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Press conference with director\u00a0Noah Baumbach, cast members Greta Gerwig, Raffey Cassidy, May Nivola, Sam Nivola, composer Danny Elfman, and songwriter James Murphy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q: Noah, you\u2019re known as a writer-director. You wrote or co-write all your films, it\u2019s always been original material. This is your first adaptation \u2014 not just any old adaptation, but a book, \u201cWhite Noise\u201d by Don Delillo. It\u2019s also a book that\u2019s been called \u201cun-filmable.\u201d What was it about \u201cWhite Noise\u201d that suggested itself to you as a film? What was it about the book that made you want to see it as a film?<\/strong><\/p>\n

NB: I think a lot of it was the timing of it because the book had occupied a huge part of my consciousness from having read it when I was a teenager. I hadn\u2019t read a Don Delillo book for years. I casually started reading it again at the end of 2019, beginning of 2020. I found myself finishing it as the pandemic arrived. It was also the first time in my career up to this point that I didn\u2019t have anything that I necessarily felt alive enough that I wanted to do. So I set out to do it as an exercise because, on finishing the book, I felt like this represents how I feel right now. It would have been true with or without the pandemic but that certainly put a finer point on it. I set out to do it almost to occupy my mind. Then I started showing pages to Greta and she was encouraging. I got deeper into it and I felt, \u201cWell, let\u2019s try this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q: Did it feel like a different process for you, working with Delillo\u2019s text and language? There\u2019s something about the prose of the book and dialogue. Looking at the reviews of the book when it came out, especially the review by Saul Urich \u2014 who wrote \u201cThe Warriors\u201d \u2014 he commented specifically on the dialogue. He said that there was something heightened about it, \u201cOn close examination, you realize that no one talks like this and yet everyone does.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

NB: I think that\u2019s a great way to put it. It\u2019s different, because dialogue is a big part of my scripts and it\u2019s often how I find the movie. I often write dialogue to discover the characters and story The rhythms of it is something that I pay close attention to when I\u2019m shooting, and the actors. So it was a new thing using Delillo\u2019s dialogue, but it felt very familiar to me. In some ways, it wasn\u2019t different because my original dialogue is also very stylized. But when we make the movies, part of the design of it is that it feels naturalistic. But, if you break it down, it\u2019s almost the opposite of what you say about Delillo\u2019s words. It\u2019s clearly artificial but if you have these actors do it, it can create its own recognizability, its own naturalism, in this heightened world. I felt like I had to figure out a way to create a kind of cinematic analog to what Delillo did in a literary way. I wanted the movie to have its own version of this elevated tone \u2014 this real-but-not-real feeling that I had \u2014 and that I think most people have when they read a book.<\/p>\n

Q: Let\u2019s hear the actors talk about this process of turning these characters that, in the book, are a bit abstract, but [have to become] flesh and blood characters. It\u2019s quite faithful that you use a lot of Delillo\u2019s dialogue in your screenplay. Greta, what do you think about this process?<\/strong><\/p>\n

GG: The relationship a reader has to a book is very different than, obviously, an actor has to text. But even though there is something heightened and surreal, and sort of floating above the Earth about the entire world he builds, which feels adjacent to our world but is not exactly our world. There\u2019s also something about it that very much makes you feel like you want to speak the words out loud while you\u2019re reading it. While Noah was reading it, he kept saying,\u00a0 \u201cListen to this\u201d and then he\u2019d read it out loud. He had me re-read it and then I was like, \u201cWait, wait, no, listen to this.\u201d There\u2019s something about this book, too, that everybody\u2019s got their favorite lines and favorite parts and their favorite thing they want to tell you about it. They\u2019re sort of mad if you didn\u2019t use the whole thing. And you\u2019re like, \u201cWell, it\u2019s a film, that\u2019s a book. It would be impossible to fit every smart, amazing thing Delillo wrote into [the movie] because it\u2019s on every page you\u2019re turning. I write in books, underlining everything.<\/p>\n

But the question of how do you make that psychologically real, it\u2019s tricky. It\u2019s not quite Brechtian. You have to inhabit it as a person, but it\u2019s also operating at a different level. What was really helpful in that was getting to rehearse with all of us. We got a month of rehearsal, which is extremely rare. So me, Adam, the kids, Don \u2014 we all got to be together working on these scenes in the location. As soon as it\u2019s embodied, it stops being esoteric and so heady. It just starts being lived in.<\/p>\n

