I've run into more people walking in L.A. than if I drove. Because you stand out so much if you walk. People from my past have stopped their cars and said, 'Hey!' But if I was in a car, they never would've seen me.
— Noah Baumbach
I think if we taped a lot of families that claim to be relatively normal, you'd be surprised when you hear some of the things said.
I thought at the time of my parents' divorce that I was upset by deeper, more profound things and I was just taking it out on the joint custody agreement. But that disruption was bad enough. That was a huge deal for a teenager.
I suppose some studio executive would say it's death for a comedy if people aren't all laughing in the same places, but I find with my movies that people laugh in very different places. I can't control it.
Adaptations are fun for me because they connect to the idea of filmmaking I had when I was a kid. I would see a movie and think: 'I'm gonna make that movie.'
Even fairly serious moviegoers can't shake this shadow of the corporate world.
Woody Allen's movies are so much a part of me. I grew up watching them over and over and would read all his comic pieces for the New Yorker. In some ways, his influence is so much there that I can't even locate it any more.
I wouldn't say 'Frances Ha' is autobiographical, but it's definitely very personal.
How you start the movie is critical. And how often you feel that there's no reason for how it's starting.
I find a lot of writing happens when you're not actually at the computer. So I carry a notebook.
It's always really special to be at the New York Film Festival, and always a real privilege.
When I was a kid, I would fantasize about my own funeral.
Manhattan is so tailored. It's driven by appealing to the very wealthy and tourists.
I'm interested in music as an extension of character.
Will Ferrell's made a lot of brilliant movies.
I graduated in '91, so the '90s for me were very much the first years out of school, so I can't really look at that decade as independent of my own experience of my 20s, really.
I really like my first movie a lot, 'Kicking and Screaming.' I think it's a - I'm very pleased and proud of that movie, but it wasn't the - it wasn't 'Citizen Kane' right out of the box, you know? It wasn't 'Sex, Lies and Videotape.'
I'm curious how people build up the codes that they live their life by, and how they come to think that that's the best way for them to function.
When I start a movie, there will be certain films that I watch again just because the vibe seems right.
I get a lot of responses to my movies. Some people say, 'Oh, I thought it was really funny - I hope that's okay!' And my answer always is 'Yes. It's totally okay.'
When you're around your family, and you have that history and that shared language, you say things you'd be embarrassed to hear quoted back to you later.
I think anxiety is dangerous, but it makes you think it's your friend.
I don't agree with the idea that my characters are unlikeable.
I think sometimes bad behaviour can be liberating for certain people. They need to behave badly to find themselves - to go off path to find their path. You see it with kids all the time: They're testing boundaries, and I think that's healthy.
It's near impossible to make a movie in black and white in the system.
I used to get up and write every day, even if I wasn't working on a specific thing. Now, when I have a thing I'm in the middle of, I do that, but when I'm not, time can go by when I'm not writing at all.
You can be aware that something is idiosyncratic, and give it to a character, but keep doing it.
There was a telemarketing job one summer in high school that I was rejected for. I still walk by the building that I actually had the interview in. It's still in New York, and I always think about that job and why I didn't get it.
With 'Greenberg,' I wanted to make a movie about Los Angeles... my great love for it and also the way that I felt not at home and alienated there.
There's something really vulnerable about playing something that you like for someone. You don't know what their reaction will be.
I've always felt some kind of connection to people who are kind of over-smart. People who over-think things to the point of some sort of paralysis, and I think that certainly can be me on any given day.
I've had times in my life when I really haven't been able to figure myself out.
I made two movies very young, and then I had trouble getting a movie made, and so - which was both, I think, a plus and a minus. It was a minus because it made me unhappy.
Other people have worked with big studios and maintained control over their movies. I see no reason why it wouldn't work for me.
I'm always interested in how people, myself included, have ideas of themselves, of how they thought they would be, or of how they want to be seen. And the older you get, the world keeps telling you different things about yourself. And how people either adjust to those things and let go of adolescent notions. Or they dig in deeper.
Anyone who's putting money into your movie would always rather you cast well-known people.
It's kind of major, learning to drive. I feel like it kicked up other stuff in my life.
To this day, I have people I might meet who will make assumptions about my life based on fictional elements of 'The Squid And The Whale.' But I think that's par for the course if you make something that feels kind of real.
I think I was going through a lot of change at 27, but I didn't know it was happening until it was over.
There is an isolated experience to being a director. It's very communal because there's a crew, but it's only you. You're the one on the hook.
'The Squid and the Whale' I shot in 23 days. I would have loved more time for it at the time, but in some ways that kind of kamikaze way of shooting was right for that movie.
That's the nice thing about collaborating with someone: Your work becomes a conversation.
My dad was a great movie companion. He wouldn't diminish 'The Jerk.' If I liked it, he liked it. He could see it through my eyes.
Truffaut loved Hitchcock.
There are the people who overthink making mix CDs and playlists, and how that works generationally is all really interesting to me.
Friends of friends had bands in college or in their early 20s and had a moment where they had some kind of interest from a record label or manager. It's always interesting how people handle those decisions and those moments.
There's always some generational-guys-hanging-out movie that is made every few years, I think, and some of them are great.
I've always liked working with friends or, you know, people I have outside relationships with.
