Noah Baumbach on his new movie ‘Jay Kelly’

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0:31Train anywhere, explore everywhere. Hi, this is Shirley Strawberry from the Steve Harvey Morning Show. Toyota-thon is on. So stop by your local Toyota dealer for incredible year-end deals on the cars, trucks, and SUVs known for their legendary reliability. Like the stylish and efficient Camry, the ready-for-anything RAV4, or check out a rough-and-rugged Tacoma or Tundra. all with great financing and lease options available to qualified customers. Visit BuyAToyota.com to find out more. Toyota, let's go places. You're listening to Ruthie's Table 4 in collaboration with me and Em, intelligent style for busy women.

1:19I've seen Noah Brumbach's brilliant new movie, Jay Kelly, five times, and I've planned to see it many more times. It's a story about a man of a certain age, a movie star played by George Clooney. He's traveling through Europe with his long-time manager trying to make sense of his past and his present, the people he's loved, the family he hasn't always been there for, and the legacy he'll leave behind. Food runs throughout as a symbol of love and emotion, of taking care of someone, knowing there will be food wherever you go and whoever you are with. In an early scene, Kelly's agent comes to his house to make him a sandwich of pickles, and potatoes, Hellman's mayonnaise, and olive oil.

2:03Kelly worries that the pickles have passed their sell-by date. He replies, pickles don't expire. I love this line and see it as an allegory for lifelong friendship, like the friendship I have with Noah Bamba. You write a line like that, like pickles don't expire, and part of you really just means it literally and then it takes you saying something like that for me to feel like it wasn't for me that was yeah it's maybe a better line than i thought it was it's a bit you know for me seeing it again for me the able to concentrate on the writing of the movie um is so important and it's most beautifully written people always ask me about luxuries in life you know whether it's a handbag or a cashmere dress or a scarf and then you realize that being able to sit in the middle of the afternoon in a cinema enveloped by the most beautiful language and beautiful film was a great luxury.

3:05It was a luxury. It is a luxury. It's the same way to have like a great sprawling meal and I feel like is a great luxury to and not worry about them turning the table and uh and to like come to a place where you feel like you can you're all just there and let's we're all going to be here and we're not thinking about it ending and you know and and uh i think that's true about movies i think the um it's actually a luxury that i gretta and i have made sure of over the last few years is that we screen a movie in a theater once a week for that very reason because I think it's so important and and uh it was actually uh our friend Jake Paltrow had compared like watching movies at home is like takeout like if you're starving and you you know and you order out and you get kind of a cold burger and soggy fries you just wolf it down and go on with your night if you're in a restaurant and you get a cold burger and soggy fries you send it back and uh and i think he was saying that in terms of like entertainment it's like if you go to the theater you have you want to have a real experience and you're also more likely to have a real experience than sitting at home and pausing and going over to you know yeah thing and half watching and then running the movie and people are coming you know and and expectations are just different and that's okay take out's great sometimes you know it's it's exactly what you want um and for me the luxury i always people always ask me my greatest luxury and i say being in a museum when it's closed you know which is the same thing when you can look but and as tumultuous as the applause was in new york and as how encouraging and excited the audience was in venice um the absence of the audience for me and just the luxury of sitting in that chair and being alone with the movie was you know something very very important i think there is something i feel the same way of of some of my favorite movie memories are going alone yeah and just having this private experience but on a big screen you're sort of this small person in this big space tell me more about planning the food when you were writing it did you say he will it will be a cheesecake rather than a chocolate cake well it was part of his routine i suppose the cheesecake is part of j kelly's rider they list all the perks and things that they want to have they need to have in their rooms to feel comfortable so this is true of many actors um uh and i think what often happens in these riders is people say things or want a thing once and then very diligent people will put them in the rider so then you end up getting it multiple times um the so in the in the movie jay has apparently said that he likes cheesecake and would like to have it in as an option in whenever he you know is in goes into a room but uh when he discovers it in his trailer in the movie he's annoyed because he doesn't like cheesecake and he doesn't understand why they persist in giving it to him.

6:22Ron, Adam Sandler's character, his manager keeps pointing out that he does like it and that he had put it in his rider years ago and had mentioned that he liked it. So that's a disagreement from the opening of the movie. But then thus the cheesecake becomes a symbol of how food also identifies us, how we We associate ourselves by our taste in food. You know, I like this food. I don't like this food. I used to like this food. I don't like that food anymore. And restaurants are that too. It's another way of defining yourself in the world of I'm a vegetarian. I'm a, you know, it's, and since the movie is about identity and about how we define ourselves, and the cheesecake is emblematic of that is he's sure he doesn't like it, although some part of him has asked for it in the past, maybe.

