Noah Baumbach Gets Personal in Marriage Story

resentment and love. But Marriage Story puts bomb Beck on a plane with Woody Allen, Barry Levinson, and Mike Nichols. In terms of directing talent. The writing, directing, and acting come together perfectly. Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson and had A Bombeck's words with exquisite performances of a couple coming apart while parenting a young son. There have been plenty of comparisons between Bombeck's own life and his movies, especially

so with Marriage Story. Bomb Beck and actress Jennifer Jason Lee divorced soon after they had a child. But bomb Beck is quick to say his films are not autobiographical, they are personal. He admits that the process of turning Beal life into films as part of how he copes

and makes sense of things. When hard things have happened to be in my life, and I mean not only hard things, but but certainly hard things have happened in my life, there is a kind of comfort I think in my mind of sort of what would this be if we put it in a movie? Um, I think, uh something, Um, did you get to know did you know Mike Nichols much? I mean, you work with him, but they worked with him and kept in touch with them.

You're so good a working girl though, you know with he said when he I met him after Squid in the Whale, and he said it reminded me of why I got into the movie business in the first place, which is revenge. And I thought, I know what he means though, because again it's not revenge on a person. It's almost like revenge on experience or or And from that, with that movie, it was kind of childhood. It was like a way for me to stand up from my younger self as an adult now who had a voice

that that child didn't have. And I think I do think of that sometimes in my life, not necessarily well I'm going through it, but sort of maybe soon after. If of that, there's a kind of soothing way of like what would that be, whether or not it ever becomes a scene in a movie or not. Um, I've definitely had that in Like hospital situations were the movie

I made before the Myerwitz stories. Um, my father had been in the hospital for a long time, and I you're close to your dad, I was, yeah, And I mean, if I'm imagine you've spent some time in hospitals, it's sort of you know, it's such a I mean not unlike the divorce system. It's like the ways you learn

to function only work in that environment. They don't have any practical application outside of that environment, you know, like how you work with a nurse or a doctor and then the changing nurse and the knack doctors going on vacation. And I didn't make a movie about it for many years later, but I felt like, well, that was a certain kind of reappropriating that situation and turning it into

something else. One of the things, among many things, I'm reminded of when I saw your film, because I wrote a book about my divorce, not necessarily because I changed a lot of details, and I assigned a lot of stories and ideas to fictitious characters that I made up in in fictional oral histories, because I don't want to say too much about specific people. But if your films are are are personal but not auto biographical, I'm assuming that when you do these films like Squid the Whale

in Marriage Story, there's a lot you leave out. Uh. Is that a process for you of what stays in

and what doesn't go in? Yeah? It is. And and with marriage Story, a lot of it was what I discovered in writing it, or once I had a draft of it, was that it worked best when I stayed on the process and the story of the divorce itself, because all the life stuff, as as in your book you you write about this wonderfully too, is that the life stuff doesn't stop for you to get divorce, even though the divorce takes over your life and kind of you gotta go to work. Yeah, you have to go

to work. You still have to be a parent, and you have to be a parent, even if it's difficult to be with your kid. You're you're now with your kid and you're distracted by the divorce. And so I felt like I I just have to acknowledge that and tell that story and all of those life moments will

be there, because that is the movie too. And it was these other scenes that were more sort of be set piece scenes that were kind of just taking and there were just other things they were and and so I that was the stuff I really stripped away in the script stage from marriage story. You wrote it yourself? The screen put yeah, completely. Yeah. When you when you write something, do you have people who counsel you that you respect and you hand them drafts and they you

get notes from them and I guess from them many. Yeah. I show Greta Gerwig, who I lived with, um uh everything, and she also is a sounding board even early on when I'm you're married, we're not technically we have a child? Yes, so we so you have your current love of your life and your child. She's the sounding board for the movie about your divorce from your predum kidding, um, well, but but just anything we'll say, any any ideas across

the board, across the board. And I have friends, uh, director friends, writer friends who I who I might uh certainly that I'll show early drafts to I bring my editor Jen lame in always from early drafts because my idea is that we should almost cut the script the way we're going to cut the final movie. So I um involved, Yeah, so like, let's shoot what we think we're really going to use And why do you think you do that as opposed to miss Some people don't

do that, most don't do that. Well. I feel like for me, time is so important. Uh. I mean it's important for every director, I imagine, but I want to have time with these scenes and time for the actors

