Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Noah Bombeck's new film is Marriage Story. It's stunning. When
Speaker 1: I first saw the film, I could barely find the
Speaker 1: words to express my reaction. It felt that real, that honest.
Speaker 1: Bomb Beck is known for messy and realistic family dramas.
Speaker 1: The Squid and the Whale chronicles divorce, Margot at the
Speaker 1: Wedding explores the relationship between two sisters. The Myrowitz Stories
Speaker 1: tells of three adult siblings, different mothers, same father, negotiating
Speaker 1: resentment and love. But Marriage Story puts bomb Beck on
Speaker 1: a plane with Woody Allen, Barry Levinson, and Mike Nichols.
Speaker 1: In terms of directing talent. The writing, directing, and acting
Speaker 1: come together perfectly. Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson and had
Speaker 1: A Bombeck's words with exquisite performances of a couple coming
Speaker 1: apart while parenting a young son. There have been plenty
Speaker 1: of comparisons between Bombeck's own life and his movies, especially
Speaker 1: so with Marriage Story. Bomb Beck and actress Jennifer Jason
Speaker 1: Lee divorced soon after they had a child. But bomb
Speaker 1: Beck is quick to say his films are not autobiographical,
Speaker 1: they are personal. He admits that the process of turning
Speaker 1: Beal life into films as part of how he copes
Speaker 1: and makes sense of things. When hard things have happened
Speaker 1: to be in my life, and I mean not only
Speaker 1: hard things, but but certainly hard things have happened in
Speaker 1: my life, there is a kind of comfort I think
Speaker 1: in my mind of sort of what would this be
Speaker 1: if we put it in a movie? Um, I think,
Speaker 1: uh something, Um, did you get to know did you
Speaker 1: know Mike Nichols much? I mean, you work with him,
Speaker 1: but they worked with him and kept in touch with them.
Speaker 1: You're so good a working girl though, you know with
Speaker 1: he said when he I met him after Squid in
Speaker 1: the Whale, and he said it reminded me of why
Speaker 1: I got into the movie business in the first place,
Speaker 1: which is revenge. And I thought, I know what he
Speaker 1: means though, because again it's not revenge on a person.
Speaker 1: It's almost like revenge on experience or or And from that,
Speaker 1: with that movie, it was kind of childhood. It was
Speaker 1: like a way for me to stand up from my
Speaker 1: younger self as an adult now who had a voice
Speaker 1: that that child didn't have. And I think I do
Speaker 1: think of that sometimes in my life, not necessarily well
Speaker 1: I'm going through it, but sort of maybe soon after.
Speaker 1: If of that, there's a kind of soothing way of
Speaker 1: like what would that be, whether or not it ever
Speaker 1: becomes a scene in a movie or not. Um, I've
Speaker 1: definitely had that in Like hospital situations were the movie
Speaker 1: I made before the Myerwitz stories. Um, my father had
Speaker 1: been in the hospital for a long time, and I
Speaker 1: you're close to your dad, I was, yeah, And I mean,
Speaker 1: if I'm imagine you've spent some time in hospitals, it's
Speaker 1: sort of you know, it's such a I mean not
Speaker 1: unlike the divorce system. It's like the ways you learn
Speaker 1: to function only work in that environment. They don't have
Speaker 1: any practical application outside of that environment, you know, like
Speaker 1: how you work with a nurse or a doctor and
Speaker 1: then the changing nurse and the knack doctors going on vacation.
Speaker 1: And I didn't make a movie about it for many
Speaker 1: years later, but I felt like, well, that was a
Speaker 1: certain kind of reappropriating that situation and turning it into
Speaker 1: something else. One of the things, among many things, I'm
Speaker 1: reminded of when I saw your film, because I wrote
Speaker 1: a book about my divorce, not necessarily because I changed
Speaker 1: a lot of details, and I assigned a lot of
Speaker 1: stories and ideas to fictitious characters that I made up
Speaker 1: in in fictional oral histories, because I don't want to
Speaker 1: say too much about specific people. But if your films
Speaker 1: are are are personal but not auto biographical, I'm assuming
Speaker 1: that when you do these films like Squid the Whale
Speaker 1: in Marriage Story, there's a lot you leave out. Uh.
Speaker 1: Is that a process for you of what stays in
Speaker 1: and what doesn't go in? Yeah? It is. And and
Speaker 1: with marriage Story, a lot of it was what I
Speaker 1: discovered in writing it, or once I had a draft
Speaker 1: of it, was that it worked best when I stayed
Speaker 1: on the process and the story of the divorce itself,
Speaker 1: because all the life stuff, as as in your book
Speaker 1: you you write about this wonderfully too, is that the
Speaker 1: life stuff doesn't stop for you to get divorce, even
Speaker 1: though the divorce takes over your life and kind of
Speaker 1: you gotta go to work. Yeah, you have to go
Speaker 1: to work. You still have to be a parent, and
Speaker 1: you have to be a parent, even if it's difficult
Speaker 1: to be with your kid. You're you're now with your
Speaker 1: kid and you're distracted by the divorce. And so I
Speaker 1: felt like I I just have to acknowledge that and
Speaker 1: tell that story and all of those life moments will
Speaker 1: be there, because that is the movie too. And it
Speaker 1: was these other scenes that were more sort of be
Speaker 1: set piece scenes that were kind of just taking and
Speaker 1: there were just other things they were and and so
Speaker 1: I that was the stuff I really stripped away in
Speaker 1: the script stage from marriage story. You wrote it yourself?
