Noah Baumbach & George Clooney — On Creation and Connection
This interview explores how Noah Baumbach and George Clooney collaborated on Jay Kelly — from the screenplay’s creation and the casting process to the personal experiences, sacrifices, and artistic philosophies that shaped the film and their performances.
Noah Baumbach’s new film Jay Kelly, which premiered in Venice and is now streaming on Netflix, is a bittersweet, reflective story about a Hollywood star who begins to question the life he has built — and the parts of himself he may have lost along the way. Blending humor, melancholy, and the honesty of an artist looking inward, the film captures the uneasy dance between fame, family, and those quiet moments when a person realizes that change is not only possible, but necessary.
As a Golden Globe voter, I attended two separate roundtables with Noah Baumbach and George Clooney respectively, and later combined their insights into this interview for Films in Frame. Clooney, warm and effortlessly charming, struck me as the kind of good-natured, friendly neighbor you’d always stop to chat with — and he answered every question with genuine openness. Baumbach, despite his status as an acclaimed auteur, carried himself with understated humility and quiet dignity. Together, their reflections — thoughtful, candid, and unexpectedly intimate — shed light on the creative chemistry behind the screenplay, the emotional core of the film, and the ways Clooney’s own life experience shaped his performance.
Mr Baumbach, this was your first collaboration with Emily Mortimer on a screenplay. How did you work together and what did your writing process look like?
It was entirely instinctive. I have always found her to be brilliant and funny, and I have admired the work she has done. I loved her show Doll & Em, and of course, she is a wonderful actor.
I had many ideas for this film, but I was not sure how to bring them together. I was telling her about them, and I loved how she reacted. So I just said, “Why don’t we write it together?”
We would meet every day and talk, and what I love about any truly great collaboration – whether it is with Greta when we write or work together, or with actors or cinematographers – is that when you are creating together, there is you, there is the other person, and then there is a third presence that emerges between you. It is something that neither of you could have created alone. Those are the best collaborations, when that third thing appears. Emily and I certainly had that in this film. The movie itself, the script, became that third entity – something that existed between us, something that simply happened through the energy of working together. After a while, you no longer remember who came up with what, or who wrote which part. It just becomes this shared creation that could only exist because the two of you were there together.
And how did you choose George Clooney for the main role?
With George, I felt that when Emily and I were writing, it was important not only to have a great actor but also someone with whom the audience would already have a history – the same kind of history that the characters in the film have with Jay. The audience needed to feel that connection.
When I gave the script to George, he laughed and said, “You are lucky I am saying yes, because there are only about three people in the world who could play this.”
George: When I said that, I was referring more to age than to movie stardom, because everyone else involved was a little younger than I am. I was mostly joking about my age, to be honest.
Noah: He was probably right. Honestly, I do not think I would have made the film without him. He was essential to the DNA of what the film was meant to be.
George: There are some similarities between this character and me. Obviously, we have the same height and the same hair. What was fun, though, were all the differences. I do not live in a world where I separate myself from people. I have a good relationship with my father, a very loving relationship with my wife, and my children who are eight years old, they still like me!
So my life is quite different [n. than Jay Kelly’s]. I do not pay for friends or live that kind of existence. Still, exploring this character was fascinating because there were experiences I could relate to. When I was taking acting classes, there were clearly people who were more talented than I was, but who did not make it. I still run into some of them from time to time. So there are elements of that world that feel very familiar.
I wish I could say that I brought some particular brilliance to it, but the truth is that it was a beautifully written script and a wonderfully directed film. I was really just the beneficiary of all that talent.
Noah: What I love about George is that he is, of course, a movie star – so charming, compelling, and watchable – but he is also an extraordinary actor. He makes it look effortless. When you talk to him, he will modestly say that it is the script or the direction, but he works incredibly hard. In this film, he reveals himself in a very genuine way. I felt deeply grateful to work with him every day and to watch what he was doing – work that never calls attention to itself, but that you can truly see and feel on screen. The scene in the forest, or the one with his father near the end, show those small cracks in the veneer of this man. I think it is a very beautiful thing.