and be able. I like to do a lot of takes and I want to I want to be able to explore, not totally unlike you might in a play or something, you know, be able to, you know, get as much out of these scenes as we can get and not feel like, oh I wish we want to know in your heart really matters as opposed to yeah. And I find also when I'm working with actors who I love, who really when it's really clicking, they're always

giving me ideas while we're doing it. A lot of my direction comes from things they do in a scene that gives me an idea of how we could push the scene in that direction. So I don't want to shoot scenes or things that I'm not going to use if I can avoid it. I mean, there's always stuff you cut, but if if I can get the script is close to what I think the movie is going to be, I feel like all the better in the movie is an amazing movie. It's an amazing movie. You

don't you know? You're an enormously talented director, You're a enormously talented writer, and you also happen to get the two actors that would be, in my mind, everyone's dream to do a drama like that. I mean, he's at the top of his game. Everybody the things, he's one of the five most talented men alive today. And her the same thing. She's almost on another planet in terms of her range and things she's done. I'm wondering, what's

the path to them with you? Is it a formal process through representation or is it like you're having dinner with Barry Levinson and he says, I can call Adam. You know what was it? Is it? Well, this is my fourth movie with Adam, so I because I knew Madam, I knew Adam, I cast Adam in frances hat Off an audition and it was before Girls had come out, so I hadn't seen him in anything. He just came in and I and so I've had a relationship with him since then, and um, so it for us and

we become friends. And what was it about him that, if you can, well, he Adam described acting as benign rebellion once it was we were doing an interview together and he said it, and I just it was one of the things where you're doing press, you're all saying the same things over and over, and then he suddenly said this. I hadn't heard this before, and I thought, what a what an interesting, great way to describe what an actor does, and also very much what he does,

which I do find. He's both in serving the material, the movie, the story always, but he's always looking for true moments, spontaneous things that activate him. And so he is pushing constantly, and so he'll and and he'll say things to me like I think, I'm not going to cross my legs in this take, And I know he has a reason because it's going to change something for him that might have great ripple effects for the scene. I may not even know why or hadn't even thought

about the fact that he was crossing his legs. I was maybe thinking or watching something else. And that's he's very aware and unaware at the same time. It's that conscious unconscious thing that actors do, and it's my favorite way to work. He's also he is. He loves rehearsing, he loves doing many takes. He knows every bit of dialogue down to the ellipse, and he's thought about it and he has the the the hesitation as it's scripted. He has found his way into it. I mean, it's

it's um. It really is that thing for I have said this, but someone said about poetry that it it gives you your own thoughts back with added majesty. And I find he gives me back my words and and my have to make every film with him, then yeah, I know, well I would like to. I mean, he's really special. He's also um. He also is you know, he's like you know, he's like this. He can talk.

We we talk about movies in general. It's not all about just his performance or He's always very interested in what the story is going to be, what the movie as a whole. It's not it's not just about you know, he's a real collaborator in in the bigger sense too. I love that. But what's it like to approach someone you've known him for a while now and you are friends with him, to approach him as things with him are at the boiling point now in terms of his career.

Is it hard to get him to do you have the kind of relationship where he turns to the rest of the world and says, I'm talking to Noah on the phone and he goes in your direction. Or is tough to find a window in his this schedule? Well, he's things have to be planned now. He's more carefully, but he will make the time because it's something he feels strongly. And what about her? How did you approach her? She I had known a little bit just over the years.

We had almost done a thing together, probably about ten years ago or something, so I and I always sort of felt like, at some point I'm gonna I'll have something I feel is right for her, and Adam and I talked about it. This was even before the script was really written. We talked about, well, who would be the right person, you know, for this movie? And she was both of our first idea. So I reached out

to her. I just emailed her and and uh, and said I think maybe I have something we could do together. And we met for lunch and then she arrived and said, sorry, I'm late. I was on the phone with my lawyer. I'm going through a divorce, and I thought Jesus, and so I thought, well, then this is either going to be a great or terrible disaster. To her credit, it was. It was great. She she went in that direction. She just saw it as a way too, you know, to

um to take it on. Yeah, her career is so varied. I mean, she can she can convey innocence and a sweetness and a vulnerability and and uh and uh and and I kind of I don't want to I don't know what the word is, kind of when she did onto this kind of a deadness, kind of an emotional neutrality that's like like she's from another planet. You know, there's an essence to her that she can manipulate. And on screen, she she's one of the few actors that