Speaker 1: The screen put yeah, completely. Yeah. When you when you
Speaker 1: write something, do you have people who counsel you that
Speaker 1: you respect and you hand them drafts and they you
Speaker 1: get notes from them and I guess from them many. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I show Greta Gerwig, who I lived with, um uh everything,
Speaker 1: and she also is a sounding board even early on
Speaker 1: when I'm you're married, we're not technically we have a child? Yes,
Speaker 1: so we so you have your current love of your
Speaker 1: life and your child. She's the sounding board for the
Speaker 1: movie about your divorce from your predum kidding, um, well,
Speaker 1: but but just anything we'll say, any any ideas across
Speaker 1: the board, across the board. And I have friends, uh,
Speaker 1: director friends, writer friends who I who I might uh
Speaker 1: certainly that I'll show early drafts to I bring my
Speaker 1: editor Jen lame in always from early drafts because my
Speaker 1: idea is that we should almost cut the script the
Speaker 1: way we're going to cut the final movie. So I
Speaker 1: um involved, Yeah, so like, let's shoot what we think
Speaker 1: we're really going to use And why do you think
Speaker 1: you do that as opposed to miss Some people don't
Speaker 1: do that, most don't do that. Well. I feel like
Speaker 1: for me, time is so important. Uh. I mean it's
Speaker 1: important for every director, I imagine, but I want to
Speaker 1: have time with these scenes and time for the actors
Speaker 1: and be able. I like to do a lot of
Speaker 1: takes and I want to I want to be able
Speaker 1: to explore, not totally unlike you might in a play
Speaker 1: or something, you know, be able to, you know, get
Speaker 1: as much out of these scenes as we can get
Speaker 1: and not feel like, oh I wish we want to
Speaker 1: know in your heart really matters as opposed to yeah.
Speaker 1: And I find also when I'm working with actors who
Speaker 1: I love, who really when it's really clicking, they're always
Speaker 1: giving me ideas while we're doing it. A lot of
Speaker 1: my direction comes from things they do in a scene
Speaker 1: that gives me an idea of how we could push
Speaker 1: the scene in that direction. So I don't want to
Speaker 1: shoot scenes or things that I'm not going to use
Speaker 1: if I can avoid it. I mean, there's always stuff
Speaker 1: you cut, but if if I can get the script
Speaker 1: is close to what I think the movie is going
Speaker 1: to be, I feel like all the better in the
Speaker 1: movie is an amazing movie. It's an amazing movie. You
Speaker 1: don't you know? You're an enormously talented director, You're a
Speaker 1: enormously talented writer, and you also happen to get the
Speaker 1: two actors that would be, in my mind, everyone's dream
Speaker 1: to do a drama like that. I mean, he's at
Speaker 1: the top of his game. Everybody the things, he's one
Speaker 1: of the five most talented men alive today. And her
Speaker 1: the same thing. She's almost on another planet in terms
Speaker 1: of her range and things she's done. I'm wondering, what's
Speaker 1: the path to them with you? Is it a formal
Speaker 1: process through representation or is it like you're having dinner
Speaker 1: with Barry Levinson and he says, I can call Adam.
Speaker 1: You know what was it? Is it? Well, this is
Speaker 1: my fourth movie with Adam, so I because I knew Madam,
Speaker 1: I knew Adam, I cast Adam in frances hat Off
Speaker 1: an audition and it was before Girls had come out,
Speaker 1: so I hadn't seen him in anything. He just came
Speaker 1: in and I and so I've had a relationship with
Speaker 1: him since then, and um, so it for us and
Speaker 1: we become friends. And what was it about him that,
Speaker 1: if you can, well, he Adam described acting as benign
Speaker 1: rebellion once it was we were doing an interview together
Speaker 1: and he said it, and I just it was one
Speaker 1: of the things where you're doing press, you're all saying
Speaker 1: the same things over and over, and then he suddenly
Speaker 1: said this. I hadn't heard this before, and I thought,
Speaker 1: what a what an interesting, great way to describe what
Speaker 1: an actor does, and also very much what he does,
Speaker 1: which I do find. He's both in serving the material,
Speaker 1: the movie, the story always, but he's always looking for
Speaker 1: true moments, spontaneous things that activate him. And so he
Speaker 1: is pushing constantly, and so he'll and and he'll say
Speaker 1: things to me like I think, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: cross my legs in this take, And I know he
Speaker 1: has a reason because it's going to change something for
Speaker 1: him that might have great ripple effects for the scene.
