(courtesy of Focus Features)
“Greenberg” delves into the emotional instability of a 40-something-year-old man with little going on his life. Faced with constant indifference and apathy, the character Greenberg, played by Ben Stiller, searches to find meaning in his otherwise mundane life.
Written and directed by Noah Baumbach, who created the acclaimed film “The Squid and the Whale” and co-wrote Wes Anderson’s “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” shared his experience creating his newest film, along with actor Ben Stiller and lead singer of LCD Soundsystem James Murphy, who scored the film’s soundtrack.
CU Independent: How was the dynamic backstage for all of you, and are there any moment’s you’d like to discuss?
Stiller: I feel that working with Noah is a very, very special experience because he just approaches movies in a very different way that I’ve [never] experienced before. He wrote a very specific script, and I think everyone who was working on the movie was really dedicated to it and wanted to do the best they could because they respected the script, and Noah so much. There was a lot of camaraderie.
Murphy: I met with Noah before shooting had started and we talked a lot about the music and the characters. It’s a lot of human-kind of camaraderie that made it very easy to talk about what the movie needed. It wasn’t any less about my emotions. We didn’t try to make a soundtrack that necessarily always accented emotions; instead I focused on creating songs that worked almost as a backdrop for what was happening and let the emotions be done by the directing and the acting.
There were a lot of jokes about, “Well, right now should there be a really moody chord?”
CU|I: Obviously this is a very different role for Stiller. What contributed in casting him as the character Greenberg?
Baumbach: I always wanted somebody who had a sense of humor to play this part. There’s a lot of humor in it, although it’s not played for laughs. Ben and I talked about this a lot: the more [the movie] is authentically portrayed, the funnier it’s going to be. Obviously Ben is known for bigger comedies, but he’s done a lot of different stuff, so I never really saw it as a different role for him, just that he’d be the best person to play this.
CU|I: What made you decide to pick a role like this, Ben?
Stiller: Off the bat, I think there are four or five filmmakers where if you get a call from one of them as an actor, you say “yes” no matter what it is, and Noah is one of those filmmakers. I felt very excited by it because it was so specifically written and [Noah and I] talked a little bit about it at the beginning: the age of the character and the issues he was going through. Then it just became a chance to work on something that was just about the character, and something that goes that deep in terms of the specificity of the writing made me feel very fortunate to have that opportunity.
CU|I: Is this something you’d do again?
Ben: I would love to work with Noah again if he has anything.
Noah: Likewise.
Ben: In terms of doing different kinds of roles, it’s just a very few number of filmmakers that have a sense of humor but also a well-rounded sense of reality.
CU|I: What kind of concepts went into creating the soundtrack?
Murphy: The goal for me was to make music that worked, that we liked, that seemed true to the characters and true to the movie and made Noah happy. I was very lucky to have that kind of open line of communication. I was making the soundtrack and Noah was editing the movie a hundred feet from me, so it was very easy to have access and have a lot of feedback and just communicate. I don’t think I ever really got self-conscious about what the goal was; I usually just go with my instincts.
Baumbach: I wanted to do something that was obviously going to work for the movie, but to have [James Murphy] interpret it himself. To come at it from a personal standpoint, I think our relationship and friendship outside the work was really important because it helped support an environment where we could both talk freely and see what happened. Some of it was trial and error, but I think our track record was pretty good.
CU|I: How did the story develop?
Baumbach: Part of the experience is both interpreting the script and rewriting it when you edit. Because I’m so involved every step of the way, I think part of my job was being open to how it transforms and what other people bring that transformed it. I think the character, Greenberg, is in many ways a 50/50 collaboration between Ben and I. [Ben Stiller] so inhabited the part and so transformed the character that I feel only sort of part ownership of him. Ben is as responsible for it as I am. And that’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.
I’m not precious about what I write, so I tend to rewrite by cutting lines and moving things around and being open to what I have, which I think is important, rather than what I anticipated having. It always becomes something different from what you started with.
“Greenberg” opens in select theaters March 26.
Contact CU Independent Entertainment Editor Sebastian Murdock at Sebastian.murdock@colorado.edu.