I know that comes across a completely different people. When she performed yeah, well there's there's a thing scripted. The thing that was in the script Um, which I wrote thinking about her because she's an actor. In the beginning there, it's the closing night of their theater company and and their home, and things are tense, and he can't help but give her a note even though she's never gonna play this part again, He's going to give her a note on the on the on the final performance, and

she says that she has trouble crying on stage. You know that What follows is she turns into sobbing in life, in the movie, in life, and I felt she could both convey the sort of that that that moment of that sort of defensive moment of of and then turn and just completely open up, you know, within it's it's it's you know, it is literally in a turn, she turns and starts crying, and that's, you know something Having her in mind while I'm writing gives you the idea

for something like that. You grew up in Brooklyn out and your parents got divorced when you were how old? I was, uh fourteen when they when they finally my father finally moved out. And what did your father do for a living? He was a writer, He was a teacher in Brooklyn College, and he teached. He he ran the creative writing program for a PhD program at Brooklyn College, and then he also was a He was a writer, a novelist and short story writer. UM, but also did

film criticism. It was he was sort of that era where you kind of did all that, you know, like there was that kind of intellectual life where you did many things. There was like a mom was a film critic as well. My mom became a film critic. She was a film critic I should, but but became for me. It was later in my life. It was it was

when I was really when I went to college. Um. She also had written fiction and had some stories in The New Yorker and had also taught And I mean the way my brother and I always described it as that art in our family was kind of like religion. It was the highest, yeah, and the this sort of thing to aim for now when you were growing up.

Because I asked practically everyone who works in film and television and beyond, you know, or if they're in music, I asked him regarding their early years in terms of music appreciation, what was film and television in your childhood? What was that like? Film was a big My parents really loved movies, so they took me to a lot of movies. Do you want to go see Sorrow in the Pity when you were eight years? Well? Kind of, uh, but they also were into what I was into. Also.

My father particularly made a real effort to go to you know, I was born in sixty nine, so sort of the the early eighties is when I was started like really kind of branching out in terms of movies. And uh, he would go with me really to anything. I mean, we would just go to movies and yeah, and what does it matter? Yeah, if it sucks, then

we learned that. We learned that, and we could and we would have you know, I remember seeing all these Richard because you know, I love Richard Pryor, and we'd go to all these just terrible Richard Pryor movies and then he's clearly doing for paycheck. Silver Streak. Silver Streak

was a pretty good one. But but I remember this one called some kind of Hero with Margot Kidder, which is I remember we were both so baffled, we couldn't believe how bad it was, and um, but that was kind of almost as good as and yeah, exactly, and just going and sitting and your religion. It was in a sense, and he you know, and big he was of you know, of the mind that we don't spend the extra money on the concession. So it really was just the movie. We Where did he grow up? Where

is he from? He's from Brooklyn to he um. His father was a painter, and he grew up in Brooklyn. He went to Brooklyn College. He went to New you Trick High School, and then he went to Brooklyn College. A painter like the painting hanging on the wall or the wall it's self. Few paint like the one hanging on the wall. And artist an artist. Ye, and your mother My mother was her whole family from the South.

Her name is Georgia Brown. She was named after Georgia, the place and h Her father worked for Coca Cola, so they traveled a lot. Uh. And when I was older, her parents were living in Seattle, but they had all started in the South. Did you know, I mean, I'm from things. I've read them. Under the oppression, you knew pretty early on where he were headed. I wanted it.

I wanted to make movies very badly, but I never I wasn't around anybody who made them, so I had no even though my parents were so into movies, it was our experience of movies was kind of like living in Brooklyn. We felt both sort of around where things were happening, but never it was never actually happening to us. And it was that feeling, always a feeling outside. And and I think my father felt that quite a bit.

He felt outside, he felt unrecognized as a writer, novelist, and uh, and there was always this feeling of like, not it's not happening here, it's over there. I went to Vas. What would you study film? They didn't really have much of a film program then. I mean they had a film studies program. I'd watch movies, but I was an English major. Uh, when you finished at Vaster, what did you do? I wrote a script? But I've never actually seen a script before. I was I like

printed out. I'd seen them like published, but I didn't realize like those were often just transcripts they would retype from the movie itself. And it was before any kind of like final draft or any formatting programs. So I was just I got so hung up. I'm pretty anal about these things. So I was trying to get all the tabs right on my typewriter and then on my computer, you know. And uh so I was just writing a

page of months. Yea, my whole experiences tabs and and trying to center everything and get them before they had those the screenwriting programs. It was awful. And then you're printed and realized one was off. And and I wrote what became my first movie, uh called Kicking and Screaming. How old were you Well, I guess I started writing it. I guess when I was three. Well. I first after college, I was a messenger at the New Yorker, which was my summer job. And then after I got out of college,