Speaker 1: I may not even know why or hadn't even thought
Speaker 1: about the fact that he was crossing his legs. I
Speaker 1: was maybe thinking or watching something else. And that's he's
Speaker 1: very aware and unaware at the same time. It's that
Speaker 1: conscious unconscious thing that actors do, and it's my favorite
Speaker 1: way to work. He's also he is. He loves rehearsing,
Speaker 1: he loves doing many takes. He knows every bit of
Speaker 1: dialogue down to the ellipse, and he's thought about it
Speaker 1: and he has the the the hesitation as it's scripted.
Speaker 1: He has found his way into it. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's um. It really is that thing for I have
Speaker 1: said this, but someone said about poetry that it it
Speaker 1: gives you your own thoughts back with added majesty. And
Speaker 1: I find he gives me back my words and and
Speaker 1: my have to make every film with him, then yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, well I would like to. I mean, he's
Speaker 1: really special. He's also um. He also is you know,
Speaker 1: he's like you know, he's like this. He can talk.
Speaker 1: We we talk about movies in general. It's not all
Speaker 1: about just his performance or He's always very interested in
Speaker 1: what the story is going to be, what the movie
Speaker 1: as a whole. It's not it's not just about you know,
Speaker 1: he's a real collaborator in in the bigger sense too.
Speaker 1: I love that. But what's it like to approach someone
Speaker 1: you've known him for a while now and you are
Speaker 1: friends with him, to approach him as things with him
Speaker 1: are at the boiling point now in terms of his career.
Speaker 1: Is it hard to get him to do you have
Speaker 1: the kind of relationship where he turns to the rest
Speaker 1: of the world and says, I'm talking to Noah on
Speaker 1: the phone and he goes in your direction. Or is
Speaker 1: tough to find a window in his this schedule? Well,
Speaker 1: he's things have to be planned now. He's more carefully,
Speaker 1: but he will make the time because it's something he
Speaker 1: feels strongly. And what about her? How did you approach her?
Speaker 1: She I had known a little bit just over the years.
Speaker 1: We had almost done a thing together, probably about ten
Speaker 1: years ago or something, so I and I always sort
Speaker 1: of felt like, at some point I'm gonna I'll have
Speaker 1: something I feel is right for her, and Adam and
Speaker 1: I talked about it. This was even before the script
Speaker 1: was really written. We talked about, well, who would be
Speaker 1: the right person, you know, for this movie? And she
Speaker 1: was both of our first idea. So I reached out
Speaker 1: to her. I just emailed her and and uh, and
Speaker 1: said I think maybe I have something we could do together.
Speaker 1: And we met for lunch and then she arrived and said, sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm late. I was on the phone with my lawyer.
Speaker 1: I'm going through a divorce, and I thought Jesus, and
Speaker 1: so I thought, well, then this is either going to
Speaker 1: be a great or terrible disaster. To her credit, it was.
Speaker 1: It was great. She she went in that direction. She
Speaker 1: just saw it as a way too, you know, to
Speaker 1: um to take it on. Yeah, her career is so varied.
Speaker 1: I mean, she can she can convey innocence and a
Speaker 1: sweetness and a vulnerability and and uh and uh and
Speaker 1: and I kind of I don't want to I don't
Speaker 1: know what the word is, kind of when she did
Speaker 1: onto this kind of a deadness, kind of an emotional
Speaker 1: neutrality that's like like she's from another planet. You know,
Speaker 1: there's an essence to her that she can manipulate. And
Speaker 1: on screen, she she's one of the few actors that
Speaker 1: I know that comes across a completely different people. When
Speaker 1: she performed yeah, well there's there's a thing scripted. The
Speaker 1: thing that was in the script Um, which I wrote
Speaker 1: thinking about her because she's an actor. In the beginning there,
Speaker 1: it's the closing night of their theater company and and
Speaker 1: their home, and things are tense, and he can't help
Speaker 1: but give her a note even though she's never gonna
Speaker 1: play this part again, He's going to give her a
Speaker 1: note on the on the on the final performance, and
Speaker 1: she says that she has trouble crying on stage. You
Speaker 1: know that What follows is she turns into sobbing in life,
Speaker 1: in the movie, in life, and I felt she could
Speaker 1: both convey the sort of that that that moment of
Speaker 1: that sort of defensive moment of of and then turn
Speaker 1: and just completely open up, you know, within it's it's
Speaker 1: it's you know, it is literally in a turn, she
Speaker 1: turns and starts crying, and that's, you know something Having
Speaker 1: her in mind while I'm writing gives you the idea
Speaker 1: for something like that. You grew up in Brooklyn out
Speaker 1: and your parents got divorced when you were how old?