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Q: Noah, in casting this, how did you put together this family, this cradle of misinformation?<\/strong><\/p>\n

NB: Greta cast herself in it while I was writing it. And I agreed right away. I\u2019ve worked with Adam a lot and had been thinking already, talking to him about maybe doing something. I sent him the book, and I said, \u201cSee if this feels like something you could do or would want to do.\u201d He got very excited about it. While working on it, I knew Greta and Adam, and that was compelling to me because generally in my films, I work with actors who know what they\u2019re feeling or what they\u2019re thinking about. I want them to play the parts generally as close to themselves as they can. In this case, their performances felt like the right thing. I felt like they should be, \u201cyou but not you.\u201d Casting someone like Adam maybe you wouldn\u2019t think of right away. But I felt that was an exciting thing.<\/p>\n

And Greta with the hair, the important hair. After that, I knew the kids were going to be such a big part of it, so that was just auditioning. I worked with Doug Abel, the casting director who I\u2019ve worked with for years. We\u2019ve cast a lot of kids over the years, but it\u2019s always daunting. I got very lucky, they were wonderful. Two of them actually lived together or were related, which was a happy accident. Raffi auditioned from England and was fantastic, and I\u2019d seen him in a couple of things.<\/p>\n

It becomes then a process where you had them read and read and read, and read with different people. And this was the pandemic, so most of it was all over Zoom, really. That\u2019s always something: if you can\u2019t find the kids, you know you can\u2019t make the movie, but you don\u2019t want to admit that while you\u2019re doing it.<\/p>\n

Q: Raffey, Greta was talking about the rehearsal period that was important for the shoot. There are these chaotic family scenes, filled with lots of crosstalk, especially in the kitchen and car. What was your experience working with those scenes?<\/strong><\/p>\n

RC: We all had such a great experience with the rehearsal process even before we did a month of rehearsing together. Me, Sam and May worked with Noah going through all the lines together and being so comfortable. Then we went our separate ways and sat on those lines during it. And when it came to rehearsing, I so vividly remember doing the kitchen scene, which almost became like a dance. Everyone knew their positions, it was rehearsed, and then when it actually came to the day, we knew what we were doing.<\/p>\n

SN: We also had an awesome choreographer named David Newman, who really made it all feel like a dance, in a certain sense, which I think worked perfectly. Every little spin was carefully thought out. It made it a lot easier to think about what you were trying to do in your head. You could be settled in your external environment.<\/p>\n

MN: Like what Greta was saying [about] the rehearsal, [it was] like being with your new family and having that experience with them and rehearse with them for so long. It\u2019s like you get to love them and know them, and it really feels like your actual family. I think with Sam and Raffey \u2014 I\u2019ve known him all my life \u2014 but I got closer with him than I\u2019ve ever been. So that was really nice. And with Raffey \u2014 she\u2019s lovely to be with and be able to have that experience. It made us closer and better actors when we were playing the roles of siblings.<\/p>\n

NB: My suggestion to them was that they were like a radio that was turned on at the beginning of the movie and then they just talked the whole movie. Whether we see them or not, they\u2019re still talking, and then when it\u2019s over [they] turn it off.<\/p>\n

Q: And this is the first time you\u2019re working with Danny Elfman?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

NB: It is, yeah. But not the last.<\/p>\n

Q: The score plays a big role in how the film orchestrates its tonal shifts. What did you have in mind, what reference point, and say something about your collaboration?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

DE: Well, from my side, it was really exciting because there\u2019s no genre in this film and to have a film that has no genre tells you that the type of music you should write is [for] pure joy. Of course, working with Noah, everything was fun and pleasurable. He has ideas, and nothing\u2019s more enjoyable for me than just trying things. We first met by Zoom, and he was already like, \u201cCan you start on some music right away?\u201d I said, \u201cWell, I\u2019m in the middle of this Doctor Strange movie \u2014 but okay.\u201d I just wrote some stuff blind and sent it to him. The next thing I know, he\u2019s cutting my music into the movie in ways that I hadn\u2019t even thought of. Then we got more and more into trying things.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve worked on a hundred and 10 films now, I think, and this definitely is one of the most enjoyable. There\u2019s no moment in the film that are dropping into a scene in the film that wasn\u2019t a pleasure to work on. There wasn\u2019t these struggle sessions of \u201cOmigod, how am I going to get through this section?\u201d The chemistry of everybody is so wonderful that no matter where I dropped in on the film, it was pleasureful. Noah would feed me ideas, and we would play it up and bounce things, \u201ctry this\u201d or \u201ctry something completely different.\u201d What\u2019s more enjoyable than that? I mean, for me. It may have been horrible for Noah.<\/p>\n

