Noah Baumbach is a screen writer and independent film
director. Third of four brothers, he is the son of the novelist and literary
critic Jonatan Baumbach and the Village Voice journalist Georgia Brown. He
graduated from Midwood High School in 1987. For a season he worked as a
messenger for The New Yorker magazine. His father is Jewish and his mother
Protestant. Their divorce was a fact that marked him in his teens, as it is portrayed
in his 2005 film “The Squid and the Whale”, a film for which he won two awards
at Sundance, an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, six nominations
for Independent Spirit Award, three for the Golden Globes, and several circles
and associations voted him as the best script of the year.
Baumbach was married to actress Jennifer Jason Leigh from
2005 to 2010 and they have one child in common: Rohmer Emmanuel. He currently
maintains a relationship with actress Greta Gerwig, who stars in his films
Frances ha and Mistress America.
The Film:
Baumbach debuted as a screenwriter-director when he was 26,
in 1995, with Kicking and Screaming. I
saw “Kicking and Screaming” in the theatre that year. I knew nothing about Noah
Baumbach; he was new to all of us. The movie began with the opening notes of a
Pixies song, “Cecilia Ann,” a phenomenon that shocked and thrilled me. A movie
in a theatre was playing a Pixies song. This meant that my generation was
making movies—taking what mattered to us and putting it onscreen, for all to
see and hear and contemplate.
This ’90s film is essentially about disaffected youths and
over-clever post-grads too afraid to grow-up, the film was easily labeled with
the indolent “Gen-Xer” tag, Baumbach and his friends were anything but
slackers, as evinced by the ambitious director making the movie at the ripe old
age of 24. And while that Gen-X/slacker label may have helped the film from a
marketing angle (sort of), Baumbach says it annoyed him while it was happening.
It is very easy to enjoy the movie, perhaps because I could
identify with the characters: I like people who talk interestingly, who have
read books, who appreciate verbal wit, who look dubiously at establishment
assumptions. I like people who know what is meant by "the
establishment," because to know it is to suspect it. I liked it that one
of the film's characters writes a short story and another character describes
him as "the bastard child of Raymond Chandler," and everyone knew
what that meant.
Movies are said to be a great influence on audiences, but in
most cases that doesn't happen because audiences choose movies that agree with
what they already think. If your idea of a great time is sitting on the floor
of a used bookstore, you are likely to enjoy "Kicking and Screaming."
What struck me about "Kicking and Screaming" is that it captures so
accurately the fact, dimly sensed by undergraduates even at the time, that the
college years are the happiest in their lives.
One spends four years talking about ideas, concepts, art,
theory, history, ideology and sex. Then one goes into the world and works like
a dog until retirement.
In "Kicking and Screaming," one of the students,
played by Eric Stoltz, has been hanging around the campus for 10 years,
reluctant to leave. He's "working on his dissertation" and has a job
as a bartender. Other students define themselves by the bars they drink in
("Going back to our old undergraduate bar," one says, "would be
like going on "Hollywood Squares"). One student, named Jane (Olivia
d'Abo) actually does have plans: She has accepted a fellowship in Prague. Her
boyfriend Grover (Josh Hamilton) wonders, "So how will that work if you're
living with me in Brooklyn?" "It'll be the same," she says,
"except I'll be in Prague. They're obsessed with pop culture (one
character hesitates before leaving a room to watch the rest of a TV commercial
- "Wait, I wanna see if they get this stain out". Childhood is not a
distant memory. Jane wears braces, and takes out her retainer when she talks, revealing
an appealing overbite. Grover's father, well-played by Elliott Gould, attempts
to communicate his needs and dreams to his son, only to hear, "Dad, I'm really
not ready to accept you as a human being yet; thinking of you with Mother is
disgusting enough, but you with another woman . . ." "Kicking and
Screaming" doesn't have much of a plot, but of course it wouldn't; this is
a movie about characters waiting for their plots to begin. What it does have is
a good eye and a terrific ear; the dialogue by writer-director Noah Baumbach is
not simply accurate, which would be a bore, but a distillation of reality
elevating aimless brainy small-talk into a statement.
The movie has an amazing cast that includes all the cool and hip actors of the 90's and classic actors like Elliot Gould.
Josh Hamilton as Grover
Olivia d'Abo as Jane
Chris Eigeman as Max
Parker Posey as Miami
Jason Wiles as Skippy
Cara Buono as Kate
Carlos Jacott as Otis
Elliott Gould as Grover's Dad
Eric Stoltz as Chet
Marissa Ribisi as Charlotte
Dean Cameron as Zach
Perrey Reeves as Amy
Noah Baumbach as Danny
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