7:21And then at the end, he realizes, maybe I am someone who likes cheesecake. What does that mean about me now? Or also, perhaps, that everywhere he goes, somebody's taking care of him. That he has the scene with his daughter, when she says you're never alone. And then somebody comes, and his father gives him a drink, you know, proving the point, doesn't he? Right. And there's a story, you know, a Wall Street journalist was given the assignment of following a billionaire in New York around for 24 hours. And they met him and they went to the gym together with the trainer and they did that. And they had massages and then they flew down to play golf in the Bahamas and were met.

8:04And, you know, their luggage was taken to the house and they changed. They played golf and then they went back and they went to the office and they were met outside and the chauffeur took them in. Anyway, the whole day went by and he said he came away not with all they did or where they lived or the wealth of it, but that this man was never alone. Also, as part of this movie is you question friendship and people who work for you and attachment. Well, that was something that Emily and I thought was kind of a funny idea in some ways, but it works thematically as well, was this idea that he starts, character starts with all these people around him all the time, and then he goes out into the world, and then one by one they start peeling off, and he's left with fewer and fewer people as he goes, and the world expands as well as he goes out into it.

9:00I mean, it was actually our neighbors when I was growing up were the Zuckerbergs. Joan Zuckerberg had a surprise party for Richard Zuckerberg. This was the late 70s, I think, or early 80s. So I was the 9 to 11 range or something like that. And I always liked them as friends for my parents because they were very like, they had big parties and they would like they would sing and they would do things that my parents didn't. My parents were more reserved in their way. And so I always liked that the Zuckerbergs brought this stuff out in my parents. But I was there once and it was a surprise party for Richard, the father.

9:41I was friends with their son, Josh, who was my age. And the cheesecake was his cake as part of the surprise. And at some point in the evening, he confessed that he actually didn't like cheesecake. and that somehow this had been the cake of choice for years and he hadn't had the heart to tell his wife that he didn't want it. And so I don't know. So I had cheesecake in my head as sort of this thing that would be a presumption that someone would like cheesecake. My version of that, I've had like, I mean, I like red wine at dinner. And when I was doing press for a movie, they somehow in a nice way got out that they knew I liked to have a glass of wine or something but then the wine would just turn up I would have like an 11 a.m.

10:33you know press thing and I'd come into the room and there'd be like decanted red wine and I was like this is now humiliating uh that was also part of what I was I think it comes to probably people wanting again food being a way of saying I want to make you happy or wine I want to give you something you know and I used to do that in the early days you know we just say oh somebody's here let's bring them that to try and that to try and you realize that actually you just kind of want to eat what you ordered uh yeah they they i and i gretta and i always have this thing where we're like too well behaved that we when when that would happen we would eat it eat it and uh and because i'd feel so bad to leave something yeah it's like returning a gift yeah exactly you're just like so uncomfortable by the end of the evening but then if they stop doing it you're like what happened to the yeah where's my pizza

11:45The only thing between you and your best self is a start button. This Cyber Monday, explore the world with NordicTrack. From the peaks of Peru to the streets of Paris, every workout moves you somewhere new with iFit trainers leading the way. The equipment's amazing, smooth, quiet, and those screens make it all feel real. Ready to start your next workout adventure with the number one treadmill brand in the U.S.? Shop NordicTrack.com for Cyber Monday savings. NordicTrack. Train anywhere. Explore everywhere. Where do you keep the knives? That magnet thing over by the cutting board. Oh, yes. Lately, I feel like my life doesn't really feel real.

12:25I heard about your breakup with the hand model. Breakups are like deaths, aren't they? Mayonnaise. Infrigerator on the shelf. Oh, yes. How are the girls? Daisy graduates this spring, and then she's at Johns Hopkins for biochemistry, if you can believe it. She's a brilliant girl. Then Jess is in San Diego. That's... I don't know what to do there. You'll figure it out. Do you have olive oil? Yeah, well, Vinnie. I've been thinking a lot about Cranberry Street. We had such fun shooting that, didn't we? We were always laughing. You know, it's the 35th anniversary coming up. Jess was born the next year, that's how I know that.

13:12All my memories are movies. That's what movies are for us. Pieces of time. Pieces of time. Do you have pickles? In the pantry, I think. Oh, yes, here they are. Check the expiration. pickles don't expire my love. I was thinking about the movie also in terms of food because the sandwich scene in particular making the sandwich and there's something about the sort of intimacy of making a sandwich in someone else's home of like coming there and using their ingredients to make them something that's from you and and that sort of vulnerability also of putting yourself there because it is a very vulnerable scene for Jim's character.

