• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • HOME
  • NEWS+OPINIONS
    • NEWS TO US
    • COLUMNS
      • APPARENT HORIZON
      • DEAR READER
      • Close
    • LONGFORM FEATURES
    • OPINIONS
    • EDITORIAL
    • Close
  • ARTS+ENTERTAINMENT
    • FILM
    • MUSIC
    • COMEDY
    • PERFORMING ARTS
    • VISUAL ARTS
    • Close
  • DINING+DRINKING
    • EATS
    • SIPS
    • Close
  • LIFESTYLE
    • CANNABIS
      • TALKING JOINTS MEMO
      • Close
    • WELLNESS
    • GTFO
    • Close
  • STUFF TO DO
  • TICKETS
  • ABOUT US
    • 5 DOUBLE-U’S
    • MASTHEAD
    • DISTRIBUTION
    • ADVERTISE
    • SUBMISSIONS
    • PRIVACY POLICY
    • Close
  • BECOME A MEMBER

Dig Bos

The Dig - Boston's Only Newspaper

READ CURRENT STREET ISSUE

DIG Year End 2020

NOAH’S BARK: NOAH BAUMBACH ON MAKING PERSONAL MOVIES, ANXIETY, AND STORIES ABOUT LIFE

Written by JAKE MULLIGAN Posted April 4, 2015 Filed Under: A+E, Film

FM_WhileYoung_728

Two decades into his career, Noah Baumbach carries the baggage of a body of work, and the rollout release of his While We’re Young gives venues the perfect excuse to show his oeuvre. Baumbach came to Boston earlier in March, accompanying a program that played Young alongside three earlier films (Kicking and Screaming, The Squid and the Whale, and Frances Ha.)

 

With the movies played back-to-back-to-back-to-back, their similarities scream out: the constant failure of language to bridge interpersonal gaps, the overbearingly intellectual fathers, the emotionally unstable mothers. One has to wonder if it’s all thinly veiled confessional, or a running diary—if the young mop-headed boy of Margot at the Wedding became Jesse Eisenberg in Squid and the Whale, who then became Josh Hamilton’s laconic layabout in Kicking and Screaming, who then became the perpetually disappointed Ben Stiller of Greenberg and While We’re Young.

 

“You work with the same actor twice, and you’re courting certain questions,” the 45-year-old auteur conceded to us a few hours before unveiling While We’re Young to a full house at the Brattle Theatre. “I make personal movies. I feel like I’m working in a tradition of filmmakers who, when I saw their movies, I would want to know what was true, or not true. Woody Allen plays with it. In literature, Philip Roth plays with it. What are their lives like? I think it comes somewhat naturally if you’re writing from experience—that other layer is always there. And it somehow keeps finding its way to the surface when I make these things.”

 

Another thing finding its way to the surface in his films is a noted anxiety about creating fiction out of friends and family. In more than half of them, one character berates another for using them as fodder for novels and stories. And that becomes the instigating incident in While We’re Young: Adam Driver plays Jamie, a hotshot documentarian who slowly manipulates Stiller’s older pro, both in front of and behind the camera.

 

The director sets to work mining humor from the generation gap—the older couple dances awkwardly to “Hit ‘Em Up,” the younger couple fetishize vinyl and VHS—but he wasn’t setting out to make a millennial statement. The film may feature jokes about a slip-n-slide wedding in Harlem, but he’s never been to one. Baumbach didn’t even bother trying to get some of his generational signifiers “correct”: he stole them from 50-year-old movies.

 

“Jamie’s wardrobe is designed after one in the Rohmer movie La Collectionneuse,” he admits with a laugh, when asked where he did all his Brooklyn-hipster research. “I just picked things I found interesting and compelling. We made up our own thing … I knew that if I was going to try to really depict Brooklyn youth culture, I would fail miserably. And it would date immediately.”

 

The same maxim applies to the rest of the film: Baumbach stuck to what he knows. The premise may have you expecting era-appropriate EDM, but it’s mostly Vivaldi, and score music taken from the soundtrack of a Francois Truffaut film. (The Wild Child, appropriately enough—a movie about a young savage boy’s relationship with the older gentleman who nobly aims to socialize him.)

 

“Sometime it’s very simple, like with a score. ‘This worked once really well, and maybe I can just use it again.’ Quentin [Tarantino] does that. And Wes [Anderson] did it with The Darjeeling Limited. Movies are part of my experience. So those things find their way in—in the same way that I’ll find myself shooting on a street or in a restaurant that I feel a connection to, or find myself using a friend as a party guest. It feels of a world that I understand.”

