It’s been 20 years since the release of Noah Baumbach’s first film, Kicking and Screaming. After last night’s screening of his new work, While We’re Young, at LACMA, Film Independent Curator Elvis Mitchell asked the director if he remembered the first time he showed one of his films to an audience.

Baumbach recalled an early screening of Kicking, his wry comedy of post-collegiate angst, in Washington, DC.

“I came straight from the train, and I was waiting in the lobby. [The movie] just got out, and I was standing with the man who was moderating. A woman came out and went straight to him, and she was like”—at this point Baumbach adopted the tone of an annoyed middle-aged woman—”‘Why did you make us watch that? That was the worst! It was so awful!’ And then she turned to me and said, ‘Didn’t you just think that was terrible?’”

Baumbach paused and gave an uncomfortable shrug, settling into the role of his 20-something self. “I said, ‘You know, it was alright.’” Then, switching back to a 45-year-old, he got reflective. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked about that in therapy. That I couldn’t either stand up for the movie, or even agree with her. I kind of went with some middle ground. You know, I gave it two stars.”

It’s that divide—between the 45-year-old person he is and the 25-year-old kid he wishes he could have one more chance to be—that Baumbach is negotiating in While We’re Young. In the film, Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts play Josh and Cornelia Srebnick, middle-aged New Yorkers whose humdrum routine gets a shot in the arm when they buddy up with young Brooklynites Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried).

Mitchell pointed to a trend in Baumbach’s films of people wanting to be any age other than what they are.

“That, obviously, is what Ben is doing with Adam’s character,” replied Baumbach. “He’s trying to do it better this time, but at the same time, you want to save yourself while you’re still vital.”

It was clear from last night’s conversation that part of what keeps Baumbach vital is music. He and Mitchell spent the majority of the evening on the subject.

“Some of your characters identify with music in a very specific way,” observed Mitchell. “Music is part of the way people live, rather than being something that is just played in the movie to set a mood or something.”

Baumbach agreed. For him, the characters’ taste in music is a huge part of who they are.

“There’s one way you could do it—and some directors do this brilliantly—where you just put all of your favorite music in. You don’t care that the people at the truck stop are listening to the Feelies,” Baumbach said. “I just have gotten more into letting the characters decide what music should be in the film.”

He listens to a lot of music while he writes. Many cues enter the film at the script stage and stay there through the final product. But it doesn’t always work out that way.

“Sometimes,” said Baumbach, “I have really clear ideas of the music that influences the movie, and then it’s not the music that feels right when the movie’s done.” For While We’re Young, Baumbach re-teamed with James Murphy (of LCD Soundsystem fame) who had composed the score for Greenberg. Baumbach imagined that Murphy would contribute the majority of the score for this film.

“But then when I was cutting this, I also wanted a kind of classic element,” said the director. “I wanted something more timeless, because the movie’s sort of dealing with age and time. And that’s when I tried a lot of these Vivaldi cues.” As he did with French New Wave composer Georges Delerue’s music in Frances Ha, Baumbach interweaves Vivaldi’s violin and harpsichord concertos with Murphy’s electronic ambience and lots of diegetic tunes to form what he calls a “collage score.”

In assembling the music, Baumbach found that some things improve with age.

“When they first go over to Jamie and Darby’s, [Ben Stiller’s character Josh] puts on Lionel Ritchie’s ‘All Night Long.’ I’d heard that song again a couple years ago. People started playing it again or, I don’t know, I just became aware of it. And I hated that song when I was a kid. And then I just started feeling that this is great, this song. And it took younger people playing it for me with no associations.”

But not all things appreciate with time.

“They [Jamie and Darby] like The Goonies. And I hated The Goonies. I’m still not sure about The Goonies.”

From the way he said it, Mitchell thought that Baumbach probably was sure about The Goonies.

“It just depends when you see it,” said Baumbach, “how old you are and what’s going on. But ‘All Night Long’ is great. And I was wrong about that.”

Tom Sveen / Film Independent Blogger