13:56Where did that come from? It was actually a story that Peter Bogdanovich told me about when he was, Warren Beatty called him once around the late 70s and said, I'm going to come over and make you a sandwich. and I just thought that was such a kind of like great like way of yeah I guess both a sort of power play but also he also wanted Peter to direct something so it was like a way of taking control but also providing something and it also gives you something to do so you're not just there asking for something you're like you have a job that you have to and that was a different circumstance because it was the actor coming to the director and he was asking him to direct heaven can wait and then which peter didn't end up doing and then warren did so i just like that so i'm coming over to make you a sandwich that that was sort of gave me the start of the scene and emily and i kind of went from there you had that conversation with people about when you do do food in movies and and i have to eat it well you have to eat it repeatedly and you know people learning the hard way.

15:11What's that like? Well, I once worked with a kid who we made, like it was like a bouillabaisse or something. What movie was that? This was Margot at the Wedding. And he hadn't had lunch, and so he was just eating it the whole time, whereas all the Nicole Kidman and John Turturro knew to just sort of, you know, do like the, and he just ended up throwing up. Oh, no. I guess a good lesson of how to eat on film. And the other scene, the ring and the ganache. Right, the ring and the ganache. Yeah, that was... So Adam Sandler's character, Ron, who's Jay Kelly's manager, we discovered that they had a history and that 20-odd years ago they had been a couple and had worked for Jay even back then, and things that were never spoken of come out.

16:00You did just bowl that night. Back then on the Eiffel Tower? We just sat down to dinner. I wanted to turn our phones off, but you said keep them on just in case. And of course we got the call. She had been photographed with that daughter of the French ambassador. One of us had to go. I stayed to keep the table. I was so nervous. Because I had a ring planted in the ganache. I never knew that part. Yeah, it was like a very romantic movie. but one that is not romantic at all, in fact, because you never came back. I don't know. I guess that just felt like a kind of somewhat dramatic way of proposing, old-fashioned way of proposing, like the chocolate nemesis.

16:58Well, you know the story of the chocolate nemesis, which is someone was coming to the River Cafe. It's very similar, and ordered a chocolate nemesis and with the words on the top saying, will you marry me? And they ordered it. And then halfway through the meal, he came up and he said, cancel the cake. And so you just wonder what happened in that first course that made him change it. I mean, scenes around tables, it's interesting because I think because I'm so tied to and interested in ritual and repetition, in relationships. I mean, sort of how people get into habits and people and friendships over a long period of time, marriages, whatever it is, whatever this is in the movie, and how when ritual is broken, or things are changed, how are you able to adjust with that?

17:59And food is such an important ritual to me, but it's such a part of people's lives, this sort of being at the table. at the table yeah and so i i mean i i mean in some ways i could probably just set all my scenes at tables i have to i have to you have i have to try to gussy it up a little and get people standing and moving over people are always need something or you know like just becomes about behavior and about people's faces and about and i love people's behavior at tables too with with food that just arms reaching across i mean i there's a lot of if you look at that scene there's a lot of We shot sort of lower on the table so people are like reaching over and blocking and Jay is even blocked by the flowers.

18:43It was something we did a bit as Jay goes sort of further on this journey. The reality that life doesn't actually revolve around him becomes more and more apparent. Sometimes he's framed smaller and kind of bigger landscapes. But another thing we did is we blocked him at the table more like the flowers block his face. people's hands. I mean, these are little things that you hope people don't notice so much as feel. But it's something I've given a lot of thought to because, of course, I do inevitably end up shooting people at tables eating. And I actually, one of my favorite, like sitting at a table, it's not very long, but in the movie Grand Illusion, the Renoir movie, it begins with this French soldier and they're called to fly over in Germany and they get shot down.

19:35This is the very beginning of the movie and they get shot down and they're brought over by the Germans and they invite them to lunch and they just sit and eat lunch with the Germans at the table. But within it, there's the way he shoots it. There's just all these arms reaching, like everybody's just, and there's a kind of casualness in the the way it's designed which also belies the sort of like the drama they're now prisoners of war uh i just always love that and i've always thought of that that scene when i think about tables because i think about or shooting people at tables is where people put their arms yeah do people ask to pass do they reach do they i don't know it's i to me it's it's cinematic it's it's compelling so revealing you know we talked to someone about that this morning about interviewing somebody for a job in a restaurant or why people go out to dates in a restaurant right right and what does it tell you about how they you know share their food do they give it to you first before they take it for themselves do they um do they recognize the waiter are they ever rude to the waiter what is it the way someone's behavior and you know you know our own you know the way we are how do they tip in america yeah you know and that that kind of is revealing and not no rules i had i had somebody you know tell me you know famously mike bloomberg said that if he was interviewing somebody for a job and they ordered a glass of wine he would hire them you know he wouldn't hire no and then another architect was there at the table and said well if somebody didn't order a glass of wine i wouldn't hire them you know and so or you know It does reveal a character.