Speaker 1: I was, uh fourteen when they when they finally my
Speaker 1: father finally moved out. And what did your father do
Speaker 1: for a living? He was a writer, He was a
Speaker 1: teacher in Brooklyn College, and he teached. He he ran
Speaker 1: the creative writing program for a PhD program at Brooklyn College,
Speaker 1: and then he also was a He was a writer,
Speaker 1: a novelist and short story writer. UM, but also did
Speaker 1: film criticism. It was he was sort of that era
Speaker 1: where you kind of did all that, you know, like
Speaker 1: there was that kind of intellectual life where you did
Speaker 1: many things. There was like a mom was a film
Speaker 1: critic as well. My mom became a film critic. She
Speaker 1: was a film critic I should, but but became for me.
Speaker 1: It was later in my life. It was it was
Speaker 1: when I was really when I went to college. Um.
Speaker 1: She also had written fiction and had some stories in
Speaker 1: The New Yorker and had also taught And I mean
Speaker 1: the way my brother and I always described it as
Speaker 1: that art in our family was kind of like religion.
Speaker 1: It was the highest, yeah, and the this sort of
Speaker 1: thing to aim for now when you were growing up.
Speaker 1: Because I asked practically everyone who works in film and
Speaker 1: television and beyond, you know, or if they're in music,
Speaker 1: I asked him regarding their early years in terms of
Speaker 1: music appreciation, what was film and television in your childhood?
Speaker 1: What was that like? Film was a big My parents
Speaker 1: really loved movies, so they took me to a lot
Speaker 1: of movies. Do you want to go see Sorrow in
Speaker 1: the Pity when you were eight years? Well? Kind of, uh,
Speaker 1: but they also were into what I was into. Also.
Speaker 1: My father particularly made a real effort to go to
Speaker 1: you know, I was born in sixty nine, so sort
Speaker 1: of the the early eighties is when I was started
Speaker 1: like really kind of branching out in terms of movies.
Speaker 1: And uh, he would go with me really to anything.
Speaker 1: I mean, we would just go to movies and yeah,
Speaker 1: and what does it matter? Yeah, if it sucks, then
Speaker 1: we learned that. We learned that, and we could and
Speaker 1: we would have you know, I remember seeing all these
Speaker 1: Richard because you know, I love Richard Pryor, and we'd
Speaker 1: go to all these just terrible Richard Pryor movies and
Speaker 1: then he's clearly doing for paycheck. Silver Streak. Silver Streak
Speaker 1: was a pretty good one. But but I remember this
Speaker 1: one called some kind of Hero with Margot Kidder, which
Speaker 1: is I remember we were both so baffled, we couldn't
Speaker 1: believe how bad it was, and um, but that was
Speaker 1: kind of almost as good as and yeah, exactly, and
Speaker 1: just going and sitting and your religion. It was in
Speaker 1: a sense, and he you know, and big he was
Speaker 1: of you know, of the mind that we don't spend
Speaker 1: the extra money on the concession. So it really was
Speaker 1: just the movie. We Where did he grow up? Where
Speaker 1: is he from? He's from Brooklyn to he um. His
Speaker 1: father was a painter, and he grew up in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: He went to Brooklyn College. He went to New you
Speaker 1: Trick High School, and then he went to Brooklyn College.
Speaker 1: A painter like the painting hanging on the wall or
Speaker 1: the wall it's self. Few paint like the one hanging
Speaker 1: on the wall. And artist an artist. Ye, and your
Speaker 1: mother My mother was her whole family from the South.
Speaker 1: Her name is Georgia Brown. She was named after Georgia,
Speaker 1: the place and h Her father worked for Coca Cola,
Speaker 1: so they traveled a lot. Uh. And when I was older,
Speaker 1: her parents were living in Seattle, but they had all
Speaker 1: started in the South. Did you know, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: from things. I've read them. Under the oppression, you knew
Speaker 1: pretty early on where he were headed. I wanted it.
Speaker 1: I wanted to make movies very badly, but I never
Speaker 1: I wasn't around anybody who made them, so I had
Speaker 1: no even though my parents were so into movies, it
Speaker 1: was our experience of movies was kind of like living
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn. We felt both sort of around where things
Speaker 1: were happening, but never it was never actually happening to us.
Speaker 1: And it was that feeling, always a feeling outside. And
Speaker 1: and I think my father felt that quite a bit.
Speaker 1: He felt outside, he felt unrecognized as a writer, novelist,
Speaker 1: and uh, and there was always this feeling of like,
Speaker 1: not it's not happening here, it's over there. I went
Speaker 1: to Vas. What would you study film? They didn't really
Speaker 1: have much of a film program then. I mean they
Speaker 1: had a film studies program. I'd watch movies, but I
Speaker 1: was an English major. Uh, when you finished at Vaster,
Speaker 1: what did you do? I wrote a script? But I've
Speaker 1: never actually seen a script before. I was I like
Speaker 1: printed out. I'd seen them like published, but I didn't
Speaker 1: realize like those were often just transcripts they would retype
Speaker 1: from the movie itself. And it was before any kind
Speaker 1: of like final draft or any formatting programs. So I
Speaker 1: was just I got so hung up. I'm pretty anal
Speaker 1: about these things. So I was trying to get all
Speaker 1: the tabs right on my typewriter and then on my computer,
Speaker 1: you know. And uh so I was just writing a
Speaker 1: page of months. Yea, my whole experiences tabs and and
Speaker 1: trying to center everything and get them before they had
Speaker 1: those the screenwriting programs. It was awful. And then you're
Speaker 1: printed and realized one was off. And and I wrote
Speaker 1: what became my first movie, uh called Kicking and Screaming.
