By Jake Coyle, Film Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --In Noah Baumbach's "Greenberg," there's a scene where Ben Stiller, playing a prickly, neurotic 40-year-old, gazes fearfully at teenage kids around him at a Los Angeles party. "You're so sincere and interested in things," he sneers. "I hope I die before meeting any of you at a job interview."
In Baumbach's latest film, "While We're Young," that nightmare has come to pass. The backdrop for generational divide is just as much social as professional, but now Stiller is starring as half of a 40-something married couple (Naomi Watts is his wife) who befriend a much younger hipster couple (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried).
Stiller's character, a documentary filmmaker who's spent nearly a decade making the same film, becomes a mentor to Driver's aspiring documentarian. While their age-appropriate friends are having kids, Stiller and Watts' Manhattan couple take hip-hop classes, bike in Brooklyn, don questionable hats and generally try to pretend they're still 25.
The two movies, "Greenberg" and "While We're Young," have established Baumbach and Stiller as a potent pairing. Stiller's performances have been called among his best, and the films have contributed to a vibrant midlife period for Baumbach, who in between made the black-and-white 20-something comedy "Frances Ha" with his girlfriend Greta Gerwig.
"In both cases, thinking of Ben doing these things just made a lot of sense to me," Baumbach said in a recent interview with Stiller. "If we keep making movies together, then I guess we can just finish off a life."
"Go off into the sunset!" chimes Stiller.
"I wish I had gotten to Ben when he was 14," adds Baumbach, imagining their version of Truffaut's Antoine Doinel series.
"I could have given you some gold," Stiller adds, cackling. "You should check out my head shot when I was 14."
It's fitting that the two have come together to chart the sometimes painful acceptance of adulthood. Back in the 1990s, the first film each made — Stiller's "Reality Bites," Baumbach's "Kicking and Screaming" — were indelible portraits of what became known as Generation X. "Kicking and Screaming" came out shortly after the sensation of "Reality Bites," which Baumbach cheerfully recalls, beat him to the generation-defining punch.
The two didn't know each other until years later, "but we might as well have," says Baumbach.
"We grew up in New York, obviously, with creative parents," says Baumbach. "That and 'SCTV.'"
They nearly crossed paths in the late '90s when Stiller's brother-in-law was Baumbach's assistant, but they only became acquainted when Stiller reached out to Baumbach after seeing his "The Squid and the Whale."
Baumbach, knowing he wanted to work with Stiller again after 2010's "Greenberg," wrote the lead in "While We're Young" specifically for him: "I wanted to write a comedy about a marriage and having Ben's voice, or at least my interpretation of Ben's voice in my head was very helpful."
Stiller was receptive: "Ah Baumbach again!" he jokes. "Stop wanting to work with me on all your good movies!"
While Stiller's character "Greenberg" was grouchily inert, unable to reconcile himself to unfulfilled ambitions, in "While We're Young," he's game (maybe too much) to adapt. He marvels at how things that were once uncool (vinyl, VHS tapes, novelty songs) are now embraced by a younger, seemingly softer generation. Driver and Seyfried's characters raise chickens and make artisanal ice cream.
One song in the movie, Lionel Ritchie's "All Night Long," epitomizes the adjustments of aging for the 45-year-old Baumbach. Though he hated it in the 1980s, he's changed his mind: "I was reintroduced to it by a younger generation who had no association with it besides it being awesome."
Though they very much identify with the film, Baumbach and Stiller, 49, both exude contentment with their place in life and in their careers. Stiller, after directing his first drama in "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," is next returning to a role he played almost 15 years ago: Derek Zoolander. He'll direct the sequel, "Zoolander 2."
"I'm excited about the idea of doing it," says Stiller. "But there's always that question: What the hell am I doing? What am I thinking making a movie 15 years after the first one came out that no one went to in the first place?"
The anxieties of such a gap sounds distinctly like a Baumbach plot. The continual struggle for self-redefinition through life's stages make up the shifting timeline of his movies. Baumbach's next one, "Mistress America," deals with a character turning 30 played by Gerwig.
"I always feel like squaring yourself with where you are with where you thought you might be is interesting to me. I feel like it's human," says Baumbach. "There are darker aspects to that and there are lighter aspects to that."
Rom-Com Mainstay Hugh Grant Shifts To The Dark Side and He’s Never Been Happier
After some difficulties connecting to a Zoom, Hugh Grant eventually opts to just phone instead.
"Sorry about that," he apologizes. "Tech hell." Grant is no lover of technology. Smart phones, for example, he calls the "devil's tinderbox."
"I think they're killing us. I hate them," he says. "I go on long holidays from them, three or four days at at time. Marvelous."
Hell, and our proximity to it, is a not unrelated topic to Grant's new film, "Heretic." In it, two young Mormon missionaries (Chloe East, Sophie Thatcher) come knocking on a door they'll soon regret visiting. They're welcomed in by Mr. Reed (Grant), an initially charming man who tests their faith in theological debate, and then, in much worse things.
After decades in romantic comedies, Grant has spent the last few years playing narcissists, weirdos and murders, often to the greatest acclaim of his career. But in "Heretic," a horror thriller from A24, Grant's turn to the dark side reaches a new extreme. The actor who once charmingly stammered in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and who danced to the Pointer Sisters in "Love Actually" is now doing heinous things to young people in a basement.
"It was a challenge," Grant says. "I think human beings need challenges. It makes your beer taste better in the evening if you've climbed a mountain. He was just so wonderfully (expletive)-up."
"Heretic," which opens in theaters Friday, is directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, co-writers of "A Quiet Place." In Grant's hands, Mr. Reed is a divinely good baddie — a scholarly creep whose wry monologues pull from a wide range of references, including, fittingly, Radiohead's "Creep."
In an interview, Grant spoke about these and other facets of his character, his journey... Read More