Interview (Written): Noah Baumbach (“While We’re Young”)

An Indiewire interview with writer-director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Frances Ha) whose newest movie While We’re Young debuts in North American this weekend.

Since “Frances Ha,” you’ve directed two features. Back in the day, we’d have to wait two to three years for a new project of yours. At this rate, you’re releasing one a year.

Well, it just sort of happened that way. The whole order of these movies wasn’t planned. I had written “While We’re Young” and was thinking we were going to make it before “Frances.” Then that didn’t happen for various reasons, so then we made “Frances.” I was waiting for Ben [Stiller] to finish “Walter Mitty” to then do “While We’re Young,” so we had a window that was big enough to shoot another movie, but not big enough to finish it.

So at that point it was very deliberate. Greta [Gerwig] and I had the script and I thought, let’s do this, I’ll then make “While We’re Young,” finish it, then go back and finish “Mistress America.”

It was unusual, but I had a lot of the same crew and people working on it, so in a way it was more fluid than one might have thought.

Given that you didn’t plan to make them in that order, how did completing “Frances Ha” first inform the making of “While We’re Young”? Both kind of share a similar lightweight sensibility. They’re more comedic than your previous films.

Yeah, I don’t know if you saw “Mistress America,” but that also has a comic tone. In some ways the stories felt like this was the way they should be made. With “While We’re Young,” I really was thinking in some ways of almost a traditional comedy of marriage and remarriage. I was telling this story, not unlike screwball comedies of the 1930’s and 1940’s. There wasn’t any question in my mind that this wasn’t going to, at least in terms of the story of that marriage and that relationship, not end on a kind of hopeful note. I also felt like it just had a comic tone, so I followed that because it’s what felt right for this material.

A trailer for While We’re Young:

The movie’s website.

Declare Your Independents and go see While We’re Young.