 

Even Baumbach’s description of his own movie calls back to the work of others: “I felt like I was doing a Lubitsch-style comedy-of-remarriage movie,” he explains while trying to pin down the somewhat-gentle tone of his otherwise caustic comedy. What starts as friendship between peers becomes a working relationship, and then becomes a family feud, with the two mens’ partners (Amanda Seyfried and Naomi Watts) interceding. Everyone is working on one film or another, and everyone’s stealing from each other—their lines, their subjects, their wives. So it’s only natural that the artist pulling the strings is borrowing his own material from everyone else.

 

“When I’m working on something, particularly writing, everything filters through that: ‘Does this [life experience] work for [the story I’m telling?]’ People who know me and who love me are aware of it,” he says. “There’s a few lines in While We’re Young that I stole from Greta [Gerwig]. I got a question last night in Chicago about how Jamie quotes Oscar Wilde: Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. But I got that off a t-shirt! I didn’t know it was Oscar Wilde—it just seemed pretty smart.”

 

“There are things that, obviously, I can’t take without asking, or things that I would never consider taking because it’s not appropriate … but I’ll steal a line from anybody if it’s good.”

 

WHILE WE’RE YOUNG. DIRECTED BY NOAH BAUMBACH. NOW PLAYING. WHILE-WERE-YOUNG.COM  

JAKE MULLIGAN
More from author
  • JAKE MULLIGAN
    https://digboston.com/author/jake-mulligan/
    IN MEMORIAM: JOAN MICKLIN SILVER
  • JAKE MULLIGAN
    https://digboston.com/author/jake-mulligan/
    FILM REVIEW: "ON THE ROCKS"
  • JAKE MULLIGAN
    https://digboston.com/author/jake-mulligan/
    NOTES ON: "HAM ON RYE"
  • JAKE MULLIGAN
    https://digboston.com/author/jake-mulligan/
    FILM REVIEW: "CITY HALL"

Filed Under: A+E, Film Tagged With: adam driver, Amanda Seyfried, ben stiller, francis ha, kicking and screaming, naomi watts, noah baumbach, Philip Roth, Quentin Tarantino, the darjeeling limited, the squid and the whale, while we're young, Woody Allen

WHAT’S NEW

DEAR GLOBE READERS LAUNCHES AS PUBLIC INFORMATION CAMPAIGN

DEAR GLOBE READERS LAUNCHES AS PUBLIC INFORMATION CAMPAIGN

SOULDIER STORY: JOEL MASSICOT ON MIXING MARTIAL ARTS, DANCE, AND MILITARY INFLUENCES

SOULDIER STORY: JOEL MASSICOT ON MIXING MARTIAL ARTS, DANCE, AND MILITARY INFLUENCES

THE END OF THE WORLD IN AN AIRBNB

THE END OF THE WORLD IN AN AIRBNB

MEETING THREATS WITH HOPE AND COURAGE

MEETING THREATS WITH HOPE AND COURAGE

TITANIC SHIFTS: DEMS SWAP DECK CHAIRS AMIDST GOP-PROVOKED TSUNAMI

TITANIC SHIFTS: DEMS SWAP DECK CHAIRS AMIDST GOP-PROVOKED TSUNAMI

NEARLY A YEAR INTO PANDEMIC, MASS CATS ARE STILL SHORT ON FOOD

NEARLY A YEAR INTO PANDEMIC, MASS CATS ARE STILL SHORT ON FOOD

Primary Sidebar

HEMPIRE FREEDOM PACK 25% OFF

FEATURED EVENT

Most Popular

  • APPOINTED SOMERVILLE OFFICIAL SPURS OUTRAGE WITH TWEETS FROM DC MOB SCENE by MARC LEVY
  • Aerial View Parkman Bandstand at Boston Common. CC BY-SA 4.0 2017 by AbhiSuryawanshi. NO HONEYMOON FOR BIDEN: 1/20 PROTEST ON BOSTON COMMON, 4 PM by MATTHEW ANDREWS
  • VIDEO: COP WHO BRAGGED THAT HE HIT PROTESTERS SHOWS HOW BAD APPLES THRIVE IN BOSTON by CHRIS FARAONE
  • PRISON HORRORS BY THE NUMBERS by SARAH BETANCOURT
  • IT’S HARDER THAN EVER TO FIND A BATHROOM IN BOSTON. WHAT’S THE CITY DOING ABOUT IT? by ZACK HUFFMAN