As for the rest of the cast – this was one of those films that is, on some level, about performance itself: about acting, about how we all perform roles in our lives. There are so many speaking parts, so many characters who appear briefly and then vanish, that I wanted people who could come in, be extraordinary immediately, and suggest an entire life beyond what we see. That was very important because one of the messages of the film is that the world does not revolve around Jay. It is a vast world, and everyone has their own stories. Everyone is the hero of their own life. And I felt that part of the job of all these performers was to remind both Jay and the audience of exactly that.
What I love about George is that he is, of course, a movie star – so charming, compelling, and watchable – but he is also an extraordinary actor. He makes it look effortless. When you talk to him, he will modestly say that it is the script or the direction, but he works incredibly hard.
The story follows a Hollywood star who feels that he has lost something along the way. Mr Clooney, as someone who is also part of that world, do you feel you had to give up anything on your own journey?
I would argue that everyone here has had to give up something on their own journey. We all do. I could also argue that the film is less about being a movie star and more about all of us trying to balance work and family – something we all fail at from time to time. The things you sacrifice to get where you are – those choices often come back to you later in life.
My choices have always been to keep my family and friends close. They have been a huge help, honestly. When things go very well, they keep you grounded, and when things go badly, they hold you up. You need that in life. For me, the main sacrifice has been the loss of privacy. I truly feel sorry for my children because they did not volunteer for this life, and at times, it can be overwhelming for them. But overall, the sacrifices you make are part of the deal with the devil that comes with this career.
And quite honestly, I have cut tobacco for three dollars an hour and sold insurance door to door – which is a terrible job – so I know what it is like to do difficult, thankless work. You will never hear me complain about the things I have had to give up, because they do not compare to what many of my friends have sacrificed.
Directing involves a constant negotiation between control and the loss of control. That tension is one of the most exciting and consuming aspects of directing – knowing what you can control and what you cannot. When directors act, I think they are often grateful to be actors again, to not be the one making every decision.
George Clooney is also a director. Did that influence your dynamic on set? Was there an additional layer of creative exchange between you because of that shared experience?
Noah Baumbach: I imagine there was, in some ways. George is incredibly experienced, and he is very clear and practical in his communication. He will ask, “What do you need? Do you want me to look this way? Should I move here?” He is not precious at all.
He understands a director’s perspective very well – that sometimes you come up with elaborate reasons to motivate an actor to cross the room, when in fact you simply need them to cross the room. Some actors require those motivations. George does not. He knows exactly what that process is and is perfectly happy to be told where to go or what to do.
He is an extraordinarily easy person to work with: focused, generous, and hardworking. We rehearsed together, and I found that many actors who also direct often feel a certain relief when they are acting. Directing involves a constant negotiation between control and the loss of control. That tension is one of the most exciting and consuming aspects of directing – knowing what you can control and what you cannot. When directors act, I think they are often grateful to be actors again, to not be the one making every decision.
Noah Baumbach is known as a director who films a very large number of takes. What do you think about that? How do you manage to work with this approach?
George Clooney: Well, I will tell you, it is an interesting process. It is not my usual style. As a director myself, if I get what I need in one take, we move on. For me, sitting in an editing room and looking through forty takes would make my brain explode.
As an actor, I came out of television, where you usually get two or three takes at most. So you learn to hit the ground running. Many actors who began in film warm up slowly into a scene, and they might do thirty takes or more. So before we started, I said to Noah, “Just so you know, I have not done this kind of work in a long time, working with someone who does so many takes. I am handing it over to you. We will do it your way. You are the director, and I am thrilled to work with you. But it may take me a little time to adjust to this method, this process of drilling down, and drilling down, and drilling down again.”
I found it fascinating. It is not my style as a director, and it is certainly not the easiest approach as an actor, but I completely understand it. I was thrilled with the process. I truly loved working with him. And since this is a film about friendship, it certainly does not hurt to have a few extra chances to get it right.
