Noah Baumbach
Noah Baumbach (born September 3, 1969) is an American film director and screenwriter. He is known for making comedies set in New York City and his works are inspired by writer-directors such as Woody Allen and Whit Stillman. His frequent collaborators include Wes Anderson, Adam Driver, and his wife, Greta Gerwig.
Noah Baumbach
Baumbach first gained attention for his early films Kicking and Screaming (1995), and Mr. Jealousy (1997). His breakthrough film The Squid and the Whale (2005) earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He began his long time collaboration with Gerwig with Greenberg (2010), and continued with Frances Ha (2013), Mistress America (2015), White Noise (2022) and Barbie (2023).
His other films include Margot at the Wedding (2007), While We're Young (2014), and The Meyerowitz Stories (2017). His film Marriage Story (2019) earned an Academy Award for Best Picture nomination and Baumbach's second Best Original Screenplay nomination. For the film Barbie (2023), which he co-wrote with his wife Greta Gerwig, he received his third screenplay nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 96th Academy Awards. He is also known for co-writing with Wes Anderson on The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) and Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009).
Early life and education[edit]
Baumbach was born on September 3, 1969,[1] in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.[2] His father, Jonathan Baumbach, was an author of experimental fiction and the co-founder of the publishing house Fiction Collective, taught at Stanford University and Brooklyn College, and was a film critic for Partisan Review.[2][3] His mother, Georgia Brown, was a film critic for The Village Voice who also wrote fiction.[2] His father was Jewish; his mother is Protestant.[4][5] His parents divorced during his adolescence, which served as inspiration for his 2005 film The Squid and the Whale.[2] Baumbach has three siblings, two of whom are from a previous marriage of his father's.[3]
Baumbach grew up in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and from a young age he was determined to become a professional filmmaker.[2][6] Films that influenced Baumbach include The Jerk, Animal House, Heaven Can Wait, The World According To Garp, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.[7]
He graduated from Brooklyn's Midwood High School in 1987 and received his BA in English from Vassar College in 1991.[2][8] While at Vassar, he and fellow future filmmaker, Jason Blum, were roommates (Blum later produced Baumbach's first film, Kicking and Screaming in 1995).[9][10] Soon after, he briefly worked as a messenger at The New Yorker.[2]
Career[edit]
1990s[edit]
Baumbach made his writing and directing debut in 1995 with Kicking and Screaming, a comedy about four young men who graduate from college and refuse to move on with their lives. The film starred Josh Hamilton, Chris Eigeman, and Carlos Jacott and premiered in 1995 at the New York Film Festival. In an interview with The A.V. Club, Baumbach said of his influences on the film, "I really responded to the kind of ensemble feeling of Metropolitan, I was also thinking a lot about Diner, which was another great ensemble "friends" comedy."[11] Baumbach was chosen as one of Newsweek's "Ten New Faces of 1996". Roger Ebert praised the film's "good eye and a terrific ear; the dialogue by writer-director Noah Baumbach is not simply accurate... but a distillation of reality – elevating aimless brainy small-talk into a statement."[12] Reviews often mentioned the thin and meandering plot, but most noted this as a facet of the characters' life stage. Janet Maslin of The New York Times stated, "Kicking and Screaming occupies its postage-stamp size terrain with confident comic style."[13]
In 1997, he wrote and directed Mr. Jealousy, a film about a young writer so jealous about his girlfriend that he sneaks into the group therapy sessions of her ex-boyfriend to discover what kind of relationship they had. He then co-wrote (under the name Jesse Carter) and directed (under the name Ernie Fusco) the New York-set comedy of manners Highball. Baumbach disowned the film according to a 2005 interview in The A.V. Club, the director stated,
Influences[edit]
Baumbach noted that comedian and filmmaker Woody Allen was "an obvious influence", stating, "He was the single biggest pop culture influence on me".[46] He has cited the films Manhattan, Zelig, and Broadway Danny Rose as influences on his work.[47]
He has also cited Ernst Lubitsch, Max Ophüls, Jean Renoir, Robert Altman, Peter Bogdanovich, Spike Lee, Whit Stillman, Steven Spielberg, as well as the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s, and the films of the French New Wave as influences.[48][49][50] His favorite film of all time is E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.[51]
Baumbach is a fan of the "beautiful" music of electronic acts New Order and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), and sought to "do something that evoked" those bands on the soundtrack of Mistress America (2015).[52][53] He has also cited David Bowie and Paul McCartney, and the film scores of Tangerine Dream and Georges Delerue, as important to him.[52]
Personal life[edit]
Baumbach met actress Jennifer Jason Leigh in 2001, while she was starring on Broadway in Proof. The couple married on September 2, 2005. They have a son, Rohmer, who was named after French director Éric Rohmer.[54] Leigh filed for divorce from Baumbach on November 15, 2010, in Los Angeles, citing irreconcilable differences. The divorce was finalized in September 2013.[55]
Baumbach's romantic and creative collaboration with actress, writer, and director Greta Gerwig began in late 2011, after they met during the production of Greenberg.[56][57] They have two sons, born March 2019 and February 2023.[58][59][60] Twelve years into their relationship, Baumbach and Gerwig got married at New York City Hall in December 2023.[61]
Baumbach's brother Nico is a film theorist and associate professor at Columbia University's Center for Comparative Media.[62][63]