Speaker 1: How old were you Well, I guess I started writing it.
Speaker 1: I guess when I was three. Well. I first after college,
Speaker 1: I was a messenger at the New Yorker, which was
Speaker 1: my summer job. And then after I got out of college,
Speaker 1: I guess it was potentially my job. But then I
Speaker 1: moved to Chicago because I had a lot of friends
Speaker 1: are doing improv and theater in Chicago, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to kind of just be around them, and um, he
Speaker 1: needed some laughs. I needed some laughs. Yeah, it was,
Speaker 1: and they moved to Chicago. I did improv a bit too.
Speaker 1: I liked it wasn't that different from writing in a way.
Speaker 1: It was how long were you there? I was there, Uh,
Speaker 1: not that long under a year? Um, and then but
Speaker 1: I was writing this script and then I came back
Speaker 1: to New York and set out trying to make it.
Speaker 1: I had two friends from college, uh, Jeremy Kramer and
Speaker 1: Jason Blum Jason, yes, And we had all lived together
Speaker 1: in college, Jason and I lived together in Cargo, and
Speaker 1: then we all sort of I said, why don't we,
Speaker 1: why don't you produce this, and let's try to make it. Um,
Speaker 1: what was the budget, Well, we didn't even know what.
Speaker 1: We still don't know. But when it ended up getting
Speaker 1: made for a million dollars, which was way more than
Speaker 1: I thought it would. But it was made in a
Speaker 1: way that was unexpected, and after it had fallen through
Speaker 1: many many times by this company Trimark, which is a
Speaker 1: video company who wanted maybe to get into sort of
Speaker 1: a Mirrormax kind of business. And yeah, and they made
Speaker 1: it for for a million dollars, which again I felt like,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of money for your first Yeah, in
Speaker 1: a way, it was too much. It was it was now.
Speaker 1: I always think about this now, and and I've heard
Speaker 1: Jason said this too. I think now we would have
Speaker 1: just made it because you could with cameras now, the
Speaker 1: digitals cameras. Really, Yeah, I cut, I did cut on film.
Speaker 1: That was I had on kicking, screaming with the UM.
Speaker 1: I had the whole experience of cutting on film and uh,
Speaker 1: all pre digital. It was just as it turned. I
Speaker 1: just worked with a bunch of people, you know, my
Speaker 1: my production company where I was, and it's a generation
Speaker 1: of filmmakers who really don't know anything else. They do
Speaker 1: it because they just don't know anything else. And they
Speaker 1: shot this film for I can't remember, maybe it was
Speaker 1: like twelve days, like to six to six day weeks
Speaker 1: and they shoot the film for a hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars and he just got into Sundance. That's great,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's like, you see the way the
Speaker 1: movie business now is like anything goes, you know, you
Speaker 1: just get it up there. Well, there's more opportunity now
Speaker 1: because of that that you can do. I mean, I
Speaker 1: made frances Ha digitally with a crew of about seven
Speaker 1: people because I felt like, in a sense, it was
Speaker 1: like making a first movie I never made. And but
Speaker 1: I thought, also, why didn't I do it now with
Speaker 1: everything I know and and that I've learned, UM and
Speaker 1: use the the fact that we're kind of under the
Speaker 1: radar as uh, there would be certain limitations, but the
Speaker 1: days there would be freedoms. Well, what I did is
Speaker 1: I shot for sixty days because I because it was
Speaker 1: so much less to shoot. It's like the film version
Speaker 1: of like if you dig down, you'll into the earth,
Speaker 1: you'll end up in China, you know, like it was.
Speaker 1: It was it was like, we'll actually have more freedom
Speaker 1: in certain ways because nobody knows we're doing this and
Speaker 1: we're so small and um and we shot on consumer
Speaker 1: digital camera. We shot on the five D. It was
Speaker 1: black and white. And it was great. I mean and
Speaker 1: and you know it was. And my feeling was, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to do this to make it like a
Speaker 1: B side. I'm gonna do this because it's I think
Speaker 1: this is the best thing for this movie and will
Speaker 1: be the best version of this movie lower bomb Beck
Speaker 1: co wrote Francis ha with his partner Greta Gerwig. She
Speaker 1: also start in the movie. Bomb Beck is known for
Speaker 1: wanting a lot of takes from his actors. To hear
Speaker 1: from one of those actors, take a listen to my
Speaker 1: conversation with Jeff Daniels. I gotta create. I gotta create.