Noah: Watching George work every day was a real pleasure. The vulnerability he begins to reveal as the film progresses is remarkable. He starts as one kind of character and ends as another – and witnessing that transformation was a beautiful experience.
Jay Kelly is a very nice human being who seems to want to be a better person. At some point in your career, whether it was an important meeting, a press event, or a public appearance, did you consciously try to be a good person?
George Clooney: Well, I am the son of a reporter, a newsman. I wrote Good Night, and Good Luck as both a film and a play. I have a deep and lasting respect for journalism. Our foundation works to free journalists who are unjustly imprisoned, that is what we focus on. I not only have great respect, but also real fondness for people who write and report stories. I always find them interesting because they are curious people. Every one of you wants to hear some new version of a story that I have not told before, and I try to provide that as best I can. But when you do a lot of these interviews, you inevitably repeat yourself sometimes. I try, compared with other actors in these situations, to make sure that my answers are not so dull that everyone behind the camera wants to shoot themselves before it is over.
I grew up in a healthy, happy family in a small town in Kentucky, and I feel very fortunate to be where I am at sixty-four. After quite a few years without a truly great role, it feels exciting to have something like this to talk about with all of you. It is exciting to be sixty-four years old and still have opportunities like that in my life. So what would I have to complain about? Why would I be dismissive or detached?
Jay, on the other hand, is different. I think that is because he became famous at a young age and never really learned how to connect with people.
Mr Baumbach, since the film has such a retrospective tone, I’m curious if you ever reflect on your career, on what you have done in the past, and how those experiences affect you today?
Yes, I think I reflect on my life a great deal. I reflect on my experiences and emotions, and in a way, all of my films are products of that reflection – whether or not they draw directly from autobiographical material. I do not, however, look back at my own work. I am proud of the films I have made and feel privileged to have had the career I have, but I do not revisit the movies themselves. I do not watch them after they are finished. They exist as versions of me that are out there in the world, and I am comfortable with that. Even if I would not make the same film today that I made years ago, I am at peace with the fact that it represents who I was then.
What I want to do in film is to create works that reflect the human experience – and that encompasses a lot. Relationships, questions of identity, marriage, friendship, children, parents, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters — these are the recurring subjects in all of my films. So in that sense, yes, I am reflective, but not about the work itself, rather about the life that informs it.
Nataliia Serebriakova
Nataliia Serebriakova is a Berlin-based Ukrainian film critic whose cinematic sensibility was shaped by daytime French cinema on UT-1 and the surreal world of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. A transformative viewing of Andrzej Żuławski’s My Nights Are More Beautiful Than Your Days convinced her to fully commit to the craft, and today her tastes gravitate toward Żuławski, Terrence Malick, and Michelangelo Antonioni. Nataliia writes for Korydor, DTF Magazine, Skvot, and Vogue Ukraine.
Nataliia Serebriakova
[:ro]Nataliia Serebriakova este o critică de film ucraineană stabilită la Berlin, a cărei sensibilitate cinematografică a fost modelată de cinematografia franceză difuzată pe UT-1 și de lumea suprarealistă din Twin Peaks de David Lynch. O vizionare transformatoare a filmului My Nights Are More Beautiful Than Your Days de Andrzej Żuławski a convins-o să se dedice pe deplin acestei vocații, iar astăzi gusturile ei gravitează spre Żuławski, Terrence Malick și Michelangelo Antonioni. Nataliia scrie pentru Korydor, DTF Magazine, Skvot și Vogue Ucraina.[:en]Nataliia Serebriakova is a Berlin-based Ukrainian film critic whose cinematic sensibility was shaped by daytime French cinema on UT-1 and the surreal world of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. A transformative viewing of Andrzej Żuławski’s My Nights Are More Beautiful Than Your Days convinced her to fully commit to the craft, and today her tastes gravitate toward Żuławski, Terrence Malick, and Michelangelo Antonioni. Nataliia writes for Korydor, DTF Magazine, Skvot, and Vogue Ukraine.[:]