Clooney. He looks amazing. But he looks like an older man. And I think, you know, I mean, sort of going back to what I was saying about the character movie stars sort of appearing fully formed to us, you know, or like people without pasts.

1:07:47in a sense. And so what was interesting was sort of stripping that away. I mean, we strip away the people around him in the movie, and we also kind of strip away his defenses as he's both going forward and backward. And to the point that when he even meets his father, Stacey Keech's character, you see him, and George plays it so touchingly, you see him like a kid again. And you suddenly see the kid who isn't the movie star. And so much of the movie is about watching a, stripping away all of these things from this person who is sort of designed to be our kind of avatar and revealing it's us and his humanity.

1:08:29And you see George do that. George is, the cracks just form on his face as the movie goes along. And his humanity just starts to emerge from him. Building up to one of the great endings and great last lines of movies that I can remember or know of. I mean, it's just, and with the music and everything comes together so beautifully with the end there. Anyway, with our last minute, if it's okay, just a couple of big picture, just the first thing that comes to mind. I read that you had sold a memoir to Knopf a few years ago. Is that happening? I'm working on it. You are? Okay. That's awesome. I mean, people, this is, I know we'll have wet people's appetites a lot, this whole combo.

1:09:13If I can conquer it, you'll see. That's exciting. Gun to your head. Do you prefer writing or directing? Oh, boy. I think I'd get shot.

1:09:29I, well, I love directing because it's so collaborative. And it's being with people every day and figuring out a thing and watching people who are the best at what they do, do it. And being there both sometimes just as a spectator and other times as a guide and someone just to give suggestions. But the thing you discover as a director is that when you work with great people, they provide the notes for you. Like an actor will do something and I'll think, oh, I just had an idea, but I never would have had that idea if they hadn't done the thing they just did. And so much of directing is really just listening and being aware.

1:10:09So I do love that. Other people project or, you know, smartasses, know-it-alls in the press, which I'll count myself amongst. You know, we all look for threads or themes that run through somebody's work. And in your case, people always talk about, oh, there's the fathers and children or people who have images of themselves that they maybe can't actually live up to, things like that. What for you, if you had to identify the most prominent theme or thread that runs through all or at least most of your work, what do you see that to be? Me. Yeah. That's fair. Yeah. OK, this one's a little set you up for maybe a more a longer answer than that, because I think so.

1:10:55I've heard people remark upon this over the years, but I really hadn't sat down and looked that closely until prepping for this. It seems that the opening line of many or maybe all of your films kind of reveals what they're actually going to be about. So for Squid and the Whale, family's on the tennis court. The younger son says, mom and me versus you and dad, right? For Greenberg, Greta's on the highway trying to change lanes and says, are you going to let me in? For Meyerowitz, Adam is trying to park and asks, am I fitting? For Jay Kelly, someone says, I forget, we're coming to an end, right?

1:11:34Close quote. I know there are others. This can't be a coincidence, right? It's both a coincidence and not. You know, it's like a thing I guess I mean, but don't know I mean. I mean, and I don't know. I don't know. Do we put more emphasis on the line because now there's the movie after it? Mom and Me versus You and Dad, I was pretty aware of. Are you going to let me in? I was not aware of at all. We're coming to the end. I was aware of, I didn't necessarily think, oh, well, the whole movie's about it. But it is, I thought it was this sort of idea of acknowledging that the ending is the beginning.

1:12:09so which I think the movie is about that in some way I suppose that his the ending is the beginning but I don't really do it deliberately I do think you you want to be telling the story always I think it probably comes from that it's just is after working and reworking a script and thinking am I telling the story is this the right thing at the right moment that these things start to happen and the work is smarter than you are. And I think just being aware of that and knowing, okay, well, if I do these things well, then hopefully something even better is going to happen that I'm not in control of.

1:12:50Yeah. Well, in case you couldn't tell, I love your films. I love Jay Kelly. And I so appreciate you doing that. So thank you. I appreciate it too. Thanks a lot, Scott.

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