Speaker 1: You can't ever make the job. I can't once you
Speaker 1: start to understand, you're creating a character in a musical
Speaker 1: in a community theater or college or whatever. In Boom Boom,
Speaker 1: you start to go down that road, it's like the sharks.
Speaker 1: You gotta keep moving. My full conversation with Jeff Daniels
Speaker 1: is that here's the Thing, dot Org. He starred in bombs,
Speaker 1: The Squid and the Whale. More on that film coming up.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing promoting marriage story. Noah bomb Beck has been deflecting
Speaker 1: questions about his own personal life. When The Squid and
Speaker 1: the Whale came out, a story about a Brooklyn family
Speaker 1: and what happens when the parents divorced, Bombeck had to
Speaker 1: deal with the reaction of his own parents. They knew
Speaker 1: it was coming. I mean it was again because it
Speaker 1: was different. It wasn't our situations, but but there were
Speaker 1: a few of it in there. The milia was was familiar,
Speaker 1: and they were good sports about it. I mean they
Speaker 1: I think one thing that was hard for them, which
Speaker 1: I didn't anticipate, and I was that people would assume
Speaker 1: then that things that were in the movie were true
Speaker 1: and talk to them about it as if they were
Speaker 1: true things. So I I guess I hadn't thought of
Speaker 1: it that way, that, oh, well, this will all be
Speaker 1: perceived is true in their lives from other people, So
Speaker 1: that could be a drag. I was. I'm sure friends dinner. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like all we didn't know that was going on in
Speaker 1: the house and it's well, it wasn't really or that
Speaker 1: I didn't. Uh, I guess I didn't anticipate when I
Speaker 1: when I when I was working on it. Now, let
Speaker 1: me say, you know, your ex is one of my
Speaker 1: favorite actresses I had, like, she's one of my top
Speaker 1: three fantastic I had one of the greatest experiences of
Speaker 1: my life. I've always said that working with her, she
Speaker 1: was just so free and inventive. Miami Blues, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll do that movie with her and I learned from her,
Speaker 1: which I thought to myself, I wasn't. I wasn't prepared
Speaker 1: for that when I was working back then. But what
Speaker 1: are the pitfalls for you of you of your primary
Speaker 1: of your roommate wife would have you your loved one
Speaker 1: being an actress, senior director, what would you warn other
Speaker 1: directors about that? Well, I mean in both the Jennifer
Speaker 1: and Grada they're both wonderful actors, and they're also they're
Speaker 1: both filmmakers. I mean the Jennifer when I had met Jennifer,
Speaker 1: she just made the Anniversary Party she had directed with
Speaker 1: Alan Cumming, which is is a really great movie. They
Speaker 1: both have a kind of incredible ability of being very present,
Speaker 1: as you're saying, like free and present as actors, um,
Speaker 1: but also their storytellers. I guess in that way, you know,
Speaker 1: and um and gret as amazing director and writer and
Speaker 1: and so I guess I never thought of it so
Speaker 1: much as like director actor in that in the window
Speaker 1: I always wondering. I always think of it in terms of,
Speaker 1: you know, how great to be if you're going to
Speaker 1: be with an actress, it's great to be with and
Speaker 1: you can't always pick them this way. One is very talented. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I found it. But an increasing number of people they
Speaker 1: just they realized, not that this was either good or bad,
Speaker 1: It just it just occurred. Was they discovered they like
Speaker 1: directing more than acting, and the acting can sort of
Speaker 1: be less and less and less defined material to access
Speaker 1: material that is worthwhile, you know, Dustin Hoffman said to
Speaker 1: me in a meeting one so a million years ago
Speaker 1: he said to me, Alec, we're all in line. Some
Speaker 1: of us are just in a shorter line to get
Speaker 1: that good script and that good material. Well, yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think in both cases they both have written things
Speaker 1: that they've acted in to give themselves that that opportunity.
Speaker 1: It's um uh, it's actually as you were saying that,
Speaker 1: I realized you've acted with both of them. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: did what we did. What He's a movie. But I
Speaker 1: remember I love doing them. I love Woody and I
Speaker 1: love working with him. And it was always like and
Speaker 1: what a treat to work with younger actors who I've
Speaker 1: always so Keena. But while I still have you and
Speaker 1: want to ask you, so you know, in my life
Speaker 1: I have worked with great directors, sometimes very small roles,
Speaker 1: and you come in and they know very well what
Speaker 1: your function in the pieces. They know the whole panoply
Speaker 1: of the whole thing. And I'm not somebody who's ever
Speaker 1: been a big enough movie star in the old school
Speaker 1: way to walk in and go we need to fire Bob.