I guess it was potentially my job. But then I moved to Chicago because I had a lot of friends are doing improv and theater in Chicago, and I wanted to kind of just be around them, and um, he needed some laughs. I needed some laughs. Yeah, it was, and they moved to Chicago. I did improv a bit too. I liked it wasn't that different from writing in a way. It was how long were you there? I was there, Uh,

not that long under a year? Um, and then but I was writing this script and then I came back to New York and set out trying to make it. I had two friends from college, uh, Jeremy Kramer and Jason Blum Jason, yes, And we had all lived together in college, Jason and I lived together in Cargo, and then we all sort of I said, why don't we, why don't you produce this, and let's try to make it. Um, what was the budget, Well, we didn't even know what.

We still don't know. But when it ended up getting made for a million dollars, which was way more than I thought it would. But it was made in a way that was unexpected, and after it had fallen through many many times by this company Trimark, which is a video company who wanted maybe to get into sort of a Mirrormax kind of business. And yeah, and they made it for for a million dollars, which again I felt like, it's a lot of money for your first Yeah, in a way, it was too much. It was it was now.

I always think about this now, and and I've heard Jason said this too. I think now we would have just made it because you could with cameras now, the digitals cameras. Really, Yeah, I cut, I did cut on film. That was I had on kicking, screaming with the UM. I had the whole experience of cutting on film and uh, all pre digital. It was just as it turned. I just worked with a bunch of people, you know, my my production company where I was, and it's a generation

of filmmakers who really don't know anything else. They do it because they just don't know anything else. And they shot this film for I can't remember, maybe it was like twelve days, like to six to six day weeks and they shoot the film for a hundred and seventy five thousand dollars and he just got into Sundance. That's great, but it's it's it's like, you see the way the movie business now is like anything goes, you know, you just get it up there. Well, there's more opportunity now

because of that that you can do. I mean, I made frances Ha digitally with a crew of about seven people because I felt like, in a sense, it was like making a first movie I never made. And but I thought, also, why didn't I do it now with everything I know and and that I've learned, UM and use the the fact that we're kind of under the radar as uh, there would be certain limitations, but the days there would be freedoms. Well, what I did is I shot for sixty days because I because it was

so much less to shoot. It's like the film version of like if you dig down, you'll into the earth, you'll end up in China, you know, like it was. It was it was like, we'll actually have more freedom in certain ways because nobody knows we're doing this and we're so small and um and we shot on consumer digital camera. We shot on the five D. It was black and white. And it was great. I mean and and you know it was. And my feeling was, I'm not going to do this to make it like a

B side. I'm gonna do this because it's I think this is the best thing for this movie and will be the best version of this movie lower bomb Beck co wrote Francis ha with his partner Greta Gerwig. She also start in the movie. Bomb Beck is known for wanting a lot of takes from his actors. To hear from one of those actors, take a listen to my conversation with Jeff Daniels. I gotta create. I gotta create.

You can't ever make the job. I can't once you start to understand, you're creating a character in a musical in a community theater or college or whatever. In Boom Boom, you start to go down that road, it's like the sharks. You gotta keep moving. My full conversation with Jeff Daniels is that here's the Thing, dot Org. He starred in bombs, The Squid and the Whale. More on that film coming up. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the

Thing promoting marriage story. Noah bomb Beck has been deflecting questions about his own personal life. When The Squid and the Whale came out, a story about a Brooklyn family and what happens when the parents divorced, Bombeck had to deal with the reaction of his own parents. They knew it was coming. I mean it was again because it was different. It wasn't our situations, but but there were a few of it in there. The milia was was familiar,

and they were good sports about it. I mean they I think one thing that was hard for them, which I didn't anticipate, and I was that people would assume then that things that were in the movie were true and talk to them about it as if they were true things. So I I guess I hadn't thought of it that way, that, oh, well, this will all be perceived is true in their lives from other people, So

that could be a drag. I was. I'm sure friends dinner. Yeah, like all we didn't know that was going on in the house and it's well, it wasn't really or that I didn't. Uh, I guess I didn't anticipate when I when I when I was working on it. Now, let me say, you know, your ex is one of my favorite actresses I had, like, she's one of my top three fantastic I had one of the greatest experiences of my life. I've always said that working with her, she

