Noah Baumbach Quotes

Defining yourself by your taste is easier than defining yourself by any genuine stance on something.

As a kid, I thought of myself as a funny person who secretly wanted to be serious, but now I think maybe I'm a serious person who secretly wants to be funny.

I like the way corduroys feel. I like the sort of jean aspect of corduroys, but also the texture of them. They probably remind me of my childhood, too, I think. I wore cords, and my dad had a corduroy jacket.

We expect forty-year-olds to have grown up at some point, and to be engaged and adult and take responsibility, and doing nothing would seem to go against that.

When you find yourself on the Internet when you're supposed to be writing, you've already lost. It's even beyond procrastination when you end up on the Internet.

A film set becomes its own family anyway, and all family dynamics come out during a shoot. The trick is hiring people who know how to handle that.

Peter Bogdanovich is a good friend.

I feel a real connection to Brooklyn, certainly, because I spent 20 years of my life there, but I don't think of myself as a Brooklyn artist any more than I think of myself as a male artist.

I'm always looking for overlooked post-Dylan singer-songwriter records from the '70s.

There are the people who overthink making mix CDs and playlists, and how that works generationally is all really interesting to me.

Will Ferrell's made a lot of brilliant movies.

There's something really vulnerable about playing something that you like for someone. You don't know what their reaction will be.

It's near impossible to make a movie in black and white in the system.

I suppose some studio executive would say it's death for a comedy if people aren't all laughing in the same places, but I find with my movies that people laugh in very different places. I can't control it.

Other people have worked with big studios and maintained control over their movies. I see no reason why it wouldn't work for me.

It's nice being friends over a period of time with people whose music you like so much, or other filmmakers, seeing people change, go through trials

When you're around your family, and you have that history and that shared language, you say things you'd be embarrassed to hear quoted back to you later.

I don't like when you necessarily know that this is the end of the movie. I like when a movie ends abruptly. You go through this, and some of the scenes are uncomfortable, and some are funny - and then suddenly it's over.

There are days when you're in a good groove and the actor really understands the part and comes as prepared every day as you are and is so inside it. And then there's the day where, for whatever reason, it's just a harder slog. And I feel like those are the days where all the preparation and everything becomes more necessary because you have to find a third route there.

I like having associations with locations beyond their meaning for the specific movie.

It's kind of a crazy art form, movies, in that you have to get it right the day you do it, generally.

I like to try to keep things as relaxed and easy as possible. I mean, movies generally attract a lot of people who like to cause fires, so they can later try to put them out. But I don't like that kind of thing.

If you don't feel good about something, you don't shake it off easily.

[Shwing] the really naked stuff I've dealt with in my own life, my own therapy and relationships - for me it just feels like a film I'm really proud of.

I live in Manhattan now, because, in a way, it was my fantasy.

Nothing that I've turned down do I feel like I should have done. Because I've generated everything I've done, I've never really considered doing something that I haven't originated myself. There are definitely things that I've been brought that someone else made good movies out of. But it's not a path I've followed, so I don't have regret.

I guess I'm interested in people who are very sophisticated in intellectual ways, while being completely off the mark in emotional ones, with huge blind spots in terms of their own behavior.

I do think it's a very good way to describe what a great actor does. You're both acknowledging the authority of the director and the necessity of the actor to push back and find their own voice.

Adaptations are fun for me because they connect to the idea of filmmaking I had when I was a kid. I would see a movie and think: 'I'm gonna make that movie.'

Friends of friends had bands in college or in their early 20s and had a moment where they had some kind of interest from a record label or manager. It's always interesting how people handle those decisions and those moments.

I think it's always interesting how music means different things to different people, and people who overthink it are looking to in some ways show off with music, versus people who just respond to a song and decide to sing it.

I think sometimes bad behaviour can be liberating for certain people. They need to behave badly to find themselves - to go off path to find their path. You see it with kids all the time: They're testing boundaries, and I think that's healthy.

I think I was going through a lot of change at 27, but I didn't know it was happening until it was over.

I like shooting in New York because I have such a connection to the city. I have so many memories there.

I love black-and-white movies that are about contemporary subjects.

How you start the movie is critical. And how often you feel that there's no reason for how it's starting.

I didn't train in directing; I talk to actors the way I talk to anybody.

Anyone who's putting money into your movie would always rather you cast well-known people.

A lot of black-and-white films generally have a color version that will be used for TV.

I grew up in the heat of '70s postmodern fiction and post-Godard films, and there was this idea that what mattered was the theory or meta in art.

I've had great experiences or joyful experiences making a movie that people found very disturbing.

I've always felt some kind of connection to people who are kind of over-smart. People who over-think things to the point of some sort of paralysis, and I think that certainly can be me on any given day.

We all have these notions of cool that come about at different points in our lives, and it's interesting in how it evolves or doesn't evolve in different people.

Wes Anderson grew up in Houston, and he and I talk about Manhattan in similar ways, as a kind of fantasy world.

When I make a movie, I have both a specific and vague, amorphous dream idea of what the movie is going to be. Of course, I don't actually know what it's going to be, but I'm still striving to get to some place with it.

I read all the time. Sometimes I get asked if I've thought about writing a novel.

I get a lot of responses to my movies. Some people say, 'Oh, I thought it was really funny - I hope that's okay!' And my answer always is 'Yes. It's totally okay.'

Wes Anderson's films, 6-year-olds are crazy about them.

I'm curious how people build up the codes that they live their life by, and how they come to think that that's the best way for them to function.

I wouldn't say 'Frances Ha' is autobiographical, but it's definitely very personal.