NB: No, it was fantastic. Even our first conversation \u2014 I would talk about the movie and what I thought the themes were \u2014 even non-musical themes. I thought in broad terms that the first section was, in a sense, the systems and strategies that we\u2019ve created for ourselves to keep death at bay or to keep this illusion of immortality going. The second section is, \u201chere comes death to our door\u201d and it\u2019s real. But we don\u2019t know how to acknowledge its reality because we only know it from movies, and from a distance.<\/p>\n

And the third section is, \u201cOkay, now you\u2019ve seen it, what are you going to do?\u201d Do you go back to the same strategies? Can you? Can you do those things? Hold up under this with this new knowledge? I would basically say something like this to Danny, and then I would hear silence. Then Danny would come back on the phone and say \u201cI\u2019m sorry, I just had an idea and I didn\u2019t want to lose it. So I went and started writing down some stuff and recording a little bit of music while you were talking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then I would repeat myself. But he was amazing. He was so alive with ideas all the time and that was the whole process. I actually went to his studio in L.A., and even though we were still editing \u2014 the editor Matt Hanum and I \u2014 we basically set up shop without asking him, while he was there, and he would come, record and play around with things. Then he would come and knock on the glass. I would come out and we\u2019d listen, talk, and we\u2019d go back. His music would influence the cut, the cut would influence the music. It was really an ideal, wonderful situation.<\/p>\n

DE: It\u2019s the first time, for me, working like that too, and I loved it. Everything was instant, the response was instant. I guess that\u2019s the kind of thing that maybe an actor has that experience, going through dialogue with the director. But as a composer, you don\u2019t get that kind of quick, \u201ctry something, play it, try something else.\u201d So it was new for me, too, but it was great. I hope we do it again sometime.<\/p>\n

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Q: There is a Frances Ha moment, and the Sondheim songs and \u201cMarriage Story.\u201d Can you say a bit about your decision to end this way? This is something that has no corollary in the book. You\u2019re just devising this musical fantasia to close the film. Can you talk about working with James?<\/strong><\/p>\n

NB: Yeah, in the writing of it, when I arrived at the end, I think. It\u2019s such a literate book and literate script and movie because of the source material. I felt that the movie had given me permission to do something that felt non-verbal, a kind of pure cinema, and be something that was visceral, pleasurable and exciting \u2014 it\u2019s a way to celebrate both life and death at the same time.<\/p>\n

I had worked with the choreographer David Newman\u00a0 \u2014 who, as Sam said, worked with us throughout the whole movie. He worked on \u201cMarriage Story\u201d with me as well. So I went to him, and then to James [Murphy]. James had lived in the \u201880s, and made movies in the \u201880s. If I had heard any of the music he made in the \u201880s, I was like basically, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you write the song that you would have written then?\u201d I worked with him before and we\u2019d become quite good friends since \u201cGreenberg\u201d when we first worked together. So I had this idea, why don\u2019t you write a joyous song about death?<\/p>\n

Q: You talked about looking for cinematic analogs to Delillo\u2019s language. The idea of \u201cwhite noise\u201d comes across differently in cinema than on the page. Can you speak more broadly about that, about cinematic expressions of the idea of white noise?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

NB: I thought a lot about it. In a sense, a lot of what is described in the book is visual, oral and sensorial. Those are things a movie can do that a book can\u2019t do. So I thought, why is this un-filmable? This is really easy to do. I thought a lot about [how] this goes to the way we use dialogue, so we miked everybody. I thought about Robert Altman movies and this is one influence in that way of miking everybody and having everybody speak at once. But also playing with focus so that when the audience is watching, they can sit back and let it all just be noise, or they can go in and we\u2019re helping them out but they\u2019ll start hearing what they need to hear if they want.<\/p>\n