was just so free and inventive. Miami Blues, Yeah, I mean, I'll do that movie with her and I learned from her, which I thought to myself, I wasn't. I wasn't prepared for that when I was working back then. But what are the pitfalls for you of you of your primary of your roommate wife would have you your loved one being an actress, senior director, what would you warn other directors about that? Well, I mean in both the Jennifer and Grada they're both wonderful actors, and they're also they're

both filmmakers. I mean the Jennifer when I had met Jennifer, she just made the Anniversary Party she had directed with Alan Cumming, which is is a really great movie. They both have a kind of incredible ability of being very present, as you're saying, like free and present as actors, um, but also their storytellers. I guess in that way, you know, and um and gret as amazing director and writer and and so I guess I never thought of it so much as like director actor in that in the window

I always wondering. I always think of it in terms of, you know, how great to be if you're going to be with an actress, it's great to be with and you can't always pick them this way. One is very talented. Yeah, I found it. But an increasing number of people they just they realized, not that this was either good or bad,

It just it just occurred. Was they discovered they like directing more than acting, and the acting can sort of be less and less and less defined material to access material that is worthwhile, you know, Dustin Hoffman said to me in a meeting one so a million years ago he said to me, Alec, we're all in line. Some of us are just in a shorter line to get

that good script and that good material. Well, yeah, and I think in both cases they both have written things that they've acted in to give themselves that that opportunity. It's um uh, it's actually as you were saying that, I realized you've acted with both of them. Yeah, we did what we did. What He's a movie. But I remember I love doing them. I love Woody and I love working with him. And it was always like and what a treat to work with younger actors who I've

always so Keena. But while I still have you and want to ask you, so you know, in my life I have worked with great directors, sometimes very small roles, and you come in and they know very well what your function in the pieces. They know the whole panoply of the whole thing. And I'm not somebody who's ever been a big enough movie star in the old school way to walk in and go we need to fire Bob.

You just get rid of the director. But my point is is, when I'm sitting down with you in the earliest stages, do you think that that's one for you is to help that person to understand what you want. Yeah, I think, well, I'm often interested in how the actor first comes at it without me saying anything. I mean, because I think a lot of it is in the rhythm of the lines, and it's very dialogical musicality of the lines, and and I think that helps the actor

find it. I find usually when actors are having trouble with a scene, it's because they have the line wrong, or they've dropped a line, or they've inverted words. It falls flat, and I'll even sometimes forget what the real line is and be trying to figure it out, and then I'll look at the script and I'll realize, oh, it's inverted. Yeah, you're doing And I find uh, I find it helps them and me then to kind of hear the scene properly. There's a lot of blocking and

physical stuff that I also find can help him. It's like what Elia Kazan would say. He was a prop director, you know that they ask him, you know about how we how we directed, and he said, I just come up with a lot of good props and then the actors. I find that takes care of a lot for the actors.

Um But unless it's absolutely wrong for the story. Um, I want the actor to suggest in what they're doing, suggests life beyond this scene, so that there's in a different movie, in the Altman version or whatever we might go with that person, and that that that wouldn't be

so surprised. Yeah, because you know, particularly if you have you know, really interesting actor doing a smaller role, it's you want all that stuff, you know, And I mean it's not right for say, the evaluator who comes and watches a marriage story of the woman who comes to see observe Charlie and Henry have dinner and in his apartment. The whole idea of that is there's no life suggested

beyond that scene. You know, it's it's it's it's she's inscrutable. Um. But I wanted that from alan Alda ray Leota that I mean in a sense that you know, there they nailed. When I see Reagan, I'm gonna go, you know, ray with all the things you've done with guns and shovels and horrible things you've done to people in movies, you know, legendary movies, I go, but I think this is probably your most terrified. I mean, he reminded me so much of this. My first lawyer who I fired in my book,

Bob Kaufman. I'm going to say his name. He terrified me. We go into a conference and as I would recite my story, said, well then they she did this, and he literally, I mean that, you never saw a man seethe. He looked at his two guys. Next, I think Jesus crushed, like everything I said was like another log on the fire of his battle scene. He was gonna go and to cleave these people, you know. And i'mber saying to myself, he's I don't think I could be around this guy

too much. So I fired Ray and I hired Allan the other way with the female Alan Alda. But but the reason I say this to you is because this is something where do you see? And maybe I'm projecting or i'm or I'm I'm in laying a lot of my own personal things, like I made films. I did this film, The Edge, with Tony Hopkins and Lee Tamahori

was the director. We had David nat screenplay. I was so excited to go do this movie, and Tammahori was somebody who didn't understand really the psychologics of Mammot's writing. It was rather baroque. It was very memedy, and and whenever he'd come across something he didn't understand, he'd cut it. So he saw he was he was a key wee.

