'Marriage Story' Director Noah Baumbach: "I Like to Feel at Home on a Set"

2 days ago

Martin Scorsese, Noah Baumbach, Greta Gerwig, Fernando Meirelles, Lulu Wang and Todd Phillips joined for the annual director roundtable.

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00:00What extent is art autobiographical, Noah?

00:07Philip Roth has a great quote about that he always started by taking two stones of reality

00:15and rubbing them together to spark the imagination. And I find, I mean, I respond to that because

00:22I often, you know, I like shooting in New York. I like to shoot on streets that I have

00:27memories from childhood, you know, things, and it, again, doesn't have to have any resonance

00:31with the specifics of the movie, but it puts me in a place of creativity. You know, I feel

00:37like so much of what we do is a kind of conversation with the child we were, you know, and it's

00:44that place of play. You know, I try to use all of these things and I put then familiar people

00:49in the movies, you know, friends, uh, my doormen, our doormen. Uh, uh, uh, you know, uh, yeah,

00:56because I mean, like, like when your mom is in the movie, yeah, yeah, no, and, and whether

01:01you know it or not, it's, it's, you, you connect to something personal, you know, and I mean,

01:07it goes to what we were talking about, how we like our sets. I mean, I, I, you know, I like

01:11to feel kind of at home and as relaxed and calm at home on a set. And I feel like then

01:18I can chaos can, it can come from that.

01:27What do you most like about the filmmaking process and what do you most dislike?

01:31I like set and I like being on set. I mean, I, I, I, I feel, I feel very deeply that movies

01:37are made in prep. I don't, by the time you're on set, it's too late. It's happening. I feel

01:42quite vividly that every second you spend doing one thing is the second you don't spend

01:46doing something else. Now that's true for your entire life, but I feel it most vividly

01:51on a film set. Whatever the negotiation of, of time and art is, it's absurd to have a timed

01:58art form. Exactly. But it's also beautiful to have a timed art form.

02:02Yeah, no, it's the same. You're always dealing against time and, uh, and negotiating

02:07with yourself. No, I mean, it is, I mean, it's the only art form that, that exists. Yes.

02:12I mean, where, where that there's, you actually, you have to get it done and on a schedule.

02:16Well, you know, you can do it as deadlines. People have deadlines.

02:19But that's different. Yeah, it's very different. I mean, your deadline is not when the sun goes

02:23down because you're never, and you're never going to get there. It's not the only day to do

02:26that. Have that location. Because you have that location with all the hundreds of people

02:30that you've got. I mean, it's true. It's different. I mean, and deadlines are good too,

02:34because it creates, it's good. You want to create, I mean, where there, where there aren't

02:38parameters in filmmaking, I think we all kind of create our own rules because you want

02:42to have those things. Yeah.

02:48Noah, you and Greta are a couple. How does she influence your work? How do you influence

02:54hers? I mean, it's beyond advice. It's like, uh, the roots are, she's in there from the very

03:01beginning. I mean, it's not things that we've discussed even about things we might want to

03:06write together or other projects. Like sometimes we'll, we'll end up like taking, you know,

03:10Greta has lines in all my movies, you know, but that are actually hers, you know? Um, uh,

03:15I mean, maybe things she said in life, but also things she wrote, you know, that I say,

03:19can I use that? You know, cause it's, it's, you know, yeah, we're always sort of thinking

03:23about things. And so like somebody had asked me is, Oh, has Greta, what did Greta, what was it

03:27like showing Greta a marriage story for the first time? I was like, I don't even think of what the first,

03:31I mean, there was a first time, but it was, you know, I felt like she knew kind of what she was

03:35going to see because of, we were so in it together all the time. It's all the time. And, and, and all

03:42the time of like, we'll see something. I mean, the, the, the, I think he talked about was you, the, um,

03:47when we saw silence and there was the, the moment of the way you shot the scene where they're talking

03:53to the Monsignor. Oh, yes. Yes. And the way, and he, we, he paused it and he was like, it's actually,

03:58it's great. It's, it's wrong, but it's great. We got in trouble and I didn't know what to do.

04:04It was the eye line. I'm one of the eye line to each person. So Rodrigo looked at me and said,

04:10well, that means we're going to have to go because of the two priests here and the, the, the, uh, the

04:14bishop is there at the Cardinal, whatever. And, um, so you jumped the line on it. Yeah. But

04:18you go from Monsignor to Monsignor. Oh yeah. It'd be like Lulu's left shoulder and my right

04:23shoulder to Steven. It'd be like cutting between the two. And we were cutting it together. Thelma

04:27and I, she looked at me and says, this is crazy. I said, I don't know. Yeah. Let's do it the

04:30other way. We looked at the other way. It says, terrible. Go back the other way. And we got back

04:34to the mistake, which really a mistake was like, and I lifted that mistake in marriage story.

04:41I do this a few times because the movie is all about perspective. It's so much about perspective and

04:45about who, who are we with? And so when they're talking in the very beginning of the movie to

04:50the mediator, I go, uh, I didn't do that exact thing. And I did it again in the courtroom. Uh,

04:57and I always, of course, then, uh, it was actually yesterday I asked Marty, but I had a feeling it

05:02felt in the best way, like kind of something, a mistake that worked because you could have always

05:09cut through him. But on set, on set is where it happened. When we looked at each other and said,

05:12okay, let's do this. Yeah.

'Marriage Story' Director Noah Baumbach: "I Like to Feel at Home on a Set" | Director Roundtable

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