And we shot anamorphic \u2014 35 millimeter anamorphic, which, of course, creates a very specific frame and aspect ratio so that you can see many things at once. If you do a closeup of a face, it\u2019s very powerful. But you can also pack the frame and do things right and left. There\u2019s so much you can do.<\/p>\n

I also love the movement [with] anamorphic. If you move when you\u2019re moving the camera anamorphically, you can pick things up in the corner, and a person can come in this way, but they\u2019re picked up much earlier than they would be normally. It\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve worked that way, and I really enjoyed it but it\u2019s challenging too.<\/p>\n

I also thought a lot about visual white noise in a way, of how the supermarket is an obvious example of that and how it\u2019s both. If you see it from above as we do, it\u2019s color, and just a mass of information in color, but if you\u2019re down in the aisle and you\u2019re looking for that very specific thing or reading the ingredients on a package, you\u2019re all the way down in that moment. We did that throughout the movie, even in ways like in the barracks.<\/p>\n

I was influenced by the scene in \u201cNotorious\u201d \u2014 the Alfred Hitchcock movie \u2014 where it\u2019s a wide shot of a party and an establishing shot, but the camera goes all the way down, down, down, down, to Ingrid Bergman holding [something]. It goes down to her hand, and becomes a closeup of a key in her hand. It\u2019s so much story in one shot. But it also [goes from] the broad to the specific.<\/p>\n

I thought, well of course, this movie is about that in so many different ways. You have the country, the individuals in the country, this family in the country \u2014 it keeps going down. So that shot at the barracks is a wide shot of people going to bed and things, and it goes down, and by the end of it, we\u2019re at the pill in Babette\u2019s hand. That was a guiding principle and those were cinematic ideas I had that were influenced by, not specific scenes necessarily in the book, but concepts and ideas that Delillo put out there.<\/p>\n

Q: The costumes also look both real and unreal. You worked with the wonderful Anne Roth. Could you talk about that?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

NB: I\u2019ve worked with Ann a few times, an amazing friend, and collaborator. I love working with Ann. Ann understood immediately, exactly, that real and unreal thing. With production designer Jess Goncher, it was the same thing. We talked about an authenticity to the period, but not any specific year or that it was to keep things both with color and style, just to keep everybody slightly above the ground.<\/p>\n

Ann is an amazing costume designer. She is a collaborator in the way that she gives you everything \u2014 she helps me direct. Actors will go in for fittings and come out suddenly knowing so much more about who they are. I\u2019ll say something in the line of direction and an actor will say to me, \u201cWell, Ann thought maybe\u2026\u201d and [I\u2019ll go] \u201cWell, Ann knows best, let\u2019s just go with what Ann says.\u201d No but, I feel lucky to have worked with her.<\/p>\n

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Q: How did you conceive the ending, the dance number in the supermarket? The music is fantastic. But the scene is not in the novel.<\/strong><\/p>\n

NB: When I\u2019m directing movies, I\u2019m always interested in how often the story, the mood, or however the movie progresses, that it gives you permission to do something that was unavailable to you at an earlier point in the movie. I\u2019m always trying to be aware of that as a director and writer. In \u201cMarriage Story,\u201d when Adam sings \u201cBeing Alive,\u201d that\u2019s something the character couldn\u2019t have done earlier. It\u2019s something the movie couldn\u2019t have done earlier. The camera moves differently in the moment. It\u2019s simple to push it. But it moves differently in that moment than it moves at any other point in the movie.<\/p>\n

I felt similarly about this, and this movie has so many things going on in it that I felt like we were given permission all the time to try something new to do, to move to another place. It has so many genre elements baked into it, too. I always wanted to be aware of what was available to me genre-wise. Him going to the motel, that we\u2019re in a kind of \u201880s noir movie now. It\u2019s something Alan Parker or Adrian Lyne would have done brilliantly. I thought well, maybe we can also be a musical, and the movie has allowed us that \u2014 that was a big part of it. Part of it, too, is intuition in the moment \u2014 a lot of it is \u2014 and then later you define it. But that\u2019s how I would define it now.<\/p>\n

Q: How did you choose which cultural parodies from the book to include and not include?<\/strong><\/p>\n

NB: Joel and Ethan Coen have a great quote when asked how they adapt other material. Joel says, \u201cI hold the book open and Ethan types.\u201d I think in the beginning, when you are adapting a book, everything is possible and you\u2019re going to use all of it.<\/p>\n