I'll do my bad dialector. He'd say, David does tend to go on a bit hit ye twenty one, althought we cut these first full speeches, and I thought to myself, well, the way that David tends to go on in these speeches is the very reason I'm here is to play the kind of weirdness these guys are in it like a weird zone. Everyone's taken something maybe and we're all weird.

And I like that. Well, we did that movie and he takes it, makes it sevent psychological thriller and thirty percent action adventure from and flips it in the cutting room. But one moment was we're there and again this was really one of the most painful moments of my life. Is I've got to sell Tony on the idea of what I think the scenes about, because he's not going to say it. He's turning into us, going, men, what do you think he's going on here? He wanted us

to direct the scene. But the point is is when I come to work with you, I want so maybe this is wrong, the nature of actors becoming so self directing. I want to come in and I want you to tell me. I want you to tell me. Do you think that that's wrong? You want the actors to tell you also what they know I want. I think that's that's what I would hope actors come in. Uh. It doesn't mean that you're not gonna have ideas, you know, it's but I think you hope they would well it

wanted to decipher what you want to do. Yes, yeah, um, but I Cada is almost like creating sort of not unlike we're saying about Rob Ryan or what we're saying about Kasan. It's like create a kind of structure around them, which is both in the dialogue and knowing your lines and and like I said, having the lines down, uh, and you know blocking that's very specific, and then then

you don't have to worry about that stuff. You can be free within those parameters, and that it actually opens you up because you're not carrying, you're not trying to figure out how to make it work, that you're going with it. It doesn't mean of course if an actor, if somebody doesn't work for an actor, you know, I don't feel I wouldn't get up on this line. I want to stay. You know that, that of course should be I mean I listened always to that because it's

I mean, you have to believe it. How much do you luxuriate in terms of composition and shooting or you differ very often to your cinematographer. How much of it that to you? And how much is that as them? Um? I mean, it's it's it is a collaboration. I mean I I the way I generally do it is I um, you know, and if it's somebody I've worked with before, we might have a shorthand and you know, sort of

going into it. But I we kind of take the script and I go through every scene together in prep storyboard. I don't I do sometimes, but I'm such a bad drawer that I it frustrates me. So I end up more shot listing um and doing little drawings and like

you know, things like like football players or things. And but but what I do is, in some ways I describe how I'm pictured the scene, and so I will give a kind of first pass on maybe he gets up here, he goes over there, this is the and and then he'll respond Robbie Ryan in the case of Meerwitz and marriage story, and he'll have his own take and say, but what if this or or he'll say that sounds right to me your um, And we'll kind of do a first pass going through the movie that way,

but I will give my first sort of interpretation visual interpretation of every scene, and then we'll do a second pass now with our notes of the whole movie and see we still agree with what we did the first time, which also will accompany then having locations and knowing now what the locations are, and things can will always change or or can change. Sometimes you find the location that matches your you know what was in your head, but often you find a location that gives you new ideas

or uh. And then then I will have him in the rehearsal with me, often even shooting it on video, so that way when we're working with the actors and and to sending the actors, that will also then. So usually by the time we're shooting, we've done at least three passes of the whole movie, a kind of visual storyboard. Do you miss film? I shot on film. I shot up through green Burg, I shot everything on film. Then Francis Mistress America and while we're young, I shot all digitally.

Marriage Story. Marriage Story is thirty. Yeah that's great. Um, you have many pots on the stove, you know, kind of other things you want to do? Or does it come at you out of nowhere? I you, I would say, up for the last sense, from squid to marriage story, I would say, I've always had there's always a thing in the queue that's just finding its way. You know, as I'm finishing a movie, I'm just starting to think about the next thing. And this is the first time

I've I've got nothing. I'm depleted. Going out on a good note, though, I'm depleted. So you want a marriage story. You've had a great career. I mean it's my tenth movie. I think that's a good way. That's a good round. I'll just keep announcing my retirement and then on retiring. But you don't have anything like but yeah, this cigarette is I actually stubbed this one out and I didn't really like the other one. So I'm going to have to two sticks together. Yes, figure it out. Yeah, noah, bomback,

whatever comes next? I'll be there. Marriage Story is in theaters and on Netflix. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the Thing.