Director Noah Baumbach, rockin’ the business-casual headphones.
For Greenberg, the latest dialogue-driven black comedy from Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding), the writer teamed with a top-shelf crew of collaborators. First came co-screenwriter and actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, whom Baumbach last worked with on Margot. Next was Greta Gerwig, a familiar face in the cinematic underground now making her mainstream acting debut. Welsh actor (and one-time Super Furry Animals frontman) Rhys Ifans joined the mix, electronic artist James Murphy (of LCD Soundsystem/DFA Records fame) contributed 11 original songs to the soundtrack, and the final piece of the puzzle was Ben Stiller as the lovably loathsome eponymous lead. However, as it turns out, Baumbach had originally imagined Roger Greenberg a little differently.
“The character was initially written to be 30 years old,” Baumbach explains. “Jennifer and I would always return to the idea of Ben if he had been 10 years younger, but I eventually offered it to him anyway, and he really connected to it. Almost as an exercise at first, Jennifer and I rewrote the role so that the character would be 40 — he turns 41 in the film — and it totally changed the script. I think it deepened and broadened it, and made it exciting for me again. In that sense, Ben was an inspiration, but I’d been working on Greenberg for a long time with no particular actor in mind.”
To find their romantic interest, Baumbach and Leigh turned to the similarly dialogue-heavy independent film movement often called mumblecore or bedhead cinema, which has included movies like Mutual Appreciation, Baghead and 2009’s Hump Day. There, they came across Gerwig, and after inviting her for a single audition at Leigh’s L.A. apartment, knew they had found Greenberg’s ideally awkward 20-something-year-old foil.
“She was so good, we had her read the whole script,” Baumbach recalls. “I brought her in soon after to read with Ben, and there was never any question — she immediately amalgamated with her character. From there, I did run the scenes with both of them, but felt they were already clicking and really didn’t want to over-rehearse them and lose their spontaneity. I mostly worked with them one on one and waited until we were rolling to try their scenes together.”
From winking references to Albert Hammond Sr., Duran Duran and Korn, to choice soundtrack cuts from Nite Jewel, The Sonics and Ram-era Paul McCartney — plus the subplot of Greenberg’s former band — music plays a significant role in the film. As Baumbach explains, he originally approached Murphy for help with the soundtrack after finding similar themes of aging and reflecting on your life’s path in the lyrics of LCD Soundystem.
“My inclination to meet James and have him score the movie came because I recognized an alternate Greenberg voice in his album Sound of Silver,” he says. “That record was an inspiration to me while I was writing the film because he tackles very similar themes. I think James connected very strongly to Greenberg as well.”
In the end, this sad, funny and occasionally hopeful story can be primarily attributed to Baumbach alone. So, does he see any Greenberg in himself?
“It’s not literally autobiographical, but I definitely feel for Greenberg and see little aspects of myself in him,” Baumbach says. “To different degrees, I think everyone is trapped in these ideas of themselves that they’ve cultivated at a very early age. For Greenberg, they’ve taken over his whole personality. Still, no matter how successful people are, they’re always dealing with concepts of themselves versus who they might actually be.”
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