Interview with Ben Stiller, Noah Baumbach and James Murphy

Recently, I was lucky enough to participate in an interview with Ben Stiller, Noah Baumbach and James Murphy, the creative team behind the new film Greenberg. We discussed how the film came to be, what the process behind the music was and how different this role is for Stiller when compared to his wider known comedies. Greenberg opens today. This is the unedited transcript.

How was the dynamic behind the scenes for all of you and were there any moments you would like to discuss?

Stiller: Well, I feel that working with Noah is a very, very special experience because he just approaches movies in a very different way than I’ve experienced before. He wrote a very specific script and I think everybody working on the movie was really dedicated to it and wanted to do the best they could because they respected the script so much. There was a lot of camaraderie. There was a feeling that we were all connected and we were doing the best we could. It was a small production so we got to rehearse for a number of weeks and hang out a little bit. All the way down to the camera people and the crew, everybody was there because they wanted to be there so it had a much warmer, more intimate feeling that all came out of the atmosphere that was set for the movie.

James, how different was it writing, instead of from an emotion to a final product, from a final product to emphasize emotion? How was that transfer for you?

Murphy: Well, the way this kind of worked wasn’t quite so much like that, but I met with Noah before shooting started. We talked a lot about music and we talked about the characters and, what Ben said, there’s a lot of human camaraderie that made it very easy to kind of talk about what the movie needed. It wasn’t any less about my emotions than anything else. There was just something you were looking at and reacting to. But we also didn’t try to make a soundtrack that necessarily always accented the emotions. For me, after seeing the first footage, it was clear the actors were doing their job amazingly well and the stuff was there. We made songs that worked like a backdrop for what’s happening and let the emotions come through from the directing and the shooting and the acting.

Obviously, this is a very different role for Ben. Noah, what made you consider Ben for a role like this and Ben, what made you take a role like this as opposed to another comedy that you’re better known for?

Baumbach: Well, I’ve always wanted somebody with a sense of humor to play this part. There is a lot of humor in it, although it’s not played for laughs. It’s more authentically portrayed. Obviously, Ben is known for bigger comedies, but he’s done a lot of different stuff, so I never really saw it so much as a different role. It just seemed like Ben was the best person to play this.

Stiller: For me, I really have to say off the bat that I think there are four or five filmmakers that if you get a call from them as an actor, you basically would say yes no matter what it is and Noah is definitely one of those guys for me. What he was calling me with was something I felt very excited about too because it was so specifically written. We talked a little bit about it at the beginning, you know, about the age of the character and the issues he’s going through. Then it was just the chance to work on something that was really about the character and the chance to work on something that goes that deep in terms of the specificity of the writing was very exciting for me so I just felt very fortunate to have that opportunity.

Would you consider doing something like this again? Is this the way you want to take your career or do you want to leave it more open?

Stiller: First of all, I’d love to work with Noah again if he has anything.

Baumbach: Likewise.

Stiller: But yeah, sure, in terms of doing different roles and films, there are just very few filmmakers like Noah that have that sense of humor set in reality and are doing what he’s doing.

The letters that Greenberg writes in the movie are brilliant. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Baumbach: Well, in coming up with the character, Jennifer [co-writer] and I were exploring a lot of different professions and the story took different turns. I think, though, that very early on we came up with the letter writing. It seemed very apt for the character. It would be something that he pours a lot of energy into. There’s a lot of frustration and anger and in some ways it is his vocation. A lot of creative energy goes into it too, but it’s an energy that would be better used in other, more productive ways. I found it very funny, but also very moving that somebody would become so invested in letting these faceless corporations or people or journals or newspapers know how he felt about something after the fact. There’s something so self important about it because there’s the notion that nobody cares what you think and at the same time, there’s something totally futile about it because you’re spitting these things out to the ether. It was something structurally I wasn’t sure how the letters would play while we were shooting because I hadn’t written them as voiceover, but as we were doing it, I had Ben read them and it became a sort of score element in the movie.

James, what were the concepts going in creating the soundtrack and what goals did you have in mind?

Murphy: I think the goal for me was to make music that worked, that we liked, that seemed true to the character and true to the movie and that made Noah happy. It seemed pretty easy to do because we were able to talk about music pretty simply. I know I was very lucky to have that open line of communication. We were editing, I was making the soundtrack and Noah was editing the movie 100 feet from me, so it was very easy to have access and a lot of feedback, so I don’t know whether I ever really got self conscious about what the goals were other than deadlines and dates on the small level. I always just seemed to go with my instincts.

Baumbach: From my perspective, I wanted James to do something that worked for the movie, but to interpret it himself, to come at it from a personal standpoint. I think our relationship and friendship outside of work, or around the work, was very important because I think it helped support an environment where we both could talk freely and see what happened. Some of it is trial and error, in terms of some things you love, but when you put it against the picture it doesn’t work or it doesn’t feel right, but I think our track record was pretty good.

Murphy: I would give Noah music and he would just try it in different places if it didn’t work there, so he was very generous.

Noah: I loved everything James did, so I kept trying to find places for it which is good because I used music more in this movie than I have in previous movies and I was partly inspired by just trying to find places for his music that I really liked.

How did the story of an actively passive man finding his calling hood from his nothingness develop over time from pre-production to post-production?

Baumbach: Well, part of the experience is both interpreting the script when you shoot it and putting it together and rewriting it when you edit. That’s kind of a general way of looking at it, but because I’m so involved every step of the way, I think part of my job is being open to how it transforms and what other people bring that transform it. I really think that the character of Greenberg is in many ways a 50/50 collaboration between Ben and me. Ben didn’t improvise the dialogue, he did the dialogue I wrote, but he so inhabited the part and so transformed the character that I feel only part ownership of him now. I feel like Ben is just as responsible for it as I am and that’s true with many things. It’s true with the music too. I think the music is very specific and personal to James even though it was created to go with these pictures. Even in the post-production, the editing, I’m not precious about what I write. I tend to rewrite by cutting lines and moving things around and being open to what I have rather than what I anticipated having because it always becomes something different than what I started with.