The Hollywood Reporter - 30.10.2019

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 70 OCTOBER 30, 2019

WILSON WEBB/NETFLIX (4)

Y

ou’ll never hear Noah

Baumbach shouting

“action” on a film set.

Instead, he’ll start a scene

by quietly whispering the words

“when you’re ready” or — even

more softly — “begin.”

“I find if we can almost elimi-

nate that line between when we’re

shooting and when we’re not, it

makes it more naturalistic,” says

the famously meticulous 50-year-

old director.

Of course, there’s never been

much of a dividing line between

Baumbach’s real life and his

onscreen one. His 1995 directorial

debut, Kicking and Screaming, was

inspired by his own post-college

malaise; he revisited the trauma

of his parents’ divorce in his 2005

film The Squid and the Whale (Jeff

Daniels even wore Baumbach’s

father’s clothes); and with 2014’s

While We’re Young, a 40-some-

thing Baumbach explored his

MARRIAGE

STORY

How Noah Baumbach’s own split from

Jennifer Jason Leigh inspired ‘a love story

about divorce’ starring Scarlett Johansson

and Adam Driver By Rebecca Ford

MAKING OF

4

fear of aging. But with his latest,

Marriage Story, which is more

than a little bit inspired by

Baumbach’s 2010 divorce from

actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, the

walls between what’s true and

what’s made up are even more

crumbly than usual.

The story centers on a married

couple, a New York-based director

named Charlie (Adam Driver) and

an actress named Nicole (Scarlett

Johansson), who are un-amicably

decoupling amid explosive fights,

bloodthirsty lawyers and a bitter

transcontinental custody battle.

“I discovered in doing a story that

was, on one level, about divorce

could actually be a way to do a love

story,” says Baumbach.

The director says the idea of

making the film had “been per-

colating in the back of my head”

for several years. But it wasn’t

until 2016, while in postproduc-

tion on The Meyerowitz Stories

— his Netflix film about siblings

struggling to survive artistically

successful parents; Baumbach’s

own dad was a novelist and his

mom a Village Voice critic — that

he decided in earnest to make

his “love story about divorce.”

And although Baumbach drew

from his own personal history,

he also spent months research-

ing the subject, talking to divorce

lawyers, judges, mediators —

even querying friends about their

experiences with broken mar-

riages. “When put in an interview

situation, they revealed things

that I didn’t know about at the

time,” he says. “I think divorce

brings up these feelings of failure

and shame.”

Baumbach decided early on,

even as he was writing the script,

that Driver, who had already acted

in three of his movies — as a

lead in While We’re Young and in

smaller roles in Frances Ha and

Meyerowitz Stories — would be

his onscreen alter ego. The two

New Yorkers spent many dinners

hashing out details of the main

characters. It was Driver, who is

married to actress Joanne Tucker

but also a child of divorce, who

suggested that Charlie should be