Speaker 1: You just get rid of the director. But my point
Speaker 1: is is, when I'm sitting down with you in the
Speaker 1: earliest stages, do you think that that's one for you
Speaker 1: is to help that person to understand what you want. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, well, I'm often interested in how the actor
Speaker 1: first comes at it without me saying anything. I mean,
Speaker 1: because I think a lot of it is in the
Speaker 1: rhythm of the lines, and it's very dialogical musicality of
Speaker 1: the lines, and and I think that helps the actor
Speaker 1: find it. I find usually when actors are having trouble
Speaker 1: with a scene, it's because they have the line wrong,
Speaker 1: or they've dropped a line, or they've inverted words. It
Speaker 1: falls flat, and I'll even sometimes forget what the real
Speaker 1: line is and be trying to figure it out, and
Speaker 1: then I'll look at the script and I'll realize, oh,
Speaker 1: it's inverted. Yeah, you're doing And I find uh, I
Speaker 1: find it helps them and me then to kind of
Speaker 1: hear the scene properly. There's a lot of blocking and
Speaker 1: physical stuff that I also find can help him. It's
Speaker 1: like what Elia Kazan would say. He was a prop director,
Speaker 1: you know that they ask him, you know about how
Speaker 1: we how we directed, and he said, I just come
Speaker 1: up with a lot of good props and then the actors.
Speaker 1: I find that takes care of a lot for the actors.
Speaker 1: Um But unless it's absolutely wrong for the story. Um,
Speaker 1: I want the actor to suggest in what they're doing,
Speaker 1: suggests life beyond this scene, so that there's in a
Speaker 1: different movie, in the Altman version or whatever we might
Speaker 1: go with that person, and that that that wouldn't be
Speaker 1: so surprised. Yeah, because you know, particularly if you have
Speaker 1: you know, really interesting actor doing a smaller role, it's
Speaker 1: you want all that stuff, you know, And I mean
Speaker 1: it's not right for say, the evaluator who comes and
Speaker 1: watches a marriage story of the woman who comes to
Speaker 1: see observe Charlie and Henry have dinner and in his apartment.
Speaker 1: The whole idea of that is there's no life suggested
Speaker 1: beyond that scene. You know, it's it's it's it's she's inscrutable. Um.
Speaker 1: But I wanted that from alan Alda ray Leota that
Speaker 1: I mean in a sense that you know, there they nailed.
Speaker 1: When I see Reagan, I'm gonna go, you know, ray
Speaker 1: with all the things you've done with guns and shovels
Speaker 1: and horrible things you've done to people in movies, you know,
Speaker 1: legendary movies, I go, but I think this is probably
Speaker 1: your most terrified. I mean, he reminded me so much
Speaker 1: of this. My first lawyer who I fired in my book,
Speaker 1: Bob Kaufman. I'm going to say his name. He terrified me.
Speaker 1: We go into a conference and as I would recite
Speaker 1: my story, said, well then they she did this, and
Speaker 1: he literally, I mean that, you never saw a man seethe.
Speaker 1: He looked at his two guys. Next, I think Jesus crushed,
Speaker 1: like everything I said was like another log on the
Speaker 1: fire of his battle scene. He was gonna go and
Speaker 1: to cleave these people, you know. And i'mber saying to myself,
Speaker 1: he's I don't think I could be around this guy
Speaker 1: too much. So I fired Ray and I hired Allan
Speaker 1: the other way with the female Alan Alda. But but
Speaker 1: the reason I say this to you is because this
Speaker 1: is something where do you see? And maybe I'm projecting
Speaker 1: or i'm or I'm I'm in laying a lot of
Speaker 1: my own personal things, like I made films. I did
Speaker 1: this film, The Edge, with Tony Hopkins and Lee Tamahori
Speaker 1: was the director. We had David nat screenplay. I was
Speaker 1: so excited to go do this movie, and Tammahori was
Speaker 1: somebody who didn't understand really the psychologics of Mammot's writing.
Speaker 1: It was rather baroque. It was very memedy, and and
Speaker 1: whenever he'd come across something he didn't understand, he'd cut it.
Speaker 1: So he saw he was he was a key wee.
Speaker 1: I'll do my bad dialector. He'd say, David does tend
Speaker 1: to go on a bit hit ye twenty one, althought
Speaker 1: we cut these first full speeches, and I thought to myself, well,
Speaker 1: the way that David tends to go on in these
Speaker 1: speeches is the very reason I'm here is to play
Speaker 1: the kind of weirdness these guys are in it like
Speaker 1: a weird zone. Everyone's taken something maybe and we're all weird.
Speaker 1: And I like that. Well, we did that movie and
Speaker 1: he takes it, makes it sevent psychological thriller and thirty
Speaker 1: percent action adventure from and flips it in the cutting room.
Speaker 1: But one moment was we're there and again this was
Speaker 1: really one of the most painful moments of my life.
Speaker 1: Is I've got to sell Tony on the idea of
Speaker 1: what I think the scenes about, because he's not going
Speaker 1: to say it. He's turning into us, going, men, what
Speaker 1: do you think he's going on here? He wanted us
Speaker 1: to direct the scene. But the point is is when
Speaker 1: I come to work with you, I want so maybe
Speaker 1: this is wrong, the nature of actors becoming so self directing.
