Page 61 - Esquire - USA (Winter 2020)
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room maneuvering, and hate, and it might on his way to the altar, considering the way di- to spending sustained time in a hospital with
just represent Noah Baumbach’s crowning vorce looms in his mind. He has endured not a dying relative. “When you’re in it, it abso-
achievement after a few decades on the job. only the split of his parents but also his 2013 lutely takes over your life,” he says. “When it’s
break (after three years of separation) from over, you don’t want to hear from it....The
Baumbach shows up early for a late lunch actor Jennifer Jason Leigh. There are, natural- system is designed, in a way, to pit you against
at one of his downtown Manhattan haunts, ly, echoes between Marriage Story and Baum- each other.” He did the reportorial legwork in
Bar Pitti. He’s wearing a black polo shirt that bach’s own marriage story—he and Leigh part so that he could fill Marriage Story with
seems to complement his still-thick Kennedy- have a son together named Rohmer, and all sorts of odd details that help illustrate di-
esque swoop of inky hair. He comes across as Baumbach has a second home in Hollywood vorce in all its brutality and banality. During
a dashing, stammery remnant of a downtown so he can visit—but you’d be naive to think one scene in the movie, legal advisors sud-
New York that’s gradually being gentrified out he’s going to draw you a map so that you can denly take a break from a tense session with
of existence—an ecosystem of Gotham cre- find all the buried references. Charlie and Nicole so that they can choose sal-
atives loafing, kvetching, flirting, pitching. Nevertheless, Marriage Story is so pre- ads and sandwiches from a delivery menu. “I
He shares an apartment with Greta Gerwig, cise in its depiction of a split, joining 1979’s wanted them to order lunch during the me-
the writer and director and actor who had Kramer vs. Kramer and 2010’s Blue Valen- diation,” Baumbach says. “The quotidian is
her own zeitgeist moment two years ago with tine in the annals of great love-is-a-bummer everything in the moment, really.”
flicks, that I find my conver- But those moments of tedious absurdity
sation with Baumbach be- set the stage for torrents of venting, singing,
coming part interview, part and bloodletting—both emotional and, in
ad hoc therapy session. There one scene, literal. If Johansson and Driver get
is the knowing nod when I tell Oscar nominations for their performances
him that I’ve experienced di- in Marriage Story, voters will undoubtedly
vorce too, and more meaning- be thinking of a tableau vivant, set in a stark
ful nods ensue when we talk Los Angeles apartment, in which Nicole and
about becoming fathers again Charlie try to sit down and settle things in
at midlife. Baumbach proj- a civilized manner, only to find themselves
ects like Kicking & Screaming, swept away in escalating riptides of rage.
Frances Ha, and While We’re It’s a spat that makes Who’s Afraid of Vir-
Young have meant a lot to me ginia Woolf? look like an etiquette lesson.
over the years, but with Mar- After you’ve watched it, keep in mind that
riage Story he seems to have Baumbach is a director who likes to shoot a
struck, for me at least, some lot of takes. Filming that fight went on for two
kind of personal bull’s-eye. I straight days. “It’s the only time that I’ve lost
the required distance as a director,”
he says. “I’d have to walk around the
block to clear my head....It was ex-
FROM LEFT: Baumbach on set hausting.” During breaks, the direc-
with Laura Dern and Scarlett
Johansson; Oscar buzz tor and his actors would retire to
surrounds Johansson’s and other rooms in the apartment build-
Driver’s performances. ing to decompress. “He will exhaust
it until you think you have no ideas
left,” Johansson says—and then, in
that moment of surrender, the right,
raw take will emerge.
If we were living in 1978, the poster for Yet that scene, which comes across
as a study in the volatility of losing
Marriage Story would probably control, is in fact an example of con-
trol at its most granular. Adam Driv-
say something like: “They’ll never get through er describes Baumbach as a micro-
manager, sure, but in a positive way.
divorce without each other.” “Whether it be with actors, schedul-
ing, what the set design should feel
like, or what the clothes should be
or feel like, he knows his job and can
articulate his thoughts with absolute
Lady Bird. They collaborated on the screen- tell Baumbach about the Jack Gilbert poem, clarity,” Driver says. “You’re not gonna change
plays for Frances Ha and Mistress America; and I tell him that a friend of mine once de- a word of dialogue, and you’re gonna want to
they collaborated, too, on a child who was born scribed divorce as “waking up every day and say it over and over again.”
last March. They aren’t married yet, at least getting punched in the face.” Hearing that,
not at the time of this particular lunch at Bar he reveals faint traces of a smile. As Baumbach reveals with his Invasion
Pitti, but they’re not averse to the idea. “We But by now, my divorce talk with Noah of the Body Snatchers anecdote, he uses mov-
just have to go do it,” Baumbach says. “We’ve Baumbach probably has the ring of the famil- ies as a way to absorb and understand life
been engaged for a long time.” iar. To prepare for writing Marriage Story, as it unfolds. In conversation at Bar Pitti, he
You wouldn’t blame him for being a little he spent months interviewing friends about sounds like an excitable film professor at a prep
circumspect about marriage, a little leisurely their own marital fractures. He compares it school, name-checking (continued on page 118)
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