21:21Greta and I, a few years ago, were out with another couple who we didn't know very well in San Francisco. It was an Indian restaurant, and he was just up front. He said, I don't like sharing, so I'm going to order my own stuff, and you guys can all share. And he stuck to it, and I kind of appreciated it. Yeah, this is the deal. I have a daughter-in-law like that. Richard, you know, they had a verb for him. The kids called him Baba, and they would say, are we going to Baba tonight? which meant that he would just basically take the food off their plate. He just didn't even think about it. Now that you just knew when you were going out to dinner with their grandfather, they'd have probably, you know, he didn't even notice it.

21:57But then he would give you the food off his plate. And their mother just made it clear that she didn't like sharing her food. Same thing with the placemat. So it is revealing how you sit and how you... Yeah, my friend of mine told me about his father. what he would do is he would he'd have his steak or something at the table he would go like this and put his arm over the thing so nobody you couldn't I mean it was really defining his yeah I've people I've talked to you grew up in poverty would talk about that that when their plate was put in front of them that the idea of giving anybody thing right anything off your plate because you're never having seconds we maybe talked about this a bit when Greta and I were on but we both tend to eat as if we're like this is it uh this is it and i i think part of it is i look forward to going out to dinner so much i mean when i'm when i'm filming a movie i there's like a point towards the end of the shoot day where i start to sort of think about the dinner as the reward for the day and i mean because i shot j kelly mostly here i got to come here so often and Linus, the cinematographer, and Mark Tilsley, the designer, we would often come, and Jacqueline, the costume designer, we would all have our meetings here and come here.

23:21But I would be like I'd be working out sort of what I might have while I'm working out the scene. But it's very comforting. It's like nice knowing this thing. Greta's very different. Greta likes to eat almost in a utilitarian way like while she's finishing for the day. Like when she's done, she doesn't want to go think about it. She just wants to lie on the couch. I, even if I'm just going home, I think about that and having a glass of wine and thing. And it's almost part of the same creative process. I don't really like to have lunch while I'm shooting because it's too. Why? I think part of it is it's like it takes too much energy out of me.

24:06I mean, if I have a real lunch. Is that what they call French hours that you do? skip that yeah i which um i love to do it that way i mean some people lunch is important to them and i respect it but i i essentially have like a like something in late morning and something in early afternoon but and then have like a real dinner uh but but even the coffee spacing out the coffee through the day and looking forward to the four o 'clock coffee but maybe it'll be 3 30 today because it was an earlier you're like i'll have it all like you know as like ways of treating yourself Be hoarding yourself, taking care of yourself.

24:41But I even love the ritual of looking at the main course, like having things to start and then the thing and having the pasta and then having the main course. There's always something a little sad to me if I just get a pasta for dinner and I don't do the main course. You're my favorite to eat with because we sit there and we look at the menu and we've eaten so many meals here.

25:14The only thing between you and your best self is a start button. This Cyber Monday, explore the world with NordicTrack. From the peaks of Peru to the streets of Paris, every workout moves you somewhere new with iFit trainers leading the way. The equipment's amazing, smooth, quiet, and those screens make it all feel real. Ready to start your next workout adventure with the number one treadmill brand in the U.S.? Shop NordicTrack.com for Cyber Monday savings. NordicTrack. Train anywhere. Explore everywhere. Food was so important, the lens of food. There's also the, I don't know if you can have a lens of music, but there is, the music was so clear to the continuity of the film, of the drama of the film.

25:59And, you know, you listen to music always in a film that's there, but maybe because of the connection with Nick and being at Abbey Road that day. But I thought, you know, when we look back, you know, I can often remember where I was when I was eating something. And I can also remember exactly how I was feeling when I hear music, you know, takes you to a place, you know, of memory, you know, just a song or. I have that with movies, music and. Movies too, yeah. Yeah. Where I remember the movie I saw, where I saw it, who I saw it with. I used to really remember it. I've lost some of it now. But food too, like restaurants that you went to and with who you were with.