Speaker 1: I want to come in and I want you to
Speaker 1: tell me. I want you to tell me. Do you
Speaker 1: think that that's wrong? You want the actors to tell
Speaker 1: you also what they know I want. I think that's
Speaker 1: that's what I would hope actors come in. Uh. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that you're not gonna have ideas, you know,
Speaker 1: it's but I think you hope they would well it
Speaker 1: wanted to decipher what you want to do. Yes, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but I Cada is almost like creating sort of not
Speaker 1: unlike we're saying about Rob Ryan or what we're saying
Speaker 1: about Kasan. It's like create a kind of structure around them,
Speaker 1: which is both in the dialogue and knowing your lines
Speaker 1: and and like I said, having the lines down, uh,
Speaker 1: and you know blocking that's very specific, and then then
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about that stuff. You can
Speaker 1: be free within those parameters, and that it actually opens
Speaker 1: you up because you're not carrying, you're not trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to make it work, that you're going
Speaker 1: with it. It doesn't mean of course if an actor,
Speaker 1: if somebody doesn't work for an actor, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't feel I wouldn't get up on this line. I
Speaker 1: want to stay. You know that, that of course should
Speaker 1: be I mean I listened always to that because it's
Speaker 1: I mean, you have to believe it. How much do
Speaker 1: you luxuriate in terms of composition and shooting or you
Speaker 1: differ very often to your cinematographer. How much of it
Speaker 1: that to you? And how much is that as them? Um?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's it is a collaboration. I mean
Speaker 1: I I the way I generally do it is I um,
Speaker 1: you know, and if it's somebody I've worked with before,
Speaker 1: we might have a shorthand and you know, sort of
Speaker 1: going into it. But I we kind of take the
Speaker 1: script and I go through every scene together in prep storyboard.
Speaker 1: I don't I do sometimes, but I'm such a bad
Speaker 1: drawer that I it frustrates me. So I end up
Speaker 1: more shot listing um and doing little drawings and like
Speaker 1: you know, things like like football players or things. And
Speaker 1: but but what I do is, in some ways I
Speaker 1: describe how I'm pictured the scene, and so I will
Speaker 1: give a kind of first pass on maybe he gets
Speaker 1: up here, he goes over there, this is the and
Speaker 1: and then he'll respond Robbie Ryan in the case of
Speaker 1: Meerwitz and marriage story, and he'll have his own take
Speaker 1: and say, but what if this or or he'll say
Speaker 1: that sounds right to me your um, And we'll kind
Speaker 1: of do a first pass going through the movie that way,
Speaker 1: but I will give my first sort of interpretation visual
Speaker 1: interpretation of every scene, and then we'll do a second
Speaker 1: pass now with our notes of the whole movie and
Speaker 1: see we still agree with what we did the first time,
Speaker 1: which also will accompany then having locations and knowing now
Speaker 1: what the locations are, and things can will always change
Speaker 1: or or can change. Sometimes you find the location that
Speaker 1: matches your you know what was in your head, but
Speaker 1: often you find a location that gives you new ideas
Speaker 1: or uh. And then then I will have him in
Speaker 1: the rehearsal with me, often even shooting it on video,
Speaker 1: so that way when we're working with the actors and
Speaker 1: and to sending the actors, that will also then. So
Speaker 1: usually by the time we're shooting, we've done at least
Speaker 1: three passes of the whole movie, a kind of visual storyboard.
Speaker 1: Do you miss film? I shot on film. I shot
Speaker 1: up through green Burg, I shot everything on film. Then
Speaker 1: Francis Mistress America and while we're young, I shot all digitally.
Speaker 1: Marriage Story. Marriage Story is thirty. Yeah that's great. Um,
Speaker 1: you have many pots on the stove, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of other things you want to do? Or does it
Speaker 1: come at you out of nowhere? I you, I would say,
Speaker 1: up for the last sense, from squid to marriage story,
Speaker 1: I would say, I've always had there's always a thing
Speaker 1: in the queue that's just finding its way. You know,
Speaker 1: as I'm finishing a movie, I'm just starting to think
Speaker 1: about the next thing. And this is the first time
Speaker 1: I've I've got nothing. I'm depleted. Going out on a
Speaker 1: good note, though, I'm depleted. So you want a marriage story.
Speaker 1: You've had a great career. I mean it's my tenth movie.
Speaker 1: I think that's a good way. That's a good round.
Speaker 1: I'll just keep announcing my retirement and then on retiring.
Speaker 1: But you don't have anything like but yeah, this cigarette
Speaker 1: is I actually stubbed this one out and I didn't
Speaker 1: really like the other one. So I'm going to have
Speaker 1: to two sticks together. Yes, figure it out. Yeah, noah, bomback,
Speaker 1: whatever comes next? I'll be there. Marriage Story is in
Speaker 1: theaters and on Netflix. This is Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to here's the Thing.