Little White Lies - 11.2019 - 12.2019

rudite and ineffably moving, Marriage Story sees writer/director

Noah Baumbach raking over the bones of a messy divorce,

between a foppish, wide-eyed theatre director (Adam Driver) and

an actor wanting to expand her horizons (Scarlett Johansson). A custody

battle ensues, and a decision must be made as to where the couple's young

boy resides: New York or Los Angeles.

LWLies: What’s your relationship to California? Do you recall your first

visit? Baumbach: I have relatives in the northern part of California, but the

first time I went to Southern California, to Hollywood, was with my father.

I guess I was in third grade, so I was eight or nine. He was a writer and he

was giving a reading at USC, and we were in Seattle because he was also a

visiting professor at the University of Washington. He and I went together

to Hollywood, and this was a huge thing for me. We went on the Universal

Studios tour, and the Walk of Fame, and I did all the things. I remember in

the airport getting a Hollywood back scratcher. I didn’t even know what a

back scratcher was or why you’d ever want one. And those fold-out postcard

sets. So that was the first time I was there. And I don’t think I went back until

I was in my twenties, when I went there to consider working in movies.

In that period did you cultivate a negative image of the place? No, no,

I was thrilled by it. I grew up in Brooklyn and I loved movies. I didn’t know

about how they got made. It all seemed so mysterious to me. When movies

arrived, they always came fully formed. Every so often I would get Variety or

Premiere magazine. I was interested in everything Hollywood, but it seemed

so remote to me. To this day, actually, I still like to see behind the scenes stuff

from movies of my childhood. Because it feels like a totally amazing door

that was opened. Behind the scenes of movies that are made now, I have no

interest in.

Do you mean like making-of documentaries that come on DVDs? Yeah.

Like when Criterion did Tootsie, I loved all their behind the scenes stuff.

I love seeing New York in that time, and Hollywood too. There was a good

one for The Conversation.

With this and films like Kramer vs Kramer and Annie Hall, there is this

East Coast hatred of the West Coast and all that it stands for. It’s

the parody of Los Angeles in the 1970s. They’re all drinking wheatgrass and

throwing Frisbees. For this movie, even though there are jokes about LA, I

love shooting there. There are so many great LA movies and LA photographs

to think about. Stephen Shore, the photographer, came to the New York Film

Festival because Adam [Driver] knows him, and we were looking at all of his

LA photos. From a visual standpoint, it’s such a great thing to have those two

cities. And I actually find that in life, because I do go to LA a lot. What must

it do to your brain to go back and forth? Visually and metabolically, they do

have this strange connection.

They’re closer politically as well. Places that care about the environment

and healthcare. Simple things.

The title of the film suggests that divorce is an inherent part of marriage.

Do you believe that? No. Well it doesn’t have to be. Alan Alda’s character

has this line, ‘divorce is like a death without a body.’ I think there is an

interesting analogy there. What divorce does is put an end on marriage.

Otherwise, death is the end of all the stories that we do. When somebody

dies, their obituary is a narrative that didn’t exist until that moment. That’s

what divorce does to marriage. When you’re going through it, there’s often

feelings of failure or endings or that love is over. Of course, the legal system

accentuates all of that, because it becomes about narrative and it becomes

about story. It’s my reality versus your reality. And what’s going to be the

new reality. In essence, love is still love. It still was love. It still can be love.

Even if you’re not married any more. It still was a marriage. That’s all

baked into this story.

The word ‘obituary’ feels like a good description of the opening sequence

where the couple list the positive aspects of each other.  It’s like movies.

There’s this thing of endings. I always think about this Buster Keaton short

called One Week. It’s the one where they’re a newlywed couple making a

house. It all goes wrong in various ways. In the end, they’re in the house,

and they’re sat down together. Then, in the last 10 seconds, it dissolves,

and they’re a bit older. And they’re now a little bit older and there are kids

running around. And then they’re two old people and he’s smoking a pipe.

Then it dissolves one last time and they’re tombstones. In a way you could

do that with every movie.

It’s like the little notice at the end of Barry Lyndon where it says all the

characters are equal now. It’s the funny thing of when movies do those

postscripts. So-and-so became a senator, which American Graffiti started.

Why don’t we all do that? When does it feel satisfying in a movie and when

does it not.

I think, more often than not, it’s unsatisfying. Yeah. Me too

Noah Baumbach

Brooklyn’s finest on the uncanny attraction of

Los Angeles and why Buster Keaton still rules.

E

IN CONVERSATION Illustration by TOM HUMBERSTONE

INTERVIEW 075

Interview by DAVID JENKINS