With this book in particular, as I\u2019d go through it, I\u2019d be like, \u201cI\u2019ve got to include that, and we have to do that.\u201d There are many great moments in the book. When I would go back to the book sometimes I\u2019d be like, \u201cOh, wow, yeah, I could have used that\u201d or \u201cwell, no\u201d or \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d I must have had a reason at the time. There are things I shot that I ended up taking out as well. The movie becomes its own thing, and it has different needs and wants than a novel does, obviously. It\u2019s not even like, \u201cOh, I\u2019m not going to use that, but I\u2019m going to use that.\u201d It became what is going to help me tell the story as I see the story in the movie, and I followed that.<\/p>\n

Q: Was it difficult to shoot and score the action-oriented scenes?<\/strong><\/p>\n

NB: There were definitely more people in this movie than in many of my movies combined. There are things that you want to be attuned to, but it\u2019s really the storytelling. It\u2019s shooting the family in the kitchen, or in evacuating the Boy Scout camp. Essentially, you\u2019re following similar principles and guidelines, which is to be true to the scene, get them from A to B, and understand how you\u2019re going to cut it later so that you have what you feel you need.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t feel different to me. I\u2019m working with stunts in a way that I haven\u2019t before. We also did everything practically as much as we could. So the train crash, the evacuation, the creek, the car in the creek \u2014 we did those things. Even the cloud has a lot of cloud tank stuff in it, so it\u2019s got real cloud in it. Partly it\u2019s because I wanted to be true to the period in a certain way, but also because I find that way of doing it both fun and challenging. But from the aesthetic perspective, I find it more pleasing. I\u2019m more afraid looking at the Creature from the Black Lagoon than I am of a digital monster. I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s a common thing.<\/p>\n

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Q: How did your own fear of death influence your character, your direction, your music, if that\u2019s something you suffer from?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

DE: The first thing Noah said to me when we met on the phone was, \u201cThis movie is made for you, Danny. It\u2019s all about death and fear of death.\u201d And he was right. It was like, \u201cOmigod, that\u2019s so up my alley.\u201d So he had me nailed with that line right there. It\u2019s all I needed to know.<\/p>\n

Q: No one else is afraid of death? How lovely.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

GG: I\u2019m super-scared of it. There\u2019s so much heightened-ness in the movie. And the heightened-ness of the book. It\u2019s so smart that to explain it, you end up sounding like a stoned teenager, because you\u2019re like, \u201cNo no no, it\u2019s doing two things.\u201d It chronicles all the ways we distract ourselves. And in that, it allows us to delight in it as well. So you are delighted by the distractions that have already been given to you, but he\u2019s pointing out that there\u2019s multiple mirrors happening. In the same way, academia flattens everything.<\/p>\n

Commercials flatten everything. News, media \u2014 it\u2019s like you have a commercial for M&Ms right after you\u2019ve got plane crash footage, and that\u2019s the same value and it comes through as the same thing. You\u2019ve got Elvis and Hitler and it\u2019s all the same. And there\u2019s a way in which we welcome the flattening to our own psyches because we don\u2019t want to know that we\u2019re on a trajectory that goes in one direction [gestures down]. So we think, \u201cOh, that\u2019s good. Maybe we\u2019re all flat.\u201d To play the parts is to steep yourself in distraction and let the fear poke through.<\/p>\n

NB: I think we want to look and feel that way, and it can be beautiful. Even if we know what the supermarket essentially is designed to do to us and for us, it also looks amazing, and it\u2019s beautiful. I wanted to celebrate it as well.<\/p>\n

GG: Also the way we were talking about the dance and saying we wanted to make something that was a celebration of life and death. We were talking about it like, \u201cWell, that\u2019s the same thing. If you\u2019re celebrating all that is, then you\u2019re celebrating all that will end. You inherently are, because it\u2019s going to. Everything about having a heightened choreographed dance in the supermarket \u2014 as if what you do in the supermarket anyway isn\u2019t a codified dance that we\u2019ve all agreed on the rules. We\u2019re already dancing. It\u2019s just that you can see that this is a dance, and the rest of the time we\u2019re pretending it\u2019s just behavior.<\/p>\n

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Check out more of Nobuhiro’s articles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here’s the trailer of the film<\/strong>.<\/p>\n