26:41First time you ate a bruschetta or something, you know, a piece of cheese. Music? And music as well, definitely. Tell me about the music and... Well, Nick Bertel, who...

26:56I mean, he was... I like for the music, the score to be part of the experience of making the movie to the degree that it can be. I bring the composer in early to the script stage. And I never worked with Nick Bertel, but I reached out to him and we met and just connected. And so when I gave him the script, he already was thinking. And he'd already written some of the themes that are throughout the movie. I mean, three of them really that are really a big part of the movie. He wrote them from the script and he came on set. He played piano for the crew. He was there as part of the whole thing. What I love about his score as well is that it's such a movie score.

27:48It's like a proper, it's got melody, it's got emotion, it's got so much life. and it really comes from him and his experience. It's at the memorial that Ruthie stars in. My memorial.

28:08And Jay runs into, George's character, Jay runs into an old friend, Timothy. They find their way to having drinks that night and going out together. And it's a place that they used to frequent when they were younger. to have an actor, a great actor in Billy Cruda, actually show him perform. And in this case, he's no longer an actor. He's a child therapist. But he's being asked by Jay to do a thing that would impress them all back in the day, which was a sort of method acting thing, which was to read something with no emotion and then give it emotion. I mean, it's funny because he's reading a kind of bar menu and then giving these sort of ordinary shrimp cocktail and Brussels sprouts and aioli sauce.

29:07He's giving it suddenly like genuine emotion. In a simple way, I thought it would be fun, like I said, to show what actors do. Yeah, that's, well, and to have this as a performance set, you almost felt like he couldn't do that. No. no this was the better actor in a way and it's also why it points out why why him not me you know why why do people become well you know how do you become a movie star you read interviews with movie stars and they'll there's always sort of this sort of accidental quote oh i never really wanted it i happened into it and the truth of it is it doesn't mean that that isn't true on some level and people are complicated they can want it and not want it but you don't no one becomes a movie star by accident yeah it's you work so hard you have to want it more than anyone else

30:10i watched you on set the day that i was starring in my movie yes um and i thought i think you and are very similar in a lot of ways. We are. We are. We're like, you know, we found each other kind of late enough, but we know each other. We recognized each other. Yeah, we did. Yeah. And I think that watching you work was so intimate for me. And to watch you, the way you kept the set, the way you had people feeling good about themselves or critical, you know, that you called somebody up on a scene or directed the way it was. and there was a mutual respect. There was a kind of feeling that we can do this through kindness, through kind of guiding and treating people as individuals, I suppose, and getting them through hope rather than fear.

31:03There was no shouting. It was a long day, and it was a day that reminded me sometimes when you look at the clock here and it's 11 and you still have, are there any more tables? and they go, yeah, two fours, a three, and a six, Ruthie, and you go, okay. And then, you know, that's a challenging time. And so it was also a lot of people, which is sometimes. A lot of people. People who all need attention. I don't mean in a negative way, but I have to pay attention to all the performances. And I had a lot of important people there beyond that. But it was fun as well. You could see that you were really involved and engaged, and it reminded me of a way of working that probably we share the values.

31:52I think, I mean, when I watch you here, what I also recognize is we work the same way as we are. I don't talk to actors. I mean, of course, you understand different actors respond better to different things and different kinds of direction. And so I do, of course, alter my approach depending on who I'm working with. A lot of rehearsal, I find, is not just getting the scenes going. It's also learning each other. But I still talk to them the same way I talk to anybody. I don't have a directing way of doing it. I still talk in the same halting way that I talk. Halting? I would never describe it. Well, I find I often stop mid and then I divert and then come back.

32:45Somebody I think affectionately said it was like, I'm always trying to park a car in an impossible spot. But I direct that way, too. I'm not any clearer when I'm talking to actors. I don't generally call action for this reason, although George liked action, so I did call it on Jay Kelly. But I don't usually do it because I like that whatever is happening in front of the camera and whatever is happening sort of behind the camera or between takes is all within a similar energy. So we're not suddenly acting. We're just continuing. And it's a conversation we're having and continuing. At the same time, just as you're pointing out, I mean, some people I think like anxiety.

33:33Anxiety or drama helps them. Like they almost need to be cornered to be able to like do their thing. I'm not that way. Yeah, maybe not. Yeah. No, I know you aren't. Yeah, I love you. I love you too. Let's go have some lunch. Thank you.

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34:16Ruthie's Table 4 was produced by Alex Bell and Zad Rogers with Susanna Hislop, Andrew Sang and Bella Salini. This has been an Atomize production for iHeartMedia.