READ CURRENT MEMBER EDITION

DIG Member 1.9 – 11/26/20

READ CURRENT STREET ISSUE

DIG Year End 2020

Footer

digbos

“It started as a vision I had while listening to “It started as a vision I had while listening to the song over and over again during the early stages of the quarantine.” https://digboston.com/the-quins-talk-making-awesome-videos-in-quarantine/ #interview #video #music #art #arts #Boston #Massachusetts #coronavirus #COVID19
“We were all caught pretty off guard when the pa “We were all caught pretty off guard when the pandemic hit, but I think that using the resources that we have available to us we have been able to meet the demand at every step.” https://digboston.com/handling-the-herd-how-boston-built-its-massive-covid-testing-apparatus/ #politics #Boston #Massachusetts #coronavirus #COVID19
Republican Gov. Charlie Baker started the new year Republican Gov. Charlie Baker started the new year by vetoing a sweeping #climate change bill. https://digboston.com/titanic-shifts-dems-swap-deck-chairs-amidst-gop-provoked-tsunami/ #politics #news #Democrats #GOP #Boston #Massachusetts #USA #veto
“Trump was voted out. However, this is not a man “Trump was voted out. However, this is not a mandate for #Biden and #Harris.” https://digboston.com/photos-recap-no-honeymoon-for-biden-rally-in-boston/ #photo #rally #march #left #protest #inauguration #Boston #Massachusetts
OPINION: IS DISSENT ANTI-NATIONALISM OR PATRIOTISM OPINION: IS DISSENT ANTI-NATIONALISM OR PATRIOTISM? #Boston #protest for Indian farmers, Saturday 1/23/21, 12-1 pm at the #Massachusetts State House https://digboston.com/opinion-is-dissent-anti-nationalism-or-patriotism/ #India #politics #food #farmer #protest #justice #solidarity @monica_gill1
HOW ONE MASS TOWN TOOK EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES TO A HOW ONE MASS TOWN TOOK EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES TO APPEASE A CONTROVERSIAL COP https://digboston.com/no-justice-how-officials-in-one-mass-town-took-extraordinary-measures-to-appease-a-controversial-cop/ #ArlingtonMA #police #reform #cop #racism #controversy #BlackLivesMatter #Massachusetts
Ghost kitchens simply don’t have a need for host Ghost kitchens simply don’t have a need for hosts, servers, bartenders, bussers … What happens to those #jobs if virtual kitchens continue to flourish? https://digboston.com/ghost-story-virtual-kitchens-appear-to-be-the-next-big-thing-but-at-what-cost/ #restaurant #labor #work #Boston #Massachusetts #coronavirus #COVID19
“I don’t think we’re going to wake up on Jan “I don’t think we’re going to wake up on Jan. 7 in the same country we went to bed in on the 6th.” https://digboston.com/former-mass-gubernatorial-candidate-predicted-violence-before-assault-on-capitol/ #politics #Massachusetts #national #Capitol #WashingtonDC #MAGA
RADICAL AND RELEVANT: THE LIFE OF HARRY BRILL http RADICAL AND RELEVANT: THE LIFE OF HARRY BRILL https://digboston.com/radical-and-relevant-the-life-of-harry-brill/ #obituary #organizer #radical #sociologist #democracy #politics @UMassBoston @BklynCollege411 @UCBerkeley #Boston #Massachusetts #NewYorkCity #Berkeley #California
NO HONEYMOON FOR BIDEN: 1/20 #PROTEST ON BOSTON CO NO HONEYMOON FOR BIDEN: 1/20 #PROTEST ON BOSTON COMMON, 4 PM https://digboston.com/no-honeymoon-for-biden-1-20-protest-on-boston-common-4-pm/ #opinion #progressive #left #action #inauguration #Boston #Massachusetts
Load More... Follow on Instagram
Social Buttons

DigBoston facebook DigBoston Twitter DigBoston Instagram

Masthead

About

Submissions

Advertise

Privacy Policy

Customer Service

Distribution

About Us

DigBoston is a one-stop nexus for everything worth doing or knowing in the Boston area. It's an alt-weekly, it's a website, it's an e-mail blast, it's a twitter account, it's that cool party that you were at last night ... hey, you're reading it, so it's gotta be good. For advertising inquiries: [email protected] To reach Editorial: [email protected] For internship opportunities: [email protected]